TOC | Last Chapter | Next Chapter | Back Cover
Story so far in Chapters 1-7: Draven witnesses the impossible - woman walking unharmed by sunlight, sparking rumors that divide Stonehold between faith, fear, and denial. Determined to uncover the truth, he ventures into the light and meets the Dawn Bringers, who reveal a wider world connected by ancient portals and powered by bonding with dragons. Now hunted by suspicion, Draven searches the forest for a dragon egg, finds a dragon den, and enters.
The entrance to the crawler’s den, or dragon as Solari called it, sloped down into a cave system hidden beneath the umbrathorns and forest roots.
Draven’s eyes were well adapted to dim light. He couldn’t see in complete darkness without any light at all, but there were smatterings of bioluminescent moss and mushrooms growing here and there that lit the way for him.
Each eye swiveled to look before and behind him, searching for threats. Thallic stone arched inward like ribs, and the tunnel flickered with cool shadows. Some bats hung above, silent and watchful, though most were out for their night time hunt.
Draven crept along, heart hammering. If that shadow-crawler came back while he was in here, he’d have nowhere to run.
The tunnel exited into a larger, underground cavern.
The soft greenish light from the bioluminescent plants cast strange shadows across the stalactites and stalagmites that hung from above amid the hanging roots of trees that pierced into the cavern.
Draven slipped between them.
Looking around, he saw the bones of birds and mammals, and even of witherwings, a raptor with ivory tusks. He didn’t know how the mother shadow-crawler had caught one, because they were among the fastest birds alive. But the tusk ivory was worth a fortune. He picked several up and put them into his pack.
While searching for the tusks, he spotted another exit, different from the one he’d come in.
Of course.
Any creature with a den made sure there were two ways out. Shadow-crawlers might be violent, but the Gloamers knew them to be intelligent too.
And then he found what he’d come for.
At the back of the cavern lay a soft nest of fur and moss and feathers. Nestled in the center were two dragon eggs. Each one shimmered with an iridescent sheen of dark purple, with threads of violet light running beneath the shell.
His teeth ground together and instinct screamed as a hand flew to his sword, but then stalled.
Any other time, had he the courage to come here, he would not have taken an egg to give the chief in hopes of rewards and status. He would’ve smashed them all to bits in fury and anger.
But instead, he had to hatch one in order to use the Aether Arches.
His mate’s face flashed through his mind.
He replayed Myra’s melodic laugh and shimmering black hair, and the feel of her hand in his.
His fists clenched and unclenched.
He could take one egg and break the other. The fewer shadow-crawlers in the world, the better.
Then he heard a distant snapping of twigs up the tunnel he’d come in by.
His breath caught.
That might be the mother returning.
Time to move.
Draven seized one egg. It was heavy and colder than ice, and larger than he’d imagined. Then again, look at the mighty monster it would become. He folded it into his pack, nestling it carefully into the padding and hard leather he’d brought to protect it.
Whether she could smell him when she returned didn’t matter. Even if the oil masked his scent, she would see the missing egg and go into a rage.
Draven darted toward the second exit and peered into its dark depths. It looked like a tunnel similar to the one by which he’d entered.
He ran up it, hoping that if the mother arrived now, she would come through the other passage.
Ahead he saw the sky beyond, no longer full night, but back to twilight. He’d been at this through most of the dark portion of the cycle. Dawn was coming.
He stopped at the exit, head and eyes swiveling, but he didn’t yet see the mother.
What he did see stopped him.
In the ravine, a short distance away, stood three dark furred murkwilers sniffing at the ground. Their silver eyes glowed as they nipped at each other. Their long fangs and claws gleamed.
Damn the day.
Murkwilers were among the most dangerous predators in the woods, that is, after the shadow-crawlers.
He could fight one. But a pack was a death sentence.
He ran a hand down his face, unsure what to do. He didn’t think he could leave the way he’d come without coming face to face with an enraged shadow-crawler.
He hesitated, refreshing the masking oil along his neck.
Maybe he could slip through the thorns unnoticed.
Or he could wait a little time, and hope the murkwilers left.
A deafening roar of fury shook the tunnel behind him.
A swarm of bats burst out in a frantic cloud.
Draven ducked, covering his head, skin going icy cold.
Time was out!
The murkwilers startled, then bolted into the trees.
They wouldn’t be far, and he’d have to watch for them.
But one danger at a time. A dragon was coming.
He wove through the umbrathorns, careful of the spines, and ran up the side of the ravine, feet slipping on moss.
Another roar shook the ground and the earth trembled beneath him.
He was going to die.
He plunged into the trees, branches clawing at his clothes, trying to hold him back. He leaped over logs and tore through the brush with more noise than he’d ever made before in his life.
He was leaving a trail.
He had to calm down, and think.
A new, louder echoing roar told him the mother had emerged into the forest. Birds burst upward into black clouds and forest critters all scattered.
She was hunting.
For him.
He wiped his palms on his pants.
He needed a distraction. And he knew what was near.
Draven yipped, mimicking a female murkwiler in heat.
The sound cut through the dark as he ran, repeating it at intervals.
Moments later, silver eyes flared and a murkwiler lunged at him.
Draven barely reacted in time, thrusting out a witherwing tusk still slick with gore. It reeked of the shadow-crawler den.
He tossed it aside.
The murkwiler’s eyes tracked its arc, and then pounced on it.
Two more burst from the brush, fighting over it. Draven threw another tusk, then another. He kept two.
They chewed on them, the blood coating their muzzles.
He backed away slowly into the shadows.
A breath like rolling thunder stirred the bushes.
The mother was here. She would smell the den on that blood.
The shadow-crawler burst from the brush in a blur of shining purple scales and snapping teeth, wings flaring wide enough to scatter snow and ice in a violent mess. It was a younger one, but still massive, its claws longer than Draven’s forearm, its breath curling with dark vapor.
She roared and seized one murkwiler whose muzzle was covered in the tusk gore, tore it in half, and threw one half away while devouring the other like a snake with a rat.
The other murkwilers yipped in fear and darted into the woods.
The shadow-crawler chased them into the dark trees.
And Draven ran the opposite direction.
He didn’t know how long they would distract her. Even with the oil, she might soon realize they smelled of her den but not of her egg.
He ran through the woods, darted past ponds, and ducked fallen trees.
He glimpsed the edge of the Ironwood forest. Beyond it lay the open plains to Stonehold.
Hope flickered in his heart.
Something tangled in his legs, tripping him.
He slammed into the ground, his breath driven from him.
From the tree shadows surged the shadow-crawler, eyes blazing with purple fury.
She lunged.
He rolled aside and scrambled between the trees, keeping trunks between them, dodging claws and snapping jaws.
Step by step, he edged toward the forest edge.
She reached around the trees, snapping at him, and her tail hit him from the other direction.
But confusion flickered in her gaze.
He knew why.
He hadn’t attacked her.
“I don’t understand either,” he rasped. “Why aren’t you killing me?”
She hissed.
A claw sliced the air behind him.
And then he understood.
She wanted the egg intact, so she was herding him.
He burst from the forest as dawn broke over the hills. He pulled his hood and mask on to protect himself and ran into the rising sun’s rays of light.
The shadow-crawler darted after him.
Light touched her scales and she screeched a bone chilling cry as smoke sizzled up.
She recoiled into the trees, roaring at the sky.
Draven ran into the open, pulling his wide brimmed hat on as the sun burned over the land.
The mother bellowed in fury, pacing the forest’s edge in the shade, screaming at him in a long string of different sounds, from roars to whimpers to gnashing her teeth.
Heart pounding and his ears ringing, Draven staggered across the plain toward Stonehold, smoke rising from his cloak.
He kept the dragon egg secure in his pack, and prayed he reached the doors and safety before the sun killed him.
TOC | Last Chapter | Next Chapter | Back Cover
Author Notes:
Images from Midjourney.
This is also being published at Royal Road.