Published via Ecency

Hi all

What a week. All I want to do is just chill this week, but I have a BloodBowl game I need to play, sigh, oh well. At least the league is almost done.

This is the start of Book 8. Now I know I have written some dark stuff but oh boy, hold onto your hats! It's about to get worse. This is the last book in the series, and I am already working on the next book, which should only be a single book.

Anyway, please enjoy the start of Book 8, and getting to know the real villains of the story!

The claws that had torn at her face and neck were now picking her up on the orders of something. She remembered gold and blood. So much blood. She couldn’t breathe, but there was nothing left in her body to fight.

A coldness settled on her. She wondered if this was what her father felt toward the end. Limbs hung limply as she was carried. The fur was warm but also slick with blood. Hers? His? It didn’t matter. As if sensing the blood running from her wounds was choking her, the beast turned her, so her head was hanging down. Blood ran freely from her throat, and she could breathe a little but not by much.
Where were they taking her? Why were they taking her? Then the rumours she had heard came back to her. The Fell Dragon was immortal not because it fed upon the lives around it, but because the champions would take its place.

She tried to push back against the beast holding her, but its arms held her too tightly to move. She had screamed her frustration, only to be answered by another voice. Too much time had passed for her to remember the words used, but she remembered what they had meant. There needed to be a Dragon and her abilities would make her the perfect replacement.

She didn’t want this. She had fought against this. She had escaped the men with military dress and white coats as a child to live the life she wanted. She had fought for years and joined many organisations to remain free of being treated like an animal. Some had used her, while she had used others. She had grown into a woman fiercely protective over what was hers, be it people or things. However, her activities were always being watched, she was never free, and when the Fell Dragon’s influence was felt, she was dragged back into front of those same men.

She was nothing more than an experiment to them. Her life didn’t matter, it never had. It had been held on a leash by the very gods, reeling her in when they had need for her. She had had people to protect and knew what would happen if she hadn’t complied with their wishes.

The metal they had placed within her burned, heightening her abilities, making her scream in agony until her throat was raw and her fingernails were torn from her fingers as she scratched at the pain throughout her body. In time she realised that her power was more than enough to free herself from her captures, but they realised it too.

More and more metal was added to her until her will to fight them was gone. She didn’t know how it had been lost but she had no more drive, even with the threat of the Fell Dragon looming. Then, freedom was offered in the form of a promise. A gilded piece of paper with a promise etched onto it, gifted to her by the First. A promise of freedom for when she had brought the beast under control. She had not listened to the rumours, only hoping for the freedom that was promised to her.

Yet, as her only remaining eye viewed the room she had been brought into, she knew her freedom had come with conditions she had not been aware of. She had begged, threatened, and even tried to get away from the room. She knew if she stayed here, there was no way she would ever be free again.

The First with their golden robes instructed the creature holding her to place her on a metal table and then to hold her in place. She had kicked and thrashed, but with the blood loss, it was a losing battle, and soon she could do nothing as she was turned to her right side to prevent her from choking on the blood that ran from her face.

Those surrounding her were confused as to where her obedience had gone, but closer inspection of her injuries alerted them that the machine that had been controlling her had been severely damaged. Then it felt like someone had slid a hot knife into the back of her neck. Before she could react, the giant wolf gripped her hands and held them down, as others latched onto her legs.

She screamed in agony as the pain inched its way from her neck down her back. Multiple hands held her in place as the pain spread all the way down to her spine. Once that occurred, she was flipped on her back, only to have her arms and feet tied in place. She could view the faces of those who held her captive. She recognized The First clothing but of all of them, there was one that stood out from the rest. She knew his name, she didn’t know how, but she did.

“Shareik.”

The man startled at hearing his name.

“Best you kill me, or I will hunt you to the ends of time.” She swore as the pain spread outward from her spine.

The First had left then, leaving her to the pain that was spreading through her body as the wolf creature lay at her side, watching over her. She didn’t know what was happening. It felt like something was invading her mind and body. She fought against whatever it was, periodically screaming in frustration or pain until her entire world flared in agony and she succumbed to darkness.

Shareik woke with a fright as the sentence was repeated again and again in his dreams.

“Best you kill me, or I will hunt you to the ends of time.”

He wasn’t surprised to find tears on his cheeks as he sat up. It had been some time since he had had that dream. He knew it was nothing but a guilty conscience surfacing. It had been so long, he doubted that she even remembered him. However, she had never met him before that day, but she had picked him out of a crowd and by name.

It had been his Master who had presented her with the promise she still held in her possession. A token she should have been allowed to use after she defeated the Fell Dragon of her time, but they had never allowed her to. She was the first of the Dragons to have access to a wish, and they all knew the consequences of her uttering her wish within their presence.

Shareik made his way to the window, which he opened to gulp down deep breaths of cool air before looking up at the twin full moons hanging in the red sky. Yet no matter how much he longed for the image within his head to be banished, it stubbornly persisted.

The Fell Dragon hadn’t been as young as those before it, nor had she been a volunteer. She had been a child when her abilities had come to the attention of those she had thought her rescuers. She could steal lifeforce by simply willing it and then shaping it into whatever weapon she wanted. Due to the abuse suffered at the hands of her father, the weapons she had often chosen to use were claws and teeth. She wanted to get close and watch those within her grasp slowly lose the will to live.

She was what Saasha could have been with the genetics of her mother and father’s races, but she wasn’t Saith. No, this Dragon was something else, with abilities that had never surfaced in this timeline. Shareik gripped the windowsill hard as he heard her screaming her threat again and again.

After she escaped from where she had been treated for the injuries sustained by the Kai slavers, whom she had also killed, she vanished for a few years. The First had tried to keep track of her skills but soon lost interest as there was no need to look for a champion this generation. They had been so wrong. The Dragon had been biding his time, and when he struck, he had decimated multiple timelines before they were able to track him.

The First would have approached the representatives of many timelines in hopes of finding volunteers, but not this time. This time they already had someone in mind. After her escape, she disappeared, finding other misfits to blend in with. Time had been generous and harsh to her. She had formed a gang that had run the planet she had been born on. The only reason the authorities hadn’t put her in place was because she was keeping worse scum in place.

Making their intentions clear to those in power on the planet, she had been hunted like a dog. Her gang was all but destroyed, and those that remained were captured and killed off one by one until she made an appearance. Now a woman, she knew this was but one outcome of her deeds. She had agreed to turn herself in for the rest of her underlings to be released.

That had been agreed but then, without asking her permission, she had been forced to bear the system that would help amplify her abilities enough to defeat the Dragon. Shareik had witnessed what they had done to her to make her a champion. She had created so much animosity amongst her people that they were trying to return it tenfold. They had forgotten that years earlier she had been at the mercy of her father’s hatred.

“Hate breeds hate.” He muttered to the moons.

He knew she was awake and knew she was free. He had felt the room being destroyed. She wasn’t going to go back again. There was only one of two ways this was going to end, and both would mean death, whether the Fell Dragon or the world, that would remain to be seen.

He sat down in a chair and continued to look at the moons. Even if she managed to get to one of the First that still remained, they were so few in number, they couldn’t grant any more wishes. He wondered if she realised that her hunts to destroy them would result in her wish becoming useless. He doubted it. She was desperate to be free. She had come so close last time, but Shareik couldn’t allow it, not when a Champion was still in the making that needed protecting.

He sighed heavily and looked up at the moons, “Saita you have no idea what is coming for you. I never should have involved you. I should have sought a different champion.”

He made his way back to the bed and sat down, knowing that there would be no more sleep. She was on his mind, and he was concerned for the current Champion. This was the first time that a Champion and Dragon were so close to one another. Their fight was going to tear this world apart.

Well, that started with a bang. Hope you're all still willing to ride this journey out with me.

For those of you who have never heard of Fell Dragon you can find Book 1 here, Book 2 here, Book 3 here, and Book 4 here, Book 5 here, Book 6 here, and Book 7 here
If you have any questions, feel free to ask me. I love discussing my books!
As the series continues, it will combine with another book series I wrote. To avoid confusion about what is happening, introductory chapters will be introduced separately so that you don't have to be lost. However, these chapters will contain spoilers. You can find these chapters here:
Races Explained
Banishment
Royal Guard
Saasha’s Direct Family
Saith Characters Recap
Human Characters Recap
Alternate Timeline Brucel
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