Fell Dragon
Greetings Readers
I trust your weekend was a pleasant one, and the week started out slowly. This week has started a little bumpy for me, as I am not connecting well with a client. I am not used to writing books for young women and it shows as the client is constantly trying to correct my work. Now I don't mind a change in tone, but at least give me time to review my work before you tear me a new one.
Anyway, none of you are here to listen to me moan. You're all here for Part 7 of Book 2 of Fell Dragon. Well, you don't have to wait any longer. Enjoy this part, it is much longer than I wanted to add, but there wasn't a great place to cut without losing the emotional impact of what was happening. I hope you all enjoy!
Jarah whistled when he removed the bandages from Saita’s head. “You heal even faster now than you did when you were a teenager.”
The woman scratched at her temple and grumbled under her breath when she noticed the tendrils had reached her right elbow. Jarah picked up the arm and inspected it from every angle.
“I heard about your regrown arm. An absolutely beautiful piece of work.”
He couldn’t get her to smile for him as she looked out of the window at the setting sun. He sighed and put her arm down before he continued to take more samples of her blood and listened to her heart and lungs. Saita pulled the sleeves of her shirt down to hide the marks. She hated seeing them, and because of that, she rarely showered.
“You smell,” said Jarah as he wrinkled his nose.
“Take the mirrors out,” she muttered.
“Shower with the lights off.”
She sighed and scratched at her facial scar with irritation. Jarah didn’t know how to speak to her anymore. She would often stare out into space and not react unless someone called her name but other than that she was in her own little world.
“The war with the Kai, who is winning?” she asked suddenly.
“The Kai refuse to fight saying they have nothing to hide, and the Saith have come to their aid when we get too close to comfort. We call it a war, but it is more of a shoving game at this point.”
“Father should have spent resources looking for me and not fighting a god damned war,” she hissed.
Jarah had noticed this angry personality developing over the last few days and wasn’t sure if it was from the trauma or if it had always been there.
“I can’t argue that.”
Doran made his way into the room with a grin and tossed an apple at her head. She caught it with ease and looked at it with disdain. “More apples Doran? I’m not hungry.”
“You haven’t eaten since I saw you, and you only sleep when Beatrice is around-”
“Because she grants me dreamless sleep.” Saita clutched the apple to her chest and grimaced. “In my dreams, I see my chest open, and I’m screaming, but no sound coming out because air is being forced into my lungs.”
She shook her head and said. “But it is the thought that counts. Thank you.”
“Eat please,” insisted Doran.
“Fine!” Saita held the apple in her hand, and then it fell into quarters.
She set the other three pieces on the bedside table and half-heartedly started crunching on one piece.
“Thank you.” Doran sat down at the end of the bed as Saita drew her legs up to sit cross-legged. “Your father will be here soon.”
“Surprised that he was willing to leave his precious war to come see me.”
“Saita!” snapped Doran.
“Tell me Doran, how long after I was gone was heirdom placed upon Kristen’s shoulders? How quickly did the search parties stop looking for me? A year, less?”
Doran recognised the spiteful voice but didn’t know how to handle it. He only stared at her before he said gently. “I never gave up. I searched every day. I have had my heart shattered on so many occasions when leads were false. Does that not count?”
Saita snorted and continued on the second piece of an apple. “You did it because you had to. Saseric did it because he owed Father his life.”
“That’s not true,” said Doran. “Girl, I would have given up everything to have found you sooner, but I cannot change the past as much as what I and you want it.”
Saita sighed and said. “Yeah, yeah, I guess.”
They sat in silence as Saita finished the apple and then continued to stare out the window once more. Doran looked to Jarah, who simply shrugged his shoulders and indicated that they should talk outside. Once they were some distance from the room Doran could only shake his head. “She is so angry.”
“Can you blame her?” asked Jarah. “She brings up some very valid points. Officially the royals moved on very quickly after she disappeared.”
“But unofficially we spent months searching for her. I followed up every lead we had.”
Jarah opened his hands in a gesture of not knowing. “She doesn’t know that. Give her time. Anger can be eased, but she will need help, and we will need to be patient with her through this time. She needs the support of those that chose her as theirs.”
“I do not think that she will find it in Karesh,” Doran said sadly. “He has always wanted to be king, and now that it is within his grasp, he will stop at nothing to keep the power it has earned him.”
“Edzeeker was never Kai to begin with. Do you think he will stop this senseless war if she tells him that?”
Doran shook his head. “The damage has been done. Both sides have had kills. It is likely to progress to something worse in the future as now Karesh has something to prove. As for Saita being home now, I don’t know how this will affect him.”
Jarah looked to the setting sun. “There is something I haven’t told Myla or Saita yet.”
“You have gone quite pale doctor, what is wrong?”
“According to the notes of Sellious Saita will likely not see her 27th birthday. The system is parasitic in nature, it is eating her alive slowly, but it is destroying cells day by day. The notes state that Edzeeker’s people normally lasted ten years with this system.”
Doran stopped dead in his tracks and stared at Jarah. “Are you sure?”
“I have noticed small changes around the sites where the first discs were implanted. I am not sure if this is cellular death or not, but I will need to keep a close eye on her.”
“You have to tell them.”
“So that they will freak out and the girl does something stupid. No. When it is obvious, then I will say something, but right now, I am telling you because even though she is angry, you have her ear. She is going to need you in the end.”
Doran shook his head and was about to say something when he noticed the private guard making their way toward them. He stopped them and asked if they were coming to collect Saita. They confirmed, and he waved them off saying that he would take her himself. They became a little irate with him, and he was forced to pull rank on them. They left it in his capable hands and returned to the royal palace.
“Saita is going to have to fix her attitude quickly because I do not think her father will tolerate it,” sighed Doran.
Saita had wanted to be happy at knowing that she was going to see her father after so long, but she couldn’t muster any feelings other than anger. At night, when Jarah finally let her be, she had managed to use his datapad to research what had happened over the last four years. Officially she had been declared dead within a year. The same year her baby brother was born. He inherited the right to the throne. Very little had been official after that to try and find her. She was sure that in the background something had been done, but there had been no faith in finding her. It made her angry. She had given up everything for them, and they couldn’t have been bothered to have come looking for her.
She fingered the thick scar that ran from her throat to further down her abdomen. Lowering her shirt caused her to get a whiff of what Jarah had complained about. She needed to have a shower. With a sigh, she got from the bed and pulled open the closest cupboard to find some clothes her mother had left for her. She feverishly looked for long sleeves and dragged her clothes into the shower area. She tried to avoid the mirror as she turned the water on, waiting for the steam to fog up the glass before she undressed.
Even with the steam covering most of the mirror when she pulled the shirt from her body she could see the marks. She looked down to see the tendrils emerging from her and creeping over her shoulders and abdomen. She hated them, and it sickened her to see them on her body. She continued to get undressed before climbing into the shower.
She reached for the soap and sponge and then proceeded to scrub at her skin in disgust. She swore the marks were growing, and she had no idea how to stop them. She wanted nothing more than to reach under her skin and pull them away from her. She gritted her teeth and scrubbed harder at the marks despite knowing that they would not be removed so easily. She paused in her scrubbing to run her finger from the scar that started at her throat and ended at her navel. Out of everything that had happened, she remembered this. She remembered barely being conscious as she was split open to have her heart removed to place more painful devices in her chest. She had not been completely paralyzed, and she had tried to grab the person before her, but her hands had been bound.
She rubbed at her wrists and shuddered. The agony was something she would never wish upon anyone. Her trip down memory lane caused her stomach to rebel, and she vomited the remains of the apple she had eaten earlier. Disgusted with herself she punched the wall, and the tiles shattered, and the water ran red. Muttering to herself she slammed the water off and exited the bathroom to find a small towel to wrap her hand in.
Once she was sufficiently clothed, she returned to her room to see that Doran and Jarah had returned. Jarah spied the bloodied towel wrapped around her hand and he clicked his tongue before saying. “Let me see.”
“It’s a scratch.”
“It’s stained more than half of that towel red; it is not a scratch.” Jarah stepped forward, took her right hand, and started unwrapping it.
The skin had been split between the middle and index finger right down to the black metal that made up her metallic skeleton.
“A scratch?” sighed Jarah.
“Hmm.”
“I’ll send a message that we will be late,” said Doran.
“Is Father here?”
“He is, and he can wait,” said Jarah. “Put that flame down Princess, you are not cauterizing this.”
“Does that not hurt?” asked Doran as he spied the wound.
“No, can we just go?”
“Let me stitch this. Your healing is so fast I doubt there will be a permanent injury,” said Jarah.
“Fine.”
“She has gotten quite cheeky,” said Karesh as he paced in the throne room. “Keeping me waiting.”
“Maybe they got caught up in something,” said Myla.
“Never had the time to train her to have a soldier’s obedience. That will have to happen now. Having another general would be beneficial to me.”
“Are you not just happy that your daughter was found alive?”
“Of course, I am!” he said sharply. “But we did train her to be a soldier, and now she will be of use. Just like Aleux.”
“Why did you not bring him to see me?”
“He is busy, Myla. The war grows daily as we take more planets from the Kai. The monkeys still won’t attack us directly after we decimated their trading planet.”
Myla remained silent. She did not want to argue with her husband about this. She hoped that he would see the error of his ways after he spoke to Saita. To see reason. Yet, she was sure that he would turn a deaf ear to it, especially now that he partially knew about what had been done to Saita. They waited for another hour before Doran appeared with the young woman in tow. Karesh grinned broadly and bellowed. “Saita, the rumours are indeed true. You live!”
He stepped forward and took notice of the bandaged hand. “I was told you had surgery on your head, not your hand.”
“The wall and I had a disagreement. I won,” Saita forced a smile.
“Well done. Look at you. I knew you would get tall eventually, but taller than your mother, that I didn’t expect.”
Saita looked over to where Myla was sitting on her throne. She looked so worried as if she were expecting this to go poorly. Her father looked thrilled that his chosen daughter was standing before him once more.
“Show me,” he said eagerly.
“Excuse me?” she was confused.
“Show me how you have grown!” he muttered something, and a wall of flame erupted from his hands.
Using her right hand, she dispersed it with one wave, killing the flame with wind before laying a finger on her father’s nose. “Is this a joke to you?”
Karesh didn’t smile. He had expected a better reaction from her. Something flashier, but she had simply destroyed his attack as if it were nothing as if he were nothing. He grumbled and tried again. Saita once more swatted his attack aside as if it were an insect. She hadn’t just grown in length but also considerably in her talent’s strength, and she was not amused.
“Are these the tactics you use against the Kai?” she demanded. “Trickery?”
Karesh took a deep breath to settle the seething rage in his belly. “The Kai deserve everything they have coming at them.”
“Did you even try to talk to them about Edzeeker?” she demanded. “Well? Did you!”
“We were trying to get you back!” he roared.
“Is that so? Then where were the diplomatic emissaries? Where were the peaceful talks? You leapt at them like a rabid animal!” Saita shouted straight back.
She had long since lost her fear of his bellowing voice.
“We were attacked-”
“By one creature. Edzeeker. You didn’t even bother to collect data. You wanted to make war because you enjoyed it.”
“I died because of you!” he roared in her face.
Saita blinked a few times, shocked that that was what her father had thrown at her.
“Yes, I make war because I need to protect my family from what happened. That thing came for you and killed me, threatened my family.” Karesh continued to yell. “You were the cause, no one else. You brought that monster to us.”
“Karesh!” yelled Myla.
“No!” Karesh pointed to Saita. “You brought the monster, and he is likely to come for you again. Get out.”
“Excuse me?”
“Karesh!”
“Your Majesty!”
Saita, Myla, and Doran spoke at the same time. The air was so thick it could have been cut with a knife.
“Get off of this planet and leave. I don’t care to where,” he hissed.
Saita’s eyes narrowed, and she said. “Try to make me.”
This time it was Karesh’s turn to back off at her words. He snarled, and she frowned at him. Then she said something that enraged him further.
“This is not your planet, Your Majesty.”
“Myla!” he spun to look at his wife. “I order you to-”
Myla got to her feet and tried to mediate the conversation that had devolved into a screaming match. “Now, just hold on a minute. This is not how I wanted this to go.”
“You are fighting a war against an innocent race,” hissed Saita.
“Saita, now is not the time to be speaking,” said Doran out the side of his mouth.
“I fight them for you, you ungrateful brat. I have had humans die trying to find the monster that took you,” hissed Karesh. “Either get on board or leave like a coward.”
“Edzeeker is not Kai,” Saita screamed.
“I don’t care anymore.”
And there it was. The truth of the matter was finally in the light.
“Karesh!” Myla yelled once more.
“If she cannot face the monster that took her, then she is of no use to me,” hissed the King. “And she is barely human.”
Saita balled her hands. “What?”
“A half-life, or are you now complete?” Karesh stood back and grinned. “That’s why we had to meet here. I can’t act on this planet. You won’t let me take her, will you?”
He turned to Myla. “The girl is complete now. Isn’t she?”
“I am less than human now, yes,” growled Saita.
“I thought so. Very well then,” Karesh looked to Doran. “You will return to the battlefield.”
He turned to Myla. “You best keep her on this planet, for if she leaves, I will have her banished from all I rule.”
“You are making a big mistake,” hissed Saita. “You have no idea what you are bringing down on the humans.”
“Why do you even care? You said it yourself. You are less than us. Be gone from my sight, coward.”
This time Saita had no words and clenched her teeth.
“Come along Doran,” said Karesh sternly. “We have a war to win, and clearly we will not get any help here.”
Karesh then turned to leave but paused. “And Saita, if you decide to change your mind, have your mother send you to me so that we can finally make a real fighter out of you.”
Then he started to leave. Doran slowly walked past Saita and said. “I’m sorry, but he is my king. I cannot stand with you. Even if I think you are right.”
Then the two of them left the throne room. Saita pulled her face in a snarl and hissed. “I did not request for you to be given life again, only for you to throw it away.”
Yikes, things Saita had long feared seem to be coming true. How will she bounce back from this? Guess you'll have to wait till Friday to find out.
Those of you yet to read Introduction Part 1, it is advised you do as this explains who the Kai and Saith are.
For those of you just joining us, please note that this is the follow on book from Fell Dragon. Here is the link to that book:
Fell Dragon Book 1
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:
Part 1
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Haven't read the other parts yet? Follow these handy links:
Part 6>>You are Here>>Part 8