Elysium's Fall Book 2:
Dark Savior of the Dragons
by Nikki McCormack
Raine is caught between the dark power of the daenox and the balancing power of the dragon web. She inherited her parents’ memories—good and bad—and their enemies.
The dragons are her best chance at defeating those enemies, but they’ve disappeared, leaving humanity to deal with the daenox and its daemon army alone. With the help of a dragon trapped in human form and a motley band of travelers, can she find the dragons and convince them to help before it’s too late? If it isn’t too late already.
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Information:
Title: Dark Savior of the Dragons, Elysium's Fall Book Two
Author: Nikki McCormack
Cover Art: Robert Crescenzio
Publisher: Elysium Books
Genre: Dark Fantasy
Length: 404
Release Date: 09/17/2019
ISBN: 978-0998376585
Excerpt from Dark Savior of the Dragons: Elysium's Fall Book Two
by Nikki McCormack
Copyright © 2019 by Nikki McCormack. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Chapter 1
Raine prodded a large black beetle with the toe of one supple deer hide boot. The irritated insect flared its wings but stayed stubbornly put. She stared at the creature and shifted her seat on the stump outside of the small deserted cabin she and Siniva had claimed as their hideaway after fleeing the cave. The cabin did not have much to offer. It leaned a bit toward the west because of several rotted timbers at the base of that side and rain leaked through the roof in no less than seven different places. Still, no one had been living there, and it was within several hours hard ride of the village of Ithkan, not that she had dared to go near there yet. The mere thought of being around that many people all at once was terrifying.
She prodded the beetle again, and it moved a few steps this time, flaring its wings twice. It was remarkable that a creature the size of her thumb should be so stubborn it would ignore the possible threat from something so much larger than it. Was that courage or ignorance?
A small cloud passed over, casting a shadow on them for a moment. Shifting onto her heel, Raine lifted her boot toe up over the beetle, throwing it into even deeper shade. This time the beetle inched forward until its head was out from under the shadow of the offending boot.
Hydra, the magnificent white stallion with his black mane and tail, that had belonged to her father, Dephithus, was grazing nearby. Now he threw his head up and perked his ears. Raine looked in the direction he was staring and held her breath to listen. Seconds later, pounding hoof beats of a fast-moving horse reached her. She watched with a deepening scowl as Siniva galloped into view, heading her direction at high speed. When he drew near, bouncing haphazardly on the back of the tolerant animal, she could make out the angry glower that set his red-bronze eyes aflame. The beetle was forgotten before the unnerving anticipation of an approaching confrontation.
For some reason, the prospect of an argument with Siniva left her more nervous than facing her captors in the cave ever had. Like Theruses at that time, Siniva was a dragon bound in human form, but Theruses had been more intimidating to look upon. Siniva looked somewhat more human, where Theruses had been more beast. Still, she had grown up around Theruses. She barely knew Siniva, and that made his anger more alarming. Before Theruses killed him, her father had left her in Siniva’s care out of desperation to help her escape. Once they were free of the cave, the man-shaped dragon brought her here and left her.
She stood up, determined to appear more confident than she felt. A crunching sound accompanied the crack and squish under her foot. The sensation seemed to pass through the thin deer hide and shoot up her leg, coming to rest as a twinge of nausea in her stomach. Perhaps that answered the question of courage versus ignorance.
Lifting the boot, she grimaced down at grisly remains of the once beetle, a twinge of guilt tightening her chest. If the creature insisted on being so stubborn, then perhaps it deserved its fate, but she could think of no way in which her boot had earned this slime. Diligently, she rubbed the bottom of her boot on the grass, vibrant green with recent rains, while Siniva pulled his mount to a stuttering stop, the animal tossing its head in protest of the uneven pressure on the bit. He swung off before the horse was fully stopped and stumbled forward a few steps, forgetting again that he was not at all skilled in the arts of horsemanship. After a quick recovery, he turned his burning gaze on her and growled.
She could not stop herself from flinching. His unkempt bronze-red hair was in wild disarray. That combined with the similarly colored scaling that highlighted his cheekbones and temples and the burn of anger in his catlike eyes made him look even less human than normal.
It made no sense that his appearance increased her unease. She also had slit pupils and areas of scaling, all of which were a strangely metallic brassy black like her hair. Then again, unlike him, she was not actually a dragon, she had merely been imbued with enough of their power at her conception to have acquired some unusual physical traits.
“What kind of half-wit are you?” Siniva roared.
Now that she faced his anger head on, it occurred to her that being a human with a few dragon traits was a lot different than being an actual dragon trapped in human shape. The latter had to be torturous. To be a magnificent beast with the ability to fly trapped in this awkward, ungainly form. A swell of pity made her hold her silence since he obviously had much to say, but her own anger simmered under the surface, ready to come to her defense.
“Someone came into town last night claiming they had seen a strange girl out this way dancing with daemons. When I left, a mob of villagers was ready to come out here and drive away the daemon-girl. Do you think it’s going to be easy to find another place to stay? Do you?”
“I was bored,” she defended, trying to ignore the growing warmth in her cheeks. “There’s nothing to do out here.”
Siniva started to say something else while his mount wandered off toward where Hydra was grazing. After a few seconds, he shut his mouth, glancing after the animal. He drew in a deep breath and exhaled, then he turned back and gave her a long piercing look. His brow furrowed up toward his thick red hair. “How can you look older already?”
“The moon has come and gone twenty-nine times since the day you rode to town to get supplies. I counted,” she snapped.
“Most people don’t age noticeably in a month.”
She hugged herself, rubbing her arms, and shrugged. She was not normal. She knew that, but being here alone had let her ignore it for a while. His comment forced her to acknowledge that uncomfortable truth again.
He glanced away, taking a sudden interest in the listing cabin. The musty smell of moldering wood wafted to them on a light breeze.
“You weren’t going to come back. What changed your mind?”
“Of course, I was going to come back,” he muttered, avoiding her gaze.
Irritation flared like an annoying rash. “Why did you come back?”
“I can’t connect to the dragon web, and I can’t find the dragons without it.”
“What does that have to do with me? Tell me,” she growled. “You owe me that much.”
He looked at her now. One eyelid began to twitch. “I was worried about you.”
She gave him a hard look.
Siniva shifted his feet and stared hard over her shoulder at the forest now.
“If I learned anything from my time as a prisoner in the cave it was how to recognize when I’m being lied to,” she pressed.
Siniva’s chest rose and fell with a heavy sigh. The breeze picked up his hair, exposing more of the red-bronze scaling at his temple and along the edge of his strong jaw. “The dragons had to link you to the web to tie their freedom to you. I thought you might be able to access that link to help me find them.”
Behind him, Hydra snorted and nipped at the other horse, driving the gelding away from the lush patch of grass he had claimed. A lock of brassy black hair fell into Raine’s face. She brushed it away with a curt swipe.
“The dragons used my father and I to free themselves. Theruses used me to thwart them for a time. Now it’s your turn. You were going to abandon me until you realized you could use me too.” She felt the sting of tears in her eyes and clenched her teeth, determined to fight it.
Siniva nodded. “I can’t say you’re wrong. Though using you again isn’t my first choice.” He frowned at his human hands. “If only Vanuthan were still part of the web. She would find me and bring the dragons together.”
“My grandmother?”
His quick mystified glance told her she had surprised him.
“Yes. I know Vanuthan. She’s the Mother Dragon. She made my father and I what we are… were,” she amended, reminding herself that, no matter how vivid his memories were in her mind, Dephithus was dead now. “I think I can find her.”
“How?”
“I’m connected to her through the power she placed in me and the power she placed in my father that passed to me. With that connection and my parents’ memories of the region to guide us, I believe I can find her.”
Siniva took a step back from her, and her throat tightened. Was that fear in his eyes? What did she dread more, his judgment or the possibility that he might leave her again? Both equally perhaps.
“I remember things,” she offered as a hasty explanation. “Things that happened to him. Things that happened to my mother. I remember them like I lived them, but the memories come in fragments. The bad ones are always stronger.”
Siniva muttered something under his breath. She only caught enough to know that it was comprised of a few vulgarities. He finally shook his head at her. “You have ancestral memories too?”
Her chest opened. Suddenly she could breathe more freely. He knew what this was. That meant it was normal, not just another way in which she could be considered an aberration. “Yes! That’s what it is.”
“What have we made?” He stared at her now like a daemon had sprouted out of her forehead.
The brief relief vanished, and pressure wrapped around her chest again. “What’s wrong?”
“Human children don’t inherent memories from their parents. That’s another trait of the dragons you apparently acquired through our meddling, just like your accelerated growth. You were supposed to be a child with enough power stored in you to free us. A human child. Not this.”
The way he gestured at her then, with a look that was somewhere between dread and disgust, made Raine back away a few steps. She could feel the weight of this strange world pressing down on her shoulders, trying to drive her down. To crush her will as it had crushed her mother’s. She knew nothing about this world beyond what she gleaned through her parents’ memories. This man—this dragon—before her was not in those memories. She was alone here, and it terrified her. Was this the feeling of despair that had driven her mother to suicide?
Siniva looked at her, and something changed in his regard then. His expression softened. He started to reach out to her, then his hand stopped and sank back to his side. “I apologize. We aren’t all that different. The council of dragons used me too. Now I’m trapped in this form, and the atrocity I committed to get here will haunt me forever. We’re both alone, you and I.”
She watched him warily. He shifted his feet like a child caught doing something wrong, and she found herself wondering exactly how old he was. Dragons reached physical maturity very quickly after all.
He lifted his shoulders then and stood tall, meeting her eyes steadily now. “I shouldn’t have left you, Raine. That was wrong. But maybe we can help each other. If you can lead me to Vanuthan, I believe she might be able to help both of us. She’s the Mother Dragon, after all, and a dear friend.”
“She’s my grandmother,” Raine persisted.
“In a sense,” Siniva granted. “What say you? We can’t stay here?”
Raine shrugged. What else was she going to do?
Siniva grinned then. He was roguishly handsome when he grinned like that, though he also looked less trustworthy. For all that she wanted to accept the comradery he was offering, she could not bring herself to smile back.
“I’ll get my things and saddle Hydra.”
Siniva’s grin faltered. He glanced over at the warhorse. “Dephithus stole Hydra from King Allondis. It might be a mistake to go gallivanting around the region on a stolen horse.”
Defensive anger swelled. She remembered Dephithus going to see the new stallion his mother had given him for his sixteenth birthday. Remembered the excitement he had felt. A joyful anticipation drawing him out to see his new horse at the end of a wonderful birthday. She also remembered what had happened to him that night. The cruel gift Amahna and Rakas had forced upon him. How it had changed everything.
Daenox began to seep up from the ground beneath her, the violet tendrils of daemon power rising to her anger.
“Hydra was not stolen. He was a birthday gift for my father.”
Siniva backed up and held out a placating hand, fear rising in his eyes again. “All right. Keep him for now. We’ll figure it out when we get closer to Imperious.”
Raine gave a sharp nod. The daenox dropped away, sinking back into the ground. “I’ll get my things.”
She ran inside and grabbed her scant belongings. The ratty clothes she had been wearing when she escaped the caves that she could not bring herself to throw away though they were already too small, a little moldering straw-stuffed doll that she imagined had belonged to a child who once lived in the cabin, and a dagger that Siniva had left with her. She stuffed these things into her father’s saddle packs that still held the clothes he had been carrying and some of his other travel provisions. While she packed, tears stung her eyes again.
Trapped in the cave for the first five years of her life, she spent a lot of time perusing the memories of her parents. Their childhood together had been happy, and she imagined it would be magnificent to experience the world they lived in. To be free and learn of all the wonders life could hold. But there was no wonder to behold in this place for a child who looked like a teenager and had the unusual dragonkin traits she had. They were traits her father also shared, but things had changed dramatically since the peaceful times of his childhood. There was only fear and persecution here.
The light of day still felt foreign to her. Even the grey, rainy days that had come often since that first sunny day when she escaped the cave left her feeling exposed and vulnerable. There was none of the comforting closeness of the solid rock walls she had grown up with.
Dark nights put her more at ease, but even then, she could feel the endless space around her. No rock walls. No prison bars. She was exposed to everything. Her only comfort came from charming daemons as she had done to entertain herself during her years in the cave. She tried to keep hidden, only going on the very darkest nights when she was sure no one would be wandering the woods. It felt so good to be surrounded by their twisted forms, to have them swarm around her, creating a buffer between her and all that open space, that she sometimes stole away on nights when the cover of dark was not so complete. Nights like last night.
Hydra perked up when she walked out with the saddlebags, his fine ears so erect the tips almost touched. A small circle of warmth opened within her, like that she had begun to feel for the young woman, Kara, who cared for her in the cave. Kara who, like her father, had died trying to help her get free.
Hydra appreciated her in some way. The day she emerged from the caves into the blinding sunlight, the stallion had been attracted to something in her. Did he sense some aspect of Dephithus in her or was it something else? Something related to the dragon power in her perhaps. Regardless, she felt a connection to the horse that was somehow stronger than that she had felt even with Kara. The stallion did not judge her, and he had attacked Theruses in his dragon form to protect her. That was a lot to ask of any creature. She would not discard him out of fear of who might recognize him, and she would fight anyone who tried to take him away.
When she went to saddle him, the stallion started to prance in place. She popped his reins lightly once, correcting him without being harsh. He stopped prancing and nudged her with his nose almost hard enough to knock her over.
Raine laughed and pushed his soft nose away. “Patience. These things are heavy.”
When she turned to pick up the saddle, Siniva was already there. He popped the heavy thing up on Hydra’s back like it weighed a feather and started to tighten it for her.
“In a hurry?” she snapped.
He stepped back from the partly tightened cinch, throwing his hands up before turning to stalk over to his mount. “I was only trying to help.”
“I can manage on my own.”
She heaved on the cinch, knowing she could not tighten it as much as Siniva could. It did not matter. She had a natural balance that made it unnecessary to over-tighten like he did out of fear of sliding off, and she had used some of the month he was gone to get used to working with the stallion. Then again, she could not short Siniva for not being able to ride well. He had spent the part of his life that he was not imprisoned in stone with the ability to fly. Why would you learn to ride a horse when you could fly?
She fastened on the saddlebags and checked the cinch one more time. Hydra tensed as a hatchet flew past her head, hitting the wall of the cabin.
“There she is!”