“Why would you even want to show me all these? Do you wish me to be tortured after trapping me in my own memories?” asked Red and this time she was angry. She had reason to be furious.
A dragon was known to have many magical properties but that doesn’t mean that all of them get to tap into all that power. Seth was a single dragon who had the capability of causing hallucinations with the fumes that he could release if he wished to but he did it without telling Red and he even wanted to see what was going on in her mind.
“You want me to get mad so that you can play with me for a little while and then you can kill me? Right? I am just another piece of amusement for you. But I shall make it plain and simple for you. You don’t need to do all these things before killing me. You can do it now itself,” said Red and this time she stood up on the mounds of gold coins.
“You are getting excited for no good reason. Why do you think t
Brother Samuel preached the Gospel wherever he might draw a crowd. He had been traveling from town to town since leaving his home in Philadelphia. As the settlements grew in the Western Territories, his stops grew fewer. Many towns had built churches and hired on preachers, but there were still towns in need of his services.Sometimes he would take on a follower who stayed with him from town to town. They were usually people that nobody would miss and that suited him just fine. He had picked up one a few weeks back. She was the most beautiful creature that he has ever seen. She had been following him from village to village, as he traveled to deliver his message. She was not the first to do so, nor the first to seek his favor, nor was she likely the last.As the first words of his sermon brought the crowd to a hush, she slipped silently into the back of the meeting hall and gradually wove her way forward through the crowd. By the last "Amen", she emerged at the front o
Through waist high snow drifts he trudged, his feet and face grown numb from exposure. Snowflakes as big as his face began to drift down from the murky sky. The wind cut bitterly into his flesh.A terrible earth shaking roar told him the Elder Dragon was now close on his heels. He climbed the edge of the glacier, racing across the icy plateau even as he felt the hot scent of dragon's breath on his back. Instinctively, he leaped aside, just as a swath of flame seared across the plain, cutting a deep furrow in the surface of the ice where he had stood a moment before. He ran on.The sun, though not yet risen, now tinged the eastern sky with deep hues of ruby and gold, transforming the glacier to an iridescent field of shimmering fire, a scene of achingly haunting beauty. Snow continued to fall in great lacy sheets. The elder dragon, his reptilian coils shining like brass in the eerie half-light, lurched across the ice fields, blindly pursuing its foe. Gasping for breath,
Red’s POVI wept so suddenly I knew not where it came from. I was surprised beyond belief. It just came and came. The tears flooded down my face as my mother knocked on my door and became alarmed as she saw me."What is it?!" she asked me her voice practically shrieking"Mother I do not know.....," it still continued."Well sit here and let me get some tissue," she got up and retrieved it from the nightstand next to the bed we sat on.It continued for several minutes like this. There was nothing I could do to stop it. Suddenly, I began to feel dizzy and extremly tired. "Mom, I need to lay down now" I told her. So I layed down and immediatly I was sleeping. I was in a peaceful meadow it contained flowers everywhere. I just stood there as if waiting. Waiting for something to happen. Nothing happened. I stood among the flowers and just felt an immense amount of peace and joy.The flowers were all sorts of different colors and the sun was
Instead I dreamed of a long dirt field. It seemed to go on for miles and miles. There I stood alone, the only similarity to my recent dreams of flowers and the adorable boy. In the air I smelled smoke and cinder. It made me gag, I nearly choked up my dinner. When I thought I was alone, I noticed that there were bodies, dead bodies, assimilating out of the thin air. I was crying again. Everywhere I looked there were dead bodies. Smoke and fog began to fill the area. Sadness filled and clogged my head. I fell to my knees and just wept.Everything about the situation was gloomy. To my right there was a body of a man wearing silver armor with a dragon icon on it. My sobs slowed and my eyes cleared of the tears and I looked at the icon. My eyes covered the man. He was roughly shaven and a helmet with a half mask covered his face. I was beyond scared but I could not keep from looking at him. He is dead! What are you doing? Eventually my cries disappeared. They seemed to be urged by
She remembered her neighbor’s daughter. She was so very beautiful. She had a killer body, with blonde hair blue eyes. She was extremely stylish and also extremely snotty and three years older. Red didn't like her one bit. At school, she had teased Red and always found some way with her friends to humiliate her. But after she graduated, they sent for her. First there was a letter. She refused to go. She said she'd run away before joining the army. She also had 2 weeks to prepare, when she received the second letter, there was only a week left. She still refused. An unexpected emergency came up and the family had to go away. They were still gone when the day came for the king's officers to retrieve her. They waited outside their door for two days. They came home, hoping to find the officers were gone. The soldiers weren't pleased to say the least. The girl was drug into their truck. She was screaming and kicking, they repeated over and over that "resistance is futile". Sounded l
“And do you know what my destiny is?” asked Red.“You should be the one to know your destiny. Not me. It seems that you have lived so many lives including at least one with the werewolf that you don’t remember any single one of them. The full moon is close to us again and it will be almost time that the wolf Alpha is coming behind you to take you and make sure that you mate with him,” said Seth and Red looked at him with his mouth gaping open.“How is that going to be possible?” asked Red.“You just think that because they have let you go you have escaped from their clutches? He has made you dream about being his Luna. He has made you think for all these day that you can get away from him while the nightmares that you have still cause you to shudder in fear. I have seen your memories and I have tried showing you your other lives but you keep on coming back here and stick to me like I am an armour when it should be
The night called to him, as he lay stretched out on his hotel bed. He could hear the sounds in the distance and he longed to get up and run. He longed to get up and shed his human form as he had done so many times before. He turned his head to look at the human woman lying beside him. She smelled of perfume, woman and him. His scent was all over her now. It would be a surprise if it weren’t. He had spent the last five hours satisfying their mutual lust. Her bleached blonde hair lay tangled on the pillow as she snored softly.Gracefully he rolled out of the bed and landed on his feet without a sound. He padded over to the balcony and opened the sliding glass doors. The night wind caressed his face as he scented the air. In the city, it was impossible to shed his skin and run as the wolf. Too many people nearby might see him and know his secret. He guarded his privacy well and fiercely. It wouldn’t do for the world to know what he was especially in light of his care
“You humans have a way of looking at every single thing in a positive spin. But I don’t care about all that. I care about what you are going to do now,” said Seth and Red looked at him in bewilderment.“Whatever I am hearing is your version. There is nothing that I know all by myself and you might be leading myself towards something which is inevitable death. Why would you think that I would trust you of all?” asked Red.“You are not as stupid as I thought you at the beginning,” said Seth with a grumble and Red retorted,” I am going to take that as a compliment.”“You don’t need to believe me. But I need to check for a fact if you are her or not. The mate of a dragon comes once in a millennia and I lost my chance the last time but if you are my mate then rest assured I am never letting you go, no matter how much of a brute you think I am,” said Seth and red scoffed at him.“That
First light found Red and Makaran seated on the house-sized boulders in the midst of a nearby river. The wood was beginning to wake as the wind changed with the rising of the sun. Small creatures crept amidst the giant rocks, and birdsong began to accompany the rush of the river. There was still a chill in the air and Red saw Makaran's breath in vapor as he spoke."First I must ask a potentially awkward question. How comfortable are you with being naked?""I have nothing to be ashamed of," Red shrugged."Good. I spend so much time in other skins, that I do not actually own any clothes. Obviously I had to borrow these from Mother Hannah. Shape changing in clothes does not work at all. They do not change with you when the Spirit transforms your body.""Spirit?""Aye, Spirit. That is what Mother Hannah and I have reckoned this to be. I have a very strong animal part to the Spirit inside me, and it allows me to wear its skins.""How many?"
It was during one of those rambles through the woods that she had come upon the castle. The trees had thinned, melting into brush and then into a meadow, unkempt and overrun, and there it stood ... in the middle of the sun drenched clearing – solid, unforgiving, a wall of unremitting black broken only by thin embrasures from which arrows could be fired at unwelcome intruders. As she stood within the fringe of trees, concealed by the broad trunk of an ancient oak, peering at the battlements, she felt a shiver run down her spine. It was a clear sunny day, but around the castle, the air seemed to thicken and she wrapped her arms around herself against the sudden cold.Her first instinct was one of flight, but her curiosity overcame the sudden rush of panic and she settled herself to survey the place more carefully. The castle was laid out in a rectangle, its smooth straight lines broken only by the swelling of the towers that marked each corner. There was no sign of life.
Somewhere in the Cathalian wilderness...Red swept her red cloak out of the way as she stooped down to pick another mushroom. She added it to the collection of its kin in her basket and danced off to find another. Soon it would be too warm to wear her cloak and hood, but her mistress insisted she wear it this evening in case she got caught out after dark in falling temperatures. Spring had just begun, after all, and Winter still thought it ruled the night.Indeed a chill did seem to be creeping through the wood. The sun was fast setting and the shadows were long. The red dusk peaked through the newly budding branches of the hardwoods and colored the girl's pale skin in bloodtones. Soon it would be dark, and Red did not know that she was being shadowed.The monster had been following her scent for miles, and now its luminous yellow eyes spied the girl in the gathering gloom. Her red hood bobbed along in the undergrowth as she worked her way toward the cottage in
Once upon a time...Three massive wolves stalked through the village streets, growling and snapping at the frightened citizens that dared peer through their windows. A young beggar ran across the street and the largest wolf, wind rushing through the shining black fur, pounced, pinning him with one large paw and leaning his head down, tearing out the young boy's throat. He let out a howl and his companions joined him, howling up at the moon, full above them. The eldest of the three, who was as black as his nephew, though the smooth fur bore streaks of silver, paused, lowering his gaze to a young woman who stood calmly in the middle of the street. A long hooded cloak of vibrant red silk hung from her slender frame and beneath the hood the wolves caught glimpses of soft blonde curls and blue eyes, dark as the sky above. She stepped back and they stalked closer, sniffing curiously."Creatures of the fullest moon, great wolves, I offer myself, my body in exchange for the sa
When Red awakens she can only see darkness. As she come to she can feel the smooth silk bedding beneath her and then she realizes that her robes and undergarments had been taken from her. She was here in a strange place, naked on silk linens. When she tries to cover herself her hands were halted but the leather bonds around her wrists that were connected to the chains that hung from the wall behind the bed. This came as an amazing shock. But what was the biggest shock was when she discovered that a steel rod separated her ankles so she couldn't close her legs. Now she was fully awake and terrified.Then, in the middle of her terror a light came from the hall. Dimly at first be then growing brighter. It wasn't long before she heard footsteps approaching. She did her best to struggle against the chains and bracer, trying to hide herself from whoever was approaching. But it was too late. A candle's flame peaked it's way around a corner and behind it followed a man so dashing tha
"What does that mean?""Young dragons--well, relatively young, to you they would be very old indeed--have the great desires. It is they who kidnap princesses, crush knights, sack towns and generally make nuisances of themselves. Not unlike young humans, they have to find their way and that often includes some temper tantrums and fits of pique. Over time, they mature and the need to prove their potency to themselves diminishes. Like old humans, they get set in their ways and a nice long nap in the sunshine seems a much better way to spend a day than burning knights to a crisp or gobbling up maidens.""I don't mean to be rude, but I thought dragons were evil? Don't you...do things just to be bad?"The dragon laughed then, so deeply and completely that small flames shout out of his nostrils and smoke curled up. When he had mastered his mirth, he at last spoke."We're no more evil than any other race. There are good and bad among us. The good can be very good
Red looked at Seth and said,” You need to begin the ceremony now..”Samuel was going say something when Seth growled at him and said,” For that we will have to do this in a different setting altogether..are you ready to take a trip in fantasy?”As soon as Red nodded she was covered in a fine mist ad everything was gone.They came for her while the sun was still high. Proctor Vesle, Constable Varlet, and the town elders. She saw them coming long before they arrived and her sobbing mother begged her to run, but it wasn't in her nature. Someone would have to die today, and she couldn't allow this mantle to fall onto one of her friends.She made tea and had it poured and ready by the time the men arrived. She could smell the sweat, see the stains in their somber attire, and sense their fear and hate. It no longer bothered her. She knew very well she was signing her own death warrant when she refused the Proctor's advances
Samuel’s POVI smell blood. A wounded animal. An easy kill. The blood is still fresh. Not dead yet. A noise ahead, whimpering. Getting close. Big animal. No not animal.The part of my brain that is still human tries to comprehend. No fur. Clothing. Human. Must not kill. It's female and injured. Blood covers her ragged clothing.Smells like sweat, blood and desperation. Can't smell her. Can't smell animal on her.She trips and I move closer careful not to frighten her. A twig snaps under my feet and she sits on her heels terrified. The terror leaves her eyes almost instantly when she see me and is replaced by hope. She reaches a hand towards me and I see the other arm is being held awkwardly. It is broken and the bone has torn through the skin.Wolf. Not pack. Strange wolf. Injured wolf. Not pack. Not enemy.After sniffing her skin I move closer letting her palm glide over my head, down my neck. She screams an
Samuel’s POVThe moon was luminescent, casting its silvery shadow over the trees like some snowy net, lighting a dirt path that wound deeper and deeper into the thick, dangerous forest. But the cloud covered orb was robbed of its full lustre, far too darkened by the wispy fog rising in off the marsh to the east.I pulled my flashlight from my knapsack and let it shine a reflection of precious light, causing snakes to coil away, and poisonous spiders to rise on silky strands back into hiding.The sound of her panting breath, still hot and desperate, led me uphill toward the meandering stream, whose running water echoed like some rushing wind, rustling fall leaves until a hundred colors struck the ground.I was closing in on her, and could almost see her now, smelling her running shapely curves as she weaved and bobbed past dangling branches that tore, gouged and scratched her human flesh. But still she pressed on at full speed, her slender, racing an