Twenty-one days before the Black Mausoleum
Little ones, little ones, hordes and hordes of them.
Blackscar flew in closer, pulling the thoughts out of their minds. They weren’t afraid. Not afraid at all. Where had they come from?
Dragons answered him. Not the adults who flew in chains, but hatchlings. Young ones still at the start of lives not dulled by alchemists and potions. Dragons who had hatched awake.
Across the sea, they said. Across the sea and across the worlds.
Awakened dragons who served willingly.
As you will too.
No.
They are returning, Black Scar of Sorrow Upon the Earth.
The silver half-gods? No, they meant something else.
The seals are broken.
That Which Came Before is bound no more.
The Black Moon.
And then the end.
When Blackscar looked into their minds and saw what had been done to them, it found a new fury, a rage that surpassed any it could remember. Something had touched them and changed them for ever, in this life and all those to come. A piece had been taken out of them. They were no longer whole. They were less than they had once been and they didn’t even know.
No!
It dived towards the fortress, towards the nearest of the chained dragons to set it free, but the dragon turned away.
Join us! it said. Come!
No!
Something flashed from the fortress below. A boom like a thunderclap and then a ball of iron the size of a little one’s head whizzed past the dragon’s nose.
A stink of something in the air.
Then a scent of magic. A ringing in its head. A tension like a thousand thunderstorms. The sky exploded. Sound and light filled the world.
Join us!
Come!
The dragon screamed. No! It forced its eyes open. It was falling, wings useless behind it, soft earth rushing up towards it. Falling, falling…
It felt the thoughts of the little ones, the ones who had done this, down in the fortress below. Lightning. They were throwing lightning in the wind.
It turned its head and opened its mouth. Even the wind could burn.
The lightning veered away, crackled uselessly around the dragon’s flames. The dragon’s wings began to move again. It spread them wide and caught its fall and powered away, shooting like an arrow, faster than the wind could follow, off and gone.
Others. It would find others.
Lots of others.