Karaneshel, do not meddle in human affairs without the Council’s permission. Next time, your punishment will be harsh.

  The words of Melorish, Speaker of the Drakon Council, pounded through Karaneshel’s head with each downsweep of his wings and each breath of thin, cold air sucked into his golden-scaled chest. He forced away the memory of her voice with an angry hiss and concentrated on straight, swift flight.

  He did not plan to meddle in human affairs this time, not directly anyway. He only wanted to talk to Vesheneris, to point out the Council’s folly, to try one last time to sway him from supporting Phanta’s inhuman army in their bid to spread evil across Lucasia.

  The acrid odors of smoke and burning flesh warned him he might be too late.

  The battlefield stood on a vast plain on the northwest coast of Candelar, overlooking a ship-filled bay. The vessels pinned the Phantan forces between the water and the Candelar army advancing from the east. If not for the presence of Vesheneris, the Phantans’ defeat was assured, but the huge drake had already scattered Candelar’s cavalry and used his fiery breath to cut swaths of death through the army’s ranks.

  His task on the plain complete, Vesheneris swept out over the bay, his age-darkened scales glinting bronze in the morning sunlight. Ahead of him, men scurried across the decks of ships, readying weapons.

  Fire spewed from Vesheneris’s mouth, white-hot at its source. Sails, rigging, masts, and men burst into flame wherever his breath touched.

  Vesheneris! Karaneshel called in drake mind-speech.

  Vesheneris dived again, and another burst of fire exploded from his jaws.

  Vesheneris, stop!

  The bronze’s battle rage, barely held in check, struck Karaneshel like a wave of intense heat. He fought it, denying its seduction, its release of the primitive beast that lurked within all drakes, then he folded his wings and dived.

  He slammed into Vesheneris’s back hard enough to force the massive bronze several body lengths closer to the water and hooked his dark claws into Vesheneris’s scales.

  You are wrong, Vesheneris. He struggled to keep his sending calm in the face of the violence-inspired rage that threatened to consume him.

  Vesheneris spun and thrashed. Release me!

  Karaneshel wrapped his tail under the bronze’s belly and flailed his wings, clawed tips tearing at Vesheneris’s flight membranes.

  This cannot happen, Karaneshel said. The Council—

  Challenge was made. Rage rode Vesheneris’s words, inviting, alluring. Opportunity was offered and taken. The game goes on.

  Karaneshel filled his thoughts with purpose and the rightness of his cause. No! We have no right—

  Vesheneris roared. We have every right!

  The bronze’s passion burned through Karaneshel’s will, and fury burst in his chest. He clamped his mouth onto the base of Vesheneris’s neck, forced his teeth past armoring spikes and sharp scales and into the flesh and muscle beneath.

  Vesheneris whipped his head from side to side and tried to dislodge Karaneshel with a rolling, spinning maneuver that sent them both plunging into the bay.

  Water roiled around Karaneshel, stealing control of his wings and closing over his head. The reek of fish and sea water flooded his senses. Pain lanced his skull as the bronze shrieked into his mind, and darkness surged around him.

  With a final mighty thrust of his wings against the water, Vesheneris slammed Karaneshel into the jagged sea floor. Agony exploded along his spine. He gasped in a huge breath of cloudy water and released his hold on the bronze.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Raking claws tore jagged furrows of agony along Karaneshel’s ribs and sliced into the flight membrane of his left wing. Vesheneris released another mind-numbing shriek, then shot toward the surface. As he broke into the air above, his triumphant roar echoed down through the water.

  Barely conscious, Karaneshel lay still in the murky depths, waiting for his lungs to extract what oxygen they could from the brine. Full awareness returned slowly, accompanied by pain. He reached his awareness tentatively upward, determined to locate Vesheneris while avoiding his rage. He found him in an instant; the bronze had not gone far.

  Clearly, Vesheneris could not be reasoned with, yet short of trying to kill him—an all but unthinkable idea, for drake did not kill drake—the only answer was to lure him from the battle.

  Ignoring the pain his actions caused, Karaneshel spread his wings and stroked for the surface. He burst from the ocean beside Vesheneris.

  Flames fed on three more of the ships.

  Vesheneris!

  The bronze dipped a wing and turned. Karaneshel lunged, and they crashed together. Karaneshel ripped at Vesheneris with his claws, broke off, and climbed away from the bay. With an angry hiss, Vesheneris followed.

  On the plain below, the Phantan forces faltered as their champion deserted the battle. The Candelar army began to recover. The remains of the cavalry regrouped, and the battalions decimated by Vesheneris’s fiery breath formed up for a new attack.

  Vesheneris hesitated. No! His anger flashed outward, struck Karaneshel, engulfed him. No, Karaneshel, you will not distract me with your hatchling tricks. You will not divert me from the duty—the privilege granted to me by the Council, by your very sire. He folded his wings and dived for the battlefield again.

  With a roar of primal fury, Karaneshel followed. Vesheneris turned to meet him.

  Karaneshel pulled up short, thrust himself backward with a tremendous stroke of his wings, and dived beneath Vesheneris’s left side. The bronze rolled to follow, but Karaneshel snapped his wings to full extension, turning his plunge into an upward swoop that carried him under Vesheneris, flank to shoulder, and brought him above and behind his opponent.

  Vesheneris tried to roll again, but Karaneshel smashed into his back and tore at the bronze scales. Vesheneris swung and pitched, his rage pulsing outward in waves.

  Blinded by emotion, seduced, released, Karaneshel roared again and drove his teeth into the wound he had earlier torn in the base of Vesheneris’s neck.

  The bronze drake bellowed. Flame erupted from between his jaws, forming a brief fireball that dissipated in a cloud of heat and fumes.

  With his jaws still locked on Vesheneris, Karaneshel expelled his own fiery breath straight into the wound on the bronze’s neck. Vesheneris’s bellow became a deafening screech that seared a red-hot path through Karaneshel’s mind.

  The shriek ended abruptly, and Vesheneris went limp. Karaneshel released his hold, and the bronze drake tumbled from the sky. His body struck the plain with a reverberant crack, crushing hundreds of Phantan creatures beneath it.

  Karaneshel hovered over the battlefield, gasping for breath, for control. He stared downward, struggling to make sense of what he saw. Rage seeped away, and the reality of the scene blasted into him.

  He had killed another drake!

  Disbelief and remorse crushed his heart. He screamed his regret, but a searing globe of heat and pain struck him and cut the scream short. The blow sent him tumbling backward through the air. His limbs jerked uncontrollably; his wings seized. Fire burned along the ragged edges of his torn flight membranes and seared the bloody furrows in his sides. It swept away grief and reinstated rage. He screeched and fought to control his flailing limbs.

  Finally he managed to extend his tattered wings far enough to stop his graceless tumble. Through a fog of madness-inspired red, he searched for his attacker.

  Atop a hill to the north stood two figures, but only one caught his attention. He was human, but he wore the black leather and silver of the Phantan forces, one of those seduced by evil. A red haze gathered around the human, flowing and swirling into a bright ball between his widespread hands. The part of Karaneshel’s mind still capable of thought recognized the man as one of the Phantan witches and the growing ball of energy as a spell identical to the one that had just struck him.

  Heedless of the pain that scalded every fiber of his being and warned that he was dying, Karaneshel banked into a ragged glide, straight for the hill, his gaze locked on the witch. The man stared, slack-jawed, as if unable to believe the drake still lived.

  Karaneshel forced himself on, willing to accept death as long as he took the witch with him. He pulled his wings in tighter, adding speed.

  The witch turned to run, his unfinished spell dissipating around him.

  Karaneshel snapped his head forward. Hot, sweet blood filled his mouth, and the witch went limp in his jaws. He wheeled unsteadily and released the man’s body over the battlefield. Without waiting to see it fall, he turned again, his burnt and torn wings barely able to keep him airborne.

  Oblivious to everything save for the pain that filled him, he struggled north into the mountains along the coast, ancient instinct driving him to find a secluded place to die.

  When he could go no farther, he angled into a gentle dive toward a heavily wooded mountainside.

  He did not remember hitting the ground.