I laughed in insanity watching at their crumbling world set aflame. Thousands of them dead at my feet, burned to ashes, ripped and mangled. Nothing more than what they had left, my life and my people too. Soon I calmed from my battle-crazed mind, back to nearly as sane as I could be.

Now that they were all gone, I was free to leave. I collected all I could and tied it in a big bag. Filled with gold, silver, gems, and other pricey things I now deemed rightfully mine, I dressed in a tunic and went outside, carrying the bag over my shoulder. It could not pay for what happened to me, but it was a start. I shifted to my dragon form and flew toward somewhere new. Anywhere new. Not knowing where I was going, but hoping to find a place, I would never have to do anything such as this again.

I had to find a way to get home, but I did not know where that was for, I had been so young when I was taken. I flew a long time, now lost over this great shining green sea. Nothing was in sight and my strength was failing, my back bleeding heavily, dripping blood mixed into the salty waves below. Hours later as my vision was fading to black, I saw a large ship of in the distance. My breath was almost gone coming in shallow gasps, I started to descend to the ocean.

 The ship was less than a mile off and I tried to make a landing. I was able to drop my bag onto the deck as I shifted back to mortal form, but I hit the ship’s railing breath takingly hard, trying to grab the edge to pull myself on, but failed falling into the depths of the sea with a scream.

“Night! Go in after her!” a woman’s voice screamed before I was sucked under water. It was a light, clear green as glass, I drifted down blackness stealing over my body. I came so far only to die, but I would die free.

There was a splash as someone jumped in and I faded out of the world. Everything was so quiet and peaceful.

This must be death, I thought. But I still feel the pain in my body; maybe I’m still dying.

 I tried to move my fingers by making a circling motion. Then next thing I knew, I was laying on my stomach on cool wood, and someone was talking over me.

I forced my ears to work as the world started to focus. I was still too weak to move.

“Look at her back; this wasn’t done just by anything. It’s the work of Cursed Blades, but they’ve been missing for more than a thousand years. I would only know this because of a small description in a book,” said a low toned voice. It was male and a young one at that. The voice was raw with some kind of emotion I couldn’t identify, but it was still silky and perfect.

“The poor thing! She’s been filleted alive,” the voice whispered in horror.

“We have to take care of it now,” came an order from a deep male voice. “Go get the other three, Night. We’ll be needing them, and hurry.”

Footsteps ran away across the deck. Light footsteps came running, knees dropped to the deck by my side.

“Dare, you’re the magic expert. Look at her closely, she not a normal person”, the whisper came from a girl, the person who had come last. I felt someone get closer to me.

“You’re right. But I can’t tell beyond what you can, all I notice is the faint glow of magic, but that's something even more unusual. You’re not supposed to see a person’s magical aura-,” the man named Dare was cut off when three other sets of feet came running.

“What’s up? I heard something and-Flipping Frogs!” someone exclaimed. It was another girl.

“Dare, what happened to her?” asked a quite male voice.

Young, deep and soft, but deeper than the others.

There was a huff.

“I’m going to need you to hold her down while Night takes care of her back. I’m not sure what will happen”, Dare said.

Why does that name sound familiar? Without question each of my arms and legs were held down. A sharp smell hit my nose. “Now pour it over her back and make sure to cover it all. Then Night, use your magic.”

“Yes,” came that soft deep voice of the person who I had first heard. At first the liquid they poured on my back was cold, then it started to burn. It felt like I was being burned alive again. I screamed, writhing and jerking in pain.  They held on even tighter, my strength gone, but stronger than theirs. They were losing their hold on me.

“Night, now!” came the call. I felt a strong stream of pure magic flow over me. It was warm and gentle; unlike anything I can remember. It caused my body to relax in their holds. I felt my back flex like a bow and then grew scales over where my skin had been peeled from my body, and then skin grew over the scales. My back arched and left me still laying still on the deck one more time.

My vision fading once again, I started to dream. Not just any dream, but the nightmare of the last time I saw my mother. We ran out of the palace and into the waiting sled being pulled by six massive reindeer. She held me tight as the sled lurched forward.

She bent to whisper in my ear. “My sweet one, listen to me. There are bad men coming for us. They are called Black Bloods. They were once humans and mages, but they turned to dark magic of the worst kind to kill off dragons. But their dark magic turned on them and turned them into dark creatures. They still have a human form they use to trick others. So, beware of them. If they catch us do not tell them who you are but say you were a servant to me. If anything happens to me, remember the name Dare Storm.” 

I turned my face towards hers and investigated my mother’s young, beautiful face. “What will they do to us?”

 Her eyes shined with tears. She said nothing and I even understood. Then suddenly an explosion went off behind us. I looked over her shoulder and saw the palace engulfed in flames and less than half a mile behind us creatures of shadows and darkness followed.

My mother was so young and vulnerable looking. She was nothing more than a young woman herself. She had only just turned seventeen when I was born. And only twenty-three days her kingdom fell. She sat holding me tight to her chest.

She knelt slowly down and whispered something in my ear that no one else could hear. “Listen carefully, my little one. Dare Storm is a mage as well as your father. If you ever need to find him, go to a place called the Isle of Magic.”

Then everything started to happen. Flashes of blood, fire and the disgusting creatures. Then the dying screams of my mother, mixed human and dragon cries of pain gurgled. I screamed an enraged, grief-stricken cry.

I struggled against my arms to realize I was no longer dreaming. Opening my eyes, taking in everything around me. I saw something strange. Three people were trying to hold me down on the bed I was laying on. One of them was a beautiful young man about my age with long silken black hair and ice blue eyes. Another was a young man who was handsome enough with white-blonde hair and glowing green eyes. And the last one was a man who seemed to be around his late thirties. He had black hair with a streak of indigo blue hair coming from his left temple just like me. His golden eyes stared back into mine; they were the exact same color.

“Dare Storm,” I whispered. Just like in my dream. It was like looking into a mirror, but the person in the mirror was an older male version of me. I froze in the moment I saw him.

He had done the same thing.

“Dare?” asked the young man with black hair in a worried voice.

It would seem that Dare never acted like this.

“Let her go”, Dare said in a rough voice, “and leave.” The hands that held me let go and the boys left the room quickly, muttering quietly to each other. When the door closed Dare came from the bottom of the bed to the side where I was.

He stopped a foot away from me and just looked into my face. Then slowly he reached out and brushed a strand of my long hair from my face. I flinched away from the contact.

“How can this be?” he rasped to himself. I could see he was trying to figure out how this was possible.

“Are you Dare Storm?” I asked in a quiet voice looking over his face, stopping on his eyes. The gold color of his eyes was only a little darker than that of mine, almost like molten gold.

He nodded slowly. “Who are you?”

“I have a lot to tell you. You best sit down,” I told him quietly and pointed to a spot on the bed. Without thinking he sat, too bewildered to do anything else. “I am not someone you know, but you knew my mother. She was the Queen of the Kingdom Annwin. Her name was Belladonna Fanir Faya Tania,” I said in a shaky voice. “She was murdered ten years ago when the kingdom fell. The Black Bloods had come for us. She had packed up all of us in the castle and tried to get us through the pass to safety, but the Black Bloods were too fast. She had told me of you only moments before she left me on the sled. But a Black Blood took out the sled. I ran to her, but she was surrounded by too many of them. I used all the magic I could, but I was barely seven years old then,” I said, starting off my long tale.

I told him everything that had happened that night and on to the years the Black Bloods kept me, before finally the last day. I covered what I had done to them in great detail, and soon it was over.

Dare sat in his chair, and I saw tears run down his face. I had an impulse and I decided to follow it. I wiped the tears from his face and for the first time in my life I hugged him tightly, feeling as if this is what I should do. I sat there, hugging him for a while, and then he pushed me away gently.

 I sat back and looked him over.

His eyes were red, but he no longer held tears in his eyes.

“What was my mother to you? I'll tell you a tale she told me once when I was very small. She would sit with me in her lap and say, ‘You look just like your father. I loved him more than the world and even my own life, like I love you. His name was Dare Storm. I met him when I was only fourteen and I went to the Isle of Magic to study for a short while, like all the queens before me had too. He was two hundred years older than I at the time and the most beautiful person in the world. He was an Elf if you can believe that. He was also a student teacher at the time. He taught me everything and soon a year passed, and I had fallen deeply in love with him. I’m sure he never noticed, and at the time I was sure that he didn’t even care if I was there. But one day I tripped and fell over the edge of a cliff. I thought I had died and went to heaven, because when I opened my eyes, it was to see him giving me mouth to mouth. I had been asleep for a month in a coma due to a hit to the head. He had saved me from drowning. Over the next year we were so close nothing could pull us apart. We even made love. But I received a letter saying that my father had died, and I was to become the new queen soon, so I had to leave.”

She had paused with an angry look upon her face. “I was only sixteen, soon to be seventeen. I told Dare and he said I had no choice. He promised one day he would come for me. At the time I didn’t know that I was carrying you, so I never got the chance to tell him. But one day he will come for you, and you will meet him. I know the moment he sees you he’ll know. Plus, you have the mark of an Elf upon your breast, so he couldn’t say you’re not his, my love. So, I left to become Queen and even to this day I wait for him. I will forever love and trust him.”

I ended the story by opening my eyes and looking at him. It had been a tale mother told more than once, so the words came easily.

He was looking at the floor, and then he looked up at me. His eyes were filled with a sadness I had never known.

“So are you. . . .” I tried again. “Are you, my father?”

“Yes,” he said, and his eyes filled with sudden joy.

“You should know that I was born on my mother’s seventeenth birthday, and that she never went a day without talking about you. Though the last ten years have done terrible things to me. It twisted my soul, my heart. I have black magic inside me, and this black magic has a will of its own at times. Whenever I get near screaming or fighting, I go insane.” I sighed; it was hard to explain.

 So, I tried another subject, “The gold in the bag I dropped on the deck is all I took from the Black Bloods. It’s mine now. But is it really true? Do I really have a family? Are you, my father?” I asked, and for the first time in ten years I cried with sadness, not fear or pain.