Chapter

One

The north’s bone chilling winds came early this year saying that this winter would be different from the ones before it. The wind told me there was something bad coming with the frozen air. Everyone was in a panic. Rushing to pack everything they thought they would need.

My nursemaid took me by the hand dragging me to my room. There was a trunk packed already with my garments I saw as she pulled me, her hand clammy on my wrist, over to the bed. She sat me down and kneeled in front of me. She looked into my eyes. In them shined a hazy fear caused by the creeping chill of darkness.

“Young mistress, listen to what I say. There are unbelievably bad men coming and we need to rush away now. There is no time to spare if you are to be safe.”

Then she was gone in a rush of velvet skirts, leaving me in the chamber with my mother. Even as young as I was the look of fear on her face carved a wound in my soul. Mother looked to the bay window of the chamber listening to the scream, shouting, and clanging of metal beyond out in the courtyard.

“Let us go, little one,” she said in a chillingly even tone. A tone so shocking to me in her melodic voice that it broke no argument against it. Clutching my hand tightly in hers we rushed from the room as she ordered servants and knights to bring our baggage and to be quick about it.

Rushing from the grand front doors across the frozen courtyard we were rushed into the waiting sled, harnessed to six massively broad northern reindeer. Mother held me tight to her chest as the sled lurched forward suddenly, leaving the castle in its wake.

As a fire dragon shifting one’s form in the frozen dead of the northern winter was a poorly conceived notion, Mother had forbidden all in her service to do so. In so she made the choice of a weakness that may yet be the downfall of her people.

She bent to whisper in my ear. “My sweet one, listen to me. There are bad men coming for us. They are Black Bloods. They were once humans and great mages, but they turned to dark magic of the worst kind to kill off dragons. But their dark magic turned them, making dark, evil creatures. They still have a semblance of their former selves 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 for it will be the only thing you have to help you.”

I turned my tear-stained face towards her, eyes glazing over with more tears. As I stared into my mother’s beautiful young face creased with solemn grief I whispered, “What will they do to us?”

Her eyes shined with unshed tears knowing she could say nothing then and even I understood. The silence was an unspoken agreement, we do not mention our envisioning aloud.

Suddenly a deafening explosion rushed up behind us. Looking over my mother’s shoulder to see our home, our palace, engulfed in flames miles in the distance behind us, was terrifying. The others were less than half a mile behind us, struggling to stop their sleds from swerving and just beyond them where big ugly creatures covered in black smoke chasing us. Their large, loping gait bounding closer and closer with each lunge of their beclawed feet as their massive claws stabbed away at the ice.

I gazed at them, terror over taking my small body as shivers shook me. My mother looking behind us only to freeze suddenly like a marble bust. Her eyes gone dark, her expression blank.

The big hideous creatures were then forever burned into my memory as the hounds of hades. I watched as the first group of the monsters took down the back level of the palace sleds, knights, and guards.

A guard sled came beside our sled, the man bowed his head deeply. “Your Highness, they are coming fast we won’t make it to the pass!”

“They are going to kill us all! We need to go separate ways if we want to have a chance for you to get away! Let us shift, please think of your daughter! Run away!”

“I know that better than you could ever guess, but I can't,” my mother whispered harshly, squeezing me in her arms.

The beasts were less than thirty yards behind us now, howling and hissing in deeply disturbed joy.

“This is goodbye, my hatchling,” my mother whispered in my ear, a final kiss to my brow. Then she released her hold on me, pushing me back to one of her ladies in waiting to launch herself up and out of the sled in the sky.

The first monster came face to face with her as she landed on the frozen earth between us and the beasts. The sled kept going, hooves stamping, carrying me away. However, the biggest monster of the pack diverted to come after the lead sled mother had just jumped from. It jumped and landed on the back of the sled breaking it to pieces.

“Your highness-,” screamed mother’s lady in waiting as she fell away from me only to suddenly be silenced.

I felt weightless for a moment before slamming into the ice cracked ground, dashing my head against an icy rock upon contact, the wind knocked out of me. Only to be staring at the beast in its glowing orange eyes from across the way.

Desperately trying to raise myself to my feet, head pounding with blood trickling down my temple, I crawled over to Mother where I could see her. She was fighting with both her magic and her enchanted swords, but I could tell she was losing.

Why wouldn’t she change?

With blood flying around her, shining like scarlet silk down her fair cheeks. Her eyes burning green, looking like the perfect part of an enraged war goddess. The edges of her silk dress whipped around her as she moved, tempting the eye to look down, she fought with everything she had. The fight was both gory and glorious as blood painted the earth, but it could not last for much longer.

The monster that chased after me landed me in the middle of a battle between the Black Bloods and my mother’s people. The beast ripped them apart, blood splattered on the freshly fallen snow staining it an eerie dark, ruby red.

Still why would they not shift forms?

Mother saw me coming towards her and she turned at the last moment to drive one of her swords into the beast hanging over me. But one of the beasts sank its needle black fangs into her shoulder.

She screamed using her other sword over the shoulder slicing its neck clean in two till its body toppled headless to the ground. As she landed holding her bleeding shoulder, black veins spreading, she set it aflame. Its bloodcurdling, growling howl of pain ripped through the air as if it had been slashed in two.

Tripping over a mangled body, laying splayed in the blood red snow I stopped moving, now watching. My mother was the last person alive fighting. She was surrounded by thirty of the hideous black things. She was frightening and beautiful, covered in blood with flames of ice and fire blazing around her, whipping her hair in a mad storm about her angular face.

I seemed to be forgotten by the beasts for the moment. I called to the inner flames of my magics, how Mother taught me, building it up in my core. Another monster caught Mother around her abdomen in its teeth.

I rushed forward releasing my magic as I screamed, “No!”

The beast tossed mother aside the moment my magic slammed into it as well as the others like a wave of golden light. My magic slammed them all back as if they had hit walls.

I ran to Mother. Blood streamed from her body in small rivers, staining the pure white snow beneath her. But too soon the monsters recovered as they turned into human like men. All were too tall and nothing but thin muscle. They looked like monsters even in human form. A twisted parody of human flesh. The biggest one, the one with a sunken scar on his left arm stepped forward towards me.

He must be their leader. “Well, well what do we have here?” he sneered. It sounded like a grated snarl.

“A little mage witchling I see, a strong one too.” He came to stand in front of me, snatching my long hair in his blood- crushed claws. He roughly pulled me up with my dark mane.

I did not make a sound, but my eyes watered madly in pain.

“Brave, are we?” he breathed. His rancid decayed breath hitting me in the face. Wet and disgusting like decomposing ghoul corpses.

I spat in his eye.

He smiled at me evilly, blackened teeth showing. “We’ll have to pay for that won’t we?” he asked.

Throwing me down to his feet he placed his heel to my ribs and pressed inward. Pain shot up my side like a white-hot iron against tender flesh.

“Who are you, little witch?” he asked.

I said nothing as he kicked me around laughing insanely. But as I refused to make a sound, he finally picked me up, bringing me up to his eye level.

“Who are you?” he asked again with a shake of his mighty arm.

Lie. “Servant…Ruby,” I whispered, blood filling my mouth.

He seemed amused. “I want to keep you as I find you amusing. Most die long before I get to have any real fun. You will make a good killer once I break you and your spirit time and again. First, I will start by making you watch as they murder your beloved mistress before you.”

Something snapped inside me, and I fought back only to be laughed at. It did me no good. He forced me to watch, hand forcing my chin, as three turned into monsters and started to rip my mother apart. I will never forget her screams as the snow turned red with her blood and her limbs were tossed aside like so little trash. When they were done what was left of my mother looked nothing like a human, but just a pile of blood, meat, and bones.

I was numb, could not feel anything and I just shut down. They laughed howling as they ran away back to their lands and lairs, dragging me behind them by my long, blood matted black hair, body dragged upon the frozen earth of what had once been my homeland.