Dragon Born Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Catch Travis Online

  Copyright © May, 2016 by Travis Simmons

  The Chronicles of Dragon Aerie

  Plague Born Book One:

  Dragon Born

  Published by: Wyrding Ways Press

  Cover Art by: Kip Ayers

  Formatting by: Wyrding Ways Press

  Editing by: Wyrding Ways Press

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or in any means—by electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise—without prior written permission.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are either are the product of the authors imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual places, events, and people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Get eight original tales of dark fantasy FREE by clicking this link: http://bit.ly/1SPV2TY

  Standing in the darkness of the eerie night, Millie Bixby couldn’t have known the serpent eyed baby she’d midwifed moments ago was a sign that dragons had returned to the long desert.

  She shivered at the ominous feel of the dark night. The purple swirl of stars that lit the Dar Desert were shrouded in a veil of thunderous clouds. But it felt to Millie as if the stars were hiding from something. She couldn’t deny the chill that crept up her spine and made her hair stand on end. If her mother were still alive, she would insist that tonight was a night to pray to the spirits above that demons didn’t leak out of the Dark Below.

  She tamped the weed into her pipe and tried to ignore the night and the thoughts of her mother who was taken too young.

  She told herself that the eerie feeling she had was nothing more than seeing the serpentine eyes of the baby in the house behind her. She tried to push thoughts of the baby away, but her wails could be heard echoing through the stone house behind her.

  “It’s a monster. Get rid of it!” the mother had cried out the moment she’d seen the baby’s golden eyes, slit with long pupils.

  With an extreme force of effort, and a curse brewing in her mind for the hateful mother, Millie turned her focus back to the pipe. Her black hands trembled in anger at the mother’s words. She shook her head. If luck had it, that golden-eyed baby might find itself in Millie’s shelter with the sick. At least there, Millie could keep a better eye on her and assure she grew up healthy, loved, and trained in some way to better the lives of those around her.

  A guttural, screeching bellow tore through the air and scattered all thoughts from her mind. It was a sound that froze the chill in her spine and sped her mind to thoughts of running.

  Deep inside her mind, some instinct told her there was only one beast that could make that noise.

  The crowd around her fell still, conversations hung unfinished in the air. All eyes turning to the north toward the mountains. For a moment, it was as if time had stopped. The silence stretched on into eternity as if in a silent echo to the scream that had frozen everyone. Millie could hear the rush of her heart, and the ragged inhale of breath.

  She could hear the wings, like giant drums of war beating down on the hamlet of Dulasan. The sound of the wings was enough to unfreeze her legs. The crowd broke into chaos. Somehow, they knew what was coming for them. Somehow—though they’d been gone long enough to be thought of as myth—the villagers knew as well as Millie that dragons were upon them once more.

  Millie couldn’t be sure how high the dragons flew, only that great winged shadows sailed between the town and the dark clouds. A cold wind howled around homes making Millie shiver. In the distance, thunder rumbled followed by a streak of lightning that lanced from sky to ground. Fire bloomed from screaming dragon mouths and took the town by storm. The reed and mud-brick homes smoldered and cracked. Though their walls had been dried in the sun, there was little protection the homes offered from dragon fire.

  People cried out in terror as they fled. The constant stream of people passing Millie and heading out of town increased and soon turned into a shoving, frantic mob. They pushed past Millie, jostling her and shoving until she was turned about and found herself running with the crowd.

  She looked back to see her young assistant, Sasha, emerge from the home as if pushed by the screams of the baby. When Sasha looked up and saw the beasts, she shrieked and fled with the crowd.

  Millie thought about going back for the baby, if not for the mother. But her terror was so great, so powerful, that it fueled her flight and wouldn’t let her mind consider what might happen to the child.

  She thought only of survival. The same primal part of her mind that instinctively knew what the roar had been also knew there was only one way for her to escape—run and hide.

  Millie flowed with the crowd, the edge of the town coming into sight. Moments later wings beat the air overhead and a swath of fire cut a blackened path before her. She couldn’t stop fast enough. The sand had been heated to glass and her feet broke through. She pulled up short, the glass stabbing into her leather shoes barely missing her feet. Before her towered flames that had once been people. They fell to the ground, smoldering heaps of charred flesh—dead almost as soon as the flames consumed them.

  Millie stumbled away, falling to the sand just outside the path of black glass.

  The heat of the town was unbelievable and seared her skin even as the cold breeze howled through the streets. At any moment she expected her dark gown to catch fire, but it didn’t. Sweat bloomed on her skin , sticking the cloth to her body.

  A sound thundered behind Millie, and she turned in time to see a great, leathery shape land on a house. The dragon was larger than anything Millie had ever seen. Its head was shaped like an arrow with sharp teeth that hung over its lower jaw. The beast was covered in green scales that shimmered like gemstones in the light of the burning town. It sized her up with one golden eye slit with a black pupil. Millie was sure if she looked close enough she could see her petrified reflection in its eye.

  Fear shook her body. Tears spilled down her face and she twisted her black hands in her brown gown. Her bladder went lax and despite all of her misgivings, she pissed herself. Urine ran down her leg and splattered on the cracked earth, running in rivulets away from her body. If she wasn’t afraid the dragon would eat her at any moment, she would have been ashamed.

  :Dragon fear,: she heard a voice rumble in her head. It was a large voice that seemed to fill every crevice of her mind. She shivered with the power and the bass of the voice. She couldn’t tell whether it was male or female, but she knew that it came from the dragon. The dragon opened its mouth and a kind of huffing sound came from deep within its throat. It sounded as though the dragon were laughing. A miasma of green mist issued forth and Millie stumbled away from it, but the fog was faster. She was soon consumed by the cloud. It burned her throat, her eyes watered, and she gasped for air. Millie coughed, trying to draw fresh breath, but there was none to have.

  She fell to her knees, and gasped for air. Every breath burned deeper parts of her body and drew out racking coughs. She retched into the sand, her dinner soaking into the ground. Her eyes felt too large for her head and throbbed with ever heave of her stomach as if they would burst any moment. Her head screamed in pain and then suddenly the cloud vanished. Millie collapsed to the ground, finally able to breathe once more.

  :Go,: the dragon commanded, and Millie didn’t wait for the command to come again. She didn’t think about the baby with the golden eyes, and she didn’t think of the mother who obviously hated the little girl. She didn�
�t think of her assistant or why the dragon was letting her go…she just ran.

  Millie followed the crowd leaving behind her life, her family, and her friends just to save herself. While the guilt tormented her it was nothing compared to the relief she felt at leaving the burning city and the dragons behind.

  Whatever plague the dragon had imprisoned her with was working its way through her body. Her lungs burned and her skin flushed. Her muscles and bones hurt. It was an ache in her skin, in her hair. She knew sickness when she felt it. She’d spent too many years filling in for the healer in Dulasan.

  Even if the dragon had made her ill, she was still relieved that it hadn’t killed her.

  The relief didn’t last long. Millie hadn’t made it more than 300 yards out of town when a thundering concussion of air sounded above her. Just hours before she’d thought dragons were nothing but myth, but now she came to understand that whenever she heard that concussion of air, she would fear a dragon attack.

  Millie darted to the left away from the line of people. She didn’t yell, she didn’t alert people of what was coming, and she didn’t look back to see the gout of fire that burst from the dragon’s mouth and took the line of people by surprise.

  Their screams of pain died away nearly as fast as they’d started. The terror fueled Millie over a dune where she half slide, half rolled to the base. From the other side of the sandy hill the sounds of destruction from the town were lessened. It was very possible for her to imagine that it was all a dream, that this was a nightmare, that this wasn’t happening.

  She let her head fall back as silent tears shook her shoulders. What was she becoming? How quickly she’d forsaken those people to save herself. That wasn’t like her at all…except it seemed to be now.

  “This isn’t a dream, is it?” a small voice asked.

  Millie jumped, barely stifling a scream. She turned to see the small dark form of Sasha crouched low against the dune. She was wrapped in a black gown that masked her against the darkness. Millie hadn’t considered how her gown might hide her, and she hoped that dragons didn’t have any special vision. It was said that some of the elven clans to the north were able to see in the dark, see auras or energy or something that was much more prominent at night. She prayed that dragons weren’t the same.

  “No,” she said to the girl. She scurried up to Sasha and tried her best to blend in with the sand. With her brown gown and her dark skin, she hoped that the night-darkened slope of the dune hid her. “What’s that?” Millie slid closer to the girl. Her hand looked hard, parched like rock. Millie slid a finger over the skin. “Does it hurt?” she asked, pulling the girl’s hand closer to her. Not only did it look like stone, but the afflicted skin felt like rock as well.

  “No,” she said. “One of those dragons breathed on me and told me to go. I haven’t felt right since.”

  Millie looked at her own hand, seeing no rash there, she checked further. There was no indication that her skin was changing as the girl’s was. Finding no abnormalities, she calmed slightly.

  “How are you feeling?” Millie asked, checking the temperature of Sasha’s forehead with the back of her hand.

  “Tired. Scared.”

  Millie nodded. “Hide for now,” she said. “Let’s hope those beasts don’t stay all night.”

  “What do you think they want?” her assistant asked.

  “I don’t know…”

  “It’s that child,” she said. “That monster baby with the golden eyes.”

  It chilled Millie how much her words echoed the mother. “Get rid of it! Get rid of that monster!”

  “You think so?” Millie held back her urge to pummel her assistant about the head and shoulders.

  Sasha nodded. “I hope they get her too. Then they can go back to the Dark Below where they belong!”

  “That’s a child,” Millie scolded the best she could while whispering. “You have no idea what she might grow up to be, but because of her eyes you condemn her to death?”

  Sasha didn’t say anything. Her eyes trained on the dune before them, lit with fire from the burning town.

  “What did I expect from a small town out in the middle of nowhere?” Millie mumbled.

  Sasha chewed her tongue but, wisely, kept silent.

  The screams were enough to put Millie’s teeth on edge. When they faded, she was glad for it, and hated herself for being happy that her little bit of suffering was over.

  You’re a healer, she told herself. What kind of healer runs when people need her?

  She rested her head in her hands, silent tears coursing down her face. And that little baby…did she have some kind of connection to all of this? She could hardly believe herself, wondering if Sasha was right. But it was strange the way the dragons had come the night she was born. The way her eyes were golden, like the dragon who’d plagued her. Could it be that the baby had a bigger connection to all of this?

  Sasha coughed and sniffled.

  Millie took some time to focus on how she felt. She didn’t want to tell Sasha that the same dragon—or one like it—had also breathed on her. If the girl was any indication of what might happen to Millie…

  What is wrong with her hand? She wondered. It certainly wasn’t a rash. It felt scaly; harder than regular skin, like a scab.

  The dragons stayed all night. Millie wasn’t sure how Sasha was able to sleep through the screams and the dragon cries that echoed across the dunes, but the girl did. On occasion, Millie had crawled to the top of the dune to see what was going on only to wish she hadn’t.

  Above the town hovered a great white dragon. This one was larger than the others and its eyes were red. Its scales were the color of milk and when the light of the fire struck them just right, they shined like rainbows.

  The dragon opened its mouth and let out a frozen breath. Millie gasped as the flaming town froze when the icy cold breath touched the buildings. Snow drifted from the dragon’s mouth covering the streets, the blood, and the destruction. For a moment, it seemed like the city might be made anew, rise from the pristine white that shrouded it in wintery breath.

  Outside the town, the other dragons waited, watching the ice dragon work. When the town was finally covered in snow, the white dragon soared up into the sky with a flurry of wingbeats.

  The flames didn’t stay frozen long. Soon the ice melted and fire crackled once more. The snow melted leaving behind no trace that it had ever been there. Millie wondered what the purpose of that was. It looked almost like the dragons were playing with one another. Several more times she witnessed the white dragon swoop down with its wintery storm only to fly away and the flames crackle to life once more.

  Millie much preferred the snow covered town to the fire ridden one. At least in the cover of snow she wasn’t able to see what had become of her home. Dismembered bodies lay scattered over the town where they’d fallen while dragons ate midflight. Buildings burned much longer than seemed possible, and Millie wondered if that had to do with some special attribute in the dragon fire. She remembered how it felt much hotter than normal flames and how it had devoured buildings like no other fire would have.

  Of course dragon fire is special, she thought. Why else would the legends refer to it as dragon fire?

  She watched for as long as she could until, finally—her stomach churning and threatening to come out her throat—she slid back down the dune. She lay beside Sasha wondering what the strange ailment was that spread across Sasha’s hand. Through the night she’d watched the girl toss in nightmares. All the while Millie kept her eyes on the rash and by her judgment it had spread.

  As the night sky lightened to the gray of pre-dawn, Millie noticed a blemish on her arm. She rubbed at it, hoping that it was nothing more than dirt, or blood she hadn’t washed off after the birth. It was neither of those things. The blemish was rough, like a scab, and Millie knew that whatever Sasha had breathed in from the venomous dragon, she’d breathed in as well.

  Her hands shook and she leaned her head b
ack against the sand. She wanted nothing more than to sleep as Sasha was, but that wasn’t possible—her mind raced nearly as fast as her heart. She had to get them to safety, but where was safety when dragons were back and could reduce a town to rubble in the span of a few hours?

  Darubai, she thought. The imperial city. But that was days away by sleigh ride. By foot she’d heard it would take much longer and she couldn’t survive in the desert that long. She’d need provisions. She only hoped there was enough left in Dulasan when the dragons left to get her to safety.

  She shivered as a human scream rose high into the air and stopped abruptly. The trumpeting screech of a dragon nearly deafened her as it soared over the dune where she and Sasha hid. Millie crouched down further, worried that the beast was hunting for her, but it kept flying. As far as she knew, it didn’t even look down. She watched the rising sun shimmer off the white scales in rainbow hues. Was the ice dragon the leader?

  More dragons followed the first and soon the entire town was empty of serpents. Leathery wings blotted out the rising sun in a multitude of gemstone colors. Millie couldn’t help feeling that the dragons were as gorgeous as they were deadly. While they filled her with dread she’d never known before, they also filled her with awe.

  Sasha cowered, her gown pulled tight around her. Millie didn’t have the heart to tell the girl that the sun was rising and the cloth wasn’t hiding her from anything. Of course, that was assuming that dragons could see as well in daylight as they could night.

  Where are they going? She wondered, watching the last swishing tail cascaded over the dunes and the great wyrms disappear into the sunlight. Occasionally glimmers of green, red, or blue would shimmer back at her from the way the dragons had gone, but soon enough there was not a single trace of them.

  Even though she’d seen them all leave, Millie still quivered with fear as she crawled to the top of the dune. She peaked over but all she saw in the town was smoking rubble. Sasha crawled up beside her and Millie glanced at the girl. She couldn’t keep her eyes from sliding down to the girl’s hand. There was no doubt in her mind that the affliction was spreading—it now encased her entire hand.