Victor

With silent, wide-eyed solemnity, Fion follows me. Her pace is measured, unhurried, but not slow. There is an elegance about her, a serene grace. Is it because she’s more than four hundred years old? I wonder. Or am I just too accustomed to living with the monsters in that hell?

She’s not like them. She is as alien to me as a flower is to a stone, with tender, easily bruised petals.

Virgins really are different, I think with a pang as I recall the taste of her on my lips. Like fruit and honey, like innocence, my whole body fired as I claimed those lips, knowing I was the first to have them. 

Not like the witch, who tasted of sulfur and decay, not like the playthings she threw me, tossed out like scraps from her bed after she’d tired of them to satisfy the lust of her officers. I’ll admit in my loneliness and my need there were times when I took these prostitutes, though I always regretted it afterwards, and felt as sick as I did the first time the witch brought me to her bed. Just a boy of sixteen, innocent as Fion, bound and tortured for her pleasure. She kept me as her pet for several years before she tired of humiliating me, and cast me aside like all the rest.

I am nothing now, her dog, biting who she tells me to bite, fetching what she tells me to fetch. But at least I am the top dog. That is, I was, when I left this place six months ago in my search of the ageless sleeping maiden. Now that I’ve finally found her, I expect to be rewarded by my mistress. But I do not expect a welcome from the other dogs.

No matter. I’ll quickly see who’s made themselves alpha in my absence, and put them back in their place.

“The trees are sick,” Fion observes behind me.

“Everything’s sick here.”

“How far are we from the witch’s castle?”

“About three miles. You’ll see it when we crest this ridge.”

“You cannot fly in her territory?”

“Once we reach Mirantha’s territory, I lose my ability to shape-shift. That is her law, branded into my flesh,” I hold up my wrist to show the tattooed runes now glowing bright crimson as we near the nexus of the witch’s power. “She keeps me tethered so I cannot turn on her.”

“You do not serve her willingly?”

My answer is a snort of contempt. For my mistress or for myself, I can’t say which.

It’s been a while since I felt this pathetic. I wonder, is it because of that girl’s presence, because I imagine she looks down on me for becoming prey to such a vile creature? Or is it just the difference between us I sensed from the moment we met? Fion is all wholesome goodness and purity; she is innocence and life itself. Whereas I, the last dragon of that once great house Crusoe, enslaved to the vilest woman in existence…

What a wretch I must seem beside her.

Fion’s one true love? Don’t make me laugh. In what world could an angel ever love the devil himself?

We crest the hill amidst the fast thinning, withered trees to look upon Mirantha’s castle. Once the mighty fortress of Braxtus, its very stone has been tainted by foul magic and twisted. Overhead a perpetual cloud casts the land in a shadow, a darkness that lingers without the promise of life giving rain.

Nothing grows here, even the grass is gone, so only hardened soil and rocks can be seen for miles, interspersed with the gray skeletons of the witch’s fallen enemies. My own father, I suppose, the mighty Lord Martin, is here among them, no longer identifiable. Just another rattling corpse waiting to be raised in defense of the castle in the event of a siege.   

I lead Fion along a raised pathway so she may pass unmolested by these skeletal horrors. I glance back only once to ensure she still follows, but the sorrow in her face as she views the cruelty all around her puts a hardness in my heart, and I turn from her, unfeeling.

“Get used to it,” I say coldly. “This is only the beginning.”

We come to the castle at last. Mottled jackals wait without the castle gates on this side of the mote filled with black poisonous sludge, monstrous slavering brutes with long snouts and twisted teeth that walk upright like men and carry weapons on their belts. They champ their jaws and lick themselves hungrily at the sight of Fion. Already they would rush and devour her, if not for my presence.

Living stone gargoyles watch me from the parapets of the castle. One spreads his wings and descends, smaller than the others with a potbelly, but the fiercest and most cunning of all the witch’s aerial officers, Dors Grobeez. 

The awful devil’s jaw moves, and the screech of stone grating against stone fills the air, so shrill that it almost drowns out his words.

“The sleeping maiden? Why is she not bound?”

“She will not run while I am here,” I answer, it occurring to me only then that I should have found some means of chaining Fion before bringing her to this place. I wonder that I felt so confident she would come quietly. Is it because I know she trusts me? The thought leaves me a little sick to my stomach.

“Take her to a cell,” Dors summons his minions, but I interject with a fierce snarl.

“I’ll take her myself. Since I cannot trust you will not molest Mirantha’s prize.”

Dors laughs, a terrible sound that screeches across the plain. “You think we would dare defy our mistress just to play with one human child?”

“To sully my reputation as the one who brought her here and get me in trouble with the mistress? I wouldn’t put it past you. Filthy demons,” I snap irritably. “Begone,” I say with a wave of my hands, as though shooing common birds. With a stone toothed grimace, Dors Grobeez stretches his bat-like wings and more awful grinding sounds fill the air, so that Fion covers her ears and winces. I watch him settle into the parapets with a sneer of contempt.

“Watch your back, Crusoe,” the demon calls down to me. “You’ve been gone a long time and Mirantha’s away… Your authority here is not what it was.”

That wasn’t a friendly warning, but a taunt. But I’m glad for the information, nonetheless.

Mirantha’s away, is she? Then I must remain doubly vigilant, if my prize is to be kept safe until her return.

Then, spying a jackal sneaking too close to Fion, I kick it in the face and pull her to me. He scampers off whimpering, and I challenge the other jackals with my glare. Even without my shape-shifting powers— even unarmed— they know better than to cross me.  

With a protective arm around Fion, I make for the front gate. I pass unchallenged, though all the soldiers continue to watch us with keen, glittering eyes.

This is going a little too well, I think with a sense of foreboding. I’d expected more resistance to my authority after so long an absence, especially with the witch being away. But so far no one’s stepped up.

Ah, I think as I spy a lone figure on the bridge this side of the castle’s lowered portcullis. Here’s my challenger.

Ekrek, my fellow officer. One of Mirantha’s revolting experiments, the horrifying product of a troll bred with a human woman, he’s hunched on the bridge now, but when aright he stands over nine feet tall with a spear as big as a tree clutched in his hideously gnarled hand.

“Victor— back,” he huffs through wide-gapped yellow teeth.

“Ekrek. Stand aside.”

“Victor no give orders. Victor gone too long. Ekrek commander now! Army follow Ekrek!”

The jackal army begins to yip and laugh with excitement, their furry bodies churning and clawing one another in an effort to move closer for a better view. I turn on them with a roar and they fall back again, tripping over one another and rolling in the dirt.

“Stay away from this woman,” I warn them. “I’ll eat the eyes of the first one that touches her.”

It’s a threat even these brutes can understand. Satisfied they will leave Fion alone while I duel the challenger, I turn my attention back to Ekrek.

 So it goes down like this, I think grimly. There’s no point wasting words with a half-wit. The only thing any of these brutes understand is strength.

I start to step forward only to be surprised by the sudden grip of that girl’s hand on my arm.

“Victor,” her eyes are wide with fear. Is she worried for me right now? The sentiment is so foreign I can but laugh coldly.

“Don’t worry, Darlin’. This’ll be over before you know it.”