Dragons Descended Upon the Wicked

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Dragons Descended Upon The Wicked

Glory Beyond Battle Book 3

By Kenneth Champion

Copyright

Copyright © 2015 by Kenneth Champion

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

without the express written permission of the publisher

except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

CHAPTER ONE

Nick Bint’s eyes opened to a ceiling made of smooth and glazed wood. He stared at the wood and admired the beauty on both the exterior and within it. Something so natural and lively. From the cracks in the wood to the dark lines and circles along the plank, to the supporting pieces that were laid across the ceiling to hold it all together. One wrong move and it would collapse. Each individual piece of wood that the ceiling was made of had a different story to tell, but none could tell a story that did not involve the rest of the pieces. He thought the ceiling represented the thousands back at his camp.

There was a crick in his neck and a knot in his back. He had gotten used to sleeping on dirt, grass, and mud, but he had never gotten the chance to enjoy sleeping on a hard wood floor. There was something quite displeasing about sleeping on wood. His eyes rolled over to find Dricos cleaning the surface of her desk. He could see that it was light outside from where he lay but he could already tell the sun was covered by thick clouds.

He had spent the night in her cabin. Today was the day where he would venture into the dragons’ lair and find his dragon. He had no choice but to trust the words of Dricos. He believed her to be a trustworthy person. Most of the time he was not wrong when he felt that he could trust a person. However, he knew as well as anyone that there are far too many people that you cannot trust in this world. If she was lying to him then Nick would walk into a sea of dragons. It would just be a matter of which one was the hungriest.

He rolled over onto his stomach and pushed himself off of the ground with his hands. He put his arms over his head and stretched them out. He leaned to the left and then to the right to stretch his tired and ached muscles.

“Did you sleep good?” asked Dricos.

“I’ve had worse nights of sleep,” replied Nick. “When do you think the appropriate time will be for us to venture into the dragons’ lair?”

“You’re going into the dragons’ lair by yourself,” she said. “I’ve already found my dragon. If I go in there I run the risk of finding a bloodthirsty dragon. I’m great at commanding wild dragons. I understand them. However, there are some dragons that simply enjoy the art of killing too much to listen to commands.”

Nick waved his hands in the air in disbelief.

“You expect me to go in there after what you just said?” asked Nick.

“Oh hush,” said Dricos. “Your dragon will protect you from the few that might want to harm you. So long as your dragon is strong enough. But from getting to know you a bit, you’ll be just fine, kid.”

“Well, you never answered,” said Nick. “What time is the best time for me to go into the dragons’ lair.”

Dricos walked over to her window. Her window faced the wall of the dragons’ lair. The tall and dark building cast a shadow on the tiny cabin. She stood at the window for a few minutes, studying the sky.

“Judging by what I’m seeing, I’d give it another two hours,” said Dricos. “Three hours to be safe.”

Nick nodded in agreement. Dricos went back to cleaning her table. After a while of cleaning she offered Nick a few apples to eat for breakfast. He was undeniably hungry and quickly devoured them. After that there was nothing for him to do. He simply sat around the cabin. As always his thoughts became relentless as he sat in the same spot on the floor of the cabin. He stared blankly at the wall. His mind took him to another place.

I
cannot believe that Reed is dead. He was genuinely kind from the day I met him when they released me from the arena. Just to see his body like that. It must have been a terrible way to go.

He could see the image of his lost comrade being eaten by the detath. Cut in half and torn to shreds. It was a horrible image to have stuck in his head. His father used to tell him to be thankful that they were not in war. The images you would see in war will haunt you forever. War with the six had only begun. The worst could very well be ahead of him.

The innocent men clenched in the detath’s mouth, then rammed into a wall of rocks. I hope they are resting in peace. War is not pretty. War is not kind. The six knew we would face hardship in the north. They are playing a game. They don’t want to come out and kill us. They simply want us to die painful deaths. They want us to die in fear. I will not let them succeed.

He closed his eyes and began to meditate. It was the easiest way for him to calm his thoughts. If not for meditation, his thoughts would become heavier and more violent as time went by. He would picture himself sitting on the grassy hill with the river flowing below him. He had gotten so good at it, it was almost as if he transported his body to that beautiful escape. Time seemed to move more quickly when he meditated. Before he knew it Dricos was tapping him on the top of his head.

“Wake up,” said Dricos. “It’s time.”

Nick sprung to his feet and walked towards the door. He turned back around so that he was facing Dricos.

“Is there anything I should know or be aware of when I step foot in there?” asked Nick.

“Open the door, then shut it behind you,” said Dricos. “Do not bother the dragons that don’t respond to your presence; just keep moving. You do not own any dragon. Yours is simply an extension of your body. When you find and mount your dragon you’ll need to know the basic commands. Listen carefully. Silner means fly. Taltu means land. Vez means turn left. Kez means turn right. Got them all?”

“Thank you,” said Nick. “I got them all and I know I’ll need them all.”

“Good; find me here after your first flight,” said Dricos.

Nick walked out the front door and headed towards the entrance of the dragons’ lair.

The weather was fair. It was cloudy, but it was not all that cold. Nick could only imagine how cold it must be to fly during the night. His heart rate began to increase with each step. His palms became sweaty and chills ran across his spine. Any sane man would never walk into an area that could potentially house hundreds if not thousands of dragons.

He arrived at the door he had walked up to the day before when he first met Dricos. The door was ten feet tall and was made of a dark grey stone with rounded edges. He placed his right hand on the black stone handle and slowly turned it.

He opened the door and quickly shut it behind him. The room he walked into was terribly dark and narrow. The only thing he could see was a light a few hundred feet in front of him. He began to walk towards the light while being in the nearly pitch-black darkness. He could not see where or what he was stepping on.

As he was about half way to the end of the tunnel he began to hear them. The roars, the cries, the deep sound of wings catching air beneath them. All of the sounds were heard over and over. There were so many of them. As he inched closer to the light the sounds increased. Soon he could not distinguish the sounds the dragons were making. Instead, he heard all of them in one loud chaotic cluster.

Nick was now only ten steps from walking out into the dragons’ lair. Fear gripped him and halted him in his tracks. He feared for his life just as he did in the arena. After a few moments of pause he took a final deep breath while closing his eyes, then he opened them and walked into the light. It got louder and louder with each step he took. Then strangely as he took his first step into the dragons lair there was nothing but silence. The roar and business of the dragons were no more.

He looked around and was dumbfounded. Thousands of dragons stood before him. They were not flying nor were they roaring; they were completely silent and stood still as if they were statues made of stone. All of the dragons were looking directly at Nick as he walked a few more steps into the dragons’ lair.

There were raised stone pieces scattered around the grounds of the dragons’ lair that looked exactly like the stones that were on the wall surrounding it. Some stones were stacked high in the sky while others were individually placed, but there was not one that did not have a dragon standing on it. In between the hundreds of stones placed along the ground was a solid stone ground that was also covered with dragons. There had to have been at least four thousand dragons looking at Nick. Some big, some small. Some black, some white, some green, and some red.

Nick walked a bit further into the heart of the dragons’ lair. The dragons had left Nick a path to walk on. It stretched directly across the grounds. As he walked, dragons ten feet away on either side of him stared him down. Nick could feel the air from their breaths along his skin.

Suddenly, hundreds of dragons took flight while roaring into the air. He was startled at their sudden movements. They did this all around him. Some dragons were further away while others took flight closer to him. One by one the dragons flew into the sky as Nick continued to walk the path. The dragons sensed that Nick was not of their blood.

With each passing step the amount of dragons that took flight increased dramatically. At one point Nick believed that they were taking flight into the sky by the thousands. Some dragons stood their ground while all the other dragons around them would fly off into the sky.

Nick looked up into the sky above him. He saw the most mesmerizing, beautiful, and terrifying thing he had ever seen before in his life. Thousands of dragons flying above the dragons’ lair thousands of feet in the air. The sky was chaotic and full with beasts of death. From where he stood the dragons looked small enough to resemble birds. They flew with such speed and precision that he could not take his eyes off of them. He saw the grey clouds directly above the dragons change color to red and blue as the dragons unleashed their breath of fire and ice. The sky changed colors in a random yet beautiful way.

Nick was finally able to get his eyes to move back down to see the remaining dragons within the dragons’ lair. There was about five hundred dragons that still stood their ground. They waited patiently for the off chance that the young boy was their match. With each second that passed numerous dragons realized their fate was not with Nick. They could somehow sense it. Every dragon longed to be with their dragon born. Each one that flew in the sky at that moment were disappointed and angry.

All of the dragons that stood in front of Nick had taken flight. There were no more dragons behind him. He turned around to find only a dozen of dragons were left. They were all walking towards him. With each passing step the group of dragons took one of them would fly away.

Finally there were two dragons left. They stopped walking towards him and stood in front of Nick. A massive white dragon and a medium sized black dragon. They looked at each other and let out a massive high-pitched growl. Hundreds of long razor sharp teeth stretched across their open mouths while saliva dripped to the ground.

They both stopped growling at each other and turned their heads to look at Nick. After a brief moment, the black dragon spread its wings and took flight into the sky. The white dragon let out a loud roar into the sky. He looked back down at Nick and lowered his body to the ground.

The white dragon had found Nick, and he had found the white dragon. Nick was a dragon born to the white dragon that stood in font of him. White dragons were the rarest of all dragons. They were hardly ever recorded in the textbooks of man. This one was extraordinary in its own right. The white dragon that stood before Nick was nearly seventy feet in length, with a wingspan of forty feet. Its eyes were black and it had a scar next to its right eye. Its arms alone were taller and wider than Nick. The dragon that he had flown on to dragons keep was not even half the size of the white dragon.

Nick walked up to the giant dragon in front of him. The fear that took hold of Nick when he first walked into the dragons’ lair was all but gone; instead he now felt a sense of peace. Nick placed his hand on the white dragon. He moved it back and forth along the scales of its face. The dragon reciprocated by moving its head along Nick’s body. Nick was caught off balance but quickly laughed off the unintentionally strong nudge.

“Looks like it’s me and you,” Nick said.

He walked along the side of the dragon. Nick could not find a place to hoist himself onto the dragon’s back. Nick was too short to reach the top of the spikes that he could’ve used to climb up with.