Page 51 of Empire of Wrath and Ruin
But it was the silence that truly drove home the horror of what we were seeing. No voices calling for help, no sounds of survivors searching through the wreckage, no signs of life at all. Just the crackling of dying fires and the whisper of wind through destroyed buildings.
"Gods," Taveth breathed from behind me, and I could hear something breaking in his voice.
Sirrax circled lower, his distress flooding through our bond as he took in the devastation below. This wasn't the work of ordinary soldiers with swords and torches. This level of destruction, the way buildings had been reduced to scattered stone and ash, spoke of something far more devastating.
Dragon fire.
The realization hit me like ice water in my veins. Imperial dragons had done this, their riders using collars to force them to burn their own people's homes, to turn their natural gifts into weapons of terror.
I can smell them,Sirrax said, his mental voice tight with anguish.My kin were here. They were forced to do this.
The guilt that washed over me was almost overwhelming. These weren't my dragons, weren't my responsibility, but seeing what they'd been forced to do felt like a personal violation. Sirrax had been enslaved once, controlled by a collar, made to fight and kill against his will. The dragons that had done this were suffering the same fate, used as instruments of destruction with no choice in the matter.
We landed at the edge of what had been the village centre, our dragons settling uneasily on ground that was still warm from the fires. The devastation was even worse up close—bodies scattered among the rubble, belongings that would never be claimedagain, the remnants of lives that had been snuffed out without warning.
Taveth dismounted and moved through the wreckage with a strange, mechanical precision. His shadows were writhing around him like living things, responding to emotions I could feel building through our bond—rage, grief, and something darker that made me deeply uneasy.
"I know this place," he said quietly, kneeling beside the remains of what had been a house. "I know these people. Knew them."
He picked up something from the rubble—a child's wooden toy, carved in the shape of a dragon. The irony of it was cruel beyond words.
Behind him, Tarshi shifted into his human form, naked but unaffected by the cold. He slid his hand on his brother’s shoulder, saying nothing, just offering support. Taveth tensed for a moment, then relaxed, and the motion made my heart ache. How long had Taveth been so alone, with no affection, no human touch? I knew Aytara had raised him, and she certainly looked at him with genuine affection, but I didn’t see her pulling him into her arms to comfort him, even as a child. Maybe that was why he demanded so much from me, every night, every morning, making love to me for hours until I begged him to stop. I had thought it was simple desire, but perhaps it was more than that. Perhaps my strange, dark man simply needed to feel touch.
The snow continued to fall, fat flakes that melted as soon as they hit the still-warm ash. The contrast between the pristine white and the grey devastation created a scene that would be burned into my memory forever.
"How recently?" Tarshi asked.
"Hours," Taveth replied, his voice hollow. "The embers are still warm, the tracks in the snow are fresh. We missed them by hours."
The implication of that settled over us like a weight. The Imperial forces weren't just advancing—they were racing ahead of schedule, striking faster and harder than anyone had anticipated. If they could reach this village, less than a day's flight from the hidden city, then nowhere was truly safe.
I walked carefully through the destruction, trying not to look too closely at the bodies while still taking in the scope of what had happened. This wasn't a military target, it wasn't a strategic location. This was a farming community, people who had probably never held weapons more dangerous than kitchen knives.
But they were Talfen, and that was enough.
"They took some," Taveth said suddenly, his voice carrying a new edge. "Young ones who showed signs of shifting ability. They always do."
The casual way he said it, as if this was a routine occurrence, made my stomach turn. How many villages like this had there been? How many more would there be?
It was then that Sirrax's head snapped up, his attention focused on something in the distance.We're not alone,he warned.
The other dragons had heard it too—the sound of wings, multiple sets, approaching fast from the south. Tarshi was already shifting into dragon form again, his face grim with determination.
"Imperial patrol," he said. "They must have seen our smoke trail."
We mounted quickly, Sirrax launching himself into the air with powerful strokes that scattered ash and debris below us. But even as we climbed, I could see them—five dragons in tight formation, their riders urging them forward with the relentless efficiency of a hunting pack.
The chase that followed was like nothing I'd ever experienced. These weren't the clumsy, reluctant dragons I'd faced in the academy. These were experienced war mounts, their riders skilled and determined, closing the distance between us with frightening speed.
Sirrax and Tarshi streaked through the sky, heading for the mountains, but pulling our pursuers away from the direction of the city. I felt Sirrax’s powerful wings beat with desperate rhythm as we wove between mountain peaks, using the jagged terrain to break line of sight and confuse our pursuers. Neither he nor Tarshi knew these mountains well—they'd both been raised in the Empire's breeding grounds, far from this wild landscape—but their size and strength gave them a crucial advantage over the smaller Imperial dragons behind us.
Tarshi pulled ahead, his dark blue bulk cutting through the thin mountain air with raw power rather than finesse. Where the Imperial dragons had to work harder in the altitude, struggling with the thinner air, both he and Sirrax had the lung capacity and muscle mass to maintain their speed. We dove into narrow canyons and climbed steep cliff faces, gambling that our pursuers' smaller frames would force them to take longer routes around obstacles we could power through directly.
But even with that advantage, they were still gaining. The Imperial dragons might be smaller, but they were bred for endurance, and their riders knew how to get the most out of them. Their formation never wavered, closing the distance with the relentless efficiency of a hunting pack that had done this many times before.
I could feel Taveth's emotions building through our bond—rage at what we'd seen in the village, fury at being pursued by the very creatures responsible for the destruction, and underneath it all, something cold and dark that was growing stronger by the moment. But beneath the anger, I could sense something else:pain. Deep, soul-wrenching agony as the shadows writhed inside him, feeding on his rage and growing stronger with every surge of emotion.
Taveth,I called through the bond, trying to reach him before whatever was building inside him took control.We can lose them in the mountains. We don't have to fight.
