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Yet even though every bone in his body told him otherwise, he only watched, his body eerily still as he bit down on his tongue.
The wrangler pulled at the chain. When the animal still didn’t walk forward, the man pulled harder. Nearby, the horses tethered to the trees shuffled, their hooves a nervous patter on the ground. After two tugs, the creature finally relented. It stepped out from beneath the tarp. The flames licked its skin, casting flickering shadows across its body. With its large head hanging low, the animal exited its cage.
At its approach, the men’s hands went to the hilts of their swords, their jaws falling slightly agape. The surrounding men took several slow steps back, and Graeson couldn’t blame them. In Graeson’s twenty-five years, he had seen many things, so it took a lot to surprise him. But this . . . he couldn’t even begin to comprehend what he saw standing before him.
“What is that?” Dani asked, leaning forward.
“It looks like a . . . dragon-puppy?” Moris said, his tone questioning.
“There’s no such thing,” Armen whispered.
“Are you sure about that?” Moris asked. “Because that’s what whateverthatlooks like.”
Graeson, however, wasn’t so sure. Puppies were cute; puppies were sweet. The animal in front of them was anything but. The creature’s head appeared kin to either a wolf or a large herding dog, with a medium-sized snout and wet nose. Not the slitted nose depicted in the books he had read about as a child, which described the legendary dragons. Irises, the color of rubies, glowed in the flickering flames of the torches that lined the makeshift campsite. Four large legs, with paws three times the size of Graeson’s fists, supported its massive body. Its hind legs were ripe with muscles. The wrangler led the animal around in a circle, whip in one hand and chain in the other, and the creature’s side came into view. Scales covered the animal’s sharp shoulders that then trailed down its spine. But what caught Graeson’s attention the most were the giant wings protruding out of its shoulder blades.
Inches from the beast’s long, yellowed claws, the wrangler cracked the whip against the ground. At the sound, the beast tried to retreat. The chain went taut as it pulled away from its handler.
Crack.
Another loud, painful screech erupted from the animal’s mouth as the wrangler cracked the whip, hitting one of the animal’s paws.
A sharp white pain seared through Graeson’s right arm as the hilt of the throwing knife bit into the flesh of his palm. No animal deserved this.
When the wrangler cracked the whip again, Graeson jerked forward, but Dani and Moris forced him back, their fingers digging into his shoulders.
Upon the snapping of the thick rope, the animal spread its wings out wide. Whereas the creature’s legs, chest, and stomach were covered with fur, its wings appeared webbed, and the torches’ flames bled through its opaque skin. An amber glow flickering within its wings.
The handler pulled something else from his belt. From their hiding spot, it looked to be a pelt of some sort. A skinned squirrel or rabbit, perhaps. When the man held it in the air, the beast lowered its head, its shoulders sagging, wings still spread out. When the wrangler tossed the pelt high in the air, the animal tried to jump, but the chain pulled it back down.
Laughter erupted from some of the men in the circle as the beast was tugged back to the ground.
The creature whimpered, yet it still managed to catch the carcass in its mouth. In a matter of seconds, the beast devoured it whole. Then it dragged its snout across the dirt, looking for more food. When the creature found none, the men chuckled nervously.
Meanwhile, the wrangler hooked the animal’s chain to a post sticking out of the ground and turned to the men.
“What are they saying?” Dani asked Armen.
Armen shook his head. “That with time, the creature will only grow more fierce, more deadly. They’re working on producing more of its kind as they speak.”
Graeson blanched.
This creature had not been merely born but created. The testing alone that the animal must have gone through was unfathomable. Let alone the confinement the animal had to endure. To be chained your entire life, stuck in a cage, never knowing that there were open skies above your head where you could soar until your wings gave out, was not a life. It was a prison. This creature did not know freedom. It didn’t even know freedom existed. All it knew was pain and suffering.
Graeson spat on the ground. “They’re all dead.”
“What do you mean? They’re not—” Moris snapped his mouth shut, Graeson’s threat finally hitting him.
“Graeson,” Dani hissed. “What are you doing?”
“What I should have done the moment we got here,” Graeson said, shoving Dani’s hands off him.
Then, without thinking anymore, he hurled not one, not two, but three knives into the backs of the closest soldiers, one after another. As the blades met their marks, three men slunk to the floor.
One of the remaining soldiers snapped his head in the direction of his fallen comrades. “We are under attack!”
The torchbearers drove the bottom of the torches into the dirt and, in one fell swoop, unsheathed their blades, their Frenzian sigils flashing in the flames.
“Go!” the soldier closest to Graeson’s group shouted over his shoulder.
