Sinner

Chapter One

The north's bone chilling winds came early this year saying that this winter would be different from the ones before it. The wind told me there was something bad coming with the frozen air. Everyone was in a panic. Rushing to pack everything they thought they would need.

My nursemaid took me by the hand dragging me to my room. There was a trunk packed already with my garments I saw as she pulled me, her hand clammy on my wrist, over to the bed. She sat me down and kneeled in front of me. She looked into my eyes. In them shined a hazy fear caused by the creeping chill of darkness.

"Young mistress, listen to what I say. There are unbelievably bad men coming and we need to rush away now. There is no time to spare if you are to be safe."

Then she was gone in a rush of velvet skirts, leaving me in the chamber with my mother. Even as young as I was the look of fear on her face carved a wound in my soul. Mother looked to the bay window of the chamber listening to the scream, shouting, and clanging of metal beyond out in the courtyard.

"Let us go, little one," she said in a chillingly even tone. A tone so shocking to me in her melodic voice that it broke no argument against it. Clutching my hand tightly in hers we rushed from the room as she ordered servants and knights to bring our baggage and to be quick about it.

Rushing from the grand front doors across the frozen courtyard we were rushed into the waiting sled, harnessed to six massively broad northern reindeer. Mother held me tight to her chest as the sled lurched forward suddenly, leaving the castle in its wake.

As a fire dragon shifting one's form in the frozen dead of the northern winter was a poorly conceived notion, Mother had forbidden all in her service to do so. In so she made the choice of a weakness that may yet be the downfall of her people.

She bent to whisper in my ear. "My sweet one, listen to me. There are bad men coming for us. They are Black Bloods. They were once humans and great mages, but they turned to dark magic of the worst kind to kill off dragons. But their dark magic turned them, making dark, evil creatures. They still have a semblance of their former selves to trick others, so beware of them. If they catch us do not tell them who you are, but say you were a servant to me. If anything happens to me, remember the name Dare Storm for it will be the only thing you have to help you."

I turned my tear-stained face towards her, eyes glazing over with more tears. As I stared into my mother's beautiful young face creased with solemn grief I whispered, "What will they do to us?"

Her eyes shined with unshed tears knowing she could say nothing then and even I understood. The silence was an unspoken agreement, we do not mention our envisioning aloud.

Suddenly a deafening explosion rushed up behind us. Looking over my mother's shoulder to see our home, our palace, engulfed in flames miles in the distance behind us, was terrifying. The others were less than half a mile behind us, struggling to stop their sleds from swerving and just beyond them where big ugly creatures covered in black smoke chasing us. Their large, loping gait bounding closer and closer with each lunge of their beclawed feet as their massive claws stabbed away at the ice.

I gazed at them, terror over taking my small body as shivers shook me. My mother looking behind us only to freeze suddenly like a marble bust. Her eyes gone dark, her expression blank.

The big hideous creatures were then forever burned into my memory as the hounds of hades. I watched as the first group of the monsters took down the back level of the palace sleds, knights, and guards.

A guard sled came beside our sled, the man bowed his head deeply. "Your Highness, they are coming fast we won't make it to the pass!"

"They are going to kill us all! We need to go separate ways if we want to have a chance for you to get away! Let us shift, please think of your daughter! Run away!"