The Dragon Games

Prologue

Regan Black ran through the slum alleyways, her legs burning, her breath coming in short gasps. Every time she rounded a corner was like playing a game of roulette. The buildings were crammed together and slanted with age, making it impossible to see what lay ahead, especially as the rain fell down in sheets. The sewer system had broken weeks ago, so when the rain hit the ground, it turned into a brown, ankle-high sludge. The night was so dark Regan could almost convince herself the color was due to mud, if not for its putrid smell. As her eyes burned, she kept reminding herself she chose this path for a reason. She was a scrawny ten year old, all knobby knees and bony limbs; she wasn't about to lose her perusers by outrunning them. Out-grossing them, on the other hand...

Regan rounded another corner. Suddenly, a hand shot out from the darkness and shoved her. Her back hit the wall so hard her teeth rattled together. A man towered over her. While the upper class wore their wealth with jewellery, fancy stones imported from the far ends of the kingdom, the lower class wore their wealth in fat. While Regan could count her ribs, this man's riches pulled at the seams of his clothes and spilled over his belt. Regan probably could have outrun him, but even if she managed to get past him, all her exits were covered. One side of the alleyway was blocked by an iron barred fence and the other was blocked by five enforcers.

"Y'know who I am?" the man shouted, so she could hear him over the rain. "I'm Pauly. I run the inn you've been stealing from. Here's what's going to happen. You're going to 'fess up and apologize, and then you're going to return what you stole from me, down to the last copper."

"Stealing?" Regan gasped, appalled. "You got the wrong person, sir. I don't know anything about stealing."

"You don't know?" Pauly sneered. "I'll give you a refresher, then. One of the games at my inn is a spinning wheel split into a hundred different sections, and only one section — the smallest section, with less width than a fingernail — is a winning spin. I've had that game for seven years, and I can count the amount of winners we've had on one hand. But, suddenly, when a little freckle-faced rodent shows up, we have three winners in less than a month."

"That wasn't me," Regan said, shaking her head. "I'm telling you, you have the wrong person."

"Then why did you run?" Pauly said. Doubt flickered in his eyes.

"Because you were chasing me! I was scared!"

"So your name isn't Regan? You're not Regan Black?"

"No!" Regan said. "I've never heard that name in my life. It wasn't me helping the gamblers win. I don't even have any Divine."

Pualy paused. All traces of doubt disappeared from his face, replaced by something far more dangerous. "Who said anything about using the Divine?"

Regan froze, realizing her mistake a half second too late. She wanted to retreat, but her back was already pressed against the wall.

"If you weren't involved, how do you know how the winners scammed me?" Pauly hissed, his eyes burning her. "You almost had me, you little rat. But now you're going to pay double. Four thousand gold coins."

"Four thousand? I don't have that kind of fortune."

"Then you will pay in flesh." He lunged for her. The movement was so quick and sudden that she didn't think; she just reacted. She threw a hand up, and an invisible force knocked Pauly back, with ten times more force than her scrawny, ten-year-old arms were capable of. He landed on his ass several feet away from her, the breath knocked out of him. Regan had never touched him, yet there was a red handprint burned into his neck, right where the Divine had made contact. Pauly covered the handprint with his own hand, his face flushing a vibrant red.