Sang's Dragon

Chapter Two



Sang

I shivered thinking about what would've happened if I arrived at home empty handed. It could've been Mother making me kneel on rice, maybe even trying to drown me in a basin full of water. Yet the worst was always the grease. Hot enough to leave burns. Cool enough to not leave even a scar. 

I didn't receive a single punishment last night thanks to my earnings from work. The lack of deer meat was made up for by some coin.  

The embers glowed an angry shade of orange from the fireplace. It was too cold in my room last night so I chose to rest in the sitting room. All I had was a sorry excuse for a blanket laying on top of me and dull flames in the pit to keep my body warm. 

After taking a moment to wipe the sleep from my eyes, I gradually worked my way up to my feet. Looking outside, the sun was slowly beginning to rise. I lit a candle and walked through the narrow hallway back to my room. Marie's snoring could be clearly heard even with her door firmly shut. Her and my mother would likely sleep until mid-day.

I closed the door to my bedroom and looked at my meager belongings. It was 

Per usual, Father didn't return home from work. He was a guard for the next village over, but I had never seen him come home in uniform. Not even when I was a child. It'd been years since I cared about where he went and where he stayed. That curiosity washed away with my youth as spite took over. 

As I stripped down from my sleepwear, the wooden floorboards beneath my feet creaking, I felt a terrible, sudden burning sensation on my wrist. It felt as if someone was taking a hot fire poker to my flesh. 

My stomach roiled. 

Hissing through my teeth, I looked down to find a new mark on my flesh resembling closely to a tattoo. 

The blood rushed from my head as I studied it. It was about two fingers wide and designed in a swirling pattern, forming a... dragon's head.

I felt dizzy. There had never been a female dragon rider. Just the thought of there ever being one was ridiculous. It had to be a fluke—some awful, terrible joke. But still, there was a warm kernel that spread through my body. 

If this wasn't some terrible mistake, my dragon, who would also be my soulbound, just hatched. He or she could be anywhere in the kingdoms, making their way toward me this very moment.

Pacing the length of my room, I thought back to my studies about dragons and their riders.

500 years ago, there was a rider named Archer Sullivan. When the riders were fighting a war against the Drorum king, Archer betrayed his people and pitted against his fellow riders, all for power and greed. His dragon, a Tenebrous, was just as evil as him. They say its scales were as dark as night and eyes as cold as ice. Archer's betrayal brought on a giant rift between the riders. Some followed Archer and his dragon, while the others stayed. It wasn't just a war against the kingdom where evil lurked, it was also a war against former brothers of the sky. It took ten years of bloodshed for them to finally defeat Archer and his evil dragon. The many years that followed the event, dragon riders around the world killed off the Tenebrous breed out of fear that every dragon would be just as evil and sinister as Archer's. There hadn't been a single one spotted in over 400 years. As those years passed, changes were made. Exceptional changes.

I had to learn more. There was only one person who I could trust with this, and lucky for me, he was the same person that carried infinite amounts of knowledge.