02 - Dragonmage by Chris Wraight - (ebook by Undead)

Author:Chris Wraight - (ebook by Undead)
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Warhammer
Published: 2011-09-19T19:49:03+00:00

He opened his eyes. He was shivering uncontrollably.

He was crouched over, his head on the stone, shaking against the ground.

Pain had woken him, the pain of ice snaking over his limbs. His skin was cracked and bleeding, rigid with the cold.

In all the pain, he didn’t remember his name for some time. When it came to him, his lips were too parched and blackened to say it.

Rathien. My name was Rathien en elien Morvenna. I was alive.

And he was still alive, though only barely. The wind tore at him, ravaging his tortured flesh. He couldn’t move. He was clenched tight, locked in a rictus of shivering, agonising cold.

When the shadow passed over him, he couldn’t lift his head to watch it. He could hear roaring, the constant thunder of the wind.

Then there was a sudden burst of something as hot as molten lead, rolling back the mists and bathing the mountainside in violent orange.

It hurt even worse, the warmth. Rathien felt his limbs scream in protest, unable any longer to tell the different between extreme cold and extreme heat.

There was more of it, coursing out and washing over him until it seemed the air had turned into a sea of magma.

The warmth allowed him to scream from his own lips. He rolled over, still screaming, wrapped in the cloak he’d worn in Lothern, over and over in the mud.

There was something in the air above him, out over the bridge. The sound of leather thrusting against air rolled over him, repetitive and heavy. Everything stank of hot metal.

He pushed himself up on to all fours, and his elbows and knees felt as if they had been impaled with rusty pins.

Rathien stopped screaming, and tried to look up.

There was no mist around him. There were no shifting clouds of vapour. The sky was open, burned clear by columns of vivid flame.

In the distance there were shouts of alarm. Voices he recognised were whooping and crying out, whether from joy or terror he couldn’t tell.

He had no idea how long he’d been out. His belly was yawningly empty. The pain made him groggy and nauseous. He was still seized by shivering, even though the air was now as hot as a blacksmith’s forge.

Rathien only had time for one glance upwards before he passed out again. It was a single glimpse, a blurred impression of what he’d done. Then his body gave up, wracked with talons of agony.

His face crunched against the gravel as he fell. His cloak sunk over his body like a shroud. He was dying again, just as he had done before.

But this time, like any mortal of the earth, he knew he would live to see another sunrise.

Magic was everywhere, rippling in the air, thrumming in the earth. It would sustain him, just as it had already done.

And he had the vision now, the vision of what he had done.

The sky!

He had seen it. He had witnessed the creation of the storm of magic.

The sky!

He didn’t feel the hands come for him, dragging him back across the bridge.

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