A Dawn of Dragonfire: Dragonlore, Book 1 by Daniel Arenson

Author:Daniel Arenson [Arenson, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780987886491
Amazon: 0987886495
Publisher: Daniel Arenson
Published: 2012-08-04T05:00:00+00:00

ELETHOR

He ran down the tunnel, eyes stinging, heart pounding, searching for Lyana in the darkness. He saw nothing but black mist, craggy walls, and shadows. His boots thudded against soft ground, as if running over moss. Or over corpses, he thought.

"Lyana!" he cried, and his voice echoed, taunting him, twisting through endless caverns. His heartbeat pounded in his ears, and his clothes clung to him, damp with sweat.

The image still burned against his eyes—Nedath the Guardian, a rotting girl with the body of a centipede, lifting Lyana in her arms. Licking her. Biting her. Elethor had tried to stop the demon, but Nedath moved too quickly. She had vanished into the bowels of the Abyss with her meal—with Lyana.

"Lyana!" he called again, and again his voice echoed like a hundred ghosts. Was she still alive?

As he ran, shadows swirled. Feet clattered all around. He could not tell if they moved near him or echoed from a distance. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling, slapping against him.

"Elllethorrrrr…"

The voice rose ahead, high-pitched as wind between canyons, mocking him. Laughter rolled.

"Nedath, come and face your king!" he cried again. "Bring back Lyana or I will kill you."

Somewhere ahead, Nedath laughed and sang. Her voice echoed from countless tunnels, a symphony of chaos. "Again the humans run… again their sweet stench rises… again Nedath shall feed!"

Elethor ran, slapping cobwebs aside, trying to find the demon. The tunnels branched, a labyrinth of them. Whenever he thought he heard footsteps or laughter, he headed that way, but then heard the sounds from behind him.

The cobwebs flapped against him, heavy and thick. Moans and pleading whispers rose from them. Elethor raised his lamp… and felt nausea swell.

Some cobwebs held severed arms with fingers that still moved. Others held ruined bodies stripped down to bones; the spines ended with withered heads whose mouths gasped, whose eyes spun, whose voices begged for death.

"Boy… boy, are you a skeley, are you skeley yet?" whispered one creature, an upside down, mummified thing, no thicker than Elethor's arm, its head shrunken and its lips smacking, its gums toothless. "Boy, it's skeley good, do you think?"

Elethor screamed and shoved past the hanging, mummified creatures. They gasped around him, eyes spinning and fingers twitching, swinging wildly on the cobwebs that bound them. Stars, what are these things? Elethor's head spun and he tasted bile. Were they humans once? Will Nedath turn Lyana into one of them?

In the shadows, the demon's laughter rolled.

"Poor poor humans, yes, Nedath. See how they cower! See how their fear fills the air, so sweet. Soon they will rot, and shrink, and hang, and lick, and smack, and whisper, and weep, and beg, and we will eat them slowly, yes Nedath, we will suck their juices dry, and the marrow from their bones, and their eyeballs, and their sweet innards, as they rot, and shrink, and hang, and…"

"Silence!" Elethor shouted, spinning around, seeking her, seeing only mist and cobwebs. He wanted to rage, to find this creature and fight, to be strong and proud and a warrior like Orin.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.