Dragonborn by Justin DePaoli

Author:Justin DePaoli [DePaoli, Justin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-04-08T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

The dark of night his only witness, Cravis gave it one final shake, then pulled his trousers up and walked away from the bush dripping wet with his piss. He arrived back at the clearing—and the dragon—before Gwendolyn.

“What say you, dragon?” He breathed warmth into his frigid hands. “Could a Painter, with the right strokes of his brush, make it so he doesn’t have to piss anymore? Have you ever seen the Painter piss? I haven’t.”

The dragon loured at him with eyes of bloodstone, its stiff upper lip forming a snarl.

“I told Gwendolyn to let me create you. I’ve got experience. My dragons might be dumber than a cripple with a hole in his head, but they don’t huff and puff and show their teeth. You try anything, I’ll gut you.” He snapped his fingers and waved his blade around. “Just like that.”

He stepped back a few paces, putting some space between him and the beast, before turning and peering into the dead forest that surrounded him. What was the bloodwitch doing to have taken so long in placing a painting?

Just chuck the bastard down and call it a day, he thought. He glanced at the overstuffed satchels slung across the dragon. We’ve got hundreds of these bloody things to disperse.

Tucked away in his pocket was a map of Boros that he, Gwendolyn, and the Painter had drawn up. Markings dotted it from edge to edge, indications of inaccessible points from the Painted Realm and where new paintings must be placed.

War was coming and if they had any hope of outmaneuvering Gorchus, they needed eyes across this entire cursed land.

Twigs snapped in the distance, and a shadow lumbered through barren trees, their branches twisting and reaching like the bony fingers of Risen.

Gwendolyn’s breath trailed out ahead of her like headlong fog. She stomped across the frozen ground with her hands stuffed in her pockets. When she finally looked up, silver strands of hair grasped at her eyelids. She brushed them back and produced a vial of blood from her pocket. Dissatisfied, she replaced it with another.

“Hyvelik’s Blessing,” she muttered. “Where is this—” She held a thin vial of crystalized blood up to the moon. “There you are.”

Gwendolyn uncorked the vial and poured its contents in a wide circle on the ground. The frozen soil drank it in like a parched straggler wandering the desert.

“What in the hell are you doing?” Cravis asked.

The answer came with a roaring whoosh as a crown of flames erupted from where Gwendolyn had poured the blood. The fire crescendoed like two waves crashing into each other, finally settling into a calm burn.

“I needed this,” Gwendolyn said, sitting before the fire. She held her hands to the flames, massaging the heat into her fingers.

“You make fire out of nothing, is that it? Just throw some blood down and there you go.” Cravis shook his head. He sighed as he crouched. “For whatever it’s worth, I could use some rest myself.”

Gwendolyn rubbed her leaky nose. “It’s called Cabal.

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