The Heart of a Dragonslayer by Megan Derr

Author:Megan Derr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Megan Derr

Chapter Ten

The next morning, Remi woke early for no reason he could discern. Better than that fucking bell.

Still unhappy after his day off had turned out so miserably, he left a note for Coree and departed, eager to go for a ride, get out of the city, and just be by himself for a day. He'd have to get back to work tomorrow, but today… today he needed to be alone.

He rode west, headed for the forest, no real goal in mind. If he happened to clobber a few bandits, wonderful, but he was hoping to be left in peace.

As he reached the tree line, though, something caught his eye: the old way point he'd noticed the last time he'd been here. The temple…

Curiosity, and a niggling idea, spurred him into the depths of the woods, staying on the road but keeping his eyes out for any signs of further way points, the old temple itself.

He hit a stroke of luck literally about two hours in, as morning was turning to early afternoon—an old bit of stone that wasn't natural, but looked like it had come from a wall or pillar. Dismounting, Remi picked it up, tumbled it between his hands—and saw another piece in the undergrowth. This general location would make sense, though. Five, six hours or so of traveling so far, roughly, would put the temple right smack in the middle of the journey.

Praying silently to Bendi for protection, Remi took his horse's reins and led the way into the undergrowth, eyes on the ground but ears alert for any sound—or lack of sound—that didn't belong.

Slowly, but with increasing frequency, he found more and more bits of ruins, until he actually came to something that had clearly been a road at one point. Heart thudding in his chest, he pressed onward, following the broken road until it grew less broken, and then expanded, and then…

Then there he was. It looked as though the temple had fallen victim to a fire at some point, and time had taken care of the rest, turning the temple to rubble and ruin.

Not a temple to Holy Bendi, God and Goddess of Life, but to their wife, Holy Dendaria, Goddess of the Earth. Fitting, as it was located in the middle of a forest, but he'd never seen one where a temple to Bendi wasn't somewhere nearby.

There was a water fountain in the very front, covered in mold and lichen, but he thought cleaned up and the piping repaired that it might be usable again. If the water was good, this place would be fit to use again. Not as a temple, though, as a proper waystation and garrison. Halfway between Variah and Swanla, it was the perfect spot. A rest point, a place for guards that would mitigate the bandit problem through sheer presence alone.

This sort of land wasn't simply up for grabs, though. The land rights would belong to either Swanla or Variah, and whichever it was, the city would have

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