He’d closed his eyes and raised his face, offering his throat. Behind him that brutal sound, the machinery of war breaking thousands upon its wheel. Screams and cries, the hammer of metal on metal, the neigh of terrified horses, the hoarse and endless wail of bellows and shouts.
But it all fell away.
He’d knelt there, ready. For an end. Not the end he’d desired, but the one he deserved. He’d gone too far. Sacrificed too much.
And if he was to die, it was best he die at her hand. Nobody else deserved to claim his life.
She tilted his head to the side, exposing his throat, then bent down and kissed him. The lightest brush of her lips against his own, her hair momentarily brushing against his skin.
Ah, that it should end like this. His life, his wants, his dreams and furies.
Kneeling in the mud and the blood to be cut down like a farm animal.
She straightened, and her fingers on his chin tensed.
“My beloved,” she whispered, her voice cracking with emotion and grief. “My dragon.”
A bell tolled.
The battle fell away. Her touch on his chin. His heart, clamoring for an end, stilled.
A clarion call. His soul rising from the tortured depths. An answer to a question he’d not known he’d been asking all his life:
Not who, but what?
What was he?
A monster, an endless calamity upon the people of this land.
But more.
Her words sounded his pain, and found, in his very depths, a dormant and yet untouched power.
A potential for devastation that dwarfed all that he had done.
And deep within Scorio, at a profundity so extreme that he’d only ever but dimly sensed its potential, that power cracked open its eyes, and answered her call.
The King’s Scepter screamed.
Scorio felt his body shift and stretch. Felt his form grow and change. His arms, his spine, his neck. Strength unlike anything he’d ever felt. Might unlike anything the kingdom had ever witnessed.
Power.
Scorio lashed his tail as he fell onto all fours. His head swept around, his mouth deepening, filling with fangs, his horns elongating.
Bones creaked and grew thick. His scales broadened and became a heavy coat.
Glory. Oh, terrible glory.
Scorio blinked and gazed down upon the King’ Scepter. She’d fallen back, horrified, and could only stare as he rose above her.
The King’s Champion.
The king himself had been absent from the battle, but his champion wore his famous armor, gilt gold like the sun. “Back, fell beast! I’ll rid the kingdom of you myself if I must!”
Words that once might have struck terror into Scorio’s heart, but now?
He couldn’t laugh. But he could breathe fire.
Scorio summoned majesty from his heart, evoked his most primal strength, and from the depths of his being he brought forth a roaring conflagration that brooked no denial.
Black flames flooded forth. The King’s Scepter screamed as she became a living torch. The King’s Champion himself roared and charged forth, his magnificent and legendary armor melting off his frame with every step.
But Scorio’s plume of fire was endless. He concentrated it on the champion, whose roar was drowned by the fire, and then he fell.
With a final burst Scorio cut off his flame, and stared upon the two charred corpses.
Then, exultant, terrified, he’d turned his bulk about and gazed out over the battlefield.
A ripple of terror was washing over it. Interrupting the battle, causing friend and foe to fall back and stare in horror at what Scorio had become.
Hoarse screams sounded from the side, and the remnants of the honor guard charged forth.
Just the provocation he needed. Scorio flung himself upon them, his wings battering them down, his talons tearing men apart, his tail snapping their bones. In moments they were dead, strewn across the grass, and then did Scorio take flight, rushing forward to leap and surge upward, his wings pulling him up, ever up, to curve around and pass over the battlefield.
Where his shadow fell, mortal men recoiled.
But when he began to torch the enemy in great sweeping passes, then did his side give forth halfhearted cheers.
The battle had ended the moment he evolved, but it had taken Scorio hours after to hunt down and destroy the last remnants of the royal army.
Some eight thousand men had died. Most burned, the rest torn asunder.
His own army had melted away. Scorio had met later in his human form with his lieutenants and generals, but none had been able to meet his eyes.
He didn’t blame them.
Nobody should have been forced to witness such wholesale bloodshed.
Scorio had left what remained of his forces in the hands of the White Jester and Garvis. But there was little left for them to command, and Scorio had departed soon after, no longer interested in the aftershocks of their victory.
Instead, he had taken to the skies.
Had hunted deer.
Had destroyed royal garrisons. Most were deserted, but he killed those who’d chosen to remain.
He slept for days on end.
He dreamed, but upon awakening, couldn’t recall what of.
Mostly he simply flew and recalled the past. Moments of glory. Moments of bravery. His childhood upon the deck of his father’s fishing boat. His brother chasing him along the shores. How he’d spent hours during the late afternoons hunched over the tidal pools, watching the wonders that the ocean had left behind.
The King’s Scepter.
Their first meeting, their first fight.
How she’d hunted him for three weeks. How he’d finally trapped her, and for reasons he still couldn’t elucidate, chosen to spare her life.
Their first kiss, three days later.
Those two weeks of sublime wonder, the whole world discarded, everything contracted to their bed, the kitchen counter, the floor, the meadow, everywhere and anywhere around that abandoned country manor.
Her touch on his chin as she’d prepared to slice his throat.
Her final screams.
Scorio knew to where he flew. He was taking his time, but he couldn’t hide it from himself.
The capital.
The king’s palace.
He didn’t know what he’d do when he got there. But he feared the pain that he carried in his heart.
Feared what it would compel him to do.
One evening, curled upon an outcropping of rock, his tail tucked under his chin, the air cooling upon his scales and his belly full of deer, he’d seen a blue portal open on the grassy sward below, and an old man had emerged, white bearded but with an elegant carriage. He’d worn a blue robe stitched with such fine designs in navy thread that it seemed he’d draped the evening skies upon his shoulders. He approached Scorio without fear or hesitation.
“Hail, Scorio! Hail to the Scourer, the Lord of Nagaran, Master of the Black Tower, Bringer of Ash and Darkness, the Shadow of Spurn Harbor, the Abhorred, Quencher of Hope and Unmaker of Joy.”
It was the first time he’d ever heard these titles strung together in such manner. Scorio roused himself. As ever, the purifying promise of flame rumbled in his chest.
But the man met his gaze with fearless amusement. He’d not come here to castigate Scorio. Then why?
“Tales of your deeds have outlasted the centuries. Though I’ll admit, in the legends you are said to have been twice as large as I see you now. No matter. There is no doubting what you actually did.”
Scorio shrank back down to his human form. It had been over a week since he’d inhabited it last. He sat, naked, upon the edge of the outcropping, and stared down at the old man. “Who are you to speak of centuries?”
“A man from your future.” The old man smiled, but in his eyes burned a wisdom, a dire intelligence, an intimation of true power that chilled Scorio to the bone. “An avid fan of your exploits. I have journeyed back through the centuries—four hundred and seventy-two years, to be exact—to invite you to help save the world.”
Scorio snorted. “You obviously didn’t pay sufficient attention to my deeds if you think that would interest me.”