“Well, well, well,” he sneered, his voice dripping with contempt. “Look what we have here. The mighty dragon reduced to skulking in the shadows like a common cur. How the mighty have fallen.”
A soldier from Osmaria, a country to the east of Telluria, Zoarak had been captured in one of their border skirmishes that went on incessantly.
As a prisoner of war, Zaorak was one of the earliest prisoners to be experimented on by the godsdamned mage. He’d been incaptivity so long that it had broken his mind, he’d ended up becoming devoted to the mage instead of despising him, like the rest of us prisoners.
“You shouldn't have come here, Zaorak,” I growled, my voice low and dangerous. “You should’ve left me alone and stayed with your precious mage. You’ll find no mercy in this place.”
Zaorak threw his head back and laughed, a sharp, grating sound that made my teeth ache. I couldfeelthem lengthening into fangs. “Mercy?” he scoffed; his grin widening. “You speak of mercy, after what you did to our master? After you betrayed us all?”
I felt a surge of anger rising within me, threatening to overwhelm me in its intensity. “That damned mage was no master ofmine,” I spat. “He was a monster, a madman," I snapped, my claws flexing instinctively as I braced myself for the confrontation that was to come. “I only regret that I never got the chance to kill him myself!”
Zaorak’s grin faltered for a moment, replaced by a cold, calculating look that made my skin crawl. “Shut your mouth,” he said, his voice flat and devoid of humor. “Don’t speak of things you don’t understand.”
My heart thundered in my chest as Zaorak took a step closer, his boots crunching on the shattered wood of the doorframe. The air between us crackled with tension, thick enough to choke on.
“Did you think you could escape from us forever?” Zaorak said, his voice dripping with malice. “You had to know we would find you eventually. You belong to the master, and now it’s time to come home.”
“Never!” I snarled, every muscle in my body coiled like a spring as I prepared to face my adversary. “I will die before he gets his hands on me again!”
Zaorak’s grin returned, a wicked, twisted thing that sent a shiver of dread down my spine. “Thendie!”
Zaorak lunged forward, his movements swift and deadly as he swung his fist toward me with bone-shattering force. I dodged out of the way just in time, the blow grazing my cheek with a searing pain that sent sparks dancing behind my eyes.
I fled, leaping silently into the shadows among the kitchen rafters, my claws gripping the aged wooden beams as I steadied myself. My chest rose and fell in shallow breaths, my body poised like a coiled spring. Below me, Zaorak prowled through the wreckage of the kitchen, his boots crunching on the debris he’d created in his destructive entrance.
“Stand and fight, coward,” he hissed into the darkness, his voice carrying an edge of frustration and glee.
I willed him to keep talking, the sound of his voice giving me the only clear indication of his location. The firelight from the hearth played tricks on the shadows, and the cacophony of his boots against the floorboards made it hard to pinpoint his movements. But his time in the brightly lit kitchen had robbed him of his night vision. For now, the advantage was mine.
“Onyx? Where aaaaare you?” His voice turned singsong, mockingly sweet.
The hairs on my arms stood up, and I fought back the shudder that threatened to ripple through me. That name. Ihatedit.
Onyx.
The mage had stripped us of our humanity and named us for the beasts we became. Zaorak was Topaz, for his gleaming yellow scales. Dmitri had been Jade. Pavel had been Agate. Each name a reminder of the monstrous forms we had been forced to inhabit, of the lives stolen and reshaped to fit the mage’s twisted experiments.
And I was Onyx.
“Should I hurt the little witch instead? Peel all the fingernails from her hands and see how pretty she screams?”
The giggle that followed curdled my blood. Zaorak had always been the maddest of the mage’s creations. Even back then, in the dungeons of the tower, he’d embraced his monstrous nature, reveling in the carnage and destruction he was unleashed to deliver on the armies attacking Telluria.
“We both know you’re no match for me, Onyx,” he said, his tone shifting to one of smug certainty.
Unfortunately, he was right. The last time we had fought, Zaorak had proven stronger, faster, and crueler than I could ever be. It had been when Zaorak had attacked the Stonehearts.
The mage had let us both out to annihilate the regiment attacking the Tellurian army. When the mage had let us out of our cages, I had ignored his screamed orders, flying over the countryside, intent on escape, but then I had seen Luka Kamenev, the Second Prince of Drakazov leading the charge—and that was when I realized that the mage wanted to attack my old regiment.
And Zaorak had been flying toward them, ready to burn them alive.
I had attacked Zaorak at once, trying to defend my countrymen, but in his dragon form, Zaorak had been too strong for me to beat. The most I was able to do was buy my old regiment some time.
Zaorak had brought me down, leaving me broken and humiliated. The bastard mage had imprisoned me in the tower dungeon again. He’d clicked his tongue at me, whining about how I’d wasted all the power he’d imbued me with.
Glaring at me with hate-filled eyes, he’d snapped, “You have just one transformation left within you. As soon as that pendant loses its shine, you’re dead.” He’d smiled, then. “But don’t worry. I know how to make my…ingredients last for a long, long time.”
Rindais had raved that night, pacing the cold stone floor of his lab as he outlined the new torments he had planned for me. He’d yelled about how he would use me up in his experiments until he’d wrung out every last drop of magic from my blood, until he’d taken back ‘everything I gave to you!’
