Snippets of Writing

5.

It only took five seconds to kill the fyer'zayendk.

The woman, tall, lean, and muscular, rose out of her defensive crouch and spun her twin swords in her hands. The points of the ivory swords drooped toward the ground as she glanced up at the sky, then at the trees around her. No more glowing figures appeared from the dark woods.

She sighed. The swords returned to their scabbards with a whisper of dragon bone against leather and she bent over to inspect the body of the fallen fire spirit. She prodded at its back with an armored finger, the tips of the fingers fashioned into dragon's claws, and snatched it back as the area she had touched began to sizzle and crumble into ash.

She had forgotten exactly how much her sword Flame - the one with the ruby stone embedded in its pommel - heated the black iron of her armor.

The woman stood up again, raking her fingers through her hair. Her waist-length blond hair had escaped its tight bun in the duration of the battle and was now soaked with blood, leaving red streaks on her face where it dragged across her skin. She tucked a loose strand behind her ear again and turned to survey the destruction in the glade.

Bodies wearing the brilliant yellow and orange of Zan Fayer littered the ground, soaking the soil with their blood. No bodies clad in black and gold uniforms mingled among them, and yet no soldiers wearing the woman's colors roamed the small battlefield.

She had caused this destruction herself.

She had been traveling as an envoy from her kingdom to their rivals-turned-enemies (though she didn't know what she, head of the military, was doing as a peaceful ambassador) when she had been ambushed by a platoon of Fayzan. It had not taken her long to systematically kill all of them, but then a fyer'zayandk - a fire spirit, and Fayzan aristocrat - had leapt upon her from the sky.

For all their fiery looks, fyer'zayandk were deceptively easy to kill - you had to cut off its head and impale its heart, preferably at once, without getting burned. Having a sword that could summon frost and skin that resisted heat proved very convenient in such times.

The woman - technically, dragoness - shook her head. It was almost as if they had known where she would be. She would have to yell at that bastard Blackheart when she got back home.

She took a few steps back, then took a running start and leapt for the stars shining high above. The scales, blue inlaid with shimmering silver veins, that surrounded her right eye spread to cover her whole body, and where there was a slim woman leaping toward the dark sky, there was a royal blue dragon climbing higher and higher with powerful wing strokes.

She headed south, away from the westerly kingdom of Hyannar and toward the desert of Zan Fayer.

The Fayzan king had taken one step too far, the dragoness thought as she breathed a plume of fire.

The Fayzan will pay for their king's insolence.

Death would come to Zan Fayer the next morning.

from 'wielder of frost and flame'.
still debating on plot-worthiness.