Illara Chronicles: Swordplay

Corruption

The not yet noon sun shown through smoke and into Kendreths eyes as he surveyed his invaded home town. The din of battle stole away the quiet. Townsfolk fled falling over themselves in every direction. He wove his way through them, downhill deeper into the chaos. At the "gate" the guards mounted a meager defense against a dozen or more dragon kin. The town guards struggled in vain against a vastly superior foe.

What is this feeling?

Kendreths heart hammered hard against its confines. He clenched and unclenched armored fists, his hands were hungry for their sword.

He was scarcely aware of Kelith and Taldren struggling to keep up, and albeit slight, the knowing reduced the swelling amalgamation of anger and fear.

It was a lone bucket of frost water on a raging fire. A fire that was stoked at the sight of Dentren on a hill in the distance, with the dread siphon on a pike, it's crackling red light cast a vile aura. A man knelt on the ground beside it. Shadows masked the face of his bowed head. A prisoner? But he was unbound.
A woman was there above him, seductively splayed across a velvet seat on a platform held on the shoulders of eight dragon folk. She was clad in a thin black dress that left little to the imagination. Even at this distance Kendreth could feel her eyes on him.

They were the eyes of a vulture on an injured mare.

Kendreth put the thought out of his mind but not before he slicked with a cold sweat. He forced his mind around the power in his chest, radiating into his boots and his fingertips.

A draconic soldier with red scales and horns that hooked down towards its sharp chin pursued a fleeing guard.

Avery.
He was dutiful, taking second shifts to cover the city's less responsible protectors when they over drank at The Last Watch. He was older than Kendreth, and large.

The huge man vaulted messily over Old Man Hanleys low fence. His pursuer kicked straight through it, reaching for its prey. Avery batted one clawed hand away, but the other closed around his throat. He let out a gurgling wheeze as the monster lifted him into the air.

Kendreth kicked the red dragon so hard in the hip that it dropped Avery and broke through the fence in a second place. It thrashed on the floor clawing away from Kendreth through the flowers in Hanleys garden with its arms, but it couldn't stand. It drug its legs.

Kendreth wanted to draw his sword. To take the things head off. He wanted to slay them all.

He tried to reel the strength in. Behind him he could hear Kelith ask if Avery was okay. "Can you breathe? Can you stand?"

That helped him to see the terror in the monsters eyes, looking up at him, pleading. He was glad he hadn't drawn his sword.

The city's protectors fell all around him to scaled soldiers of yellow green and blue, but they were not killed. They were being tied and taken.

One creature fought more fiercely than the rest. He was closer to human than the dragon kin but still far from it. The monster of a man in a loincloth stood a full head and a half taller than Kendreth. His skin was pale and stretched tightly over thick slabs of muscle. It had chains for binding around its hips, and moved loudly as it pounced and captured good men.

One of the few remaining guards shot it with a crossbow. The monsters face split into an impossibly wide smile as the barbed bolt sunk deep into the things shoulder. It's mouth opened in a grin that nearly reached its ears, displaying every tooth. Without hesitation or so much as flinching it tore the bolt out. An unnaturally long tongue unfurled and licked the wound.

It arched it's back, flung it's arms out and laughed like a rabid gnoll. A shrill unnerving cackle.
The fleeing soldier had put a lot of space between himself and the beast and was still running hard.