The sickly green colored dragon seethed in anger as she stared into the water. Eesoeena often could use the reflective surface to scree, or foresee a little of the future. She was upset because the signs were unmistakable. She furiously clenched her claws, which were around a deer retrieved from the forest. The doe shuddered as Eesoeena’s talons sank into its chest, killing the animal. The dragon disdainfully threw the doe against the cave wall with an angry jerk, preferring to eat her meals when they were at least partially alive. So, she thought, a Stoneseer has risen…after three hundred years. Three hundred years of hiding in caves, slinking through the night, and eating…animals. She promised herself that it would not be animals ever again. The tender flesh of children was so much more delicious, and the younger the child, the more succulent the meal. The risk of discovery up until now had been too great to seek a meal of young flesh before the arrival of a Stoneseer. Now the hunting would be risky, but it would be calculated. Eesoeena hoped she could find the Stoneseer before he became an adult…they were so much more difficult to kill as adults. She looked at the doe against the wall, its nerves causing its limbs to kick and jerk even in death, and then she turned toward the cave opening. The stench from her body rose in noxious fumes. The same toxic vapors that her misshapen body emitted had poisoned the cave walls and ground, sinking through the cave floor and into the underground river for many years. The contaminated river system carried the death knell to all life in the water, and all life that drank the water. The dragon was very aware of the effect she had on the river, and it was the one source of deep enjoyment in her tormented and exiled life.
She stood at the opening of the cave and sighed with deep anticipation, the light shining dully on her ailing olive colored body. With great effort she lifted her deformed and bloated carcass in flight, taking in great amounts of air through her nose. She sifted the myriad of scents in the night air as she searched hungrily for the scent of a young child.
Eesoeena, misshapen from birth was an egg that many said should not have been allowed to open. She chuckled because she knew that her egg was blooded by a youth under threat of death. Although the stress in the giver of the lifeblood that helped to create her distorted the life in the egg, Eesoeena survived. The depraved overseer of the egg ritual wanted more than loyalty within a dragon; the overseer wanted merciless ferocity. Eesoeena, made for evil, fulfilled her destiny to its fullest extent. Through her self-torment with envy and discontentment, she matured into a malevolent creature. She was an evil being responsible for many deaths of both human and dragon kind, wanting to wreak havoc on those who were not like her, and communicating her misery to others by instigating their suffering and prolonged deaths. Eesoeena was not a tolerant individual, but rather quite the bigot. She did not like man. She did not think dragons should coexist with such a pathetic creature, and her focus in life was always to turn her evil genius toward ways to eradicate what she considered vermin.
Eesoeena procured much enjoyment from cruelty. When she tormented creatures, her anger was whipped into high fury if a creature succumbed to death too soon…without as much suffering as she could wring from it. For so long she had only taken creatures not easily missed, but now it no longer mattered about discovery. She knew when the Stoneseer was in place, the others would return. She would no longer be alone.
Discovery of the long kept secret of dragons’ survival was imminent…and it would be well for the people of Bordok to understand the payment expected in exchange for certain courtesies. The pathetic state of the Bordokian water system was to Eesoeena’s credit, and she chuckled when she considered the commanded recompense for the loss of her dank and musty abode. Payment for clear and clean water also meant a constant supply of pink-fleshed, tender Bordokian children. Eesoeena’s mouth dripped long strings of saliva in anticipation of the taste of the small children’s bodies as she sought prey from the evening skies. She greedily sucked in the scent for which she was searching, pulling it deep into her lungs, as her eyes spied lights in a small cottage. Eesoeena screeched and her heavy body plummeted toward the target of much anticipated pleasure.
