Reaper's Dragon

Prologue

"Why?"

Her voice was hoarse and broken as though it hadn't been used in a while, or it had been used too much. Her hand, as she reached up to grab as much of the shirt's fabric as she could was cadaverous and frail.

"Why me?" she croaked as she pulled the diminutive owner of the shirt closer to her. "Why did you do this to me?"

Alaura choked on a sob as she held the dying woman in her arms. Ignoring the stench of the trash filled back alley. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't know. I thought..."

The woman pushed feebly at Alaura's chest. "You didn't think at all," she rasped. "Look at what you've reduced me to."

Her words cut off as a coughing fit wracked her body with violent convulsions.

Alaura pressed her free hand to her mouth as tears rolled down her cheeks. She held the woman as gently as she could, trying to ease her suffering though she didn't know how.

"My daughter," the woman rasped when her coughing had subsided.

"I bought her freedom," Alaura said reassuringly.

A hollow choking sound came from the woman, and it took a moment for Alaura to realize it was laughter. "And will you do to my daughter what you did to me, oh honored savior?" she practically spat. "Freedom is not a gift when you have nothing to offer the world. At least as a slave I had food and shelter, piss poor though it was. It was a stupid, selfish child who took what little comfort that was away from me."

Pain blossomed in Alaura's chest as the truth of those words struck her to her soul. She had long thought herself beyond such naïveté as she sacrificed her hard won freedom for the woman in her arms. Now, faced with the consequences of her actions, she could admit to herself she'd had a fanciful image in her head that this woman, a person who reminded her of her own mother, would leave the filth of the pits behind and achieve happiness.

The piercing wail of a babe split the air, and Alaura instinctively looked around her. The woman in her arms struggled vainly toward the sound.

Five feet away, nestled up against the cold brick in a cradle of rotted wooden crates and discarded packaging, was a small grey bundle of rags with a skeletal pink face.

"My baby," the woman wheezed as she continued to struggle toward the mass.

Horror descended over Alaura as her eyes finally made sense of what the bundle must be. Gently, she extracted herself from the woman and moved toward the wailing infant. When she picked it up, it was shockingly small and far too light. This was not her first experience cradling an infant child, and this one was much less substantial than it should be.

Slowly, carefully, she brought the bundle back to the woman, intending to set the child in its mother's arms, but it was too late. While she'd been retrieving the baby, the woman had taken her last breath and died.

As if it could sense the passage of its mother, the bundle stilled and grew silent. Alarmed, Alaura checked to find the babe gazing up at her with dark sunken eyes.

"I'm so sorry," she said.

With one last look to the body of the woman, Alaura held the child to her chest as she made a silent promise to its mother's memory.