(DISCONTINUED) Legacy of the Thunder and Fury--Book 1--Shock of Betrayal

Prologue

My writing style is dramatically improving, this chapter isn't so great, but my newer chapters are much better. I may rewrite this someday when I have time.

                                                         Heather

A dark haired girl trudged behind a stocky round viking. Her hands were bound together by a thick rope that rubbed and scratched against her skin. The other viking held the end of the rope, periodically yanking it to make the prisoner walk faster. She clamped her mouth shut, completely silent. She was stiff like she wanted to run but couldn't which she literally couldn't. Her green eyes were dull with unhappiness. she had a thick black braid matted with leaves and twigs as if she had gotten tangled in a bush while trying to run. Her slanted eyes flitted from side to side like she was trying to find a way to escape. She limped sideways as the guard holding her leash gave a abrupt turn and made a beeline towards a tall makeshift building made of planks leaning together. A dragon skull was mounted on the top. Other smaller buildings of the same style without the skull dotted the break in the vast forest, where the tiny camp was surrounded by ancient pines.

"A visitor for Alvin, eh?" another viking chuckled as he ducked out of the building with the skull and the prisoner's keeper nodded curtly. "Ah." The girl glumly recalled what had happened last night that had gotten her into her predicament.

She had been reading.

She unrolled the scroll a little farther to gaze intently at an illustration of a spiny dragon with sparks bursting out of its mouth. Underneath the drawing was the label: Skrill.

Cool, she thought and read a little more. The viscous Skrill draws lightning from thunderstorms and funnels it along its magnetic spines to hit its target, the manual said. Known weaknesses: the Skrill cannot shoot lightning when it is submerged halfway or fully in water. 

At one point her father had traveled all over the archipelago charting down rare dragon species, like the Skrill, for instance. She loved reading her father's tales of dragons to find their every secret, skill, behavior, and habitat. Of course, she had read this particular manual many times, and remembered gushing over the Skrill many times, and even showing it to her mother, who told her that the Skrill was also her favorite. The raven haired girl had noticed her mother seemed tense when she mentioned the Skrill, like there was an important secret hidden from her. She would then think and worry and pry at the thought, trying to figure out what it might be, but she could never seem to be able to get a grip on it.

She unrolled the scroll another few inches and briefly skimmed over the Smothering Smokebreath, the Changewing, the Armorwing, and stopped at the picture of a magnificent beige dragon with blue frills and fins and wings like a giant butterfly. Deathsong, she read underneath the picture, and unlike the others, this picture was colored, perhaps to show the dragon's striking colors. The Deathsong's roar is a beautiful melody to the other dragons, drawing them in with its siren-like quality. It uses its frills to cup around to form a crude megaphone which it uses to project its song hundreds of miles. It produces an amber substance which hardens after several seconds after being fired. its saliva is an oily substance used to deflect any access amber so it does not accidentally glue its mouth shut, she read.

Then she though: too bad there aren't any common dragons in this.

She stopped reading for a moment to debate which dragon would be more powerful; the Deathsong or Skrill. Well, the Deathsong can't breathe fire so it couldn't destroy anything unless it uses its claws or teeth. She looked at the butterfly dragon again. Its tail could be used as a whip, she countered. The Skrill shoots lightning and it could use its claws and teeth to kill something, but if the Deathsong and Skrill had to fight, the Deathsong could just brainwash the Skrill from a distance with its call, use its amber to trap it, and then kill it with its teeth.