Sukina's Story

Chapter 1: Part 1

Four years later, my father and I lived in the countryside of Orkc, on the outskirts of the village of Ginlast. Butan earned a modest living as an overseer of a shoe factory. We would have earned more, to be honest, if it weren't for the King's taxes. But Orkc was part of the Sovereign States — countries that King Cini III leeched money from as payment for the dragonheats. He claimed the costs needed to be reimbursed from the rebellion, which he used to fund his precious war effort down south. Now, these wars were against the grey dragons that threatened his operations, harvesting the precious commodity, secicao.

We did bring in enough money though to keep up a house in the suburbs of the growing grey and industrial town of Ginlast, just west of the wide muddy river where the wind blew cold at night. And there was enough left over after basic living costs that I could stay at home and look after the house. Most of the factory work in the town was being handed over to automatons, which made it difficult to get a job, especially for women.

But I did have plenty of time to write novels. My debut with a book called The Dragonboy had carved a cult niche for itself in Slaro, the capital of King Cini's country of Tow, with dedicated readers in academia. I saw it as a kind of personal revenge, really. I'd write about dragons and the positive connections humans could have to them. Hopefully showing to the world how the grey dragons in the south that King Cini III had declared war on weren't all that bad. And reminding people, I hoped, that dragons were a valuable part of our world and should be protected.

But that didn't mean my thirst for vendetta had left me the last four years. Naturally, I couldn't shake the memory of the new King Cini throwing my mother's head in the park dustbin and plunging a dagger into my dragon's heart. And, once I was ready, I planned to do something about it.

I had a gym below the basement, warmed only by a single radiator that guarded against my country's bitterly cold winters. I had made a promise that day, four years ago in the forest, that I'd never be so weak I couldn't protect my family again. I'd never cower behind a thick oak tree as I watched the prince now king throw my mother's head in the dustbin and strike a dagger into my dragon's beating heart. I would be strong. Always in top physical condition. Trained for any circumstance.

Each day I whacked the punch bag in the gym with the fury of my memories, until my fists and elbows hurt. Even though the skin around the contact points had hardened over time, I still had a pain limit, and I knew each time to only push myself slightly past it. After I'd nothing left in my arms, I'd attack the bag with my bare feet. Launching acrobatic backflips and cartwheels that suited my slender form. Then, when my feet had been beaten, I'd move over to the monkey bars, performing handstands and somersaults and as many pull-ups as my now recovered arms and shoulders could take. After that, I'd sprint around the room in intensity bursts, until my legs again started to burn, my hair was drenched in sticky sweat, and my heart was pumping at its absolute maximum.

Still, that wasn't the limits of my endurance, for I always had locked away in the cabinet on the side wall three flasks of secicao oil. Under King Cini III's rule, secicao was now starting to power the country of Tow and all its surrounding Sovereign States like our own.

Most would only drink secicao warmed in a teacup, which gave a boost in things like stamina, strength, endurance, acuity, or other properties depending on how the secicao was made. But only the military, the king's contracted producers, and the black market had access to secicao in its purest form — oil. With just a little more viscosity than cooking oil and a more acrid taste, secicao oil could give trained soldiers a boost of up to three times their abilities. They could rip down trees, leap over houses, see things in slow motion — again their exact skills depended on the properties of the secicao blend.