“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” I said. “Damn. Well, I wonder what the hell it could mean if it isn’t that?”
Rollar narrowed his eyes. “There is one more possibility. But… no, forget about it.”
“Tell me, Rollar. We have to consider all possibilities.”
“Well, it’s improbable, but it might be something else. Different creatures.”
“And what creature might that be?”
“Dragons,” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper, his eyes darting from side to side, as if the mere mention of these creatures would be enough to conjure one from thin air.
I scoffed; this was even more of an improbability than an army of harpies. “Rollar, come on. Dragons haven’t been seen in Prand for hundreds of years. Hell, maybe even thousands of years, depending on who you ask. They’re as good as extinct. And anyway, they’re not blue. No, you’re reaching way too far with that one, buddy, way too far.”
“Actually,” he said, with a slightly more confident voice now, “there was a species of blue dragon. Storm drakes, their scales electric blue, their eyes glowing a shade of violet. The largest of all dragons, they were said to be able to devour a mammoth in one bite and blast lightning from their mouths. One bolt of lightning from a storm drake, it was said, could turn even the stoutest stone tower into a pile of rubble in one blast.”
“And when, my friend, was one of these storm drakes last seen in Prand?” I asked, raising my eyebrow skeptically.
“They never existed in Prand,” he admitted. “But across the sea, in the Hailstorm Mountains of Yeng, they were last seen a mere few hundred years ago, according to the chronicler—”
“Rollar,” I said, “we don’t have time to waste on rumors of mythical beasts last seen, supposedly, across the ocean hundreds of years ago. That fucking asshole the Blood God is getting stronger by the day, and fuck knows where my uncle is after he escaped through that portal, but I think we both know that that scumbag has likely ramped up whatever evil shit he’s been doing on behalf of the Blood God. Rodrick, I’m guessing, ever since I kicked his ass, has been working double time on bringing the Demogorgon into this plane of existence.”
“Understood,” he said. “We have much greater problems to deal with.”
“That we do. And we’ll be starting tomorrow. We’re leaving Brakith at first light. Drok had another of his dreams, the ones he claims are messages from his Wise Woman, and the meaning in this one was crystal fucking clear: time is running out, and the Blood God is getting stronger by the day. We have go to the Wastes and see this woman, and I need to get my hands on whatever potent magical weapon she’s got waiting for me.”
Rollar nodded once. “As you command, Lord Vance. I’ll be ready to leave at first light tomorrow. I just need to do a little more research today though, if you don’t mind.”
“Read away, my friend, read away,” I said as I turned to leave his chamber. “Just make sure that you’re ready to roll at dawn tomorrow.”
“I will be, Lord Vance.”
I gave him a curt nod and then left him to his scrolls and tomes. Perhaps he would find out something else about this mysterious prophecy, or perhaps he wouldn’t. I wasn’t about to pin my hopes on anything that vague though. No, I had been feeling a strong pull to the north for weeks now, and I intended to follow up on that hunch now.
I hoped my plate armor was ready; it would have been a shame to have had to leave Prand without it. I decided to go and check on the armorer’s progress before doing anything else.
I walked through the castle, being greeted by a ton of guards and servants along the way, all calling me “m’lord.” It was taking some getting used to. Though I was officially the lord of this town and the county around it, I still felt like an exiled assassin in some ways. Reality was taking a while to sink in.
I headed out of the castle and into town. As I was on my way to the market square, I saw some guards securing a bunch of prisoners in the stocks set up near the entrance to the town. Then they lowered the drawbridge to allow travelers, merchants, and peasants who lived outside the enormous city walls to enter. In these sets of stocks, a number of prisoners would always be held, with their heads sticking out of the heavy wooden blocks. That way, passersby could enjoy hurling insults—and rotten food, lots of rotten food—at the hapless criminals. Their position at the main entrance to Brakith was deliberate too. They served as a blunt reminder to any potential criminals of the justice that awaited them should they try to flout the laws of my city.
I paused when I saw the guards lead a man with a very familiar-looking face to the stocks. Indeed, the arrangement of the features on that face was so eerily familiar to me that staring at this particular jailbird felt like looking into a mirror.
“Edwin,” I muttered, shaking my head and glaring at him.
Every time I laid eyes on Edwin, I was amazed at just how striking the resemblance between him and myself was. Anyone who saw the pair of us together would have assumed that we were twin brothers. My uncle must have scoured Prand high and low to find this chump, an effete actor who had donned vampire makeup, hidden out in a ruined castle in the hills, and pretended to be me while I was away. Well, he pretended to be a vampirism-infected, murderous version of me, who supposedly abducted the virgin daughters of Brakithian townsfolk and sucked their blood in the ruins.
The reality, of course, had been that my uncle had been abducting these poor girls, sacrificing them to the
