Dragons Rising by Daniel Arenson Read Free Book Online

rose to her left, a third to her right, and the
valley kept sinking, collapsing, churning. All around her they rose,
the skeletons of the dead, the firedrakes of old reborn, and on their
backs still rode the skeletons of paladins, buried with their mounts,
linked to the beasts even in death. Behind her, Mercy gasped and fell
to her knees, but Beatrix remained standing, a solid pillar in the
center of the storm, as true and ancient as King's Column that rose
in the center of her empire.
    These
creatures will make King's Column fall.
    "I
raise them for you, Spirit!" Beatrix cried out. The reptilian
skeletons kept digging themselves up from the soil, raising a din of
shrieks, moans, roars. Beatrix cried out above them all. "Bless
them with your light, Spirit, so that I may lead them in your name!"
    She
felt the light glow within her--the light of holiness. The Spirit had
heard her prayer. The Spirit answered. His light grew within Beatrix,
mightier than starlight, than the light of dragonfire. She held out
her arms and opened her palms, and the light gathered within them,
balls of luminescence.
    "I
give you life!" Beatrix shouted, laughing, wreathed in the
light. "I give you holiness!"
    They
kept rising around her, dozens of the great skeletons, their wings
beating, their jaws opened wide in roars, no flesh left to them, no
hearts to beat, no lungs to breathe, no gullets to blast fire, beings
of nothing but bone, nothing but pain, but she would make them great.
She would make them greater than any living being.
    Beatrix
stretched out her hands, and the holy light flowed through her
fingertips, coiling toward them.
    The
skeletons of firedrakes turned toward her, and her strands of light
crawled into them, slithering like glowing serpents seeking new
burrows. The skeletons gave high, yelping sounds like drops of water
falling into pools, echoing against metallic walls, the eerie bugling
of another world. The light spread through them, running along their
bones, limning their wings, coiling along their spines. Beads of
light shone in their eye sockets, jewels of the heavens gazing
through the darkness. Strands of light spun, coiling together into
tightly woven balls within rib cages, thrumming, beating like hearts.
On their backs, the skeletons of riders--fused to the spines of their
mounts--cried out to the sky, bones shedding dust.
    "Rise
and live again!" Beatrix cried, the light flowing through her,
thrumming in her chest, pulsing through her fingertips. "I grant
you new life!"
    Around
her, they kept rising, dozens, hundreds of the fallen, the bones of
great dragons, hearts of light beating within their ribs, eyes of
heaven lighting the darkness. They flapped their wings. Shreds of
leather swung between bones. Their jaws opened wide, dangling their
last strips of skin, and all cried out to Beatrix, weeping for the
touch of air again, the night upon them, the holiness of life again
in their bones. Their cries were deafening, rising again and again,
hundreds of voices calling out together. The land vanished beneath
them, and all the world was bone, sound, light, darkness, and her
dominion. Her power to raise the dead. To hunt the living.
    "You
will seek the life of weredragons!" Beatrix cried out, laughing
now, her hair crackling, her robes storming. "You will sniff out
their pulsing hearts like bloodhounds. Find the weredragons! Find
them and kill them and bring their corpses to me. Fly! Fly!" She
pointed to the midnight sky. "Fly and crush the flesh of
dragons."
    With
echoing cries, the skeletons beat their creaky old wings. Old bones
snapped. Joints shattered. Shreds of skin tore. Maggots and worms
rained from them, shed from burrows in bones. But still they rose.
Their wings beat, pounding the air, and their claws kicked off the
earth, and their spines rattled like primordial snakes. Within their
rib cages, their hearts of light thrummed madly, spinning, coiling,
pulsing out light that blazed out of their eye sockets. They