It is not for fate or the reasoning of stories that gloomy and windblown nights are the harbingers of tragedy. Shadows hide your blades, thunder drives your fellows into their own refugees. The screams of your enemies are not too loud when the thunder and the storm smother them. The frightened, pleading faces don’t poison you with guilt when you can’t see the light die in their eyes. You want to sleep well, even when what had to be done had been done. And for the people of the village, nothing needed to be done like this. If there had been moonlight and calm and clarity, their organs, their eyes and ears and throbbing heart would have rebelled against the better judgement of their souls. But the darkness had already come to these parts of world and it would never leave again.

  Thus, they drowned their pain and fear in stale beer-water. Thus, they painted lamb blood on their patchy timber huts. Thus, they left their women and children with homes where the cold rain seeped in. Thus, they ventured into the dark forest that surrounded the village like an inky, wailing sea. And thus, they got ready to murder most unwanted guests this tempest had brought upon their shores, from the umbral depths of pine and wildness.

  Their well-rehearsed chants raged to sound out the wind, whose mournful howls plowed through a patchy canopy of coniferous, withered trees.

  “For the future of our world!”

  “Death to the warlock!”

  “Fire cleanses!”

  The local mendicant, with the utmost pains, had written them on tablets that, not a day baked, already cracked and crumpled. Doubtlessly, this would be the most important day of his life, perhaps the entire village’s. The middle-aged thin man waved his holy words at the spearhead of his herd, head held high against malefic air.

  This howling mob stood at the old house whose stone walls trembled in the wind and whose floor creacked with every step. The wood had been firm once, the walls stout. But life had been getting worse for years by now. Still, the house was nice when one did not look too closely. Thick white paint and think white lies; the childless owners, once rich peasants, had hoped the gold of the travelers might turn their fate around. Little chance of that now.

  The old door cracked, its wood, hollowed by the countless worms inside, broke. The hammer rammed against it, again and again and again. “By the lord of light, open up! Give us the monster you are holding! It's not too late to save your souls!” Their champion, bald head painted with a black charcoal sun, gave no pause until nothing but splinters and dust remained.

  They did not need to spill into the almost-ruin. The elderly couple, their stitched, once-fine clothes barely clinging to their emaciated bodies, were there already. With an apology in their eyes, they pushed out a lanky figure whose bronze skin glistened with the sweat of fear. Long, straightened hair stuck to a fussy face and long, straight nose as he cast a panicked glance from green eyes at the villagers. He was almost bare; the night was too hot for him. “Listen! I can explain! I too can serve the people of the emp-” He yelled. The leader hit him with the backside of his meaty hand to the cheers of the others. Bones cracked as the stranger fell. “Silence, Necromancer! It's your fault the world's gone to shit. The common man's had enough of you! You and the other degenerate will burn on the stake. That is the place the empire has given you.”

  “Kill the sorcerer!” They jeered. Their eyes glinted with excitement as saliva filled hungry mouths. It had been a long time since the smoke of a purifying pyre had last touched their lips. You took what food you could get.

  “Listen! I don’t take anyone’s corpse without their premortem consent! I don’t talk to the dead unless they want me to! I use my art to protect and build! I-” He did not get further. The oxlike man had stepped aside, and his leader threw one of the tablets at the man. His ribs caved in with the sound of squelching, shattering bone. Blood catapulted from his mouth.

  The holy man wrinkled his mouth in a snarl of disgust at such wickedness and evil. The stranger must have been made for him, a sinner to be sacrificed for the glory of his deeds and his god. This was his path out of insignificane, into priesthood. Real power. Real magic. His golden hour. “Silence! Silence! Silence! No matter your intentions, you will not pervert the divine plan any further. All is as it should be already. The lord of light and all doth speak: Given is life by me. And the lady of death speaks: Taken is life by me.” And he reached out, to seize the offering of fate.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  But fate did not win this day. He gazed into the darkness of the house and recoiled, shrieking with fear. The earth shivered, the air and the trees screeched in the storm. An undulating voice; deep like the abyss, without humanity and so much worse, without fear.

  “Itzil takes and gives how she pleases. No one ever stopped her. Humans who are preyful, she asks you; Is she a god?”

  Without rhythm, not without melody, the thing chocked all strength out of the peasants' throats and legs. When its hulking shape emerged from the shadows and the lackeys of the priest did not dare to take another step forward.

  They had given her kind a mocking name, drake. Reality defied their words. A dragon, upright, no wings but terrible hands. Few were the spots where terrible brown-red scales shone against their hungry torches. Dented iron and ragged cloth from lands seen and unseen barely contained something that towered over every man. The head, so much like the great beasts of the scorched north, held two slit eyes. A yellow irradiance scorched the villager’s soul, terrible, alien, all-consuming. Paws each the size of a shovelhead pushed the human hosts aside. Its walk more beast than man, it placed a reptilian talon on the wizard, claimed him. The monk stepped back, triumph turned to terror. The monster laughed. A long, fleshy tongue trashed inside a leering maw wet with drool. Then it made words unlike them.

  “Pathetic. By the dark Gods, Itzil decides to give this stranger life. You are too weak and scared to oppose her. Run off, little things.”

  Only the thug in front moved to face it, as he bellowed. “Or what, sinspawn? You can't flee, you can't win! We are men! We crush monsters and all that is evil!” Eager for conflict, his muscles tensed as he lunged at her from the side, his club poised to smash her skull. His arm's arc had not reached its zenith - fast as an arrow, the drake’s hand sprang forth and seized his head. Four fingers contorted, a wet twig snapped – then brain, blood and bone exploded onto the flock of gathered humans as she crushed it like an overripe pear.

  “Or, Itzil decides you die.”

  The dragon opened her hand, and a mushy thing fell away, limp and spurting. She licked the gorey hand, then laughed, without depth or sincerity. The mob turned, soiled with the slimy innards and blood and horror. They would have run if it had not been for the monk. From the moment the other man had attacked the beast, he had hastened to the rear. He screamed and pointed now, more loud than uplifting. “It’s alone and we have the gods and humanity on our side! Charge!” The faithful turned around, ready to kill at the behest of their leader.

  With a hideous cackle, the monster retched and from its maw exploded a hellish flame that surged across the open ground. The first melted to slag, but the wretches too removed squealed, flailed and spread themselves like running butter as the fire scorched the flesh from their bones. The monster's laughter rose to an insane howl as it cherished the sacrifice they made, priests, lambs and candles at once. Only their leader remained to stand, abandoned by the few wiser than their kin.Obstinate rage fought helpless, mortal panic and together, they rooted his limbs, left only place for bitter threats.

  "You will not get away with this! My church will avenge me! You and the Necromancer will burn at the stake!"

  Now, the scaled creature flung open her jaws and he espied its sharp, pearly-white teeth. The sides of her maw drew back, formed neither smile, taunt or threat. It was pure, predatory hunger. Too late, the man broke free of the stranglehold of fear. She reached him in a single leap. An animalistic hiss and a terrible weight pressed on him, pushed him to the ground. Amber animal eyes and long fangs sparked in a darkness now only lit by thunder as they snapped down. Like a surgeon's scissor, they cut his thin belly open and bathed her head in steaming hot blood, always so pleasant in cold nights like this. Warmed, she feasted on all the morsels; stomach, bones, lungs, kidney, heart, fat, in no particular order. Rolled each of them in her maw, took sweet time to savor the aroma of fear, blood, urine, stomach and fat. A familiar dark, heady rush filled her grotesque body. Only when she was almost full, her claws broke open the skull and took the real delicacy.

  Sometimes later, she had been asked if any of this had been particularly necessary. Of course it was not. She said. It did not even serve any sort of higher purpose or statement. She was a hungry animal and made no apologies for it back then.