SINGED
Chapter 25

“Welcome my good and faithful son,” Cyndr hissed.

He toyed with me, took the gem but also gave me my greatest desire. The transformation was painful. He claimed I had been deformed by a disloyal servant. Only by his power could I be restored. I promised him vengeance.

My spirits fell. The change gave me greater power, but it did not grant me peace. I chased away my sorrow with rage, driving Cyndr’s great dark army relentlessly towards an enemy I did not know.

I had been given what I wanted but it had cost me everything. I threw myself into my work.

The disloyal servant had been a Faydrim witch from the darkling forest of Glendin Weald. It was the sylvan kingdom of the King and Queen of the Wood. The servant’s name was Selene Wealdborn. She was their daughter.

I did not care who they were. My pain and emptiness would not let me think. I had become mindless after all.

We arrived at dusk and as night fell we attacked. Initially I reigned down dragon fire indiscriminately. When the defenders launched a counter attack against my siege engines I focused on driving the defenders back into the burning wood. Then I attacked their allies who had arrived on horseback, disrupting their lines.

All-out attack on the forest failed though. The Faydrim were formidable opponents, even more so when defending their home. My army took huge loses. None that entered the forest returned. I did not care. We tried again and again.

Cyndr was present in spirit only. I could feel him like a shadow hanging over me, darker than the night. As the battle wore on he whispered in my mind to return to Lindor.

“Someone is trying to enter my lair,” Cyndr hissed. “Dispatch them and return.”

It was my brother, trying the sneak in through the crypts where we dragonlings all entered the world after our hatchings. I fell on him from above, my purpose renewed. He fled, and I followed.

We sped across the night sky, trading jabs. He was smaller and weaker than me now after my transformation, but faster, at least for the moment.

Vaguely I realized he was leading me back to the battle. He used his speed, not to escape but to enrage me further by disabling more of my war engines with dragon fire. I counter attacked his ally’s forest, but it was raining now, a magical rain, that moderated even my flames somewhat.

It did not matter. Nothing mattered. I had become like Cayn and the Sea Hag. I was a prisoner to boundless greed. I was a bottomless hole that could never be filled. Brand was gone, snuffed out. He had been consumed by the dark.

My brother led he out over the forest, and numbly I followed, shouting threats I could not even understand. When he plunged into an opening in the dense forest canopy, I chased after him.

I was met by a swarm of glowing wraiths that sapped my strength by soothing my rage. I responded as if stung. I needed my rage. It was all that I had left. Even it was not really my own. It was the chain by which Cyndr controlled me.

In the center of the clearing was a shining silver pool. My brother landed at one end. I was too weak, too disoriented to continue. I landed on the other side of the pool, still sputtering threats. My eyes grew heavy, blurry.

Then the pain went away