The King's Concubine

Chapter 15

“Serena, what is going to happen?” Orphen asked of his little visionary.

“War,” was the simple answer she gave. What she saw was making her hands tremble in his and he knew it was the end, as the dragon had predicted. He just was unsure of what the end really meant for them.

“This woman will be the end of you,” the High King Nicholas spoke to the dragon that was flightily hanging from the hut, looking down upon the dredges of the world, mortals in every guise. Nicholas may have a prolonged life, but he was able to die, and the dragon had the fires of Hell burning in his eyes ready to give death to the three that stood before him. The high king was nonchalant about it all. “If you let her live she will destroy your entire race.”

“That is not the way we have seen, or heard, it, High King.” The last was said in a taunting voice. The dragon race bowed to no one, especially a vampire who claimed dominion over nearly everything.

The door of the hut flung open and out came a decrepit looking creature whom only days before had been beautiful, her hair the color of sunlight. Now she was a dark, aging mess who was dying painfully by the curse Orphen had laid upon her. She writhed out of her hut, crawling nearly on the ground in a surreal fashion that reminded Orphen of the zombies they had seen once pulling themselves from the crusted earth they had been buried in. It was a long while ago and he wondered if their curses had spoken of the same volumes, or if theirs had been worse.

“If I live,” Lena spoke through a voice dry as the sands of the longest desert, “the dragons will rule this world.”

“And what will we rule over?” another dragon spoke from above the trees, his heavy body weighing down on the branches, though the branches did not break under the pressure. The very magic of the elements were on the side of the dragons.

“You will rule over new creatures, ones that raise themselves from whence they were buried,” Lena promised.

A dragon in the skies hissed, a breath of fire alighting the tops of the trees. Orphen looked up in fear. They were ready to start this war, to bring down the very nations surrounding this forest, whether Lena lived or died. They intended everyone in this forest to die. “There is a reason those creatures have long been kept under the ground, Lena, Visionary.”

Serena squeezed Orphen’s hand tightly. She saw, she knew, but Orphen had to ask the correct question or her answer would be simple and dull like her eyes. “What should we do, Serena?” He asked it quietly though he knew the dragons heard every word he spoke.

“We should leave,” she said blandly. “We should evacuate all of your kingdom quickly. By dawn all will be gone.”

“What a very perfect answer,” the dragon said to her. He leaned down his nose until his elongated neck brought his head perfectly level with her own, though his head was nearly the size of her body. “You see very clearly.”

“She said ‘all’,” Orphen pointed out. “Serena, what do you mean by all?” Orphen could not explain his haughty attitude in the face of the dragons. He knew he should have been quaking as he had done in the beginning, but something told him to trudge on and finish what had been started, even if in the long run he would be running away.

“The dragons will all be dead, this forest will be a sea of blood, and the dawn will be red,” Serena spoke. “The only one left standing will be Nicholas.” Orphen was the only one who noted that she did not refer to Nicholas as the High King, as would be proper, and he wondered about the Nicholas that would be standing in the sea of blood. “If we leave, we will survive,” she explained, to Orphen. “If we stay we will be among the ruins.”

“Confident, aren’t you, girl?” the lead dragon hissed, his scales rippling with his coming anger.

Serena remained silent.

“Destroy them,” the dragon commanded. “The only survivor should be Lena.”

“Wait!” Lena cried out. Her voice was fraught with the pain ripping through her veins. Serena cringed a little, just enough to let Orphen know how hard it was to watch the girl’s mother suffer, even if she did have her killed. “Do not take my daughter from me!” Lena demanded of the dragons.

“Kill Lena as well.” Lena’s eyes widened. This was not how it had appeared in her vision. She was losing the grasp of control.

“Stop!” Orphen cried out, running forward and knocking Lena out of the way of the talons that were swinging her way. They both narrowly escaped the death blow. “She won’t die,” he admitted. “Why torture her?”

The lead dragon, who had not moved from his spot even as the dragons lowered themselves upon them, gazed at Orphen with a sort of smug glance that had Orphen shivering. “If you are strong enough to put that particular curse on her, you are strong enough to fight us.”

“Why are you doing this?” Orphen demanded. “Why destroy this all? For millennia you have been living in peace with us-”

“Peace!” the dragon roared, fire dripping from his fangs, smoke clouding the vision of all who stood before them. By this time everyone in River Forest had emerged to watch the ensuing madness that was sure to come. “This has never been peace. Since the first mortal has walked upon this earth peace has been nothing but a dream of the innocents. It is time to start over.”

The suddenness with which the dragon dropped to the ground, the people scattering out away from the large husk, had Orphen blinking several times. He had not even seen the movement. Simple as that the dragon was lying in the waters, that rose considerably at the bulk of a being larger than the village lying before them, dead. His blood ran from the wound on his back that a sword had torn open. The man above him that tore the sword out, a sword nearly larger than the man’s body, was the identical image of the high king, who still stood directly beside Serena and Orphen, but now with a smug smile upon his face.

“Mortal,” the man on the dragon’s back scoffed. “It appears you are just as mortal.”

The dragons all moved back, their eyes locked upon the sword in the man’s hands. The sword was glowing with brilliant shade of green, something Orphen never thought he would think of that particular color.

“My eldest son,” the high king stated casually to Orphen. And all at once Orphen knew what was going to happen. The high king believed he would survive this war, his pride and joy would be among the bodies. Orphen knew, by Serena’s very wording, that the high king would die so that the son, also Nicholas, would survive in the new world that would soon be created.

The high king turned to Orphen and Serena amid the chaos and smiled a bitter, yet happy, smile. He was anxious for war. Orphen could not even truly understand why war had come to them so suddenly. Something underlying had been working against him all of these years, and Lena, consorting her daughter to the likes of an Elf King who was interested in only self-aspirations, had known it all along. It was why Serena was to die, to free her, and to make her stronger.

What happens when a visionary’s visions become a lie?

“You two must go,” the high king explained to Orphen and Serena. “Do not look back.”

“Come,” Orphen tugged on Serena’s hands, the chaos of people flooding into River Forest. Orphen recognized a vampire race when he saw one. Self-proclaimed immortals were attacking what had once been believed to be true immortals, though the high king’s son had just proven that to be an utter lie. “We must leave before we are caught up in this maelstrom.”

“No,” Serena snapped firmly. “We can not go without my mother.”

“Serena, there is no way for me to save her,” Orphen proclaimed. “The curse, I do not even know how I placed it on her.”

Serena shook her head and looked to Orphen helplessly. She could not say the words and he was beginning to already understand her urgency, the sway of her movements, the subtle ways of her telling him she saw something. “Can we save her?”

“Her soul, yes.” It was as straight forward of an answer as he could expect. He ran into the ensuing fray, which had now grown bloody with warriors coming from all walks of life to fight the dragons that had alighted upon the forest, which was slowly burning to the waters below from the breath of ancients. Orphen wondered how much the high king himself had seen and known. Had he come to River Forest that particular day because of a vision from someone from his usual kingdom?

Orphen grasped Lena, who was shivering from her pain. Her eyes were unfocused and gray with cataracts. She had little time left and whatever Serena needed to be accomplished had to be done in that little bit of time.

With Lena limp in his arms he began his dash through the rivers, Serena following at his side, both of them running for their lives. Orphen had the power of manipulation and sword play but not enough to hold is own among King Nicholas’s people.

“Will you one day tell me what you see in the past that has made this very day?” Orphen asked of the frail blonde beside him who bounded as fast as any of the half-breed creatures that fought bravely alongside the vampires to destroy the dragons. Hatred had turned to a sort of camaraderie in an equal time of disengaged madness.

“When you ask it of me,” Serena huffed out, “I will tell you everything.”

“That is all I can ask,” Orphen said, and the two of them bounded through River Forest, blood and fire left in their wake.