Black caste

My name is Randall Erik Ddraik.

I’m a Dragon.

It was France, late September 1916, World War I.

“You ready?” I asked the grim-faced young soldier, crouched beside me on the edge of the trench.

“Bloody stupid fucking suicide mission, sarge,” he growled.

His name was Doug McAllister, a scruffy lad from Devonshire. Twenty years old and full of piss and vinegar. He’d been at my side for over a year, ever since we got to the western front.

“I didn’t ask if it was smart. I asked if you were ready.”

There was a flash of fire in his blue eyes. “Bloody hell right,” he said, clicking his bayonet into place on the end of his rifle.

“And it’s undoubtedly stupid, mate,” I huffed, giving him a cold grin..

We’d seen all kinds of hell together and he’d been fearless through every bit of it.

Trench warfare is its own unique kind of nightmare. Aside from the almost daily combat, horrific living and hygiene conditions, and malnutrition, there was also the problem, at least on the British side of things, of stupid leadership.

Attacks consisted of trying to run en masse across an open ‘no man’s land’ while being shot at by snipers, shelled by artillery, and worst of all, being prey to withering fire from the hellish German Maxim machine gun nests. All this to sometimes gain nothing more than fifty feet of muddy, blasted, and ultimately useless land. Brilliant.

If you made it into the enemy’s trenches, or they made it into yours, you ended up in exceptionally bloody close-quarter fire. Or it got real up close and personal as you looked your enemy dead in the eye, fighting hand to hand with knives, brass knuckles, trench clubs, or whatever you could get your hands on in a desperate moment. I’d killed a German soldier with a metal coffee pot during one gruesome breach of our lines. It got brutal.

Naturally, I was having the time of my life. Admittedly I was probably the only one, but you couldn’t buy combat training like this. Hell, I kept volunteering for extra time on the frontlines. The only thing that kept it from being perfect was the lack of women. They were in nonexistent supply on the battlefield in 1916. Kind of like British intelligence.

Cléry-sur-Somme, on the Western Front.

I was commanding a small squad of twelve men. Our mission was to destroy an ammunition depot that intelligence reported was close, in the nearby German trenches. One of theirs was, supposedly, only about fifty meters away from our trench at this point on the field, just across a thin strip of no man’s land.

It was late night and darker than usual, with thick clouds completely obscuring the moon. The occasional flare lit the night, trying to cut through the darkness in bursts of glaring yellow.

“Ready lads?” I said, looking back at the anxious faces of the young men behind me. They were scared. I couldn’t blame them.

“Chins up now, boys. Follow the big man’s lead, he’ll keep ya safe,” McAllister said confidently.

I hoped he was right. I wasn’t worried about myself, but I didn’t like being responsible for the lives of others, when they hadn’t made the choice to risk it. These boys had been ‘volunteered’ for this mission, not chosen it like myself and McAllister.

“We are not going to die today, lads,” I said flashing them a fierce smile.

“Bloody hell right, we’re not,” echoed McAllister.

Their expressions resolved into grim determination. At least they knew I would be out in front of them every step of the way. It gave them confidence in me, even if they didn’t have it in the mission itself.

Further up the line, the silence was shattered as our side began an artillery attack. It was our cue and our cover.

“Move!” I said in a hissed whisper.

We swarmed over the edge of our trench and sprinted across the rocky, blasted ground. I couldn’t keep the fierce smile off my face as the thrill of combat sent battle-adrenaline surging through my system. The shells exploding in the distance accentuated every beat of my pounding heart.

We weren’t taking enemy fire. The artillery barrage was doing its job, drawing German focus to the area where the shells were striking, the enemy anticipating a raid there.

I raised a fist high, and we dropped to our bellies, closing the last few feet to the trench in a crawl. I peered over the edge. It was big, about twelve feet deep and much wider than most, four men could comfortably walk shoulder to shoulder. A narrow set of trolley tracks ran the length of it as far as I could see. The Jerrys used hand trolleys to quickly move ammunition, it made resupply to other trenches much faster and more efficient. I’ll be damned, maybe intelligence had got it right and the depot was close by.

A small footbridge about six feet up ran along the length of the forward wall that we were looking over. It made for an easy drop in, and we jumped quickly from the bridge to the trench floor.

My internal alarm bells went off. Artillery attack or not, there should have been at least a few soldiers left behind to guard the depot and deliver ammo to the area under siege up the line. I blinked down my secondary lens. What must have been close to twenty heat signatures bloomed into view, from German soldiers hidden in the darkness of the trench. Bloody fucking hell.

“Grenade!” One of my men screamed.

Like a hero he dove on it, but missed covering it completely as it bounced erratically on the uneven dirt of the trench floor. It ripped open his guts and took the leg off another man behind him.

A hail of gunfire erupted at us, and we frantically dove for cover behind whatever we could find. There wasn’t much, and two more of my men went down without a sound, their deaths marked only by their blood staining the ground. I hurled a smoke grenade, and a billowing, acrid grey cloud quickly filled the trench, obscuring both sides’ vision but providing more cover for us.

“Open fire!” I yelled as I lobbed two grenades toward the enemy. I blinked my infrared lens back up so I wouldn’t be blinded by the heat blooms from the explosions. I couldn’t see if I’d taken any of them out, but I heard agonized screams, followed by shouting in German.

“McAllister!” I barked. He appeared by my side, and I grabbed him and pulled him close, yelling in his ear over the gunfire. “I’m going to get behind them, we’ll catch them in a crossfire. Hold this spot! Don’t die!”

He nodded sharply. “I won’t, sarge!”

He was used to me attempting suicidal things and somehow succeeding. Using the smoke as cover, I leapt onto the footbridge and used it to springboard out of the trench and back up into no man’s land.

Looking down as I sprinted along the edge of the trench, I saw muzzle flashes as soldiers fired blindly at each other. My men wouldn’t last long against these odds, I had to move faster or I’d lose them all. It took me about eight seconds to get behind the Germans.

I leapt back into the trench, coming down on the back of the most rearward German, my boots planted firmly in the middle of his spine. I heard it snap and he went limp. I was holding a pump action shotgun, the perfect weapon for close range trench fighting. I could hit two, sometimes three targets with one blast. I blasted for all I was worth.

Two Germans fell, then five, then seven, as I raced through their ranks, heading back towards my men. They were onto me before I could make it eight. I fired again and missed, then dove and rolled as a wild burst of machine gun fire ripped past me, just missing. The bullets slammed into the trench wall, throwing bursts of dirt into the air. I came up almost face-to-face with a shocked, wide-eyed soldier. I planted the shotgun against his chest and pulled the trigger, only to be met with an empty click.

His shocked look turned into a surprised smile, and he breathed out the word, “Leer!”

I whipped the stock of the gun into his jaw, sending him reeling backwards into the trench wall. Empty but still effective, ya bellend. Before he could recover I drew the knife off my hip and sprang forward, sinking it into his heart. I dumped the shotgun, drew my pistol, and continued charging back toward my men.

I caught a strange hissing screech at the periphery of my hearing. It was buried under the gunfire and men’s shouts and screams. I didn’t have time to process it more than that, in the heat of combat.

I waded into the lingering grenade smoke, blinking down my infrared lens as I moved. I counted heat blooms from eight remaining Germans, which quickly became five as I dropped three. My surprise blown, two turned and fired on me. I dove for safety behind a steel-plated hand trolley, sitting on the tracks in the middle of the trench.

Unfortunately, the bloody thing wasn’t solid steel but plate-reinforced wood, and a bullet slammed through it and cut a burning furrow across my thigh. I gritted my teeth and hissed. Bloody fuck all, that hurt.

I pushed the pain away and peeked around the trolly’s edge. Past the Germans by about twenty yards, I could see the heat signatures of three of my men, crouched behind cover. I hadn’t lost them all.

I watched them take down two more Jerrys with tactical concentrated fire. I popped up and threw my last grenade at the remaining three.

“Hit the deck, lads!” I screamed at my men as I tucked back down behind the trolley.

As the ringing of the blast died away, I heard that screech again, closer now in the sudden silence. It sent a cold chill down my spine.

I stayed in a low crouch, my pistol at the ready, scanning the trench with all my senses. Nothing. Well, nothing out of the ordinary for a death-filled, bloody, blown-up, stinking trench.

“Nice toss, sarge,” McCallister said, peeking out from cover. “You clear?”

“Clear,” I said, uneasily. It didn’t feel clear. What the hell was that sound?

He stood and started walking towards me. “Bugger fuckin’ me, sarge. You’re a right crazy, git,” McAllister said, an amazed look on his face. “I thought Fritzie had us done in for sure.”

“They got too many of us,” I said, anger constricting my voice as I took in the carnage of my slaughtered squad. They’d put their trust in me and died because of it.

“Aye,” McAllister agreed, a grim look replacing the amazed one as he turned to his surviving mates. “Step lively, boys, let’s get their tags and get this stupid bloody mission over with.”

Before anyone could move, flares went off overhead illuminating the trench. Things immediately went to hell.

The soldier standing farthest away from me, Dabney Gilford, got tackled by something that slithered out of the shadows, moving fast. He was knocked out of sight behind a pile of equipment, and a screech reverberated through the trench, followed by two more in response. The sound seemed to be coming from all around us. McAllister and the other soldier, Ron Crook, looked to where Gilford had fallen. Crook’s mouth gaped in silent horror and disbelief. McAllister screamed.

In all the time we’d been fighting side-by-side together, I’d never heard that kind of abject terror in his voice. I leapt up onto the footbridge to get eyes on what they were seeing.

Gilford had been tackled by what looked like a German soldier. If a German soldier had semi-translucent black skin, red glowing eyes, and a mouthful of dirty fangs. It crouched on top of him, its teeth buried in his throat, as his body quivered underneath it. I knew immediately it was a vampire, I’d just never seen one of this kind up close before. This was Nosferati, a Black Caste.

They were the most horrific kind of vampire, the absolute worst of the species, eternally hungry feeding machines. They’d keep sucking on you till your heart shriveled to powder and your veins collapsed. If they were still hungry after that they’d start eating your corpse.

I didn’t even have a chance to move before another one leapt out of the shadows at McAllister and Crook, taking them both down. A third came racing toward me on all fours along the trench wall, clinging to it like some kind of hellish spider. Its long tongue spilled out of its open hissing mouth and dripped viscous black saliva.

War zones made perfect hunting grounds for vampires. The chaos made it easy for them to hide their identities and cover their movements, and with the abundant supply of death and blood, they could feed at their relative leisure.

The hideous thing sprang off the wall at me, clawed hands stretched out in front of it. I braced myself and caught it in midair by its outstretched arms. Using its momentum against it, I pivoted on my heels, swung it around, and slammed it with all my strength back into the trench wall. I swear it yelped. Before the stunned thing could react, I jumped off the footbridge with it and smashed it headfirst into the hand trolley.

“How do ya like that, ya bloody cunt!” I yelled.

It was hurt badly but it wasn’t dead. Its long tongue whipped around the outside of its mouth, and it screeched weakly. It was immediately answered by the other two, who stood and looked at me, their faces blood-soaked and dripping. Bollocks. I slammed the vamp’s head into the trolley several more times until it exploded like a dropped watermelon, spraying me with an eruption of blood. I didn’t even have time to be repulsed, as the other two came streaking at me along the trench walls, one on either side.

I grabbed onto the trolley, lifted it off the tracks, and hurled it at the vamp on the wall to my left. I missed, the cart crashing into the wall in front of it, but I hadn’t expected to hit it. What I’d done was force it to veer off the wall onto the trench floor, slowing it.

More importantly, I’d given it something to think about. It was used to killing humans. Humans don’t throw three-hundred-pound steel carts around like they were rocks. Proving it wasn’t a completely mindless killing machine, it paused, wondering who, or what, it was dealing with.

The other vamp showed no such caution and was still charging at me. Its mouth opened impossibly wide, blood and slobber drooling off its tongue, fangs, and mass of sharp teeth. The stench coming out of its mouth was like rancid, rotted meat. Really, it was gross.

I grabbed another knife out of a sheath on my thigh, and hurled it at the monstrosity as it leapt off the wall. I missed its heart, but still buried the blade in the vamp’s gut. I caught it by its throat and tried to fling it behind me, but it grabbed onto my jacket with one hand, and its clawed fingers pierced deep into my shoulder with the other. White hot pain lanced down my entire arm as my shoulder ran slick with blood.

The Nosferati was tall and stringy, without much discernable muscle, yet it was still surprisingly strong. It tried to pull itself in close, driving its open mouth and fangs toward my throat. I had to fight to keep from retching at the horrific smell.

My blood was boiling with rage. These things had killed the only men left of my squad. It was blood debt I was going to carve out of their undead hides.

As the other vamp overcame its apprehension and drew close, I snapped a sidekick at its head, driving my booted foot hard into its face. It crumpled into a stunned heap on the ground.

I forced the one I held away from my neck, and raised it aloft to arm’s length, squeezing its throat with all my strength. Its legs flailed wildly, and its tongue lolled out of its open maw. I grabbed the slimy thing with my free hand and pulled, there was a popping sound as I ripped it out of its mouth. It screeched wildly in agony. I took hold of the knife in its gut and drove the blade upward until I sliced through its heart. I was doused in another torrent of blood. I was past caring at this point.

I pulled the knife free and dropped the dead creature at my feet, glaring at the last vampire. It had recovered from the kick and scuttled away from me, staying low in a spidery crouch. A long, reverberating hiss escaped its throat as it cocked its head curiously at me.

“Your turn now, ya fuckin’ twat,” I growled.

“Not human,” It croaked, in a voice that was dry and gravelly. Like it hadn’t used it in decades.

“More than you, Black Spawn.”

“What be you?”

“Half-kin,” I said, advancing on it.

It perked up on hearing that.

“Ohhhhh, delicioussssss,” It smacked its lips, and its tongue slithered out of its mouth hungrily.

The light from the flares winked out, and the trench sank back into almost total darkness. The bloody thing disappeared into it. Shit. It had some kind of ability to blend into the darkness. I blinked down my infrared lens and saw... nothing, because the walking corpse registered no heat. Maybe it was using the dark as cover to escape.

Searing pain flared across my back as claws ripped into it. Nope, maybe not. I whirled and swung, but my knife sliced only air. The fucking thing was faster in the dark. My blood ran as invisible claws raked my chest. I hissed and swung, missing again. I stopped and stood stone still, trying to hear the thing’s approach, for all the good it did me. There was a barely audible whisper of air a split second before I was hit with a hammer-like blow to the face. I reeled backwards, my gunshot leg flared with pain, throwing off my balance, and I tripped over the trolley tracks, falling to my knees. I swung the knife wildly.

I am not going to di… I didn’t get a chance to finish the thought as another blow slammed into my face. Stars exploded in my eyes, and my head was driven down into the mud.

A flare bloomed overhead just in time for me to see a gaping, slobbering mouth descending towards my throat. I managed to get my forearm in between its fangs and my neck, and the vamp clamped down on it like a vice. There was a blast of pain and then numbness, followed by a sudden sense of euphoria, like I’d just taken a big shot of morphine.

I knew what this was. Vampire saliva acted like a powerful tranquilizer and narcotic. Once they got a bite on a victim it allowed them to feed without having to fight with their food. I had to get it off my arm... but it felt so good, so relaxing. I could let it have a little blood before I ripped its heart out, couldn’t I?

Things started getting fuzzy. The guttural moans coming from the feeding creature were like a lullaby, and its glowing red eyes looked so pretty. Wait, were those moans coming from me?

I heard the crack of a rifle shot, though it sounded muffled and distant. The top half of the vampire’s head disintegrated in a shower of blood and gore, and it fell off of me. I stared at it in confusion for a moment, then looked around.

Through blurry vision I watched McAllister walk up to the vampire and empty his rifle into what was left of its face, turning it to pulp. He kept pulling the trigger, even after his gun was clicking empty. The vampire’s body twitched and jerked in slow spasms.

“Bayonet, heart,” I slurred, trying to fight my way out of the daze I was in.

McAllister stared at me for a confused moment then buried his rifle’s bayonet through the vampire’s heart. It went still.

He slumped down next to me as my head cleared from the effects of the saliva, my enhanced metabolism working through it quickly.

“You all right, sarge?” he asked after a few minutes. His neck was covered in blood from bite wounds that were still seeping, but it had missed his jugular.

“Yeah, thanks, mate. You saved my life,” I said, “I thought it got you.”

He looked over at the Black Caste, his expression said he didn’t believe what his eyes were telling him.

“It was biting me. It, I…” he trailed off, sounding utterly lost. When he looked back at me his eyes were wide in wild panic. He was starting to hyperventilate. “What the bloody fuck is that thing?”

I put a reaffirming hand on his shoulder, gave it a squeeze, then slapped him hard. It shocked him but calmed him down.

“Sorry, mate,” I said. I was, but I needed him to focus. “It’s exactly what you’re afraid to believe it is. I’ll explain when we’re back on our side. Right now, we have to get the hell out of here before Jerry comes storming back in. Understand?”

He shook his head, took a few deep breaths, then firmed his jaw.

“Yeah, sarge.”

I stood and hoisted him up. “Good, let’s bloody move.”

We made it back to our side safely, but the mission was an utter failure. I lost the entire squad, and the ammunition depot wasn’t destroyed. Sure, we killed almost twenty German soldiers, but it wasn’t worth the cost.

I told McAllister everything I knew about vampires, while telling him as little about myself as possible. It was enough for him. He just needed to know that he wasn’t insane, that he’d actually survived a vampire attack, and that I’d always have his back.

I owed him a debt of gratitude for saving my life, and I made sure that everyone knew how heroic his actions had been in the face of an overwhelming enemy force. He was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, for his bravery. If it had been up to me, he would have gotten the Victoria Cross, but that was reserved for officers. Stupid wankers.

McAllister stayed by my side till the end of the war and distinguished himself many times over. Dozens of men owed their lives to him by the time his service was done.

The vampire in the trench turned out not to be the only one he ever killed. He’d developed an understandable hatred of the bloody things, and because of what he’d learned from me, he would call whenever he thought something even had the hint of vampire attached to it. He was wrong a lot, but he turned out to be right on more than one occasion.

When his time passed, I made sure that he was buried with full military honors, befitting a man of his bravery and character, and I stood in the company of three generations of his family as he was laid to his final rest. I had been proud to call him a friend.

death roar

My name is Randall Erik Ddraik.

I’m a Dragon.

A fact I’d only learned about myself somewhat recently. It was 1524, I was eighteen years old, and for the first time in my life, a thought I’d never had before was burning through my mind... I might die today.

I whipped my sword up over my head to block a savage two-handed swing my half-brother, Elliot, sent screaming down at my skull. My shoulders recoiled painfully from the force of the blow. He was four inches shorter than me but outweighed me by at least twenty pounds, and was using every one of them in his powerful swings.

I staggered, slipping on the grass, wet from the steadily falling mist.

“Die, peasant!” he spat at me, pressing his attack.

I took a quick step backwards and regained my balance just in time to block another vicious blow. We were fighting on the highest promontory of the cliffs of Duncansby, just feet away from a sheer drop into the ocean. I could hear the waves crashing into the rocks far below us. Gulls whirled and screeched overhead in the grey sky.

“Why are you doing this, Elliot?” I raged back at him. “It’s a fool’s act!”

He strode forward, raising his sword for another attack.

“You dare call me a fool, peasant! I am of noble blood!”

He really was of noble blood, though not of title. Our father, ever the rake, had charmed the bloomers off a local duchess, and when her husband the duke had demanded satisfaction, pop lopped his head off during a duel. The duchess kept Elliot, and he grew up with her other three sons. He was constantly belittled, beaten up, and bullied by his stepbrothers, who never let him forget he was a bastard. To say that he grew up bitter, angry, and hateful would be putting it mildly.

“I’ll have your tongue for such insolence!” he shouted at me, his ego raging.

He charged with a bloodcurdling roar. I could hear the Dragon in it, and it unnerved the bloody hell out of me.

“The only fool here is you!” he snarled as his blade sliced the air towards me.

I fended off one blow, then a second, just barely. On the third his sword slipped past my guard and dug deep into my bicep, spraying blood. I howled as pain ripped through my arm, and retreated again, getting dangerously close to the cliff’s edge.

Elliot spun his blade lightly in a circle with one hand, as if it weighed nothing, while I was now forced to hold mine two-handed, thanks to my wounded arm.

“I should just send you over the edge and be done with you. You’re not worthy of my blade.”

“It’s too soon, we shouldn’t be fighting!”

Brothers don’t normally start killing each other until we reach at least a hundred and fifty years old. There’s no rule against it, no Dragon law, it’s just an unwritten, inherently understood code. The older brothers allow the younger to experience life, mature, learn fighting skills, and experience combat. When you fight one of your kin, it’s not only to thin the herd, but also to push the victor to the limits of his skills, so that he emerges from the battle even better than he went into it.

“It’s never too soon to be rid of a lowborn cur like you,” he said, his voice dripping with condescension, like audible venom.

Elliot was only two years older than me, and he’d fought as many battles as I had, which is to say exactly none, but he had more time training with our father, which made him better with a sword, and he knew it.

He was also better armored. Clad in a full breastplate with shoulder pauldrons, gauntlets completely covering his arms, and plate greaves and cuisse protecting him from shin to thigh. The benefits of wealth.

“You’re a filthy maggot. Common peasant gutter slime,” he mocked.

Shame and jealousy burned through me at his words, made worse by the fact that I very much looked like the peasant he was describing. I was wearing rags by comparison, wool leggings, a simple cotton shirt, and tall leather boots.

My only protection was the thick leather jerkin covering my chest, to which I had hastily attached some thin metal plates and steel gauntlets to protect my hands and forearms. It made me nimbler than he was, but not by much. His Half-kin strength more than compensated for his heavy armor.

I am not going to die today!

I willed myself to believe it as I went on the offensive, more than anything to get the hell away from the cliff’s edge. The fall would kill me as surely as his blade, and given the choice, I preferred the blade. At least there was honor in that, I told myself.

I was all raw strength and scared fury, desperately trying to make up for my lack of skill and training. Howling like a madman I swung low and caught him by surprise as my blade skittered under his block and slammed into his leg. He hissed in pain. The strike didn’t pierce his armor, but it dented it and knocked him off balance. I whipped my sword up and brought it whistling toward his neck. He blocked me this time, moving faster, but I still drove him back a few more steps.

I pivoted on my heel to change the direction of my attack, and swung in a slicing arc at his mid-section, hell-bent on driving my blade through his armor and deep into his ribs. I didn’t even get close.

He stepped inside my swing, blocked with his sword, and slammed his steel-clad fist into my face. My nose shattered, stars exploded in my vision, and I tasted blood. Before I could fall, he grabbed my wobbling body by my jerkin and yanked me close. I sagged in his grasp.

“You sicken me,” he hissed. “You’re an embarrassment to our kind.”

As I fought to get my wits back, I felt something surpassing the pain and the fear. It was anger. I was righteously pissed off. I’d actually felt sorry for this “royal” twat and the way he’d grown up, and this is how he chose to treat me?

When I became aware of Elliot, I was thrilled to have a brother living so close to me. I’d had fantasies of us becoming fast friends, traveling the world together, training, bedding lots and lots of fair maidens, and sharing adventures. Sure, eventually we’d try and kill each other, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t be mates for a while.

“Why?” I asked, “We could have been friends, Elliot.”

I wasn’t exactly sure when he’d become aware of me, but he clearly harbored different ideas about our relationship.

“With a festering gutter dog like you?” he scoffed. “Don’t be absurd! Noble blood does not lower itself to friendship with commoners.”

Out-fighting him wasn’t working, but Elliot did have a chink in his armor. I knew the worst part of his upbringing wasn’t the torment from his brothers, it was the utter lack of love he received from his own mother. She disdained him, seeing him only as a constant reminder of her own infidelity, and worse, as the person responsible for her losing her husband. I attempted to exploit that wound, in a desperate play to save my life.

“You’re so alone in that house. I know your mother doesn’t love...”

I wasn’t able to complete the sentence, as Elliot drove his fist into my stomach, taking all the wind out of me with it. I dropped to one knee, gasping for air.

I weakly swung my sword at him in an intentionally wide arc with my injured right arm, turning my body slightly with the swing to cover my left side. As he moved to block, I reached my left hand to the inside of my boot.

“My mother loves me!” he shouted.

His block knocked the sword out of my grip with such force that it flew backwards, clattering against the rocks before it disappeared over the cliff’s edge.

“She loves me!” he shrieked, boiling with rage, spittle flying off his lips.

I’d hit the nerve I was aiming for. He was seething, unfocused, and off guard. All I needed now was a whole lot of luck.

“Who could love a bastard?” I said with a sad laugh, “I pity you.”

His face contorted with unbridled hate, and he drew his sword from hilt to tip across my shoulder, cutting it deep. My whole body spasmed as my arm ran red with blood, and I struggled not to scream. I half succeeded. His smile of pleasure at my pain was sadistic. He pulled our faces close again, just inches apart.

“My whole family loves me, gutter dog.” There was cold hatred in his voice. “But no one will miss you when you’re gone.”

He drew his sword arm back, the tip of the blade aimed right at my heart.

“Well, perhaps your mother will. When she learns of your death, I’m sure she will need... consolation. I think I’ll visit the whore. A good tossing by a young noble will do much to soothe her loss, I’m sure.”

Oh, you bloody, fucking, cunt.

Three things about us gutter dogs. One, we learn quickly that no one is going to hand us anything in life and we have to work or fight for everything we get. Two, we’re most dangerous when cornered and we don’t fight fair, we fight to survive. Three, don’t ever talk shit about our mothers.

Before he could strike, my left hand flashed upward, driving the knife I had pulled from my boot straight into his throat. Blood sprayed all over me as Elliot stumbled backwards, a look of utter shock and disbelief on his face.

Oh, and four, gutter dogs always carry knives. Never know when you might have to shank a bitch.

His sword fell from his hand, and he dropped slowly to his knees, his hands clutching feebly at his pierced throat. His mouth moved, trying to speak, but I had cut his trachea, and nothing came out except the wet gurgling of splattering blood.

I moved to him and pressed him onto his back in the wet grass. There was no resistance in his body, and his eyes were wild with confusion and fear. I knelt beside him and began quickly stripping off his breastplate.

“I am not going to die today,” I said aloud, my voice calm and steady.

I wasn’t trying to mock Elliot’s death. I was confirming my own life, through the ragged exhaustion and pain I was feeling. Acknowledging myself for having survived my first battle against one of my kin. My heart sang with a fierce, indescribable joy.

“I am not going to die today,” I repeated, as I tossed away the breastplate and lowered an ear to his chest, drawn by some instinctual need. I listened to his heart.

Bu-bum… Bu-bum… Bu-bum…

Each beat came slower, quieter than the last, and as it quieted another sound grew, one that was primal, bestial. It swelled in his chest, growing exponentially with each fading pulse of his heart, and when the last beat finally came, that sound ripped upwards through his ruined throat and exploded out of his wide-opened mouth. It was his Death Roar, a clarion call marking the end of his existence as a Dragon.

It was savage, and raw, and transcendently pure. It hit me like a sledgehammer to my brain, and I was too young to be in any way prepared for it. It was utterly overwhelming, and it blasted me into unconsciousness.

When I woke up, I found myself lying across Elliot’s lifeless body. I pushed up onto my knees and looked down at the empty shell. I felt no compassion for him, strangely I felt... contempt? My mother would be horrified by my lack of empathy. I was actually surprised, and confused, by it myself. I couldn’t explain it, but Elliot had fallen to my hand, proving he wasn’t good enough, or worthy enough, for the Test. So there was no reason to feel empathy... was there?

His family wouldn’t miss him, and for that I did feel sorrow. With Half-kin, the one that killed you would never feel bad about it, but to not be mourned by someone, anyone, was a tragic thing.

All my pain was gone. I checked my wounds. My bicep was completely healed, and only a small scar remained on my shoulder. His Death Roar was the cause of that I was certain. I felt vitalized beyond measure, so full of energy I was practically bursting with it. It was as if I had absorbed his very life force. I would come to find out later from my father that, in effect, I had.

I pulled my knife from his neck, then stood and lifted Elliot, throwing him over my shoulder. I needed to dispose of his body and disappear from here. Being found with a dead noble, covered in a fair amount of his blood, wouldn’t end well for me, unloved bastard or not. I walked to the cliff’s edge and flung him unceremoniously over it, into the sea below. His armor was heavy enough to carry him to the bottom and keep him there. A moment later I sent his sword tumbling after him.

I began the long trek home, one thought consuming me the entire trip. I had to be better. To win every battle and earn every Death Roar, I had to be better than all of my brothers, better than every other Half-kin. Hell, better than everyone.

To this day I believe, and I’ve never learned otherwise, that I’m the only Half-kin to ever hear a Death Roar at such a young age. It fundamentally changed me, as the first roar is supposed to, far sooner than most. It drove me into training with relentless dedication, and a burning determination at an age much younger than any of my kind, and it’s made me a better warrior than Half-kin far older than me. It was a gift that’s given me great advantages in my life, and one that I’ve never taken for granted. Elliot proved himself unworthy of the Test, but I will always be grateful for him, and honor him for giving me that gift. He was still a douchy little twat-waffle though.

 END