It slithered along the ground, eyes fixated on its prey. The woman, unknowing of her stalker, continued to the cliffside clutching something that glinted weakly in the morning sunlight. As she reached the edge of the cliffs and looked down upon the raging sea, It drew itself up, casting a shadow over the woman's shoulder.

She spun quickly, lashing out with the dagger that she had held so close to her and slashed it on the nose. The Monster shrieked as it flung itself back in pain, guarding its nose with one of its taloned, leathery wings. Jerking forward, It snapped its jaw shut inches from the woman's nose, causing her to stumble dangerously close to the edge of the cliff. She lunged again but hit the Monster on its hardened scales, shattering the dagger. A piece of which sliced into her arm. The It moved in to finish her off, the smell of blood inciting its hunger for a meal after its long, magic induced sleep. The woman, bleeding and weaponless, lost all hope. She turned to the cliff edge and leapt off, hearing the snapping of the Monster jaws right behind her.

The Drake, not a horrible monster as the woman had thought in her last moments, was greatly malnourished. It had not eaten anything for around three hundred years. This was a huge problem for the growing Dragonkin. Drakes require more quite a lot of food when they are growing or they run the risk of there stunted growth twisting their mind. As it is, this drake had just woken up in a magically sealed cave close to the coastal port city of Trem after three hundred years. The fact that it had survived that long was a testament to the spell that had kept it safe and sleeping. However, there was one major problem remaining. There was nothing in the area that could feed it. The countryside around Trem were home to a few farmers but the city mostly fed itself on fish and imports, the farms mostly feeding the moderately wealthy with something different. The fact that this was the first human the drake had looked at as a potential food source was only because of its training that it had received three hundred years ago when It was just a hatchling.

However training disappears in the face of starvation, this was the first time a human had ventured into the region around the drakes cave. The drake had actually stumbled upon her as she ventured up the winding path to the cliff edge, and pushing down the hunger, followed her in the hope that she would lead it to some form of food that its master hadn’t forbidden all that time ago.

As it was, when it noticed the glimmer of dagger cradled in the human's arms, It became agitated by the sight of the weapon. Hoping it was only for the Human’s protection and not understanding the significance of the inlaid gold and silver and the decorative nature of the hilt and crossguard, It continued on. When the Human, a woman it had now realised, reached the cliff edge. Seeing the woman kneel at the cliff edge and press her hands together and bow her head, It became confused, that was a pose its long lost master had sometimes adopted when about to perform a taxing ritual or a large scale summoning. Hope bloomed in the Drake's chest, could this Human perhaps be its master? It edged up closer behind the woman, finally rearing above her as she prayed at the edge of the cliff. The woman must have felt its presence, because she immediately spun with a scream and slashed out at it, cutting it across the nose. It had realised that the woman was not its long lost master and had returned the slash with a snap of its teeth near the woman's face. The Drake hadn’t thought that the woman would try to toss herself off the cliff after the dagger shattered on its scales. As if in slow motion the Drake saw the woman turn and toss herself from the cliff into the water down below, the Drake desperately lunged forward and snapped its jaws shut just above her, catching her by the hair and jerking her to a stop.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

She woke, curled up on a cold, hard floor with a piercing pain situated around the back of her head. She didn’t understand as her last memories were of her jumping off the cliff before she complete the sacrifice to the sea god. She could remember that and….. The horrible Monster that had attacked her. She shot up, frantically scanning the room she was in, what she realised was a cave. Near the entrance was the Monster, curled up and sleeping. She stifled a gasp at the sight of the creature and scooted back, desperately trying to put distance between her and the beast. Slowly, one of the eyes flicked open and It lifted its head. Its scales shone with a dull shine from the light of the cave entrance, seemingly reflecting all the colors of the rainbow before stopping on a muted green. The woman couldn’t imagine how the creature had grabbed her mid fall.

The Drake stared at the woman, so pitifully hungry that all it could do was raise its head, the energy that it had used to save the woman and bring it back to its home had been too much. It would likely need to hibernate again until it regained enough strength from the earth. That is, unless it ate the woman, no, never would it break the rules its master had laid out for it. Even if as it was coming to suspect, that its master had sent it to sleep and protected it with their last breath. No matter what, those rules were sacred.

She almost shrieked in terror when the Monster turned its gaze on her. The strands of hair exiting its mouth finally explained why her head hurt so much, and how It had saved her from death. However she had been ready to die, had been needed to die in fact. She had been born a sacrifice, the seventh child of the seventh child born to a rich and prosperous family. She was the only one of her generation that could have possibly taken up the duty of sacrifice, the others were too young still. She had been selected by the priesthood of the city to sacrifice herself at the cliff's edge to the great sea god. She had agreed, but she hadn't died. She, for the first time in her life, had no path laid out for her and had no idea what to do.