Georges stood shoulder to shoulder with the other recruits. His training had now been completed. He had been fully inducted into the Shulite army. He had completed his transformation into a Dragon-Soldier of Nachash and was now clothed in black armour, his spiked wings folded at his back.

Khilliarkos was addressing them in the main drill hall of the barracks, where they were about to leave from to go out on a mission.

“Now listen, you worthless putrid maggots!” Khilliarkos shouted. His terms of address did not really change much, no matter whom he was talking to. “The mission we are going on tonight is of the utmost importance. We have received intelligence from a double agent who was apprehended and tortured last week that the snivelling little Larakians are searching for a boy in Dahma whom they believe is going to be the next ruler of their pathetic little country.”

Larakians. The people of Larakia, the country that Shul was perpetually at war with. Georges had been trained to hate it and just the mention of the word made his lip curl. When Khilliarkos said it, he spat.

If Georges had been his true self, he would have questioned whether the people of this country were really all that bad as he had been made to believe. But he wasn’t his true self at all; he was a ferocious, hideous half-dragon half-human soldier clad in black and carrying his favoured weapon, a huge scythe. The part of him that would have questioned this, that had wanted to escape from Shul, had all but died, beaten into submission as it had been by Khilliarkos and the Shulite training regime.

All that was left was a tiny little voice deep down inside him that wondered if the Larakians were actually evil. But he shoved this voice away, shoved it further, deeper down inside him. He existed to serve Shul and the King of Shul, Echthros, now. He wanted to bring Echthros glory. He wanted to get on with the mission. He wanted to hurry up and leave so that he could get on with finding and killing someone or something.

“Tonight,” said Khilliarkos, “your mission is to find and kill this boy, the so-called heir to the throne of Larakia. Make him suffer. Destroy him. Completely eradicate him from the face of Mashal!”

The soldiers roared. Georges joined them.

“Silence! Now, listen to me closely, worms. The Larakian agent we captured, after we persuaded him to speak, said that the boy they are looking for is an adolescent, with brown hair and a scar on his right cheek, living in Ubal, one of the cities east of Choresh forest. Here is the plan. Do not forget it or your punishment will be unimaginable. You will fly, in groups of three made up of mixed rank, to Ubal. We will meet there and I will give you further orders. Is that clear?”

“Yes Commander Khilliarkos, sir!” bellowed the soldiers in unison.

“Good. Remember, most of Dahma still does not know about or believe in our existence, so let’s keep it that way, as it helps our work. We do not reveal ourselves unless absolutely necessary. We will drop in under cover of dark, work stealthily, and avoid exposing ourselves unless we absolutely have to. If anyone does see you, enslave them, or kill them. Is that clear?”

“Yes Commander Khilliarkos, sir!”

“Good. Now MOVE OUT!”

The soldiers saluted with a final “Yes Commander Khilliarkos, sir!” before getting into threes and marching out of the room.

To Georges’ surprise, Khilliarkos made straight for him. Even despite his new state, a shiver ran down his spine. That was how Khilliarkos controlled his soldiers—with fear.

“Georges, you are the newest recruit. This is your first mission. You will fly with me and Corporal Stratiotes. Is that clear?”

“Yes Commader Khillarkos, sir!” said Georges automatically.

“Good. Come with me.”

Georges followed Khilliarkos and the other soldier in their triplet, Stratiotes, up onto the roof of the barracks. Around them, the dragon soldiers were beginning to take off in groups of three, running to the edge of the roof and then leaping over it before unfurling their wings and letting the air catch them and lift them up into the night sky. “Depart!” said Khilliarkos, and then he ran to the edge and jumped.

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Georges followed. He had practiced a few times during his training, but he did not need to be taught how to fly—it was now second nature to him, part of his new dragon state. His stomach felt like it had fallen out through his back for a moment as he fell. But then he opened his wings with an effort of will and muscle and felt himself lift upwards and begin to soar. He beat the wings a few times, roaring with delight and anticipation at setting out to kill, which carried him up higher still. His wings flapped violently at his sides and he felt the air gush past him.

Flight is beautiful. Flight is always beautiful, even if the things that fly are not.

In front of him, Khilliarkos had transformed into an even larger dragon, his own two enormous wings protruding outwards from his back, a spoked tail extending unnaturally out of his armour, his gauntlet-clad hands morphed into gigantic talons. Georges did not know how Khilliarkos had the ability to transform himself into this larger dragon form. Maybe it was because he had drunk even more of the black liquid than the rest of them had. Maybe it was because as a Commander of the Lord Echthros he had been granted a special ability. Maybe it was simply because he was a greater and more powerful being than Georges and the other recruits. In any case, Khilliarkos shouted in a monstrous, twisted dragon voice “To Ubal! Fly in my wake!”

Georges obeyed. A tiny, tiny part of him left over from before might have thought for a brief moment of flying off and escaping. But no, that couldn’t be right. He was a dragon soldier of Shul, he lived and died to serve Echthros.

He felt the rush of air from Stratiotes flapping his own wings somewhere at his side. He felt the uncommon stillness in the air right behind Khilliarkos, in his ‘slipstream’. He felt the air passing underneath his wings and pushing him upwards further. He flew. They climbed up through the cold night air and the cloud cover. Beyond and above the clouds, the moon appeared, full and menacing, like a massive white hole in half of the sky.

They flew for hours, the rest of the troops arrayed in threes around them, over the canopy of clouds, through the quiet, eerie world above them as they rolled and tumbled below. Occasionally they glimpsed plains, desert, ocean, forest, in the gaps in between the clouds. The wind whistled past Georges, making him extremely cold, but he didn’t care. His thoughts were few. Obey. Steal. Kill. Destroy. Find the heir. Destroy. Steal. Kill. Obey.

Eventually, Khilliarkos began to dip downwards, bringing them into their descent towards the city of Ubal. Now Georges’ stomach started to feel as if it was moving upwards out of his body. For a moment everything went white, and then they were through the cloud barrier and the world was darker again. But they could see their destination.

Ubal was a large, round, walled city, identified by a series of fires that were still lit within it. It was built where five rivers met, or one river flowed into four, judging by the glistening veins of water that ran into it.

They dived further still. Georges could feel Khilliarkos’ predatory intent, his hatred and determination, radiating off of him. He fed on it, using it in turn to fuel his own hatred and determination.

Just then, without warning, something materialised out of nowhere in the air next to Georges. It let out a scream, shrill and long, and started to thrash around as it fell through the air.

Unfortunately for Georges, the thing hit him as it fell and grabbed onto him, apparently out of terror, because the screaming did not stop. The two of them went into a spin, with Georges struggling to stay airborne and in control. The thing clubbed him with all its might with one hand and held on to him tight with the other.

They span and span, down towards the ground, and Georges struggled to regain command of his flight path and to tear the screaming thing off of himself, gashing it several times with his claws, sending a trail of red around them.

The ground approached fast. Just before they made impact with it, Georges managed to wrench his wings free and extended them. With a surge of speed the two of them pulled up away from the ground, narrowly avoiding being smashed against it.

The shock of this seemed to make the screaming creature pause for a moment, for it temporarily relaxed its grip on Georges. Seizing his moment, he grabbed its arms, then pulled them off of himself. He flew along just above the ground for a short while, holding on to it by its arms, then dove and let go, dropping the creature into what he could see in the dark was a wheat-field. The thing let out another shriek, the loudest of all, then as it hit the ground it fell completely silent.

Georges brought himself back around and then swooped down to land next to it. Just a little way away from him the silhouettes of Stratiotes and Khilliarkos hit the ground too, the huge black shape of Khilliarkos morphing back into a more human outline with a blood-curdling crackle of flesh and bone. The commander strode over to him, his breath coming out in heavy and horrible gasps of deep irritation.

“What issssss it?” asked Khilliarkos of the creature that Georges had collided with. It was lying unconscious on the ground where Georges had dropped it. Khilliarkos picked it up by its long hair and held it up to the moonlight.

It was a girl, wearing a long white robe, sandals on her feet and a glittering ring on her finger.

“Well done Georgesss,” said Khilliarkos unexpectedly. “You’ve caught your firssst Larakian.”