Forged in Dragonfire (Flame of Requiem Book 1)

FORGED IN DRAGONFIRE

FLAME OF REQUIEM, BOOK ONE

by

Daniel Arenson

• CHAPTER ONE: ELORY
  
• CHAPTER TWO: VALE
  
• CHAPTER THREE: ISHTAFEL
  
• CHAPTER FOUR: MELIORA
  
• CHAPTER FIVE: VALE
  
• CHAPTER SIX: ELORY
  
• CHAPTER SEVEN: MELIORA
  
• CHAPTER EIGHT: ELORY
  
• CHAPTER NINE: ISHTAFEL
  
• CHAPTER TEN: ELORY
  
• CHAPTER ELEVEN: JAREN
  
• CHAPTER TWELVE: KALAFI
  
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ELORY
  
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN: JAREN
  
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN: ELORY
  
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN: MELIORA
  
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: VALE
  
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: MELIORA
  
• CHAPTER NINETEEN: VALE
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY: ELORY
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: MELIORA
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: ELORY
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: ISHTAFEL
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: MELIORA
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: JAREN
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: MELIORA
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: ISHTAFEL
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: MELIORA
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: LUCEM
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY: MELIORA
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: VALE
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: MELIORA
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: KALAFI
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: MELIORA
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: ISHTAFEL
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: ELORY
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: MELIORA
  
• CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: ELORY
  
• AFTERWORD
  
• NOVELS BY DANIEL ARENSON
  
• KEEP IN TOUCH
  

 
 
ELORY

Blood.

Searing sunlight.

The
cracks
of
whips on flesh.

With cries of agony,
with sand and tar, with twisted shoulders and breaking backs, the children of
Requiem toiled.

"Faster!"

The flaming whips flew,
ripping through skin.

"Up!"

The chains rattled.
Slaves fell. Masters roared.

"Toil!"

The sunlight beat down,
as merciless as the whips. Across the pit, a nation broke. A people shattered.
Thousands spread across the crater, hobbling forward, feet chained. The whips
cut them. The sun burned them. The yokes hung across their stooped shoulders,
secured with chains, bearing baskets of bitumen. The tar bubbled up from the
wells, filling the pit, burning bare feet, churning the air, invading lungs
with noxious fumes.

"Faster!"

Blood.

"Up!"

Whips ripping skin.

"Toil!"

Golden masters of
light. Shattered, dying slaves.

Requiem—a nation
broken. A nation in chains.

Elory trudged across
the tar pit, chains rattling around her ankles. The seeping tar burned her
feet. The yoke shoved against her narrow shoulders, cracking the skin,
threatening to crack the bone. Sticky clumps of bitumen filled the baskets
hanging off her yoke, the fumes filling her nostrils and lungs, spinning her
head, leaving her always dizzy, always numb. The sunlight beat down, baking her
shaved head, burning her arms and neck, nearly blinding her. Her collar
squeezed her neck, leaving her wheezing, struggling for every breath.

"Faster,
worm!"

She could not see the
overseer, but she felt his whip. The lash slammed against her back, and Elory
yowled. Even over the stench of bitumen, she smelled her own blood. She
wobbled. She fell to her knees, nearly spilling her baskets, burning her knees
in the seeping, sticky blackness.

"Up! Toil!"

The whip slammed down
again. Elory screamed. She wept. She pushed herself up. She hobbled onward.

Faster. Up. Toil. The
words rattled through her mind, an endless chant. The prayer of her people. The
only words that would perhaps allow her to cling to this flickering life. A
life of blood. Of pain. Of tar.

Of hope,
Elory
thought, eyes stinging with tears.

"Move,
maggot!"

Her master's whip
lashed again. Again her back tore. Elory shuffled onward, chains rattling, blood
seeping, the ancient word on her lips.

"Requiem,"
she whispered as she struggled across the pit, carrying the bitumen.
"Requiem. Requiem."

"Faster! Up! Toil!"

Requiem.

Tears stung her eyes.
Elory looked around her. Through the fumes of tar, the blinding sunlight, and the
sweat in her eyes, she couldn't see far. All around her, her nation broke. Men.
Women. Children. Chains around their ankles. Collars, cursed with dark magic,
keeping their old magic at bay. Slaves. Wretches. No more than maggots by the
blinding light of the beautiful masters.

But once we were
proud,
Elory thought.
Once we were dragons.

She shut her eyes, and
tears streamed down her cheeks. She tried to imagine it. She tried to believe.
Her father had taught her that five hundred years ago, their people—the Vir
Requis, an ancient race—had lived in a distant, northern land. Lived a life of
peace and plenty. Lived in palaces of marble and forests of birches.

Lived free to fly as
dragons.

Elory opened her eyes
and looked over her shoulder. It still lay there. She had to believe. Past the
tar pits. Past the great wall and the seraphim upon its battlements. Past the
desert. Past the sea. Past the wilderness of forests and mountains. A realm
lost but not forgotten. A realm where her people had flown. A realm called
Requiem.

For thousands of
years,
Elory thought,
we flew free . . . until they came. The masters.

She blinked tears and
fumes out of her eyes. She saw them there, around her and on the wall.
Beautiful beings of light. Towering men and women, their hair long and golden,
their eyes shining with inner light, their pupils shaped as sunbursts. They
wore gilded armor, carried lances and shields, and swan wings grew from their
backs. Haloes shone around their heads, pale gold, barely visible in the
searing sunbeams.

The destroyers of
Requiem. The masters. The seraphim.

"Move, you wretch,
or I'll toss you into the tar!"

Her own seraph, a
beautiful deity who shone in the sunlight, swung his whip of fire. Again the
lash slammed into Elory, knocking her down. Again she struggled to her feet.
Again she shuffled onward. For ten years now—since she had been only
eight—she had labored here in this pit. Carrying the bitumen, this black gold,
the viscous tar that held the bricks of palaces and temples, that waterproofed
ships, that glued mosaics to floors and gemstones to chains of gold, that gave
Saraph its power and kept Requiem in chains.

"Requiem," Elory
whispered. "Requiem. Requiem."

With every utterance of
the word, her collar squeezed her neck. The collar that kept her in this
form—a scrawny youth, her limbs bony, her head spinning, barely five feet
tall, barely heavier than the yoke she carried, her back whipped, her skin burnt.
The cursed collar engraved with runes of dark magic. The collar that let them
rule her people. The collar that kept a proud nation enslaved.

The collar that
chains the dragon inside me.

Elory looked behind her
again. There, in the center of the pit, she could see them. A group of dragons.
Only five. Vir Requis with their collars removed.

The great reptiles
labored in chains. Seraphim stood around them, pointing lances and swords,
swinging their whips. The five dragons dug with claws, ripping into the hard
earth, seeking the reserves of bitumen within. Elory's own mother, the silver
dragon Nala, dug there into the rock, her scales cracked, her wings wrapped
with chains. Soon more of the tar would rise into the pit, filling the crater
with its hot, sticky, precious gift. Soon the rest of Requiem, myriads of collared
souls, would refill their baskets.

Day after day.

Year after year.

Generation after
generation.

Five hundred years of
blood. Of whips. Of prayer.

Once I too could
become a dragon,
Elory thought. She took step after step, feet burning,
knees buckling. She tried to imagine that she was one of those great reptiles
now, that she flew on the wind.
Once none of us had collars. Once millions
of us flew in the north, proud and strong. Before the seraphim came with their
chariots of fire. Before they toppled our temples, brought us to this distant
land. Once we too were an empire.

She stared up at the
sky. The fumes stung her eyes. The sun beat down, a white inferno. She could
not see the stars of Requiem, the Draco constellation that her father believed
still watched over their people. But Elory still prayed to those mythical
lights. The ancient prayer of her people. The prayer her people had been
singing for thousands of years in the northern forests, for five hundred years
in this desert of blood, of whips, of toil.

"As
the leaves fall upon our marble tiles, as the breeze rustles the birches beyond
our columns, as the sun gilds the mountains above our halls—know, young child
of the woods, you are home, you are home." Elory's voice cracked, barely a
whisper, and she tasted blood and tears. "Requiem! May our wings forever
find your sky."

She
trembled as she shuffled onward, carrying her burden. She had to believe that
those birches still grew somewhere. That leaves still fell upon marble tiles.
That blue mountains still rose above marble halls. That Requiem awaited her,
that she could see it someday, that she could someday tear off her collar,
become a dragon, and find her lost sky.

"Silence,
slave!"

No
trees grew here in her captivity. The only palaces that rose were not the
marble halls of dragons but the vicious fortresses of Saraph. The only wings
here were the swan wings of seraphim. No dragons flew here in the south, only
the whips of the overseers, and again those whips tore into Elory.

Again
she fell.

"Bloody wretch."
The overseer stepped closer, whip flailing. "Useless. If you can't stand
up, I'm going to beat you into the tar."

As the whip lashed,
Elory screamed.

Her back tore open.

She cried. She begged.

"Sir,
please!" said another slave, hobbling forward, an old woman with gray stubble
on her head. "I'll help her rise. I—"

The overseer swung his
whip toward her, lashing the grandmother across the face. She fell, spilling
her baskets of bitumen. The overseer roared with rage. Elory lay in the tar,
unable to rise, her blood seeping, wondering if this was the day she would die
here, die like slaves died every day in the pits, die without ever seeing
Requiem.

She ground her teeth.

I must live.
Tears burning, she struggled to her feet, limped toward the grandmother, and
helped her rise too. Blood dripped from the old woman's cheek.

"We toil
onward," Elory told the overseer. She saw her own blood boiling on her
flaming whip. "Always. Always."

For that hope,
Elory thought.
For that dream of dragons. For that dream that, after five
hundred years of our backs breaking, we will someday fly again.

"Requiem,"
she whispered as she made her way out of the pit.

Ahead of her, across
the haze, sprawled the dry land of Saraph. No trees grew here. No rivers
flowed. A barren, cruel land of sunlight, of stone, of gold, of tar. Across the
rocky field, thousands of her people labored in chains. They mixed clay with
straw and bitumen, poured the mixture into molds, formed bricks. In the
northern distance grew the wall, eternal, towering, topped with seraphim,
forever a cage around her. Far in the south, swaying in the distant heat, Elory
could just make out the city of the masters. There these bricks rose into great
palaces and temples, cobbled roads and bathhouses, statues that soared hundreds
of feet tall. There the labor of Requiem raised wonders for the glory of the
seraphim. There was a land forbidden to Elory, a land she built yet would never
visit, a wondrous empire made from this bitumen, this clay, from the blood and
tears of Requiem.

We will never enter
the city of the seraphim, but someday we will fly into Requiem again,
Elory
thought.
Someday we will remove our collars, rise again as dragons. Someday
the stars will guide us home.

She was carrying the
bitumen toward a squat stone refinery when the archangel arrived in his chariot
of fire, forever changing Elory's life.

The chariot streamed
across the sky like a falling sun, casting out heat and light. Four firehorses
pulled the vessel, beasts woven of flames, their manes flaring, their eyes
white stars. Shoulders stooped under the yoke, Elory stared up at the chariot,
as lowly as an ant witnessing a swooping phoenix.