Have you ever seen a Dragon fight?
A legendary one? Not those overgrown lizards with no wings or those with muddled bloodlines.
Vacuse has never seen one fight either because the legendary Dragons, the true ancient beasts, have not been seen in the world for centuries.
Until now.
"Ahahahaha! Finally! My family will be great again. After hundreds of years, we will have a true Dragon, and we will rule the sky once more!" shouted Drenvar Vorrakyn, the head of the Vorrakyn Family, the only family in the world with the Dragon pathway.
Vacuse wanted to shout at him. He wanted to stand and cut his head with his sword, but he was powerless, held down by a spear that was driven through his chest and into the ground.
His head was filled with pain that made everything fuzzy. The smell of his own blood felt like rusted metal in his mouth, and the nearby groans of pain from the others made his ears ache.
Surrounding him in a circle were others like him, pinned down by a spear to the chest directly on the magical formation drawn into the ground.
All of them, including Vacuse, were children of Drenvar. The illegitimate children. All of them thrown away like disposables after they had dedicated their lives to the family.
Their beasts were also dead beside them, crumbled heaps adding to the bloody scene.
All in a bid to summon a true Dragon and bind it into the Soul space of the family Head.
It was a known fact that the Vorrakyn are the family of Dragons. They ruled the sky and dominated the land with their terrifying powers, both Dragons and Soulbearers.
Their Soulbearers were known as Dragon Riders.
But all that was in the past.
In the last eight hundred years, none of the Vorrakyn could bind a true Dragon to themselves. They could only bind Drake, Wyvern, and such.
It led to their sharp decline. Their territory was slowly reduced until they were pushed to the far edge of the Empire. Only their title of Grand Duke remained.
What's a title that couldn't be backed by power?
But now, the family Head had called a true Dragon.
It should be a thing to celebrate, a joyous occasion.
But Vacuse couldn't care less. It was his blood that was used to power the magic formation. It was his pain, and it was his heart that got torn by betrayal.
His life was a very wretched and useless thing.
He was born because his father simply wanted to spread his seed as much as possible just so he could birth a child capable of binding a Dragon.
But they all failed.
They turned to his disappointment, and he let them know it.
He turned them into mindless dogs that only obey orders, and he used them as his tools.
Vacuse really didn't mind because he really wanted the family to be great again. He dedicated his life to that without complaints. He fought and bled for it.
But as he lay there, his blood and life dripping away, he realized that his thirty-four years of life was indeed meaningless.
For the first time in his life, he wanted something.
He felt a great rush of anger that made his left arm, the one cut short at the elbow since he was a kid, throb painfully. He smiled, and his teeth were bloody. Just like a dog that turns on its owner.
He wanted to kill his father and be the one to raise Vorrakyn to its greatest height.
For the first time in his life, he wanted.
But so what?
He was lying on the ground, pinned to the floor with his life draining away, and his beast, a Lindworm, was dead, their Bound cut away.
Bang!
Suddenly the ground shook, and large cracks appeared all around them as if the earth itself was crumbling under the might of a Dragon.
The space above Drenvar brightened with silver light, and it cracked—empty space cracked like mirrors as the great beast brought its snout out, quickly followed by its body.
Vacuse forgot his pains instantly, and his breath, the last of the breath he had, stuck in his throat. His eyes widened in wonder.
Had he ever seen anything so ugly and beautiful at the same time?
The Dragon was huge, a walking mountain with a head that was big enough to swallow everyone in there whole. Its eyes were slitted, but it was the scales that were pure silver, and they were the most beautiful thing on its body.
But one thing that surprised Vacuse most was its presence.
There was nothing noble in it.
The Dragon was pure destruction and hatred, and its eyes burned with the light to cause harm.
Its lips curled back as its eyes swept over them, fury gathering at its brows, low growls that made it seem as if their bones were being rubbed together came out of its mouth.
They didn't understand what it was saying. Only its Soulbearer could, but they felt the irritation and disgust rolling off it.
What Drenvar used was a forbidden technique of the family that forced a Dragon to appear.
But what happens when the Dragon finally arrives?
Vacuse didn't know what the man was thinking, but he mustn't have thought far about what would happen when the Dragon arrived.
In the brief silence that followed, Vacuse began to laugh. His chest flared with pain, and his life drained faster, but the look on Drenvar's face wasn't something he was going to pass on.
Drenvar pressed his hand to the red Wyvern beside him, and his eyes glowed as he used dominance. His bound beast, the Wyvern, raised its head and roared.
The aura around them exploded, an intense thing of rippling heat and shockwave. The power that had sent Vacuse and his beast smack into the ground more times than he could count.
Drenvar and his beast were the most powerful in the family, and they rubbed that fact in the face of everyone.
And yet their power was a splash against the Dragon.
Vacuse became jealous immediately. That kind of power—the type that he could use to walk his own path and plan his own destiny. He wished he could have done that with his life, to do as he wanted, to try and lift his family instead of just following Drenvar's orders.
The Dragon looked at them, dismissed them as unimportant, and then it spread its wings that bloated and covered the sky immediately.
Then the Dragon roared.
It roared.
A sound that shattered their ears and the ground they were standing on. A flash of light followed, and the Dragon's body was covered in white lightning that flowed like liquid between its scales.
The sky above them turned to silver light.
Then the heavens fell on them.
The lightning that covered the sky fell.
The last thing that Vacuse remembered to do before his death was to curse himself for allowing himself to live such a useless life, and then to curse Drenvar for his betrayal.
Then everything went blank.