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hand.
    Dante ex­amined the seal.
    It was blood red, em­bossed in gold, and in the cen­ter of the stamp, there was the out­line of a dragon with a dia­mond-shaped eye. It was the un­mis­tak­able signet of King De­mitri Dragona, the tenth of his line, the im­per­i­ous ruler of Dragons Realm. He broke it and read the de­cree out loud in the com­mon tongue, his voice trav­el­ing across the War­lo­chian Square like rolling thun­der. “For the highest crime of treason against the realm, I, King De­mitri Dragona, re­gent of the royal court, hereby sen­tence the trait­ors, Wylan P. Jo­nas and Sir Henry Wood­son, to death by ex­e­cu­tion at the hand of their fu­ture sov­er­eign. The ex­e­cu­tion is to be meted out on the fourth day of May in the 175th year of the Drago­nas’ Reign, the sea­son of the dia­mond king.”
    The crowd grew deathly quiet as Dante ap­proached the first of the two con­demned men. “Wylan P. Jo­nas?”
    The war­lock raised his head, leveled a hate-filled glare at Dante, and spoke with heavy con­tempt in his raspy voice. “Yes, lord?”
    “You have been found guilty by a court of your peers for the crime of treason: What say you?”
    The pris­oner mustered his re­main­ing cour­age and spat at Dante’s feet, and the ef­fort cost him greatly, as his cracked, swollen lips im­me­di­ately began to bleed. “I say you can all go to hell.” His eyes flashed am­ber, glow­ing with rising malevol­ence, and his words trailed off with a hiss.
    Dante re­mained un­fazed.
    He neither re­acted to the ab­use nor ac­know­ledged the slight.
    Rather, he stepped grace­fully to the side. “And Sir Henry Wood­son, you have also been found guilty of plot­ting against your realm and your king. Do you wish to speak on your own be­half?” He nar­rowed his eyes with sin­gu­lar pur­pose in an un­spoken warn­ing: Think be­fore you speak . “Do you wish to beg your prince for mercy be­fore you die?”
    The second pris­oner looked up and trembled.
    After a long, piteous mo­ment had passed, he shrank back against the post. “It is not in the nature of a war­lock to sub­mit to the rule of an­other mys­tical be­ing, mi­lord. I make no apo­lo­gies for de­fy­ing the Drago­nas or the king’s rule.” He gasped for air, and it was read­ily ap­par­ent that his lungs had already been dam­aged from a pre­vi­ous beat­ing. “How­ever, I am also not a fool. If his lord­ship would send me to my death with honor, without the pain or scourge of fire, then I would humbly re­quest that he do so.”
    Dante took a meas­ured step back, re­gard­ing the second pris­oner from head to toe. Mercy was not the way of the dragon, and ruth­less­ness was all the War­lo­chi­ans un­der­stood.
    He stepped for­ward, ap­proach­ing the ob­stin­ate pris­oner first, the one who had spat at his feet; and the crowd gasped as he tore Wylan P. Jo­nas free from the post and crushed the heavy iron man­acles ef­fort­lessly be­neath his power­ful hands.
    The iron crumbled into dust.
    Wisps of smoke rose from the prince’s palms.
    And Dante kicked the pris­oner to the ground with a booted foot and snarled, “You are an in­solent fool, war­lock, but at least you are brave. The mer­ci­ful death will be yours.” He grasped the hilt of his sword in its scab­bard, bran­dished the blade in an aud­ible chime of steel, and swiftly brought it down along the pris­oner’s neck, re­mov­ing his head in one clean blow. Bra­cing him­self against the spat­ter­ing gore, he licked his lips, felt his fangs be­gin to elong­ate, and slowly re-sheathed the blade. “As for you, Sir Henry Wood­son, you shall re­turn to the pit of hell as noth­ing more than a pile of ash, so that even those who in­habit the un­der­world will know: A dragon’s fury is migh­tier than a war­lock’s pride.”
    He took two large strides back and began to call his