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