“The Lord will see you now,” the man said.
Cole exchanged a look with his father, and then Tove smiled as he rose from his chair. He smoothed out his shirt and pants before striding toward the messenger. The warlock’s eyes flickered nervously as Tove approached him, but he lifted his chin.
“Of course,” his father said with an airy tone that belied the rage simmering beneath his surface.
Cole matched his dad’s laid-back demeanor as he followed him from the room. They swept through the enclosed, gray stone hallway before arriving at a set of stairs. Those stairs spiraled down the middle of a circular opening that descended to the main entrance ten floors below.
Like the hallway, the walls here were all barren and lacked any color. He’d heard that when the arach who once ruled this land still lived here, the palace was alive with color, noise, parties, the arach, and other immortals, but none of that remained.
One of the mad Lords had stripped all the tapestries, rugs, and paintings from the palace and burned them in the courtyard. Now, not only was the place bleak, but it was also as hushed as a tomb.
There was no banister for the stairs, so they stayed close to the wall as they descended. Their footsteps echoing off the stone was the only sound until a dragon released a roar from somewhere within the palace. That roar reverberated off the walls and rebounded incessantly around them.
The hair on Cole’s nape rose, but he kept his face impassive as they arrived on the first floor. The messenger led them down a hallway filled with statues of golden dragons situated in various positions.
Some of the statues had the ill-fated arach posed beside them. He suspected the only reason these statues survived the purge of all the other decorations was because they looked like they weighed a ton.
Cole examined the statues as they passed. It had been a thousand years since the last arach ruled the Shadow Realms and Dragonia. He’d never met an arach, but his father had known them and would sometimes tell stories of them.
Besides controlling the dragons, the powerful arach could withstand being burned by flames, throw fire from their hands, and cast spells like witches. Some of those spells remained on this palace as they blocked vampires from teleporting out.
No vampire could teleport into a residence, even if they were invited in at some point, but they could all teleport out unless something stopped them. And here, the lingering power of the arachs kept them trapped.
The arachs weaved a powerful brand of magic, but despite their many powers, they were now the cautionary tale many children heard at bedtime and many rulers tried to avoid becoming.
The long-lost rulers of the dragons looked like most other immortal creatures. They didn’t have wings like the pixies and didn’t shapeshift like the lycan, but they had fangs like vampires, and if the statues were any indication, they had the arrogant stance of an immortal sure of their place in this world.
They shouldn’t have been so confident as that place no longer existed.
His father once told him that in the beginning, the arach were a rather peaceful species. Still, disagreements on how to rule the Shadow Realms resulted in a civil war that dethroned the original ruling family and sent them into exile.
But the war didn’t end there, and eventually, all the powerful creatures destroyed each other.
That war nearly destroyed the Shadow Realms when it spilled out of Dragonia. The dragons wreaked havoc throughout the realms as the arach battled to the death.
When the dust settled and nothing remained of the arach, their once-tamed dragons ran wild throughout the realms. His father once told him they’d believed they were all doomed. They’d managed to kill some of the dragons, but there were far too many, and the realms were falling apart.
However, when the first non-arach ruler sat on the throne, the dragons returned to Dragonia. That was when the immortals learned whoever held the throne controlled the beasts.
It didn’t take them long to realize that whoever held the throne couldn’t handle its power, and it eventually eroded their sanity until they became a corrupted, broken version of their old selves.
The first ruler had only taken the throne on a whim. The warlock entered Dragonia in the hopes of avoiding the dragons now living in the other realms. He’d been lured by the power of the throne and decided to sit on it. That decision was the turning point in the war against the dragons as his presence on the throne called them back to Dragonia.
That warlock went from a peace-loving man to one consumed by the paranoia that others were trying to kill him. He became determined to stop his imaginary assassins before they stopped him and set the dragons free again. That mistake cost him. He was dethroned by a lycan who moved in for the kill while the dragons were gone.
The lycan ascended to power only to suffer the same fate.
The messenger stopped outside a set of immense double doors. Each door held the carving of a dragon in midflight. The dragons’ tails curled before them, and their wings spread open as fire erupted from their mouths.
Almost everything within this place was drab, but these dragons were a splash of vivid, detailed color amid all the gray. The fire looked so real it seemed it would burn his fingers if he touched it. The rubies in their eyes gleamed in the rays of the sun streaming through the windows. The emeralds of their green scales cast green color across the floor.
The messenger pulled both doors open and stepped back. He gestured for them to enter the enormous, grand hall. It was at least the size of two football fields long and another football field wide. The room was so large that the throne on the other end, and the man sitting on it, were barely discernible.
Half a dozen dragons lounged inside the room. They were coiled up with their tails near their heads as they dozed contentedly in the sun streaming down on them.
When the doors opened, the dragon closest to them cracked its yellow eyes open and lifted its head. The spikes along its back rose before settling in a wave. Then it opened its colossal jaws and released a yawn that displayed its hundreds of razor-sharp teeth.
It settled its head on its front paws and closed its eyes, but Cole knew it remained focused on them. And though none of the other slumbering beasts stirred, he was certain they were aware of their presence.
His father plastered on a smile before descending the five steps to the great hall. Cole swiftly followed.