Call Of The Dark



Jasper froze in his spot as he watched behind Lazarus. The moon was shining bright and he saw the shape of a dragon with a rider swishing across it. "Can't be," he rasped. 

Lazarus narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean?" he growled. He noticed that Jasper was not focusing on the fight, instead his focus was elsewhere. 

Jasper pointed at the sky. "Dragons." 

Eyes wide, Lazarus whipped his head back as shock churned in his chest. Has Emma come back? He had asked her to stay in Yizinia. Shock turned into pure dread when he saw a dragon flying in the sky. "Did you say dragons?" he rasped. Because now Lazarus didn't just see one. There were two of them. And none of them looked like Nephie. 

Jasper rose to his feet as he watched at the two dragons who were flying towards them with powerful strokes of wings. "Gods!" Jasper was stunned. On various occasions he had seen Emma's dragon. Once she had come to sit right on the top of the palace and the whole palace had shaken when it roared. And now there were two such dragons. "They are gorgeous!" he breathed as he stepped closer to them, feeling magnetically pulled towards them. 

"Why have you stopped?" The king roared, getting up from his cushioned chair. He was enjoying seeing his sons fight. He knew that Jasper was going to do his best to kill Lazarus even though he would be killed in the end. That meant that Lazarus was going to get a lot injured. He would take the opportunity to kill Lazarus as well. Viktor had formed his strategy a long time back. His oldest thought that he was smart, but he forgot who he was dealing with. Viktor was the vampire who had ruled Wilyra for centuries with his shrewdness. 

Viktor's roar sent the courtiers whimpering as they too watched the princes with their faces turned towards the sky. "Are you wasting my time and that of the courtiers?" He was about to send a flurry of curses when his words were cut off by the sound of powerful flapping of wings. He snapped his head angrily and his anger turned into pure surprise. He saw two dragons coming towards them. On the inside, a wave of worry cruised through him. Had Emma come back with her dragon to save Lazarus? "Guards!" he barked. "Take your positions!" A dozen guards took their positions in front of the king to save him as more ran out of their hiding places. 

Two dragons landed just outside the ring with their riders. There was a huge commotion amongst the courtiers as all of them ran here and there to save themselves. The dragons breathed fire, melting the iron spikes of the ring. 

Lazarus was bewildered. He hadn't seen those dragons or the riders before. He stood rooted to his place, not knowing what to do. As if this wasn't enough, he saw four more dragons flying this way and one of them was Emma. She was sitting with a woman who resembled her on Nephie. He was even more startled when he saw that there was a man in Nephie's clutches and he was shrieking with horror. Nephie swooped in and deposited the man on the ground. Yet another dragon landed with one more man in his clutches. When the man got up, Lazarus was even more surprised. It was Drogo. He looked extremely weary and tired. He had a beard of several days and there were dark circles beneath his eyes. 

With glee Emma jumped down from Nephie and rushed to Lazarus. "Lord Lorza!" she shrieked with joy and jumped at him. He caught her instantly and hugged her tightly in his arms. 

"Why did you come?" he said, inhaling her scent. He was so riled up the past few days without her that as soon as she was in his arms, he was flooded with relief. "And who are you with?" The six dragons formed a circle around the princes as they flapped their wings and finally tucked them behind. Lazarus took a deep breath in, taking the faces of the riders who mounted them. 

From the corner of his vision he saw Jasper going towards the other man who a dragon had thrown on the ground and who was now shivering with terror. "This is the Head of the village up north!" Jasper announced. 

"What is going on?" Viktor shouted, hating that his perfect plan was getting washed down the drain by the gigantic dragons. It was as if Emma had brought her own form of mutiny. At the same time, he was scared of the dragons and so he still remained behind his guards, not daring to come out or move an inch from his place. 

Emma bowed to the king, stepping beside Lazarus. "Your Majesty," she said with a bold look in her eyes and a confident aura. "I have brought the real culprit who killed Prince Jade." 

When Queen Violet and King Titus had told her how they could help her, she explained to them about her predicament. Titus was only too happy to extend his help to her because she had brought him a dragon rider, and that too of a dragon that hatched after thousands of years. When he heard that she was marked by none other than Prince Lazarus, he sent six of his best dragons under Bernice's leadership. The first thing that Emma did was to take them to the village in the north. With the dragons out there, the villagers shivered and when she threatened that she would raze down the village in dragon fire if she didn't come to know the truth, the Head of the village revealed it all. 

Emma and Bernice were just too sad and disgusted when they came to know that Drogo was hiding in a cave near those villages. Nephie dug him out of the cave. As soon as they got all the evidence they needed, they headed for the palace. However, as they were flying to the palace, Bernice remained silent. Emma knew that her mother was silently mourning her father. 

Viktor growled. "You are interrupting a royal decree."