Free Dragon Guardian (Drakins of Wyrmarach) by Eden Glenn Page B

seethed through him. He kicked the table,
sending papers, pens, books flying across the room. A book bounced off the
haunch of the massive indigo-winged brute, drawing The Chosen’s attention back
to matters at hand.
    Trapped in iron chains, unable to do anything more than
vocalize its protest, the fiend observed him with the watchfulness of a
predator. The wretched animal waited for a mistake, when a moment of
inattentiveness might provide an opportunity for escape.
    One slip and the fell brute would kill him. The adrenaline
rush of controlling such a fearsome creature kept him on a power high, like a
snake charmer’s deadly vice. Phaux mumbled warbling
had ceased. Something in the dragon’s uncanny blue eyes cleared giving him a
renewed alertness, a watchfulness that hadn’t been present, a frightening
intensity that stalked him. Animal instinct and something more lurked in that
intelligent gaze.
    He stepped on the trigger pad to brighten the overhead
spotlight. The flood of light blinded the demon’s baneful stare as much as it
illuminated his work. He ground the steel on the stone a few more times for
good measure. He slipped the whetstone into the pocket of his lab coat. Taking
the sharpened knife he resumed cutting through the creature’s skin. Good, the
fresh honed scalpel sliced smoothly through the resilient hide.
    There, ready to peel back the outer layer of dragon skin. He
ignored the beast’s screams of anguish and cut through attachments holding the
skin to muscle as he peeled. The sound, a crisp wet slurping erupted as hide
parted from raw tissue. A bitter odor emanated from the dragon to hang in the
air, coating his tongue with a harsh metallic taste. The writings laid claim to
undefined magical properties of the dragon skin.
    The animal’s screeches reduced to pitiful groaning,
punctuated with shallow pants of air. Yet, as the many months of study wound
down, the monster’s once lustrous indigo skin had
taken on a sickly gray cast.
    The Chosen laid the carpet of dark hide out across the table
for closer examination. Once removed from the body, the skin resumed the rich,
metallic deep color of health, which absorbed glimmers of light from around the
room. Within hours it would cure into silken leather. Pretty, yet seemingly
useless. He searched the table to find the wine glass that had toppled over.
There, fortunately it remained unbroken.
    He retrieved a bottle of wine from the small apartment
refrigerator below the shelves of electronic equipment, and then poured a pale
golden yellow liquid with a greenish tinge, Riesling Spatlese 2007 GK into the
crystal goblet.
    He swirled the wine under his nose inhaling the bright aromas
then sipped the wine, velvety sweet fruit coursed down his throat. He paused to
enjoy the elegant finish of the masterfully crafted German wine. The bloody
trail of gore left by his gloves around the delicate crystal repulsed him, just
like the wretched creatures, to taint the civilized enjoyment of a glass of
wine.
    Scrutinizing the hide for any hint of magical power revealed
nothing to him. The secret remained hidden in the leathery expanse. He refused
to give up. A break-through had to be near, or he would soon have to find
another dragon on his own because this one wasn’t looking good. Perhaps it was
time to get some more live chickens for the thing to eat.
    He’d experimented on the monster for all these months,
drinking the blood, pulverizing the cells to powder form for ingestion, wearing
garments made of the leather, extracting hormones, cultivating bacteria from
the animal’s skin and anything he could think of to trigger his own suspected
dormant dragon gene.
    The documents about the sidhartha had convinced him the
secret was to be revealed from the skin. This puzzle would not defeat him if he
had to remove the entire hide, section by section, from the beast’s massive
carcass.
    Yes, the work helped
The Chosen concentrate and see the clarity of the situation. He