Free Forged in Dragonfire (Flame of Requiem Book 1) by Daniel Arenson

have flown with you, Mother.
    He should have flown,
blown his dragonfire, lashed his claws. Yet this collar kept him chained. Kept
him in the dust, a worm, a wretch.
    "Praise the
Eight!" the priest on the hill cried. "May the gods bless their
souls."
    At Vale's side, his
father closed his eyes and whispered so softly Vale could barely hear.
    "As
the leaves fall upon our marble tiles, as the breeze rustles the birches beyond
our columns, as the sun gilds the mountains above our halls—know, young child
of the woods, you are home, you are home." Jaren took a shuddering breath,
raised his head, and gazed up at the sky. Tears filled his eyes, and awe filled
his whisper. "Requiem! May our wings forever find your sky."
    The ancient prayer of
Requiem. The words that, the stories claimed, King Aeternum had sung six
thousand years ago in a distant land, forging a home for the Vir Requis. A home
for dragons.
    Vale raised his eyes,
seeking the Draco constellation, seeking those stars his father claimed blessed
Requiem. But he saw no stars that looked like a dragon, only a field of cold
lights like so many dead eyes.
    The stars had abandoned
them. His mother was gone. His sisters were gone—both Elory and the sister
they never spoke of. All hope was gone.
    The wagons dumped the
last corpses of slaves into the pit. The dragons—the few slaves allowed to
shift into their ancient forms—began shoveling dirt into the grave, hiding the
dead, hiding the shame. Soon Vale would return to his hut with his father, but
his mother won't be there, nor his sister, and in a few hours he would rise,
and he would toil in the sun, and the chains would chafe his body, and the
whips would cut his back, and it would continue. Year after year. Generation
after generation. Endless pain in the land of Saraph as Requiem remained but a
memory, fading to myth.
    "Come, son."
Jaren placed a hand on his shoulder. Tears still streamed down his lined cheeks
to dampen his beard. "Let us return to our hut. Let us pray. Let—"
    Laughter.
    Laughter rolled across
the darkness, interrupting Jaren's words.
    "Mother!" A
voice rose in mocking falsetto. "Mother, please!"
    Slowly, his chains
rattling, Vale turned around.
    He saw them there on a
hill. Two seraphim, a woman and a man. Both wore gilded armor, the breastplates
curved to mimic bare torsos. Both carried round shields and lances. Vale was
tall for a Vir Requis, almost six feet tall—a giant among the malnourished slaves—yet
these seraphim dwarfed him. The immortals were beings of beauty, hair long and
lustrous, pupils shaped as sunbursts in their golden eyes, lips full and pink,
wings the color of milk. Fallen angels. Masters. Destroyers.
    "The little whore
whined like a babe," said the male seraph. He raised his voice to falsetto
again. "Mother, Mother, please don't let the bad seraph take me! Don't let
him spread my legs and thrust his holy spear into me!"
    The female seraph
laughed. She raised a flaming whip. Vale recognized her. Here stood Shani, an
overseer of the tar pit, a woman who had beaten Elory with her whip too often
to count. So many nights, Elory had lain shivering on her straw bed, feverish
and moaning with pain, as Vale rubbed ointments into the wounds on her
back—wounds Shani had inflicted.
    "Ishtafel's new
whore was in my work team," Shani said to her companion. "Worked as a
yoke bearer. I striped her back many times. Squealed like a pig every
time."
    Rage flowed through
Vale, a fiery explosion. His fingernails drove into his palms, shedding blood.
    They're talking
about Elory. About my sister.
    "Come, son," Jaren
said, voice still choked with grief. He placed a hand on Vale's shoulder.
"Let's go. Leave them be."
    But Vale could not look
away from the laughing seraphim on the hill. The pair were still talking, laughing
as they stared into the grave.
    "Little harlot
will be back in Tofet in no time." The male seraph snorted. "The
weredragons never last long with Ishtafel."
    Shani barked a