Schaefer The sons of the wind

The altar of sacrifice
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-64268-248-9
Verlag: novum pro Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 322 Seiten

Dark does not know how many generations of humans and magical beings he will influence when he founds his Cult of Dragon Mages. He cannot know how many will die to banish the Dark God Sombra. But Dark knows that evil must not be allowed to gain power over Carrera. Some five hundred years later, the time has come. And Dark is lucky, because apart from setting up a wedding, it doesn't seem to take much to save the land. But every wedding is just the beginning, sometimes of something good, sometimes, however, of much further suffering. But the prophecy seems to come true and slowly the most important characters come together. The vampire hunter, master swordsman, shapeshifter, warrior and Amazon find each other.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Schaefer, A.

Leseproben

1. Prologue

"THEY'RE IN TOWN! FLY! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!"

Several times the high priest of the dragon mages was jostled and stumbled. Time and again he managed to stay on his feet and keep running. He was almost one ninety tall and slender. His poison green hair fell into his emerald eyes with a kind of casual elegance. Hanging from one of his pointed ears was a two-inch earring shaped like a feather. He wore a sleeveless white shirt - now filthy - and equally white pants. He had no shoes on. The green-melted cloak of the dragon mages, torn by the battle, he had dropped somewhere. Around his upper arm was a golden hoop, in whose coils a serpentine dragon body was reflected.

He hurried through the destroyed streets. Almost all the buildings he passed had collapsed. Doors were hanging off their hinges. Windows were smashed. He had lost count of how many murdered loved ones he had passed. Tear-streaked marks stood out on his boyishly handsome face.

A deafening bang sounded as a gigantic piece of the city wall was blown away. Dark, the high priest, turned his head in panic and looked back. He could see the Black Army advancing and the creatures of darkness. He shuddered. Suddenly his foot caught and he fell hard, scraping his hands. He looked around for the cause and immediately regretted it. Dark had stumbled upon the disfigured corpse of his disciple Tai. Fighting back tears and disgust, he picked himself up and ran on, blinded by tears. However, he could not prevent horror-filled premonitions from forming in his mind: What if I'm too late? What if I can't save him? What if I fail just as I did with Tai? Only very slowly and with great effort was he able to suppress these thoughts. He had to pull himself together. Under no circumstances could he allow such ideas to continue to take shape in his mind.

When he finally reached his cottage, which was located deep in the center of the mage city, he stood rooted to the spot. A shiver of fear ran down his spine. The door had been smashed.

"No - please don't!" he breathed.

Panic gripped him again. Nevertheless, he laboriously brought his fear under control and cautiously entered his house. The floorboards above him creaked, so someone had to be upstairs. He fervently hoped that it was only Joaquin and not one of those monsters that attacked the city of Sugiawa mages. Monsters against whom no magic helped, as he and his comrades-in-arms had learned with great loss when they had tried to defend the city from the onslaught of the Black Army. Now only a few desperate people were still fighting. The rest of the people had fled headlong. Some had even forgotten their children from fear. Like most, he had declared the city lost. Now he tried to save at least his son's life. He slid silently up the stairs. On the upper floor was the entrance to Joaquin's room. Only splinters of wood remained from the strong wood of the door. There were nasty cracks and scratches in the frame. The board, which had once been the door of the room, had flung it away with such force that it had shattered into a thousand pieces on the opposite wall. He let his eyes wander around the room with a dark foreboding. The furniture of the small room had been razed to the ground. His son Joaquin sat laughing on the ground among the rubble of his once modest but beautiful room. He clapped his hands in an incomprehensible pattern, making a long bone-thin creature dance to the beat of his hands.

Despite the horror he had just seen, it elicited a smile from the dragon mage.

Joaquin turned his head toward him and beamed. "He's funny, isn't he?"

His father shook his head with a sigh. When would the boy finally learn that not all visitors were friends and playmates? He walked up to him and lifted him in his arms. The boy stopped clapping and the bone creature collapsed from exhaustion. "Just wait Dark," it hissed with its last breaths. "You and your bastard, you can't escape us ... the city is completely surrounded ... the Black Army is everywhere ... everywhere ... even in the air ... and under the ground ... everywhere ... even in people you know ..."

The dragon mage turned away from the dead creature and wanted to disappear through the door. But there just entered a troop of soldiers, all armored by black armor, on which was emblazoned the red salamander. The sign of Sombra, the god of hate and darkness, the ruler of the Black Army.

Dark backed away to the window. But from there, more skeletons were just climbing in. The thin, pale skin was stretched tightly over the black bones that shone through. They were trapped.

Help me Veneno, the dragon mage mentally shouted to his friend.

A split second passed, then the roof was torn away with a deafening roar. The followers of the Lord of Darkness backed away in panic as a giant scaled head loomed over them. The gigantic, poison-green dragon tore open its mouth and swallowed Dark and his eight-year-old son. It pushed off from the house so violently to take to the skies that it disintegrated into its component parts. He flew up to a plateau nearby and gingerly touched down. After making sure no one was in their immediate vicinity, the dragon laid its head on the barren rock and opened its mouth. Dark and Joaquin climbed past its man-sized fangs into the open. Dark stepped to the edge of the plateau and looked down on the burning mage city. His green eyes saw scorched fields, destroyed houses, fleeing people. And all this made his heart cry. It contracted painfully until he could no longer breathe and thought he would suffocate. An endless stream of tears ran down his face, which was disfigured by bloody scratches. He felt a small hand clinging to his and looked down at his son. He fell to his knees beside him and hugged the boy tightly.

"Father, what's wrong?" asked Joaquin in amazement, because still he didn't understand the seriousness of the situation, still everything was just a game for him.

The poison-green dragon Veneno, nudging his master lightly with his nose, suddenly raised his scaled head abruptly. Dark, warned by him, wiped away his tears and followed the dragon's gaze.

Three black-clad figures had appeared in the middle of the plateau. They flipped back the hoods of their cloaks almost simultaneously, and Dark froze as he recognized the woman. It was none other than Selina, the last one he had trained as a priestess. Her long, ice-blue hair framed her delicate countenance. Her now compassionless blue eyes bored into his. Nothing about her reminded him of the shy, helpful girl he had taught eight years ago.

The man who formed the front of the trio was completely unknown to him. He was a good two meters tall, had pupil-less black eyes and a murderous smile on his pale face.

The third in the group was apparently an animal man. He had bushy, lux-like ears and whiskers. They adorned his corpse-pale face, while his yellow eyes pierced mischievously. His short, disheveled hair was black as night.

"We demand that you pay your debt, Dark, High Priest of the Dragon Mages and leader of the Corps of Dragons," the big man said with a dripping sneer. Nevertheless, it was an unmistakable demand, which Dark should comply with as soon as possible if he wanted to live to see another morning.

"Who are you to dare make any demands of me? Make yourself known!" the dragon mage fiercely demanded of the stranger. But the latter just grinned unimpressed and took a step towards the dragon, his rider and his son. Joaquin did a quick, - for all present - unpredictable stupidity. He pushed his father over the edge of the cliff with a powerful push of his almost limitless magic. Dark was so surprised he couldn't even scream. His gaze bored into the sad eyes of his only son, who had only a farewell for him on his silent lips. Veneno did exactly what the boy had hoped for - he jumped down the cliff behind his master.

Joaquin turned back to the three arrivals. "You were one of the beautiful people!" he said, looking at the man with the empty, black eyes. Then his gaze fell on the animal man. "And you were once a wealthy landowner, until a devastating fire that took everything from you - power, property, ... family." Finally, he turned to the young woman. "Your eyes only tell me that I know you," he finally said, confused and curious at the same time.

"Who we are doesn't matter," the beastman replied, growling. "You will come with us now to pay your father's debt."

"Agreed!" replied Joaquin, grinning mischievously. Selina raised her head in surprise. "If you can?"

"What do you mean, if we can?" laughed the malice of an elf whose soul had been thrown to the demons and only by a miracle remained unharmed. But he did not know that. Nor did he even know his true name. He knew only the one by which he was always called: Marek - Master of Vampires. The name meant nothing more than a will-less puppet, and that's exactly what he was, will-less, a servant for eternity.

The animal man made a move that no human could have dodged. But Joaquin didn't need to, because he clapped his hands once again. The dark creature froze in midair. Selina and Marek narrowed their eyes suspiciously as the boy clapped his hands a second time. The beast-man, looking incredulous and horrified, began to leap about wildly like a puppet to the beat of Joaquin's hands. His two comrades could no longer hold on and burst into roaring laughter.

Meanwhile, Veneno had caught his master and flown back to the plateau. He spread the limbs of his right claw and grabbed the boy in flight. The latter was still laughing and instead of shouting loudly in fear, he...