Chapter Twenty-Three
The fiery blast shattered the peace of the sleepy valley, igniting an unsuspecting flock of sheep into a bleating mass of putrid smoke and dancing orange flames. Arach chuckled as an updraft expanded the tattered leather of his wings and vaulted him higher into the clouds. He adored the noise those senseless sheep made whenever they exploded. The sound distinctly reminded him of a bleating human screaming out in pain.
The heat of the inferno searing through the valley wafted hot against the softer tiles of his underbelly. Arach brought his great black wings together in one graceful motion, fanning the super-heated air deeper into the unsuspecting valley below.
He spied a small village nestled at the far end of the verdant tunnel. Just lovely. Arach chuckled into the wind. The humans would soon swarm into their ridiculous vehicles, those strange colored contraptions with the spouting tubes of water. Then they’d frantically soak down the walls of their homes with hopes of saving their meager possessions from his cleansing blasts. Naïve mortals. They placed so much importance on the trivial items of their fragile little existence. They were foolish enough to value things easily destroyed, things easily replaced. If the idiots had a flicker of sense, they’d hie themselves out of the valley and launch themselves into the ocean. Of course, if they did decide to take to the water, he’d just end their misery by calling up the kelpies.
Kelpies. Arach spread his wings and soared higher through the wisps of clouds, narrowing his eye slits against the rushing wind streaming against his face. He’d promised the kelpies a bit of pleasure after robbing them of their latest ship full of yowling mortals. Perhaps he should conjure a great storm to stir up a bit of chaos across the waters. Maybe that would please his watery friends. A good, stout boat-foundering maelstrom would sooth the anger churning in their watery little hearts.
Of course, he really cared less if the annoying water demons were pleased or not and wouldn’t lay odds that the wicked things had anything close to resembling a heart. But it never hurt to have an ally or two in any reality, especially since this particular realm now held the likes of Torin. Arach folded his wings against his body and speared through a particularly damp bank of clouds stretching across the horizon. An ally could be useful in maintaining a tamed world, especially with a stone guardian chieftain and his unlikely apprentice lurking about the land.
A stone guardian chieftain. Arach snorted out a cloud of roiling black smoke as though trying to clear his nasal passages of debris. Damn that old woman. Foolish enough to believe he’d consider a chieftain, even Torin, a viable threat. How dare she think she could mention the guardian, ask Arach to leave and he’d just tuck his tail and go. What the blazes did she think he was? Some cowardly lower level minion? Arach stretched out his wings and dove toward the ground, filling his gullet with an ember-fanning rush of air until his belly scales separated into a swollen mass of pressurized air.
No. He would not go. And he also would not lessen his playtime in this delightful world just to make them think he’d gone. Arach unhinged his lower jaw and vomited a volley of blue-white flames into the cluster of dwellings snugged against the base of a velvety green hill. Tiny dots of humans streamed from the blazing buildings on the outer edges of the chaos. The unfortunate victims trapped in the epicenter of the blast were incinerated on impact.
Arach chuckled as he curled the length of his body upward through the smoke. Perhaps a tussle with the stone guardian chieftain would even provide an enjoyable distraction. Igniting unsuspecting humans had its advantages but after a bit, it did grow to be quite boring. At least a meeting with a worthy foe would provide some sorely needed excitement.
Arach stretched out his wings and pulled his heavy body higher into the sky. Perhaps it was time to lure the chieftain out, annoy him a bit by threatening something dear to the leader’s heart. Arach flapped his wings down and held them close to his body, rising higher through the azure blue layer of the sky into the darker silence of star-dusted space. Rolling onto his back, he stretched his forearms behind his horned head and relaxed into the floating weightlessness of the void. Yes. He could think here. Plan the game down to the last detail and perhaps even pay off his unspoken debt to those damnable kelpies. With a chuckle, Arach closed his eyes. Life truly tasted much better when a bit of excitement loomed on the horizon.