Faith Of The Dragon Tamer (Book 2) by Cole Pain

stepped over the remains of his partitioned face and approached the table, cautiously testing each stone before he went. The box was a small, metal pyx, the type used to carry healing herbs to kings and men of fortune centuries before. It was rumored all pxyes had been blessed by the fates in order to magnify the properties of the herbs and expedite the healing process. Ren had always wondered how a pyx could be blessed by the fates if the fates were intangible. Now he knew. They were blessed by the Oracle’s Fate.
    Ren picked it up. It couldn’t be here to heal him. He was sick at heart, not in body. Could it be another message? A sweeping aversion resonated in every limb. He couldn’t take another message. The last three were more than he could endure.
    Small chiseled runes lining the edges of the pyx caught his attention. They consisted of a multiple backward-slanted Z’s, the symbol for victory, the same symbol etched on the hilt of his sword.
    What was victory without his mother, Aidan, or his own soul?
    The sun sunk lower in the sky. He needed to hurry back to the others. He was tired, but he desperately needed to see his friends.
    He placed the pyx on the table.
    “No more,” he said.
    The pyx’s sides collapsed. An explosion of colors shot skyward with the force of the ten winds. Ren fell. A stone’s jagged edge sliced through his shoulder.
    The colors pulsated faster and faster. The turbulence whipped around him, flailing his hair and threatening to tear his clothes from his body. The skin on his face burnt from the vitality of the color’s movement. The air surrounding him, the air providing life and nourishment, was whisked away, leaving him parched and drained. His lips dried, his eyes stung, the nausea in his chest caused him to swivel and relieve himself of his last meal.
    When he turned back to the colors they were forming a picture. Ren shielded his eyes from their brilliance but was unable to turn away from the images before him.
    As the wind beat and the colors pulsed, he saw an image of himself killing his mother with his sword, running her through with lethal intent. Then the scene changed. The colors turned dark as screams of horror filled his mind. He clutched his mother to him, watching as others fell around him in death. With each death he pulled Renee closer. The look on their faces was defiant and heinous. His mother, one of the most beautiful women in the Lands, was laughing at death.
    The colors surged again, forming an image of the silver dragon. He stood over it, as the painting showed, plunging his sword into its heart. Ren tried to turn away as the silver dragon’s violet eyes began to weep, but before he could the image changed into one of darkness.
    He walked toward the manacled dragon. Barracus’ face smiled in anticipation. The silver wailed a warning through its clamped jaws as he sliced a gouge deep into the silver’s flanks. The dragon howled in pain as fire spewed through its muzzle, creating a red ball that grew larger and larger, dominating the scene and blackening out the horizon.
    The colors pulsated again until they created an image of him kneeling before a man of darkness. The shadow moved toward him, swallowing his essence. Suddenly a ray of light shot through the dark man, shattering the shadow’s form into thousands of minuscule black pieces. He rose from the soot, drained and torn but whole.
    Then the scene changed. He saw himself walking toward the sheet of darkness and standing proud before it. As he drew his sword the darkness swallowed him. His body shuddered and twisted until he became a torrent of madness.
    When the scenes ended, the colors swirled faster. They became a stark white hand with long, sharp fingernails. The hand opened and moved toward him, wrapping around his neck and choking all air from his lungs.
    Just before he lost consciousness he heard them and he knew if he didn’t heed their voice the second image of each scene would become