In the dark of her room, tucked warm beneath her covers, Princess Lilya of Cush shook with fear as someone beat against the outside of her room’s door.
THOOM! THOOM! The noise echoed across the room’s chilled stone walls. Lilya imagined the wood flexing with each beating.
“Let me in!” a voice demanded. It was the deep voice of one of her personal guards.
She remained silent and sank further into the darkness of her covers. Maybe the guard would just leave.
The noise stopped and then seconds later something came splintering through.
She could hear the guard’s arm as it scraped past the splintered wood of the newly gashed hole to undo the lock.
There was a clicking sound and the door softly brushed open. “Where are you, princess?” the guard’s low voice came. His footsteps trod heavily on the floor. “Lying down to sleep like a good girl? Your father has promised you will bed me tonight. He lost a game of cards in the keep.” The guard’s knee pressed into the cushion of the bed.
Lilya moved quickly to the opposite side.
This wasn’t the first time her father had wagered her body in a bet.
“This won’t take long!” The guard clamored with his large calloused hands until finding her wrists and pinning her against the bed.
Lilya shook violently and winced. The reek of beer consumed his breath as he huffed down upon her and clumsily touched her curves.
“Hold still!” he commanded before clutching her wrists with one arm and pulling down her under garments with the other.
“No!” Lilya balked and wailed causing the guard to lose his grip on her wrists. She clawed his face with her nails and attempted to escape but he pinned her legs down with his own.
“The more you fight, the longer this will take!” the guard bellowed as he repined her wrists. He ripped a hole in the front of his pants with his spare hand and approached her below.
“No!” Lilya screamed again before the guard’s hand silenced her mouth. She bit him and thrust her right leg out from beneath him, bashing it into his groin.
The guard curled over in pain as Lilya fled from her bed and down the hall outside her room.
“You wench!” the guard screamed in pain.
He would soon follow her, Lilya knew. The torches burning against the castle walls blurred as she ran past their lights. “Help!” she called out. But no-one replied. Had the whole castle lain down to sleep?
The stone walls curled as she dashed in a circle and then down a flight of stairs. One foot after another, she descended the stairwell as her mind raced, certain that at any moment the drunk would catch her.
Suddenly her bare feet caught in a stone groove and she went careening to the floor.
From where she had come, the guard drunkenly stumbled toward her. “Now I’m going to hurt you as well!” His lips slumped on his face in his stupor. “Stay still wench, so I can drag you back to your room!”
Not tonight, Lilya thought while clamoring back to her feet and down the torch lit hall once more.
With a pivot on the cold floor she darted into the main hall where cloth tapestries depicting Cush’s history rippled in a breeze against the walls. A knight in one of them seemed to look at her with a stern bravery on his face and a bone white sword clenched in his fists.
“If only you were here now,” she whispered beneath her breath as she searched the great hall for somewhere to hide. Behind father’s throne? No. Surely he’ll look there.
If she hid anywhere in the hall, she decided, eventually the drunken guard would discover her. Her heart thumped rapidly against her ribcage. There were swords hanging with a shield against the far wall.
Within seconds she reached them. She pulled on a sword and it came loose from its brace. She could barely support its weight in her hands.
“Ha…!” the guard mocked her as he exited the stairwell and saw her struggling to wield the weapon. “A little role-playing before the festivities, young soldier?” His drooping smile revealed crooked rotting teeth. He licked them. The motion repulsed her. “Come to me, wench!”
Lilya held the sword in the guard’s direction while walking backwards toward the main hall’s massive outer doors. “Stay back,” she warned him.
He followed closely a few feet from her blade.
As her back met the wooden doors she swayed her sword toward the guard and pulled with all her strength on the heavy door behind her. It slowly gave way and she slipped from the torch lit hall into the pitch-black night.
Where to go? The scent of spring flora wafted through the air. She remembered the labyrinth to the castle’s side and darted for it.
“Not so fast, whore!” the guard’s voice startled her as his massive hand clutched her wrist, throwing her to the ground.
As she rose and began running, she thought, He will come. Her weapon braced close in the black night. And when he comes I will run this steel through him.
“Here, kitty kitty!” the guard mocked her.
The darkness was silent.
Something warm overcame her and a light in the distance rapidly came her way. It dove from the sky above and crushed into the ground, quaking the earth beneath her.
There was a faint red glow and the scales around its winged body rippled in the breeze. Muscles in the creature’s long face tensed as its pure nova white eyes pierced the guard’s own stare.
The guard backed toward the castle doors, quaking with fear, and stumbled into them. He fell to the ground. As he lifted his head and brushed his unkempt hair from his face he mumbled to himself. His hands shook and he looked frantically around.
The dragon walked forward, tossing dirt with its claws. “Leave her be,” the voice boomed forth from the dragon’s mouth.
“It speaks!” The guard found confidence through his intoxication and strode toward the dragon as he mocked it. He lifted a cragged stone from the earth close by and chucking it against the creature’s forehead. “All hail the great beast! Why don’t you just leave me and this pretty maiden alone and I won’t have my fellow guardsmen hunt you down and slay you.”
“You assume I’ll let you live.” Smoke fumed from the beast’s nose.
“This wench is my prize and I’m not leaving without her.” The disheveled guard retrieved the decorative sword from Lilya’s stunned hands and approached the scaly creature. “And besides…” He swung the sword in circles, passing it from hand to hand. “You assume I’ll let you live.”
“I warned you, boy.” The dragon dislodged a paw from the ground, thrust it against his attacker, and plunged him amongst a plume of dust in the earth.
“Let… me… go…” howled the guard as he pushed with all his might against the dragon paw that pinned him. He reached for the sword that was just out of reach beside him, but was unable to free himself from the massive paw.
“This is your last chance. Go in the castle and leave me and this young lady alone.”
As the dragon lifted his paw the guard clamored for the sword and rose in a threatening stance. He charged and opened his mouth to scream but never gasped a breath.
An inferno of light and flame exploded forth from the dragon’s mouth, instantly dispensing the man’s clothing in a puff of ash. His skin boiled before charring against his bones and soon in the licking flames of the dragon’s breath all that was left of the soul that once was, were his blackened bones as they tumbled to the ground.
The fire sucked back into the mouth from where it had come. “You are safe now.” The dragon’s massive paws churned soil as he approached Lilya.
She fainted against a patch of lush grass.
With all the tenderness a dragon could muster the beast scooped the maiden into one of his front paws and stared at the soft beauty of her face. Slowly her head rolled to the side and rested in a groove of his palm. He would look after her tonight; at least until she awoke and could take care of herself once more.
With a gust of his wings he w
as airborne in the night sky. Earth below him disappeared in darkness as he soared above, destined for his lair in the mountainous cliffs outside Cush.