Drakanox Snippet

Since The Tale of the Drakanox was featured yesterday on Bad Moon Rising, I’m sharing a passage today. This is one of the most dramatic moments of the book. Enjoy! And if you’re intrigued, you can read the full interview by clicking the link, above.

“Elldri!” Duessa cried.
She only had a moment to glimpse the struggling pile as the wagon rolled past. A guard straddled Elldri’s back, twisting her arm up and back. A second one strode close enough to aim a kick at her head.
“I’m coming!” Bettain tried to crowd between Tisha and Cylass, but the guardsman pushed her back from Tisha, who continued her swaying dance.
“Don’t get off the wagon,” he warned.
The next moment Tisha called, “Shield your minds!”
Before Duessa could even decide what she meant, Elldri’s shriek crashed into her mind. Her soul was splitting, torn apart from within. Something dark and horrible flooded through her. Alemin and Bettain were bent over, clutching their heads and wailing together as if they had all one voice.
It was like the Larder again. The anguished howl reverberated inside and outside her. In a dim way, she heard Cylass demanding what was wrong, and some vague reply from Tisha. Duessa could only rock and keen with terror.
Yards behind the wagon, a dark blur erupted where the soldiers had tackled Elldri. Duessa thought it was a fountain of blood, darker than mage robes, but then it fanned out into jagged tentacle arms. The pressure in her mind eased. She blinked and tried to understand.
The squid-like horror hovered, Elldri’s face amid blackened scraps of fabric. Her toothless mouth stretched in a hideous O. There was more screaming, but it came from the men who had been beating her. Shark-toothed tentacles shoved them off, but also carved flesh and slithered through gaps in their armor. Blood spattered around her. Elldri’s tentacles drove into their throats, silencing their cries, but then came worse — a sickening flood of desire to rend and kill and consume, not their flesh but their very souls.
There was so much of it. Too much. Duessa’s mind went momentarily blank as the sensations overwhelmed her.
“No, no,” Bettain was moaning. Alemin stared with dreadful recognition.
Duessa gagged and choked out, “Elldri’s a devourer?”

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