Viceroy Gwyn sat down in a chair in front of the table and ran his hands along the surface, marveling at the smooth, tingling sensation that ran up his arm. He deliberately placed his hand over the dragon's maw then chided himself for thinking anything might actually happen. It was a marvelous creation. He smiled. Well, well, it was the first positive thing the departed Viceroy had left him.
"Change is coming, wait and see," he said quietly. It might have been a breeze playing with the lantern flames, but for a moment, the table seemed to gleam a little brighter.
THREE
Konowa Swift Dragon didn't trust trees, not since he'd fallen out of one when he was a child of six years. His relationship with them had only gotten worse since then. He spun around quickly to face behind him, alert for any sign of movement. The game path he followed was bare, the trees to either side big, brown, green, and motionless. Good. Something buzzed by his ear and he slapped a hand against his neck then held it out in front of his face to examine the kill. He grunted with satisfaction; at least one black fly would no longer torment him.
"That'll teach you," he said, wiping his hand on the bark of a nearby tree. He grabbed the canteen slung across his shoulder and took a drink, looking around at this strange, sweltering forest that was now his home.
A miasma of sounds and smells assaulted him at every turn. Bugs, birds, and furred-beasts twittered, chittered, spewed, cawed, oozed, growled, yelped, and bit all day and most aggravatingly, all night. The trees secreted bucketfuls of cloying sap, the smell every bit as vile as a formal palace ball he'd once attended at the height of summer years ago in the Calahrian capital.