The Dragon Kings' Forbidden Witch

Thorne was moving before his conscious mind fully caught up with his instincts. He was on his feet, abandoning the archives, running through the corridors of the palace with the focused purpose of someone who understood exactly what was happening and exactly how bad it was.

He’d been waiting for this. Expecting it. Dreading it. The curse was worsening, and sooner or later, one of them was going to lose control completely.

He just hadn’t expected it to happen now.

Thorne rounded a corner and nearly collided with Draeven.

For a split second, both brothers froze, their eyes meeting. Communication passed between them without words, a shared understanding born of growing up together, training together, surviving a curse together.

”Kaelen,” Draeven said. Not a question.

”The training grounds,” Thorne confirmed. ”The curse....”

”I know,” Draeven interrupted. ”Come on.”

They ran together through the palace, down corridors and across courtyards, moving with the speed that only dragons could manage. Behind them, guards tried to keep up and quickly fell behind. Servants pressed themselves against walls as the two kings passed.

The morning sun was climbing higher in the sky, painting everything in shades of gold and crimson.

And ahead, from the direction of the training grounds, smoke was beginning to rise.

***

The training grounds had transformed into something from a nightmare.

Half the field was on fire. Not just burning, but destroyed. The grass was blackened char. The wooden training dummies were reduced to splinters and embers. The canvas bags were torn apart, their sand contents mixed with ash and scattered across the ground.

And in the center of this devastation stood a dragon.

Captain Rhen had managed to escape the dragon’s immediate attention, pressing himself against the far wall of the training ground and praying that his stillness would make him invisible. Around him, the other warriors had mostly fled, scrambling to escape the confines of the training ground, some of them carrying injured companions.

But there was no true escape from Kaelen’s dragon form.

He had keyed on the movement of one of the fleeing warriors....a young soldier, barely more than a boy, and was stalking the man with the focused intensity of a predator hunting prey. The warrior ran, but Kaelen’s dragon form was faster, far faster. The dragon’s wings beat once, twice, and then he was airborne, his claws extended, his mouth opening to reveal teeth meant for tearing flesh.

Then he froze.

His entire body went rigid in mid-air, his attention snapping toward something else. Every muscle in his dragon form tensed, and a sound that was somewhere between a keening cry and a roar tore from his throat.

Draeven stood at the edge of the training ground, his entire body shimmering with golden light.

His transformation began.

It was different from Kaelen’s wild, desperate change. This was controlled. Deliberate. A king assuming his true form not in panic or loss of control, but in response to a direct threat.

His skin began to shimmer, to ripple like water reflecting firelight. The golden light that had been tracing across his body suddenly intensified, becoming brilliant enough to hurt to look at. His clothing tore as his body began to expand, restructuring itself.

His arms lengthened and thickened, his fingers fusing together into something more like digits, his nails hardening into claws. His shoulders broadened impossibly, muscles restructuring into something built for raw power rather than any human optimization.

His spine arched, and vast wings began to unfold from his back. Where Kaelen’s wings were delicate and elegant, built for speed, Draeven’s were massive and powerful, built for raw force. The scales that began to emerge were a deep golden color, almost orange in places, like molten fire given physical form.

His face restructured...his jaw elongating, his teeth growing wickedly sharp, his eyes burning with such intensity that they seemed to emit their own light. When he opened his mouth, fire flickered between his teeth.

The transformation continued, and Draeven grew. Larger than Kaelen’s dragon form. More muscular. More obviously built for combat.

When the transformation completed, he was easily fifty feet from snout to tail, his wings spreading nearly sixty feet when fully extended. His presence was overwhelming, the sheer mass of magic and raw power radiating from him was enough to make the air shimmer.

Thorne’s transformation followed immediately after.

It was different from his brothers’. Where Draeven transformed into raw power and Kaelen into elegant precision, Thorne transformed into something built for intelligence and cunning.

His scales were a deep midnight blue, almost black, shot through with veins of silver that created patterns reminiscent of stars. His wings were narrower than his brothers’, built for maneuverability rather than raw force. His body was smaller than Draeven’s but larger than Kaelen’s, built for speed and flexibility.

But his eyes....his eyes were fully black, and they held an intelligence that was almost more unsettling than the raw fury visible in Kaelen’s eyes or the controlled power visible in Draeven’s.

For a moment, there was a terrible silence.

Three dragons stood in the training ground, the dragon brothers, their ancient power fully manifested, their forms terrible and beautiful and utterly inhuman.

Kaelen’s dragon form keened.....a high, sharp cry of distress and rage, and Draeven’s responded with a deep, rumbling roar that shook the very foundations of the training ground.

Draeven moved first.

His massive body crossed the training ground in what seemed like a single bound, his claws scraping deep grooves in the packed earth. He didn’t attack in the way a normal dragon might attack....all teeth and claws and rage. Instead, he moved with the practiced precision of someone who had trained for combat, who had spent decades learning how to fight.

He was trying to subdue Kaelen, not kill him.

But Kaelen’s dragon form didn’t understand that distinction.

The pale silver dragon lunged forward to meet Draeven, and the collision between them sent a shockwave across the training ground that knocked the remaining warriors off their feet. The impact created a cloud of dust and sent debris flying outward in all directions.

When the dust cleared, the two dragons were locked together, their bodies intertwined, their claws seeking purchase on each other’s scales.

It was a brutal display of power.