PREFACE
Jiua beholds the fire swallowing her tribe. The intensity of heat emitting from the blazing flames is burning against her body. Her porcelain face with golden flecks on either side of her cheeks gleamed against the scorching blue fire. She climbed the highest cliff of the Stegardian forest; where once every Stegard lived in liberty before an incursion by the first bloods race of the Medralians. The Medralians obliterated the peace which was, a long time ago preserved from the inception of their ancestor: The great Stegardian Rhineas.
When the Medralians realised they cannot rule the Stegards they vowed to destroy them.
‘We’re the children of nature brought up by the Gods themselves.’ Jiua thought staring down the cliff hearing the chaos of death. She made her prayers to the God of fire Emone, the one who bestowed them with fire.
The truth that Jiua is the last surviving Dragon soul had frightened her to her bones. She knows she has to keep the bloodlines alive, she has to avenge the deaths of her cult and other Stegards. Her Dragon cult is the strongest amongst them, she’d seen her brothers, father and her family fighting against the Medralians, sacrificing their lives and now it’s her turn, she’s the only one who could bring them justice.
Her golden eyes welled up with hot tears. She clenched her fists, jagged veins glowing with the streaming fire through them. Her tearful eyes now glared with rage, her whole body shuddered and she was just to explode. She knew she can’t fight them alone, she needs more souls by her side. Her mother had told her once when she was young and didn’t yet get her fire that they were all born from the fire. Now she is witnessing her kind and their flesh melting in fire and their bones turning into specks of dust. She couldn’t believe her eyes, because she knew her mother would never lie. Indeed, Jiua’s mother was right. The fire which was ravaging their existence is not the fire which runs through them. It was blue like an ocean. It was the ice fire so cold that it burns – the evil fire of Zohua.
She panted heavily and steams of agitation drew out with her exhaled breath. She looked at the mountain ridged over the sea across the green cluster of forest beneath.
‘The Abode of Emone where he lived under the river of flames which goes deep into the stomach of the sea burning everything in its way, but not us. We’re his children, we’re the Dragon soul.’ Jiua recalled her mother’s words and recited them along with her mother’s voice in her head. She outspread her arms like a Dragon unfurls it’s wings before his giant flight and jumped down the cliff. Her red fiery hair waving behind her as she goes down cleaving the wind, and exploded into a huge ferocious Dragon.
She roared in grief spitting out the raging fire melting the rocks of the cliff, flapping her wings flying even rapidly than the wind itself. She lifted her huge body upward briskly and surged up erupting like an volcano, in the flash of moments she was flying above the clouds spreading her giant wings going like an arrow loose from the bow, spinning. The soft wind brushed through her rough long spine covered with spikes. Her tail emerging from between her paws – low behind her wings – helping her to get control over her flight maintaining the balance. Her gigantic eagle claws were hanging limply behind her breast. Jiua loved the skies, flying above the clouds gazing down at the little huts of humans, or the big stony castles of the first bloods high lords, they all looked puny, little and weak from above
