Page 9 of Heart of Chaos (Chaosborn #1)

Chapter nine

Eisa

I followed Revna as we wove through the crowd, noting the tables full of men and women with pointed and rounded ears, both Chaosborn and drage.

“Food is there,” Revna shouted over the noise, pointing out a large counter covered in platters of mashed potatoes and vegetables and meat. There were baskets of bread and tureens of gravy, and a large keg in the corner sat poised to dispense ale into one of the many mugs piled next to it. “Let’s get some plates. You could use a large meal or two, I think!”

She dragged me toward the counter and pushed a plate into my hands. There seemed to be a lack of order to the process for filling one’s plate, but Revna pushed past some of the men, already tipsy with ale, to pile fish and beef and carrots on my plate.

“Here.” Revna pushed me onto a bench at one of the tables with other round-eared candidates and slid in across from me. ”Make friends.”

“Eisa?”

I looked down the table to see a pale-skinned woman, her hair a mass of auburn curls that spilled over her shoulders and her eyes a familiar, golden-brown.

“Branka?” I blinked, sure I was seeing things. Henrik had sold Branka a year before. It had left a hollow ache in my chest, the loss of someone as close as a sister. And here she was at the end of the godsdamned world.

“Gods, it is you!” she cried, pushing from her bench and rounding the table to wrap me in a fierce hug. “I never thought I’d see you again.”

“I take it you two know each other?” Revna asked, smiling faintly at our display.

“We were indentured together for many years,” I explained. “Branka, this is Revna. She’s one of the drage who found me.”

Branka offered her a smile and a hand, Revna accepted before diving back into her meal.

“How are you here?” I asked, pulling back to study Branka’s face. It was still perfectly heart-shaped, her cheekbones high and regal. That and her curvaceous figure were why Henrik had been offered so much money to buy out her contract. “Henrik sold you.”

“Him and about six other men,” she scoffed, waving a hand dismissively. Her tone was light, but I caught the edge of pain there. Of hatred and hurt and bitterness. “The last one just happened to cross paths with a drage who insisted they test me. How’s Sigrid?”

I smiled, pretending not to notice her pain. “Free,” I laughed, not sure I quite believed my own words. “The drage who found me bought out her contract.”

“Really?” Branka asked, sitting next to me on the bench. “Why?”

“To convince me to come, I think. How did they convince you?”

“Gods, anything was better than whoring,” she said with a grimace. Again, that sharp edge cut through her light words to a darkness that hadn’t been present before Henrik had sold her.

Perhaps I could convince Arik to go back and kill the bastard.

“Thank the gods Jorgen found me,” she added, squeezing my hands.

“Jorgen?”

“Ah, a beautiful lady summons me,” drawled a male voice behind me.

I looked around as a man the size of a mountain sat next to me. He had shoulder-length brown hair and, like most drage males, a short beard covered the lower half of his face. His pointed ears were adorned with silver rings, and his sleeveless tunic showed off tattoos that spiraled down his arms. A thin scar bisected his eyebrow, but it made him look more roguish than fearsome when paired with his wicked grin.

“Hello Revna. Branka,” he drawled. I was sure Branka blushed faintly at his attention. “Who is your lovely friend?”

Revna smacked the man’s hand as he reached for my braid. “Eisa, this is Jorgen,” she said, scowling at the man, who grinned and raised his hands in surrender. “And he normally has better manners.”

“Eisa,” Jorgen said, tasting my name as he held out a hand. I took it, but rather than shaking as I thought he intended, he lifted it to his bristly lips. “A pleasure.”

“Ignore him,” Revna suggested as I blushed. “He’s a massive flirt who has nothing of any substance to offer. One of the members of our reirhold—our fighting unit.”

Jorgen appeared not to notice Branka’s pretty flush as he grinned at Revna. “I’d happily show you everything I have to offer if you’d let me into your bed, Rev.”

“Kindra would roast you alive,” Revna replied dryly as I choked on my ale. Branka patted me on the back, a deeper shade of crimson staining her cheeks.

“I rather count on it,” Jorgen laughed, turning to me with a devious grin. “What about you?”

Revna brandished her fork at the huge man. “Don’t even think about it, Jorgen. This one burns blue.”

“Blue?” He pushed on to the stone bench next to Revna as if he had been invited and looked at me with interest. “Lucky bastard. Thought it would be fifty more years at least until Arik–”

Revna elbowed Jorgen so hard he cursed. I frowned, but Branka cut in before I could ask what he was about to say. “You really burned blue, Eisa? That’s really rare!”

“I still don’t actually know what it means,” I said, directing my irritation at Revna.

She sighed and put down her fork, looking aggrieved at the unfinished pile of mashed potatoes still on her plate. “When a drage is tested, their blood burns the color of the dragon most likely to bond with them. Gold for me, white for Arik.”

“Blue for me,” I finished. “So why is that rare?”

“Blue dragons are the most magically gifted. The largest,” Jorgen cut in, allowing Revna to stuff more potato in her mouth. “There have only been a handful in human history, and the last one to bond a human died a millennia ago.”

“Really rare,” Branka repeated, sounding awed.

“What color did you burn?” I asked, wondering how much Branka had already learned that I’d have to catch up on.

“Gold,” replied Branka proudly. “But frankly I’d have taken any color to get out of my contract.”

I turned and caught Jorgen looking at Branka with something a bit more intense than professional interest.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“Two months,” Branka replied. “It’s been all chores and training, but it’s still miles better than the brothel. Or Henrik’s. Here!”

She turned to the rest of the candidates sitting at our table and shouted over their combined chatter. “Everyone! This is Eisa! Eisa, this is Brita,” she pointed at a tan woman with brown hair who nodded politely, “Thyra,” a stout woman who looked like she could successfully wrestle a bronze into submission, “and Ivar,” who looked like he might be sixteen at most. “Jorgen found all of us in Dragejakt.”

“What about the other candidates?”

“They came in with other drage over the last two months. Mostly lordlings. These four, though,” Jorgen gestured to Branka and the others with his mug of ale, “have formed something of a bond.”

“Happy to meet you,” I said, exchanging handshakes around the table. I turned back to Branka. “What kind of training?”

“Mostly physical exercises and sparring.” She wrinkled her nose at the thought of it. “I don’t even know why we have to bother with swords if we’re supposed to be bonding dragons.”

“Because there are not enough drage left to defend Ironholm should the odemarksdyr make it past the gate,” Jorgen replied through a mouthful of bread. “And you won’t all bond. Better prepared than dead.”

“How likely is that?” I asked, my voice betraying my panic at the thought of wasteland monsters wandering into the dining hall.

Jorgen shrugged unconcernedly. “It happens once or twice a century. The iron in the mountain defends against rogue creatures here and there, but not when they attack en masse. Only dragon fire is guaranteed to destroy odemarksdyr.”

“That doesn’t matter right now,” said Revna, giving Jorgen an exasperated look. “Let’s focus on making it through the Rifting first.”

“And not dying,” Jorgen agreed, brandishing a fork over a slice of fruit pie.

“And how exactly do we not die?” I asked, hoping now was the right time to ask about the Rifting. “What exactly happens?”

Jorgen swallowed and turned to Revna with a scowl. “Elysia’s tits, Rev, have you told her nothing?”

“There’s a lot to cover!” she said defensively, swallowing her own bite of dessert. “She asks so many questions.”

“Haven’t changed much then.” Branka beamed at me between forkfuls of apple and berry filling.

“To answer your question,” I turned back to Jorgen, my own pie abandoned, “no. She hasn’t told me anything.” Revna made an indignant noise, and I amended, “Hardly anything.”

Jorgen chuckled as Revna scowled, stretching his beefy arms over his head. “Alright then, candidates, gather close. It’s story time.”

Revna groaned, but Brita, Thyra, and Ivar immediately turned their attention to the drage as he leaned forward and began to speak.

“Eons ago, there was a sorcerer.”

Revna groaned again, and Jorgen shot her a grin before continuing. “A human who tried to manipulate Chaos to serve himself. Back then, there were many such mages, but this sorcerer went too far with his magic. Pushed too hard. He tore a hole in the world itself, and from the Rift poured dark magic. It ravaged the land, turning all living things to death and ice and decay.”

“The Odemark,” I said.

“Yes. ” Jorgen nodded gravely. “It’s why sorcery is banned in the human realm. Too volatile for most humans to wield without causing serious harm. Anyway, with his power spent on stabilizing the Rift in the world, the sorcerer had none to fight the odemarksdyr—the monsters that emerged from the Rift. More and more poured into the world, and soon the human lands were overrun.

“But then, one day when the Rift was at its widest and the sorcerer was near death, something else came through. Something larger and stronger than the darkness. A force of light and the power that created the universe and all the worlds within it.”

“A dragon,” Revna clarified when we all looked confused. “Dragons are pure Chaos. That’s the source of their power. Creation magic.”

“But if Chaos caused the tear in the world,” I interrupted, “how are dragons not just as destructive?”

Jorgen laughed. “Oh, they are. But unlike humans, dragons can harness Chaos without ill-effect. They are one with it. And their world—whichever world lies on the other side of the Rift—had been overrun by the darkness that spilled into ours. Ravaged to the point of destruction. But in offering them a home in our world, the sorcerer discovered a problem. In their world, dragons had no corporeal form. They were the energy of creation, birthed from the collapsing stars that made up all things. There was no way to harness their creation magic to undo the destruction of the odemarksdyr.”

“Until the sorcerer offered the first dragon his soul,” Revna cut in, warming to the tale. “Relying on the one thing that humans have that is known to bind magic: the iron in their blood.”

“An accord was made,” Jorgen said. “The sorcerer would allow a dragon to share his body. Would find others willing to do the same. Would bind them to their souls with their blood and grant them corporeal form. In exchange, the humans would become drage; able to shift between man and dragon, their lives lengthened by the Chaos energy, their bodies protected by its magic.”

“But not all humans were able to survive being so near the Rift,” Revna continued. “Many died, burned up by Chaos. Many went mad, trying to force a second soul to bond to their own. Others were consumed by the dragon, unable to remember themselves as human or return to their human bodies.”

“The ones who did survive were different—able to harness the Chaos in their bodies and control the shift,” Jorgen added. “The ones whose blood burned with the Chaos in their veins. Not many, but a few select humans who had retained enough of the magic of creation to harness a dragon’s soul.”

“The Chaosborn?” I asked.

Jorgen nodded. “Ironholm was built near the Rift, the iron-rich rock serving to help repel the odemarksdyr so the drage could defend the human lands from their encroachment. And every ten years or so, the Rift widens, and the Rifting occurs.” He sat back on his bench and basked in the enraptured glow of the small crowd around him. “The souls of dragons seeking to escape their dying world and help fight the odemarksdyr come through to bond a soul strong and brave enough to accept them.”

Many other Chaosborn had leaned in to our table to hear the story, and they broke with a wave of chatter and excited discussion at the close of the tale.

“How do you know all this?” Branka asked in awe.

“The Book of Chaos,” Jorgen said, as if this were obvious.

“It’s all recorded in the archives, albeit in fancier language,” added Revna with a dismissive wave of her hand.

“I’m plenty fancy,” muttered Jorgen.

“If their world is dying, why don’t they all come through the Rift?” I asked.

“The Rift is widest for only minutes,” Jorgen explained. “Just a few minutes every ten years or so for as many dragons as possible to find a bond. They cannot cross the Rift until they have a human who invites them into their soul. As Revna said, even among the Chaosborn, there are losses.”

“Once there were over a thousand drage warriors on Ironholm. Now we number barely two hundred.”

“What happens if the drage die out?” I asked.

The table was silent, and I knew the answer.