Chapter Three

The Sea Dragon’s Servant

Mog watched enviously as his mistress picked the remains of a ship from between her huge teeth. Mangier sharks, razorfish, and hideous kestel viperfins swarmed around the sea dragon, fighting over her leavings and attending her every whim. She paid them little heed. Only the Turbidus leeches, strange, twisted eel-like creatures fed on her own toxic blood, garnered any of the dragon’s attention.

The leeches allowed Tempest to control her fishy minions. They connected the thralls to the immense sea dragon—sending her sights and sounds and smells from far distant places. To disobey Tempest was to court crippling, leech-inflicted pain. The lifespan of a bad servant was, naturally, very short.

Mog was a good servant. Not as servile, perhaps, as the swarms of leeches that ringed the dragon’s neck like a living mane—but useful, and certainly powerful.

The dragonspawn flexed his hulking muscles and chewed the last bit of flesh from the bones of a drowned sailor. His mistress had destroyed many ships recently. Her servants, Mog included, delighted at the charnel larder laid before them.

Mog, though, knew that the mistress did not destroy ships in the Turbidus Ocean merely because she could—she did so because of the anger burning within her immense belly.

The dragonspawn did not completely understand his mistress’ fury. He had seen the object of her desire many times, but he could not comprehend what fascinated her about those small hits of isolated rock. In the part of his reptilian brain that he shared with Tempest, Mog knew these islands as the Dragon Isles. He knew that she, Tempest the Great, somehow stood barred from entering the isles. He knew that the magic standing in her way was very ancient and that it was called The Veil.

Mog had difficulty comprehending that anything could thwart his mistress. Yet when she or her minions tried to approach the isles, they found themselves confused and disoriented. Always the Dragon Isles slipped away, out of their grasp.

Tempest lusted after the islands. Once, they had been home to many good dragons of Ansalon—gold, silver, brass, bronze, and copper. Now, however, many of the metallic dragons had fled, and the isles stood as mere shadows of their former selves.

Tempest lusted after the islands and the genuine treasures they contained—not the sanguine, meaty treasures that thrilled Mog, but wealth and power and magic. Such things were the hoard of dragons.

But The Veil kept her out. And so Tempest summoned storms and vented her rage upon ships passing through the Turbidus Ocean. Ships she feared might pierce the Veil and reach the Dragon Isles.

Her servants grew strong and fat on the blood of her victims. Yet Tempest remained no closer to her goal.

Her desire to reach the isles burned in her mind and, therefore, it burned in Mog as well.

All of Tempest’s dragonspawn were strong, but Mog was the strongest. He was the first she had made, forming him out of the bodies of captured draconians as well as from her own blood and sinew and magic. He was, therefore, most closely connected to her, most clever, most powerful. He was the only one who could assume the shapes of both the sea’s denizens and his mistress’ two-legged enemies.

Mog was well-suited to the job of killing. Iron-like scales covered his humanoid body and limbs. The tips of his fingers and toes ended in sharp spikes. His webbed talons propelled him swiftly through the brine. His blood-red eyes easily pierced the gloom of the deep. Mog’s rasp-like mouth could rip the flesh from any enemy he encountered.

Yet all this was still not enough to penetrate The Veil.

Tempest’s unholy desire burned within him.

Mog groomed the blood from his scales and waited impatiently for the next ship.