Monarchy's Plight

Chapter 17

There was a roar from inside the nest, and the wyvern guards standing outside rushed in. Goon followed from a distance, stopping at the entrance. He could see Alisa and another deino in the center of the nest. Surrounding them were shadow wyverns, and towering over them all was an enourmous shadow wyvern. Alisa had told Goon the wyverns had a queen, this must be it. "Sneaking into my nest," hissed the queen. "How foolish can you be." She leered over the deinos with bared teeth.

Without warning, one of the shadow wyverns cried out. It's body convulsed for a moment, and then it turned on its queen, leaping onto her back and biting into her neck. The rest of the shadow wyverns watched in shock as the queen furiously ripped the slave from her neck, threw it to the ground and crushed its head with her foot. Something jumped out of the wyverns body and slithered into the shadows before reappearing and jumping into another wyvern. That wyvern turned on the queen too, and was met with the same deadly response. This time, Goon caught sight of the thing jumping between the wyverns. It was his shadow, controlling them somehow. The shadow slaves ran to help their queen, tearing the traitor apart until another appeared.

The shadow wasn't doing much damage to the queen, but it was drastically decreasing the slaves numbers. Seeing an opening, Goon rushed into the nest and attempted to bite into the shadow queen's neck. She saw it coming instantly and swiped her tail, throwing Goon to the ground. She loomed over him. "Well, that was stupid," she hissed. She opened her mouth and a green substance oozed from her jaws. Goon looked across the nest to Alisa.

"If we survive this," he shouted, "I'm gonna kill you."

~CL1