The Villain Origins: The Dragon And The Fae
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Taryn Tary
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1: Unicorns
She ran as fast as she could. The wind whipped her fiery red hair, and her joints creaked from exertion.
She dodged the thorny branches that would have welted her face. Sweat beaded on her brow and upper lip. Again, she jumped over a fallen log, mindful not to lose her footing on the wet forest floor.
No, she couldn’t fall. She couldn’t afford to lose sight of her prey. They needed to pay; their blood needed to be on her hands.
Just like how they had ripped her soul into pieces.
With a loud scream, she leapt, momentarily suspended in the air, and used the momentum to tear into its gray back with her sword. Shrieking, it rolled on the ground before coming up on all fours, shivering and stretching, its spiked hunchback oozing smelly tar where her sword had torn into it.
A ghoul. A round hole for a mouth, filled with rotten spikes, screamed bloody murder before charging at her. Swirling her sword up into position, her lips tipped up.
“You are dead,” she said.
She swung her sword, tearing into its torso as she thwarted the ghoul’s long, sharp claws that would have disemboweled her like a piece of butter. Like a flying monkey, it latched onto a branch, gracelessly jumping from tree to tree as she narrowed her eyes on the target and hummed.
“Well, well, look at that… Dumb demon dancing on a tree.”
With a cry, it jumped onto her, its black void for eyes going wide for a moment before it slumped onto the floor. Dead.
“I did warn you, to be fair,” she grunted as she pulled her sword from where it impaled its heart. “You are just too dumb to get it.” She watched with loathing as the stinking demon’s body disintegrated into ashes and seeped into the soil.
No normal sword could kill a ghoul that easily unless they were beheaded or their rotten ball of a heart was torn out. She raised her sword, covered in traces of ash.
“We did good today, didn’t we, Volor?”
The sword gleamed red.
As long as a Viking sword, her Volor was anything but ordinary. The pommel was carved into a budding tulip at its base. Gold and red grip spiraled up to strong wings spread wide into the hilt.
The length of the double-edged sword was decorated with bright, sharp, small red zircons at the center along its length. When used with precise knowledge, red zircons helped heal the most dire physical wounds—but of course, there were consequences for that. And the true stones were precious, which only added to Volor’s value.
As valuable as Volor might be to someone else, it was more than that for her. Volor was a part of her. So was Valerie.
With that thought, massive black wings popped from her back. The pointed silver shaft extended where its vane ended halfway. The bottom set of feathers had their sharp silver shafts much longer and curved outward as ruthless, poisoned blades.
At one look, her wings looked like spiked armor protruding from her back, so no one would dare backstab her. She snorted at the irony.
Valerie always had her back. Even the thickest swords couldn’t cut through her with Valerie as her guardian.
Just as her poisoned hatred had grown inside her for two centuries, so had Volor and Valerie grown in strength. But two centuries ago or now, at the end of the day, only they were there to witness the miserable end of her life.
She, Volor, and Valerie were one soul. None existed without the others. Come what may, she’d never trade any part of her soul for the ordinary.
“Let’s go, lassie.”
Valerie flapped, ready to take off just as Volor disappeared into thin air.
But she whipped around at the scrunching of grass. Volor was sharp as ever, gleaming in her outstretched hand.
“Show yourself and I will show you mercy,” she called out. Her amber eyes darted from tree to tree. Flecks of red started seeping into her pupils.
She tightened her hold on the sword. “Ambush, and I will disembowel you!”
Except for the occasional sounds of frogs and crickets, the sudden silence of the forest overwhelmed her, making her notice for the first time how thick the forest was. The canopy barely allowed a sun’s ray or two in.
A small, timid form peeked from behind a big tree. Dressed in a shaggy, sparse white dress, a curtain of blond hair fell around the girl’s face. Smears of red coated her hands and legs.
“Who are you?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at the girl’s rapidly healing wounds. Impossibly fast, even for her.
“Haveneya,” the girl answered, her sea glass green eyes twinkling with an otherworldly gleam.
She pointed Volor at Haveneya. “And just what are you, Haveneya?”
The girl seemed to hesitate for a moment. “Unicorn.”
Surprised, she stood still for a beat. In her five hundred and seventy-seven years of life, she had never heard any true tales of unicorns.
Even in the otherworld, filled with demons, beasts, night hunters, wolvens, faeries, and elvens, unicorns were a myth—rumored to be harmless creatures who could never be confined or shackled.
Not to mention the talk of immortality by drinking from a unicorn horn, though she doubted the truth of it. But since they never revealed their identity to anyone, it could all be just rumors.
Hell, she hadn’t known they were real until now. Asking this girl about drinking from her severed horn was a bit too much, even for her.
Warily, she parroted, “Unicorn?”
The girl nodded. “Thank you for saving my life.”
She raised a brow. “I didn’t mean to. I thought unicorns were just a myth?”
Haveneya just smiled. “I will find you to return your favor.”
Before she could say anything, the girl started shifting. She watched in awe as the girl’s limbs turned into white, furry legs.
In no time, a small, brilliant white pony stood before her, with glittering white wings and a small golden horn on its forehead. Fairy dust exploded in the wake of its flapping wings. It nodded its head at her and disappeared.
She stood, baffled by the encounter, and then blew out a breath. “So they actually exist. Here I thought we were the creepiest, Valerie.” She shrugged. “Let’s go.”
Wings flapping, she flew into the quiet stretch of a vast expanse of forest somewhere on earth. This island was just that—full of forest and rivers.
Life hardly extended beyond occasional wildlife.
She flew into her cramped old hut made of mottled and cracked brick.
Mawa sat outside on the grass, cooking something up again in her stone stove. She was a wrinkled old bat with white hair and still perfect teeth. Teeth were Mawa’s obsession.
How a two-thousand and eight-hundred-year-old witch managed to preserve all of them was beyond her.
But then, Mawa wore a necklace made of teeth from the beasts she killed. The tiny witch was unbeatable.
She had made the mistake of underestimating her—until Mawa knocked her ass off the ground.
Her mind started to wander. Two hundred years ago, during the attack—the day Yodam almost perished, because of me—she escaped with an inch of life from that godforsaken, bloody cave.
Of course, she wanted every last demon dead. She trusted Corey.
And in return, he betrayed her and left her an empty shell.
She wanted to kill him that night. But she was fatigued, exhausted, and undernourished—moreover, in grief, horror, and denial for Yodam, her beautiful kingdom in blood and ashes.
So she flew, after finally escaping months of their captivity and torture. She flew as far as Valerie could take her.
And then darkness swallowed her. She was as sure as the last rays blinding her eyes that she would be found passed out in the woods and then tortured to death.
But Mawa found her, scrawny and battered. Mawa had brought her to “earth,” but she didn’t care about her new “guardian.”
She was numb to her core, except for bloodlust.
And this time, he would be on his knees begging for mercy that will never come.
Mawa was full of wisdom and powerful magic. She picked up more than a few tricks from her.
Mawa turned her into a ruthless killing machine, the one to strike first.
She helped her understand a part of who she was, something the young rebel in her never understood. Now she could do telekinesis.
At first it was hard, but then she had a few centuries to practice, and now she could lift a couple of rocks by dancing her fingertips with no effort.
She could send balls of energy to strike her opponent, but it always drained her.
Besides, Volor was enough for her. Volor could cut clean through almost everything now.
And Valerie fluidly covered her back during any attack, working in sync with her, never throwing her off balance.
All three of them together were a deadly combination.
“You stink, scrawny,” Mawa said. That’s what Mawa called her. Scrawny.
And that was just fine with her. She despised her real name anyway.
“Really? I didn’t know. Maybe you stink more,” she replied.
“And I will feed you maggots, scrawny!”
“Ooh, joy. I wonder how that will be any different from that.” She jutted her chin toward a brewing pot of earthenware, smirking as she stepped into the hut. She was followed by a string of two thousand years’ worth of curses from Mawa.
They always bantered, but she just knew Mawa enjoyed it as much as she did.
Mawa always said that she was something more, to go figure. But she wanted nothing more than to kill the arsehole who tore up her life.
So that’s what she did. Every stray demon she found, she killed.
She took her sweet time killing a stray dark fae during those rare opportunities—after all, they killed Pa and Beau without any mercy.
Only God knows if Ru was still alive.
But she was a lot more powerful now. Her chest never thundered in fear anymore, nor did she flee.
Her sword was always raised, and her steps never faltered.
And just like Mawa, she no longer felt any emotions except betrayal, hate, and anger.
Love, fear, sadness, and… happiness? The very word her name stood for was long forgotten.
Trust? It was a variable eliminated from her equation.
Not a single Calla bloomed in over two hundred years. Thus, her equation was simple: kill as much as she could before she was condemned to hell.
In hell, she would rule in the middle of these monsters and then…
It would be payback. Again.
