"Estara - Prolouge - The Last Of The Gold" by Katherine Bates

The Last of The Gold

            Joe Braddock stood at the side of the road, carefully hidden in the shrubs. His blonde hair, that some might have described as Gold, was cut fairly short and carefully covered from prying eyes by the hood of the cloak. His eyes matched the colour of his hair, even the once black pupils had turned Gold, long ago they had turned Gold and not a trace of the black pupils were left after that. He was an old man now, and he felt it, he was not put up for hiding in shrubs on winter nights, waiting for a certain rider to pass. He wanted to be back in the glades with his dragon, Haslan, not crouching in a ditch in the cold.

            The wind bit into him and he wrapped his white cloak tighter around him. He wasn’t so keen on the white cloak, he’d prefer to be wearing his gold cloth one with the gold armour underneath. But that wasn’t possible, he had to stay unnoticed, and that meant wearing unidentifiable clothes.

            Eneru stood further back, seemingly invisible except to Braddock. Strange for a white unicorn to be near invisible, Eneru should have been easily visible. Braddock didn’t bother to question how Eneru had managed to achieve invisibility; Braddock never questioned anything to do with magical creatures.

            Braddock turned his attention back to the road, as always it was deathly silent. What had made Haslan so sure that the rider would come this way, the long route? Why not take the shorter road, or cut across country? It would have been much quicker. Unless the rider had to come down this road, otherwise it would miss something important. Something like Braddock.

            Braddock didn’t like that thought, not one bit. He shivered uncontrollably and then trained his eye back onto the road.

Eneru looked up and sniffed the air tentatively, ears pricked forwards. Braddock glanced round at him and then turned back to the road, silently drawing the plain blade from its sheath. He looked at it with disgust, this was not going to help him against what he was going to face shortly, this hunk of metal was probably going to get him killed instead of the rider.

            He could see the rider at the end of the road, the huge silver stallion with the sliver-cloaked rider perched upon its back. The rider reined the horse in, hidden eyes searching the darkness, searching for someone, for Braddock. The last rider of the Gold shivered and put the blade on his knees, drawing his hands in front of him to ward off any searching spells.

            He felt one brush against his barrier and he hoped he’d made it subtle enough to avoid discovery.  The rider flinched slightly, obviously worried his spell had been blocked.

            The sliver-shrouded figure urged his horse forwards into a slow walk and came down the road with a fair amount of precaution. He knows I’m here, Braddock thought, but he doesn’t know where. And that gave Braddock the advantage, he knew exactly where the rider was.

            Carefully he took the white cloak off, the gold hair glinting in the moonlight, and the he stood up, the dull silver blade hanging limply at his side.

            The rider turned its face to him.

            ‘Ssso,’ it hissed, ‘the lasst of the Gold hass been ssent to desstroy the messsenger of the high lord of the Sssilver. You know you can never desstroy uss, we are now the ruling dragonss in the mountainss, the Black long ago forssoke their heritage, do not think for one moment that the Gold could ever take our placesss.’ He hung onto the ‘th’ and ‘s’, lingering onto them like a snake.

            ‘Never have the Gold aspired to rule,’ answered Braddock, ‘even the treacherous silver know that. We have only ever aspired to keep the natural order of the dragons, and if that means killing all of the silver then so be it.’

            ‘You are a very ssstupid man. You are the lasst of the Gold, you are no match for the might of the Ssilver.’

            ‘You have only one dragonrider, and he won’t allow any others. How do you expect to go against the rest of the dragons? All of them?’

            ‘Our masster iss sstrong, he will desstroy you all if you resist.’

            ‘I’ve enough of the polite talk.’ Braddock snarled, ‘Get down off your horse and prepare for your destruction.’

            ‘Fool,’ hissed the rider, ‘do you not sssee that you can never desstroy us completely, we ssshall always resssurrect our dead, we can never truly die.’

            ‘The blade of the gold strikes true, black hearted mortal. Though you may resurrect the dead, the sword of the gold shall tear the body into the void.’

            ‘And what do you carry now, the dull metal of the dragon fearing people’ssss blade? What power have you against I?’

            ‘None,’ answered Braddock, raising the blade slightly and setting his face rigid, ‘yet I will fight to death if I must.’

            ‘And what will it achieve? Foool, I’ll not waisst my time in combat with you. My masster is not wanting I to be late.’

            He kicked his horse in the sides viciously and it reared up, crying out in pain. Braddock leapt forward, hoping to stop the horse from charging on down the road. But the silver just leapt over him, forcing Braddock to his knees and leaving a deep gash in his head.

            Eneru leapt out of the bushes, visible now. Braddock scrambled up, casting the dull metal blade into the ditch; it would be of no use to him. Eneru leapt to the road, racing to catch up with the silver horse. The moon appeared from behind a cloud and Braddock’s golden hair shone brightly in the soft light; the bright golden eyes swirled and sparked as Braddock’s palm began to glow softly, magic was going to be his weapon now.