Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Dragon Fall
    Dragon Fall
    Dragon Fall
    Ebook178 pages3 hours

    Dragon Fall

    By Barbara Bretana

    5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Yeah, I was the spoiled only son of a rich set of parents. Trouble was, my uncle murdered them and I couldn't prove it. I wasn't the easiest kid to raise and my drinking, drug use and party attitude didn't help. Still, that didn't give my uncle the right to treat me like I was bonkers. I stole his Ferrari and went to a friend's party. got drunk, crashed and woke up inside an old mine. I thought I was only a little bunged up, it turned out I was dying. Which opened my mind up to the creature that had been ensorcelled inside the mine for the last thousand years. A dragon. He rescued me after I promised to free him. He did more than rescue me, he opened up a whole new world where I had the power my uncle wanted.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBarbara Bretana
    Release dateOct 29, 2014
    ISBN9781310918001
    Dragon Fall
    Author

    Barbara Bretana

    I've been writing and reading since the age of three. Anyone who knows me knows I'm nuts about horses, reading, dogs and painting. Went to school in Vermont, Castleton State and Pratt/Phoenix School of Design and found out college wasn't for me. Worked with Developmentally Disabled and loved it. Went back to school for my CNA license and decided to try writing for a career as I keep breaking things like my rotator cuff, discs and whatnot. Getting bucked off your horse, well, I don't bounce like I used to. I'm the one in the brown coat.

    Read more from Barbara Bretana

    Related to Dragon Fall

    Related ebooks

    YA Science Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Dark Tales

      Dec 2, 2021

      Dark Tales
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      What The Magpie Says

      Oct 16, 2022

      What The Magpie Says
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Two Poems by Phillip B. Williams

      Dec 15, 2017

      The masters are yet dead. Wanting to be human,I tried to rewrite The Waste Land. The canon’s reachcasts ruinous light. The masters’ pens breachthis page where, above, my own hand spectates. Babylonrisen, exorcism in reverse, whose nature upended now?

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      KILL A STRANGER Chapter 2

      Dec 31, 2020

      If you’ve never been in a situation like this before, you just can’t understand it. I’ll be blunt. It was absolutely terrifying. The nightmare started just like that. Bang. I literally woke with a start, and realised that I was being flung around in

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Sweet Sorrow

      Aug 19, 2019

      Sweet Sorrow
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Sound Of Bongo

      Oct 2, 2019

      The Sound Of Bongo
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Haunted

      Sep 27, 2023

      Haunted
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Averted Vision

      Sep 1, 2022

      Averted Vision
      25 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Hollywood, Ending

      Feb 13, 2018

      Hollywood, Ending
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Longer on Moon

      Sep 22, 2022

      Longer on Moon
      19 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary

      Jun 17, 2020

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary

      Jun 17, 2020

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Song Of The Woods

      May 23, 2022

      Song Of The Woods
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Penny

      Jul 2, 2020

      Penny
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The First Day: One man’s walk to his own cremation.

      Aug 7, 2014

      The fog was thick when I left my bedsit and ventured out alone into the barren and murky city. I was heading for what used to be called a crematorium and these days is known as a funeral parlor. I had received a notice instructing me to arrive by 9 a

      15 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Little Love

      Apr 5, 2023

      A Little Love
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Dragonfly Season

      Aug 26, 2020

      Dragonfly Season
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Speck In the Sea

      Jun 13, 2017

      A Speck In the Sea
      15 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Zeno’s Paradox

      May 30, 2024

      Zeno’s Paradox
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Five Poems

      Jul 1, 2022

      You have to go back to being immature,a timed regression essentialto running up a further lifetime of debt. I owe you, the polar bear says,an icy French OUI. A kiss on both cheeks,plus a wish to sit on a bench at the center of a green-painted park,yo

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Last Survivor

      Aug 26, 2020

      MY FRIEND ROSA AND I talked about the weekend as I settled into work in the Port Authority offices on the sixty-fourth floor of Tower One of the World Trade Center. Rosa was the same age as me, 31, and we loved catching each other up on our lives. My

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Price of Moving On

      Aug 10, 2024

      Content Disclosure: Mild Violence, Supernatural Themes The river had a proper name at one point, but that name moved on, perhaps over the Ferry toward the supposedly greener pastures of its opposite banks, just like everyone else in this damned unrea

      18 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Cricket League

      Jan 1, 2020

      Ivy Lugbill, age 8 Indianapolis, IN I was so excited! My dad and I were going camping! After we packed all our stuff, my dad said, “Hop in!” I grabbed the paper towel roll binoculars I had been making and jumped into the car. It was a really . . . re

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Change of Direction

      Jan 24, 2020

      Change of Direction
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Seven-Year Cycle

      Jul 5, 2022

      The Seven-Year Cycle
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Change

      Aug 8, 2019

      The Change
      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Artefacts

      Nov 4, 2021

      Artefacts
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The White Fox

      Oct 13, 2017

      The White Fox
      10 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Dragon Fall

    5/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Dragon Fall - Barbara Bretana

      Dragon Fall

      Copyright 2014 by Barbara Bretana

      Cover Art by Barbara Bretana

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

      .

      Dedication

      To Lily who helped me more than she knows, and to Peg as always for her support and input. Yes, I do curse my computer and talk to it like it can hear me. Hal, are you listening?

      He pass’d the flaming bounds of place and time;

      The living throne, the sapphire-blaze,

      Where angels tremble, while they gaze,

      He saw; but blasted with excess of light

      Closed his eyes in endless night.

      Gray, The Progress of Poesy. 2.l.12

      Now, I will believe there are dragons.

      Shakespeare.

      Chapter 1

      I finished my last beer, burped up the suds and threw the empties into the back seat of the car. It was my uncle’s Ferrari although my money had bought it. I leaned against the door of the Audi A5 that belonged to the party host and guzzled the last dregs out of the can.

      A semi-circle of expensive cars were parked on the shingle beach close to the bonfire. We had started the fire earlier and now it was dwindling to low flames and dark ashes. The air smelled of a myriad mix of beer and vomit, smoke and salt from the waves rolling ponderously up on the shore. The water was gray and cold; a storm was brewing out in the channel, stirring up what was usually a placid beach.

      There were forty of us; teenagers drunk almost to the point of being comatose. Some of us were lying on blankets with others in the back seats of their stolen or borrowed vehicles. A few of us managed to stand upright without falling over the fire. It was nearly two in the morning; we had been going at it since four the afternoon before. What were we celebrating? I remembered it as a party celebrating Christian Monmouth’s first ‘A’ in second form. Since he’d been kicked out of seven private schools; that was a grand reason to celebrate.

      I’d sneaked into my uncle’s garage, stolen the keys to his Ferrari and taken off before the butler; chauffeur and my babysitters could find and stop me. Of course, the major dose of ex-lax I’d spiked their coffees with had ensured me an unimpeded get-away. They were all too busy on the loo. When I left the house, I could hear their groans of misery all the way down the drive.

      In the Ferrari, it took me only 20 minutes to reach the motorway and in forty more, I was nearly sixty miles up the coast where I met with the rest of the group and we caravanned to the beach where we consumed three kegs and as many cases. There wasn’t one of us sober enough to walk, let alone drive but that didn’t stop any of us, including me.

      For fifteen minutes, I fumbled trying to find the keys in the ignition, and another five to turn them, put in the clutch and shift. Backing up was beyond my skill. I lurched forward, stalled and started over.

      Someone fell across my bonnet and I hung my head out the window to peer blearily at the limp form of a tall blonde teenager. It was Christian, the party honoree. He lifted his head to stare at me. Going so soon? he drawled with his upper crust accent.

      Got to get this car back before daybreak, I told him.

      Don’t drink and drive, he giggled and slid slowly off into a heap by the wheel. I got out, staggered over to him, grabbed him by an ankle and dragged him off to the side where no one would run over him.

      Getting back into the bucket seat, folding my six-foot length in while drunk was a task I had to concentrate. I had stalled the engine, had trouble restarting it until I remembered to put it into neutral and disengage the clutch. She purred sweetly as I popped the clutch and took off in a spray of gravel.

      I made it all of four miles before I missed the curve, bounced off the guardrail and plummeted a hundred feet down the cliff overlooking the beachhead.

      Without a seat belt, I went out the open window, falling through tree limbs that slowed and cushioned my fall. I landed on something that bounced under me, heard the car hit only feet from me, the ominous cracking of wood and I was falling again down a dark shaft.

      When I finally came to an abrupt stop, I could not breathe. Far above me, I saw the faint light of a star. I tried to move. Pain was everywhere. My arms, legs and head hurt. I swallowed blood, blinked it clear from my eyes. I moaned. I could only get one hand to move and reached out to grope around me. My fingers explored broken wood, sand and gravel. I smelled an odd musty odor, of iron and mold. I must have landed on the buried wooden hatch of an old copper or iron mine. This area, I remembered, had once been a stronghold of mining villages.

      I had no feeling below my waist, had no idea what was going on with my legs, did not know that they were hanging off over another hole. I heard the dripping of water, the trickling of gravel and then the bottom fell out from under me. I fell again, this time landing with a force that knocked me out.

      ***

      My eyes were open. I could feel with one hand that they were open, but I could not see anything, not even the glimmer of starlight. I was ice-cold, could feel myself shivering, and knew if I lay there much longer without getting help, I would die.

      I was no longer drunk enough to not care; I felt every ache and pain from the knot on the back of my skull to the sharp rock poking me in the lower hip.

      I heard a rustling to my right and froze, thinking there were vipers down here with me. My conscious mind did not recognize that it was too cold for snakes.

      My one usable hand scrambled for rocks, then dug into my jeans pocket for my cigarette lighter. Consciousness faded.

      ***

      I want to die, were the first words I uttered before I was fully aware. Let me die.

      I was so cold. My hand was gripping something so tightly that it was numb. I brought it to my face and ran my tongue over it, exploring the outlines of the object. I tasted plastic and butane, realized I was holding a lighter and flicked it.

      Light bloomed and I lifted my head to stare through filmy eyes at a shadowy cavern filled with rocks and debris. Old timbers lay scattered, willy-nilly along with other mining gear. I had landed on a pile of sand and scree that had cushioned my fall enough so that it hadn’t killed me outright.

      I knew I was paralyzed with no hope of rescue. My cell phone was missing so I had no way to call for help if even a phone would work down here.

      The dry rustle came again, and I felt warmth creeping up my back and into my fingers. I knew my body was shutting down, my mind spiraling into a dark, warm core where a brilliant spark was all that existed.

      I thought, I'm dying.

      I heard a deep voice thrum in the air near my ear. ‘Who are you, man and why are you dying?’

      Help! I yelled and was stunned that my own voice was a feeble croak.

      ‘Ah,’ the mellow, somber voice went on. ‘I see by your thoughts you are a puny broken man creature. You are dying. Do you not wish to live? Heal yourself.’

      I laughed in my head and thought back to this strange voice. I must be crazy. I can’t heal myself. I’m too broken. Broken inside and out. Let me sleep. It doesn’t hurt anymore.

      ‘Man,’ it said urgently. ‘Do not go into that last dark, for you can hear my thoughts and you can bring the light of day to me. For a thousand of your years, a mighty wizard named Penndennis has trapped me in this black cavern, spelled me here. He cursed me to remain until man could speak to me, mind to mind and under the light of day. Dying, you pierce the veil that keeps my thoughts from yours.

      ‘Help me free this prison and I will rescue you.’

      What are you? My thoughts came slower and slower.

      ‘I am the Light that Pierces the Darkness Before the Dawn of the Night Wind. I am a Dragon.’

      Dragon? I’m talking to a dragon, I mused. I could feel everything unraveling, didn’t care, nothing hurt anymore. I was warm, cozy, curled up in my head. But the voice kept on, nagging me.

      What? I snapped, angrily.

      ‘Do not go so easily into the darkness, man.’ Something hard and scaly wrapped itself around my middle and I had the sensation of flying upward. ‘Do one thing for me,’ it coaxed. ‘And if you still want death, I will give it to you.’

      What, then?

      ‘Light your light and say these words, I release you, Dragon.’

      I felt a warm gust of sulfuric air hit me in the face and a measure of strength and feeling came back. When the pain came roaring back, I felt a delicate nip of fangs on my neck and had the impression of something huge hanging there. I felt a fiery rush through my veins and a measure of clarity came to me.

      ‘I have given you a taste of dragon blood,’ it said. ‘It will hold you until you can get human aid. Now, say the words.’ I lit the lighter and stared into a multi-faceted jewel of an eye as large as my own head. Shadows bounced off an opalescent hide mostly in tones of emerald and bronze. I saw that he was horned with a forked tongue and fangs as large as my hand.

      ‘Say the words,’ he repeated, and I gasped them out. There was a brilliant flash of light that illuminated the entire cavern around me. His wings unfurled and chains of light glowed in the flame of the lighter, as he leaped into the air carrying me in his front legs. Within seconds, he was airborne, out of the mine and soaring through open skies above the wreck of my car. Smoke spiraled from the ruins marking the spot.

      ‘Where do you wish to go, man?’ it asked me, and I heard it laugh gently in my head.

      ‘I am not an it, I am Night Wind and I am FREE!’ My head lolled back, and I surrendered to the darkness.

      Chapter 2

      Valentine Tregarron? I did not know the voice that called my name, but I recognized the uniform of a medic and the flashing blue and red lights that surrounded me.

      Don’t move, Val, he said and slipped a foam collar around my neck. They cut my clothes off, poked, stuck, and tied things to me. I felt the jerk as they lifted me up on a gurney and transported me not to a waiting ambulance but to a helicopter that was waiting on the scree. Three people climbed in with me, doing things to me that hurt. Both my arms were sporting IVs and the medic placed an oxygen mask over my face.

      Valentine, do you hear me? What happened? We found your car at the bottom of the cliff. Do you know what day it is? Valentine, many people will be doing many things to you. Valentine? Valentine…

      ***

      Lights flashed by overhead. The sensation of flying down a long tunnel of light scared me. I remember trying to reach up and grab hold of anything to try to stop the slide but there was nothing I could grab onto. I cried out. A woman’s face leaned over mine. She wore a mask and all I could see were her eyes. Brown eyes behind a green mask.

      You’re going into surgery, Valentine. You have a broken arm, two compound fractures of both legs and a possible spinal fracture. You also have a concussion and a collapsed lung with broken ribs. Can you tell me what happened?

      Car went over cliff, I mumbled into the mask. Dragon?

      What? He’s incoherent. He ejected before the car went over. His injuries are consistent with an ejection. God, he’s broken nearly every bone in his body. Shit, we’re losing him! BP’s falling! Paddles! The voices faded away.

      ***

      I walked through a formless white mist that had a pearly sheen to it; I followed the brightest line to its source and saw that it was the glow from a yawning dragon. It was over thirty feet long but curled around itself, its eyes glowing like fire opals. Little puffs of fire came from its nostrils, which were as big as my fists. I realized, with astonishment, that it was snoring.

      ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ it asked me. ‘I am asleep, in your head. Do you still want to die? I see that you don’t. You’d better start

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1