Excerpt
Darkness split the sky in two, roiling out of the insidious crack, like dye into water. Its jagged teeth snapped, and its spiraling, billowing fingers reached out, trying to snatch up anything and everything it could find. Chaos churned within its maw while terror and panic surged through its breaths.
Did it even breathe?
No one knew.
But what everyone did know was that its ravenous appetite for destruction was quickly descending toward them, ready to devour. Ready to raze and consume until there was nothing left.
Yet there was a flaw to its plans, an unanticipated surprise that gave the broiling, corrupt mass pause.
Its birth once more into the world was to be heralded by the dark beings it had sent before it. Creatures and machinations snatched from other realms never meant to interact with this one. They were vile, corrupted things imbued with the very malevolence that fueled the Blight.
Except there were no dark beings. No servants of chaos and death. There was only a line of dragon riders standing in its way.
They waited there, poised in the air, ready to strike. So few of them were left after the truly torrential forces it had sent after them. Their once resplendent regalia was now covered in blood, soot, and who knew what else, their faces grim with determination.
There weren't supposed to be any there at all, though.
The Blight had spent nearly a century turning the humans against each other. Influencing a leader here, giving a bandit tribe visions there. Although it had been held back by the gods of this realm, tendrils of its power had still been able to slip through the cracks. It had planted its seeds, allowing them to root and fester and rot, until it had enough of a hold to send its creations through.
And bit by bit, it had weakened the gods from the outside. It was an arduous task, one that took eons of patience and planning. But the Blight was not a new creature, not like the spritely spirits or the newborn deities. No, the Blight was born of ash and misery and shadow oh-so-very long ago, before time even knew its name or its purpose. There had been a plan once, long ago, that would have moved everything along much sooner, but that had fallen by the wayside, as many things had.
All because of the heroes that hovered before it now.
