Dragonlords of Karaton - Prologue

The night was dark the stars and moon taking refuge behind the clouds to shield themselves from the atrocities below. Torchlight moved through the trees, the crunch and swish of the brush awaking the parents in their small cabin. The father threw off the covers, the mother running for the small child sleeping in the next room. She shushed the child, the father draping a heavy coat around them, looking anxiously toward the noise.
The mother and child were hurried through the door into the night, the father staying behind to answer the rude knock on their front door. The mother hurried through the trees, pausing only to stare in horror at the terrible scream erupting from the home she’d fled from. Shortly thereafter the night was lit up as flames swallowed the cabin, the burning wood creaking and snapping as it was consumed.
Crying, desperately trying to move forward without waking the child she was carrying, she ran through the trees. Her bare feet slapped against the damp leaves as she rushed ahead through the melted snow. She had to save her child! She could hear the heavy steps and the deep vocal calls of the soldier’s behind her. A light in the dark became her beacon, a neighbor she had never been aware of. Her heart begged for their help, but couldn’t bear the thought of their refusal and it was so late at night, and the wind was picking up the scent of snow in its wake.
She searched for a window, and found one unlatched. Softly, she pushed it up, and wrapped the child in the heavy coat belonging to its father. Be safe, she prayed, lifting the coat and child onto the table next to the window and out of sight. With another regretful, choked prayer, the mother ran on, the soldier’s slashing of foliage following her.  

The king awaited the news with furious stillness, and when his advisor’s footsteps stirred the air, the silence hid in the windows for fear of shattering. The man appeared, cradling it like a human child—though it was no such thing. It had been wrapped in a worn rag the servants used in their cleaning and weighed heavily in his arms and in his heart.
He approached his king with uneasiness. There was darkness in his heart, a cold black flame that held the fury of a husband and father who was neither any longer. The advisor wished another could deliver this news, but there was no one else. The news must be his, no matter how afraid he might be. “The lords have been slain, Sire,” he reported, “and their dragons have perished with them as you knew they would. However, after searching their lairs and their nests, the knights found this.” The rag was removed, revealing the red and brown egg in his arms.
The king stood. “Have they found the child?”
“They search for it, still. They found the mother, but the cold, and the snow … she passed without disclosing its location to anyone.”
“Destroy it,” the king ordered, “the child will die in its absence.”
“Yes, Sire,” the advisor agreed and left the chamber with the egg. The walk to the dungeons was long, and the weight within his heart grew with each step. He meant to leave it amongst the dead, in the cold, but looking at the red flecks amongst the brown, bright like the color of embers, his heart couldn’t bear the burden. He could not kill the last dragon.
And so the future moved forward.