Ailsa rinsed the mud from her dress, then wrung it out and pulled it on. The wet blue fabric clung to her skin. She stepped into her boots and snatched up her pack. Ailsa searched for her sword and knives before she remembered they were locked away in the town jail. Ailsa scowled, following the […]

Ailsa rose to her feet, shivering. Something in the dragon’s voice made Ailsa wonder if it already had. She gazed at him, then walked to the crystalline fountain and knelt down. She leaned forward and braced herself against one hand, her bare rump in the air. She scooped some fresh water and sipped at it. […]

“What happened to this place?” “A swamp plague, I think.” The dragon scratched his neck with a wing-tip talon. “A plague?!” Ailsa jerked away from a puddle filled with tiny swimming insects. “Yes, you know how it is. A few people drop dead, the rest flee.” The dragon folded his wing. Something dark crept into […]

Ailsa ascended old wooden stairs slick with moss and half-rotted by humidity and rain. Every creak made Ailsa’s heart jump. She braced herself to avoid tumbling back down the steep hill if a step broke. Aside from the decaying stairs, there was nothing to break her fall save the jagged gray rocks littering the tall, […]

Sunlight filtered into the cramped cell through rusted iron bars set in mossy stone. Ailsa scraped at a patch of crusty yellow lichen with her boot. Three days imprisonment had reduced her to pondering the walls. Limestone, maybe. She shifted against the scratchy wool blanket covering the cot’s thin mattress. Stupid swamp town. Stupid jail. […]