Dark Children of Naor

    Almost in the same moment, a knock on the door sounded and a man opened it.

    Four overlords of the city, with whom she had talked five days earlier, shuffled in. When Nayana had first learned there was a reward for the dragon she was chasing, they had at first, ridiculed her. Not only was she not a dragon hunter, but she was a woman. However, when she’d repeated the question about the reward and brandished her javelin, they’d confirmed the rumors about the impressive reward.

    An old town councilor, thin, hunched and dressed in dark robes, came closer to the bed she lay in. The unpleasant smell of dirt and sweat reached her and she forced back a gag.

    “Supposedly, you killed the dragon, miss” he spoke with an unpleasant, gruff voice.

    She pointed at the sack with her uninjured right hand. The skinny man approached the parcel and reached inside. He took out the blackened, slithery dragon’s tongue, clotted blood darkening the rough cut end. One of small group of councilors shuddered with apparent disgust. The skinny man couldn’t pull his eyes off the slab of meat for the longest time. He finally shrugged then put it in the sack again. He wiped his hand on his robes.

    The black material of his robes masked the dirt well. To Nayana disgust, it seemed the town councilor attached little importance to cleanness or hygiene.

    “Where is the carcass?”

    “In the clearing a quarter day’s march to the east,” the man who’d rescued her replied.

    The town councilor nodded, obvious satisfied. He reached deep into his coat and pulled out a purse that jingled with, she assumed, coins. Unceremoniously, he threw the thick purse on to her bed.

    Nayana picked it up with her right hand and weighed it.

    “Here’s the price we agreed on,” the town councilor said in his gruff, dismissive voice and turned toward the exit. To Nayana, the man’s contempt for her was obvious. A woman dealing in a male profession was someone he held little regard for.

    The others followed him out. When the door closed behind them, Nayana took the purse to her rescuer. He waved his hand, rejecting her offer, and sat down on the low stool in the corner. She didn’t insist.

    “Then, let me thank you once again, sir.”

    “Why did you chase this dragon, miss?”

    She didn’t want to reveal why she was hunting dragons. “I have my reasons, sir.”

    In a world where hunters become prey in the flash of an eye, where people you know and love betrays you--who can you trust? Our dragon? Visit Naor and maybe you’ll find out.

    What would you do if you changed from hunter to prey? What would you do if someone you’d just met turned out to be someone else? What would you do if a member of your family betrayed you?

    The world of Naor is a world created by Ulse, the God of brightness, and is ruled by his rights and filled with creatures of his work. And yet it hides darkness—darkness created by Ulse’s brother, Hodgorn, the master of evil. This darkness infects human hearts, drives wars and diseases, and creates terrible beings—atrocities to gods of brightness and an insult to their work. They become rampant like a disease that must be exterminated.

    What would you do in the face of an embodied evil?