Elixir (Chronicles of the Seven Sons Book Three)

Chapter Two

504 A.D.

"Drag it in, lads, don't let it lie there! You'll frighten the people," the old man ordered as they dragged him in his beast form to only the gods knew where. At this very moment, he couldn't have cared less. Anything was better than the hell-hole he had been in years earlier. He was certain nothing could ever cost him a greater pain than those thousand years. Not even when they dragged his body down the jagged, winding staircase into some musty, drenched place, did he feel the amount of pain he felt for endless centuries before he had been free. And even if he was in pain, it wasn't as if he could convey it. All he had was an inner monologue. His body was in turmoil, stuck in this form until his powers and magic regenerated. There wasn't even enough juice in him to allow him to open his eyes.

He'd been in perpetual darkness for days, ever since he arrived in this providence—or whatever it was called. He had been running from hunters, internally defeated and exhausted after burning them to bits, when he ended up collapsing in the middle of the fields. At the time he collapsed, he knew he didn't give a damn who saw him or caught him. All he wanted was to sleep, and sleep he did until his mind awoke—but his body did not.

It didn't matter now. All that mattered was getting healthy and leaving this place—whatever it was—behind to find a place of complete seclusion where he could get the eternal peace he deserved. But clearly the gods didn't want that.

If he had the strength to open his eyes, he'd have made the puny nobodies crap their pants as they started to poke and prod at him, oohing and ahhing at the prize they'd found. Huh! Prize! He thought to himself. If only they had caught my human form, then they would've known just what a prize they had won. A puny little Greek boy with thousands of scars on his body, an extra heart in his rib cage, and many—many—re-wirings within his body, the likes of which would make people refer to him as a demon and have him burned at the stake if they knew.

"Have you never heard of a drakon, boys?" Hearing the deafening silence, he knew the boys hadn't, but honestly neither had he. So what the hells was the old coon referring to? "Well boys, you're looking at one."

Where? he wondered, until the boys started caressing his scaled body and continued to ooh and ahh. If only he had the strength to wake up.

"Drakons were first created by the God, Hades. Legend has it that he trapped seven human males..."

Legend has it that Hades is a dick. One who pried on humans and made them suffer for thousands of years, just so he could use them as experiments to build a damned army. Chrysippos wanted to rip the old coon's throat out and feast on it—and his entrails—for the glorification of what Hades did. He was in no way, shape, or form the "most beautiful creature" in the universe. He was a horrid beast one with two stomachs, two hearts, claws, scales, and burning fire within him...and that was only when he was in his beast form. But in his human form? Forget the fact that he was puny, his mind was scrambled. Sometimes he thought with his human mind, other times he thought with the beast's mind—which was often when the beast was "dying of starvation," even though he had eaten two minutes ago. And then there were the times when he'd suddenly go blind and would start seeing the world from the beast's eyes and while that came in handy when people tried to harm him, it made everyone noble enough to talk to him, run away.

And some "beloved beast" he was. Hades tortured him day in and day out trying to figure out every single thing that would get him angry, just so he could see how long it would take for him to transform into his beast form, which in and of itself was one of the most painful experiences of his life.