Chapter 67: Rare Grains
Grant rose to his feet, circled around the table, and stepped out of the tent but even he hadn’t expected this.
His breath caught as his gaze locked onto Kaelor, mounted atop a beast that defied natural sense: a massive, three-headed creature, larger than any cow and black as ink. Each of its heads moved with eerie awareness, its thick, sinewed necks rippling like coiled ropes of shadow.
For a heartbeat, Grant stood motionless, his boots rooted to the earth as if the very soil had seized him. Around him, the once-busy merchant grounds erupted in gasps and cries. Conversations halted mid-sentence, purchases forgotten, and even hardened traders stepped away in alarm. The creature’s presence cleaved a path through the crowd like a blade through silk.
Titan, the beast, made no effort to hide its hunger. It snarled with one head, bared its gleaming fangs with another, while the third lolled its long, meaty tongue over jagged teeth, its maw dripping with imagined delight, already savoring the tender flesh of the onlookers and the crunch of bone beneath its jaws.
When Baron Garrick finally emerged from the tent, the sight drove the breath from his lungs. His lips parted, but no words came. His eyes bulged, and his entire form tensed like a man staring into the jaws of a nightmare. "Is that... a Devil Beast?" he whispered hoarsely.
Grant’s lips twitched into a faint smile, eyes never leaving Kaelor. "A sign," he said, voice low with meaning, "that he has begun to conquer the things that drive other men to run. Tell me, does he not remind you of the Red Dragon?"
The moment the title left Grant’s lips, Garrick’s face twisted. The Red Dragon. A name that belonged to only one man, Duke Merlin Dravion who established House Dravion. From then, the title had been passed down and now belonged to Duke Caldor of House Merlin.
He had earned that name long before he inherited his father’s seat, carving his legend into the northern frontiers with blood and fire during the border wars with the Winter Kingdom. He was ruthless. Fearless. Victorious.
And now, this... disgraced whelp was being compared to him?
Kaelor had never earned a thing in his life. He was filth, exiled from nobility, scorned by commoners. The man had soiled the capital with scandal. Rumors claimed he had laid with nearly every prostitute within its walls, and perhaps even threatened the daughters of decent men into his bed. He squandered coin like it grew on trees, destroyed thriving businesses with his antics, and brought entire taverns, like his brother’s, to ruin. He was a walking plague of shame and destruction. Worse still, he had never held a blade with skill, never lifted a finger in service of the land. He was weak. Laughable.