• Again she was running, and again she was running from the soldiers of Negav City. The life she had spent so many years to maintain had fallen apart around her thanks to her traitorous sister. Behind her she could hear the shouting of the naga guards as the clashed against the steel of her lovers blade. The human woman turned a corner and paused in a doorway to catch her breath. Adrianna held her future child close, feeling the warmth and movement beneath the eggs shell. There was a triumphant shout from the guards and her face flushed in horror before she started running again. Her love, the naga soldier Dorian Telaron, was dead, she realized ducking through a low archway and heading for a gap in the city wall.

    Emerging from the other side of the wall, the former slave breathed a sigh of relief and kept running, again she heard the guards behind her, “damn their unnatural speed.” She hissed under her breath. Her legs burned and her lungs felt like they would explode but she kept running. More shouting, they had spotted her. Adrianna make a break for a nearby upturned root hoping the obstacle would slow her pursuers. Just as she reached the root a sharp whistling sound rang through the air followed by a sharp pain as the arrow embedded itself in the woman’s back.

    The Naga stopped to watch as the human female staggered forward, her pierced heart struggling to keep going. The squad’s marksmen readied another arrow and loosed it dead between her shoulders. Adrianna fell to her knees as her vision started to go dark. Falling forward, the egg rolled out of her arms and into a low crevice. With her last breath she muttered the name of her love and smiled as her soul left her body.

    The naga guards searched for the egg but could not find the unborn child, deeming it lost to the lands predators, they took the mothers body and returned to their duty. Below the vines and exposed roots, the egg stirred and began to crack, hours later a black scaled naga child emerged with only the first word it heard, his name and that of his unknown father, “d-d-do…dor-ee-ann….Dorian…..”