As he walked along the stone path through the front yard, he noticed the experimental pens set on the grassy slope behind the manor, enclosed by wooden fences. There was nothing inside them—at least, nothing within his line of sight—but the ground was covered in dense claw marks and scuff marks, and several deep grooves left by something sharp scarred the inner rails.
As he rounded the side wing of the manor, a sound he had never heard before suddenly came from inside a shed with its door half open—a noise somewhere between a low roar and a shriek. It was brief, lasting less than two seconds, but his back was drenched with sweat and his vision blurred. His body was warning him—warning him to run.
He could not just leave. He had a responsibility to the townspeople, so he forced himself to press deeper into the manor grounds.
As he passed the first window, he heard the strange sound again. A low breath forced up from deep within a chest, as though something was being repeatedly crushed between lungs and had yet to find an outlet.
He instinctively crouched down, then slowly raised himself beneath the window and glanced through the glass.
It was a Dragon Beast with the form of a giant dragon, bred from a bull as its female parent.
It was larger than any of the so-called draconic breeds he had seen circulating through the underground black market. Its shoulder blades jutted out, and its spine was covered in worn gray-black scales. Its eyes were a cloudy pale yellow, its pupils drawn into narrow vertical slits that shrank beneath the lamplight. Its forelimbs were chained to a stone platform, the ends of the chains embedded in the ground like two stunted trees welded into rock.
Fairwood