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Dragon’s Knight. Chapter 1.

 

Dragon’s Knight

1.

 

                A long ride.

                Helga gave the Ducati an easy, steady pace.  Friends left behind her however, weighed heavy on her mind.

                It was The Venus, she thought.

               “Go west” she had said to them, but then, a subtle turn of the conversation, and The Venus had sent Helga in a different direction- south-west.  Ash, her oldest and closest friend, and those they had met along the way, were now headed west without Helga.

                The Venus had done it, Helga believed.  The Venus had placed a compulsion on them- Ash goes west and Helga…  Helga was headed home?

                But Esperance, was not her home any more.  It hadn’t been for quite some time- long before Helga Ash and Pup had fled, fed up with what had become of the town- the growing oppression by those claiming leadership.

                Helga Ash and Pup had left to find somewhere new- brave the world for the sake of their freedom.  The long road east to Eucla and beyond, braving the perils along the way... to go that far, only to be turned around by The Venus- too beautiful, too convincing… 

              The compulsion, nagging at her, unspoken, ever since first leaving Eucla, had allowed Helga to stay with Ash and the others long enough to skirt around Esperance, to continue on to Ravensthorpe and a disastrous fight with a vampire there.  Only another day after that,  to nurse their wounds and scavenge the town, and they had parted ways.

             The Venus.

            Go west, she had said, and they had, for a while.  But where Ash, Pup and the group had continued that way, Helga had said her sad goodbye, and left them, going south-west instead.

           She was now alone and headed to Albany.

 

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