Blue Diamonds (Book One of The Blue Diamonds Saga) Read Online Free PDF Page A

the wind. It went on like an approaching parade in the distance, only the parade never got closer, leaving only the bass drum teasing in the wind with its thump-thumping.
    After a while Sir Williamdale realized that the drumming was actually the beating of his heart, and the wind was his breath. The world around him was all dark grey, but he didn't panic. He just smiled as visions of his mother and father appeared from the dark.
    They smiled, and then suddenly they were standing beside the bed of his childhood, and though he couldn’t hear what they were saying he felt an overwhelming feeling of love. Again the scene shifted and a great darkness hovered over them that only he seemed to notice.
    "Run!" he wanted to scream, but just as it was in his childhood, his mouth would not obey.
    There was a bright flash and a crash, and then he was once again flooded with images from the day that he saw them perish. He wanted to rise up, to help them escape, but just as it was in the past he couldn’t move. Only now, in this vision, the sound of death and destruction was flooded over by an alarm bell ringing, ringing, ringing...
    “No!”
    Sir Williamdale's own scream broke him from his trance, and as he regained his wits he realized that the ringing bell he was hearing was actually a percussion of teeth crunching against armor. It was the dragon's teeth, crunching his armor.
    I'm in the beast’s mouth! He thought, and immediately wanted to fall back into the dream that he woke from.
    The dragon was chewing on him with short, frustrating gnaws, confused as to why he wouldn’t break. Searing pain coursed through his body as points of the teeth repeatedly slipped through the openings along the hip and knee joints, slicing his skin and injecting burning saliva each time. He lamented in his misfortune. Not only was he going to die this night but his pride and joy, his fabulous, enchanted golden armor was going to prolong the process.
    The terrible pain that he was in overtook his ability to even wail, and it virtually paralyzed him. Time had obviously passed since the fall. As far as Williamdale could tell there was no longer any fighting going on. In between bites, he glimpsed the ground to be close, meaning the dragon was low to the ground. Like a dog gnawing on his bone, he imagined.
    At first he began to pray for his life to end, but when he opened his eyes and looked around as if searching for a sign from God, there was a miracle. A miracle in the form of his broadsword. He had sheathed it sometime during his climb, and low and behold it was still at his hip. He recalled that the sheath, as well as the strap that held it to his body had also been reenforced with the same dwarven gold as the rest of his attire. Now it was his turn to smile.
    “You’re coming with me you devil,” he said.
    Then, summoning every bit of strength within his broken body, he reached for his side and gripped its hilt. Once he felt that he had a nice, firm grip he waited, concentrating on the gusts of air that brushed across his face every time the mouth opened wide before a bite. Feeling out the rhythmic, chewing bouts of pain, he waited.
    “One. Two. Three!” he said, and then Sir Williamdale drew his sword and aimed for the ceiling of the dragon’s mouth just above the tonsils. As he did he planted the hilt of the sword firmly at the center of his abdomen, while giving extra support with his other hand. The closing of the mouth gave plenty enough pressure to start the initial incision, and then he braced his lower back and thrust the rest of the golden sword into the dragon's palate until it was buried to the hilt.
    A spitting cough followed, whipping him from his sword and tossing him out and onto the forest floor in a heap. There was a second sound, but that was the dragon’s head as it collapsed to the ground next to him. Sir Williamdale’s sword had pierced directly through the top of it's mouth and into the unsuspecting dragon’s