Books / Fiction / The Roots That Breathe
The Dimming Canopy · Book One
The Roots That Breathe
In Thessaria the ground has started to go wrong. The fortress of Vaelmoor holds its border with dragon fire, the wandering Telaru listen to the roots, and between them stand the dragon Threnvald and the man bound to him. Epic fantasy about power, restraint, and what a bond costs when it is used without asking.
The opening
Threnvald circled where the air thinned into a cold so clean it felt like a blade drawn along the tongue.
The valley of Edrath lay open beneath him, arranged into greens and browns and river-silver, a place that could almost pass for peaceful when he was still high enough to forget what waited beneath it.
He did not think of himself as beautiful, because beauty was a human way of judging things, and humans judged things so they could decide what to claim.
He inhaled deeply and iron entered his mouth.
He thought of himself as precise, and precision in the upper sky was a form of power that did not require permission.The Roots That Breathe
Somewhere beneath the waiting, for the first time, the ground had begun to listen back.The Roots That Breathe
Every dragon in Thessaria carries a name and an epithet: Threnvald Ash-Above-Cloud, Ryen Wing-Over-Ember. The full name is given once, at a dragon's introduction. After that, only the name.
