Aithusa was a ghostly, pale figure against the backdrop of a smoke-stacked night sky. Blooms of bright flame consumed straw houses with people running.
A spray of flames came into a thatch roofed home. A woman screamed and bolted away, baby in hand, into the liminal space of darkness that was the open lay of land and forest.
"The dragon is back!" A man bolted through the town past wheel barrow, wood fence, and pigpens. "Get the children to the wood. "Where's Susan? SUSAN!"
The man turned to the sound of a crying child and grabbed the toddler from the mud near a gate. He swung it open, losing time as he pushed it aside.
When the sun rose the next day, it brought to mind the ghostly, fleshy wings and the terror they had brought.
Farm animals lay mangled and dripping with vibrant red over the landscape. The creature hadn't even eaten them, just killed them and limped away, doing what damage it could. The carcass of a white sheep with black, still-open eyes fixed forever ahead lay disjointed with it's hooves turned up at an odd angle.
The crowd gathered.
"This evil is the work of sorcery!" The man bellowed with rage. He pulled himself onto a wooden bucket, speaking loudly above the crowd of tired folk. As the people gathered closer, the man held his daughter close, comforting her as she sobbed. "There's luck that we didn't lose more! I will do everything to make sure these monsters and MAKE SURE THIS NEVER – HAPPENS -AGAIN!" The gathered crowd exploded with fist shaking and shouting.
"We will run them from the land, along with every sorcerer, and we will burn them all!" The shouting and jeering of the crowd grew in volume as men pulled weapons from the throng, intent on hunting the deadly creature.
The sight of a young blond woman screaming while her mother tried to comfort her. A man pulling her harshly through a doorway by the arm. HELP ME! Help me!" she cried. "But I'm not a sorcerer. I'm not a witch." Tears glistened from her face as she was tired, bare backed and ripped clothes to a fence post. They didn't bother to stack a pyre. Men doused her in thrown mead and set fire to the crying girl, her scream breaking and piercing the echoing hills.
A crowd gathered slowly outside Camelot.
There a rumor that sorcerers were in the citadel had spread.