When the Dragon Takes Flight — A Deadly Horde and the Battle That Forged Merona
- Michaela Riley
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Long Excerpt from Labyrinth of Shadows: The Witch's Rebirth
There is a moment in every hero's journey when training ends and survival begins.
For Merona, that moment looks like this:
Twisted limbs. Mottled skin. Eyes glowing infernal red. Razor-sharp claws scraping bark and earth as a demonic horde erupts from the tree line — and the woman who was burned at the stake in 1590 Copenhagen has exactly seconds to decide whether everything Murdach and Mairead taught her was enough.
This is Long Excerpt from Labyrinth of Shadows: The Witch's Rebirth — and it is the scene that shows you exactly who Merona has become.
The strategy before the storm
What strikes me most about this scene — and what I worked hardest to get right — is that Merona does not panic.
She has every reason to. The creatures emerging from that tree line are not human. They are not even close to human. Limbs bent at unnatural angles. Joints protruding beneath sickly, mottled skin. Eyes that glow with a malevolent, suffocating presence that makes the very air feel wrong.
And yet her first word is a command.
"Murdach. We need to act quickly."
Not a scream. Not a prayer. A tactical assessment followed by a clear directive to her most powerful ally.
In that single sentence you see the entire arc of Merona's growth from the terrified midwife burning on a pyre in Copenhagen to the warrior who reads a battlefield and issues orders while her heart is still pounding with terror.
She is afraid. She does not let it stop her.
The ravine
The detail that I love most in this excerpt is the ravine.
"We'll funnel them through the ravine. It'll limit their numbers and give us the chance to pick them off."
This is not magic. This is tactics. This is a woman who has spent her reborn life studying warfare, terrain, and the mathematics of survival — using the landscape itself as a weapon before she ever raises her hands.
The Morrigan's response says everything: "A solid strategy, young one."
When the goddess of war and fate calls your plan solid, you are doing something right.
The moment Murdach takes flight
I have been asked many times why Murdach is a dragon.
The answer is in this scene.
When Merona needs the skies cleared — when the horde is too vast to fight on the ground alone — Murdach does not reach for a sword. He becomes something that makes the ground shake. Something with scales that glitter like precious gems. Something that launches into the air with a thunderous roar and changes the entire tactical reality of the battle in a single moment.
The dragon is not a metaphor. The dragon is the answer to every problem that cannot be solved at human scale.
And the woman standing below him — the woman who calls Now! and releases a blast of pure energy that slams into the front ranks of the demonic horde — is his equal in every way that matters.
What this scene is really about
On the surface this is an action scene. Demons. A dragon. A wolf goddess flanking. Elemental magic.
But underneath it is a scene about trust.
Merona trusts Murdach to clear the skies without being asked twice. Murdach trusts Merona to hold the ground while he transforms. The Morrigan trusts Merona's strategy without question. And Merona trusts herself — the hardest trust of all for a woman who spent centuries dying for crimes she did not commit — to call the shot at exactly the right moment.
"Now!"
One word. And the battle begins.
Read the full story
This excerpt is from Chapter 22 of Labyrinth of Shadows: The Witch's Rebirth Part I — the first book in the award-winning Witch's Rebirth Trilogy.
If this scene made your pulse quicken — the full book is waiting for you.
🎧 Audiobook — 10 hours · Narrated by Abby Filsinger · $14.99 michaelariley.com/product-page/labyrinth-of-shadows-unabridged-audio-book
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The labyrinth has no end. ✦ — Michaela Riley 11x Award-Winning Author · Founder, Blackwell Spines
