Dread Mountain

Vraal are vicious, fighting beasts, bred in the Shadowlands. They are mentioned once in the last volume of The Deltora Annals. At that time, a Vraal had been seen in the foothills of Dread Mountain with a pod of Grey Guards.

The Guards had the beast on a chain attached to a metal ring fixed to its neck. It was snarling and clawing at them. It was about the size of a man, and every part of it, from slashing claws to lashing tail, was made for destruction.

According to Ranesh, Sha-Ban, and others who have heard Grey Guards talking, Vraal live only to fight and destroy, and are highly intelligent in the ways of battle, though in nothing else. They were bred in captivity, and though a few have escaped to roam wild in the Shadowlands, most are kept in cages beneath a place called the Shadow Arena. They are used, in the words of Guards, for “sport.” Prisoners are forced to fight them in the arena, for the entertainment of the crowd.

It is hard to imagine the mind behind such “sport.” Or to imagine one that would breed a creature solely so that people will suffer and die. More than anything else, the Vraal symbolizes evil to me. Not the evil of the beast itself, but the evil of the mind that created it.