Riding those hundreds of dragons were more men and women like Kibsigy, who strived for peace between dragons and men.
Most of the dragons distracted the towers by doing a strange, elliptical dance in the sky while thirty others strategically destroyed the functional ballistic mechanisms with fireballs. They’d hit their marks perfectly, sparing the towers’ integrity, and thus killing no one. Kibsigy had spent his years preaching about the kind nature of dragons. Thousands supported his quest now, and in some towns, where the dragons helped the people with hauling rock, clearing forests, and other difficult tasks, the people worshipped the beasts.
In the face of growing support for the dragons, the king raised the dragon hunters’ commissions. The gold was irresistible to young men from starving families. They dreamed of better lives, and so the king had been successful in recruiting many new warriors to his crusade. Ashos had become a military centre, spending all its resources on producing soldiers, and the surrounding lands suffered from raised taxes so the king could fund the massive expense of the men’s training.
The towns seen conspiring with dragons were punished the most severely. When those people could no longer afford food, Kibsigy had strung four corners of a giant net to four dragons and taken them to the great lakes. They had dragged the nets through the water and dumped house-high piles of fish in the middle of starving settlements. But the people needed more than fish to survive, so he’d been forced to see the king at the castle several times.
Each time, the king had grown angry and thrown him out. When Kibsigy was banned from Ashos altogether, he decided to turn the people against the king.
Today was the great summer feast. Overnight, Kibsigy and his followers had snuck into the city and replaced two thirds of the meat intended to be served at the city banquet with cooked dragon flesh obtained from fresh dragon corpses left behind by hunters.
Lunch time had passed. Many would have consumed the dragon meat, so they could now hear Tolcan speak for himself. And Kibsigy would continue coming to the city until the people took the side of the dragons and forced their king to call off all soldiers, and cease his dragon-slaying quest.
‘Are you ready?’ Kibsigy asked his scaly friend, staring at the back of Tolcan’s giant head.
‘Today, we make a new history, son of Nogdo!’
Kibsigy felt a thrill shoot up his body and he said to himself, ‘This one’s for you, Father.’
A Word from K.J. Colt
Whimsical is a type of narrative I quite enjoy, and whenever I read a whimsical narrative, I often imagine Stephen Fry’s voice in my head. Isn’t that odd? Maybe I’ve just been overindulging in Harry Potter audiobooks, or playing too much Little Big Planet for PS3. So I braved a whimsical piece of fiction this time. Whimsical, sweet and simple.
Even though I write fantasy fiction, I hadn’t yet dared write a dragon novel because their mythology is vast, their subject is well explored, and to think I might have anything new to contribute seemed borderline arrogant.
So I thought I’d revise a short piece I started three years ago, which I only wrote because my partner said, quite tritely, “You’re writing fantasy, eh? You should write a dragon story.”
I felt like saying, “Of course, I’ll write this long and complex 100,000-word novel while you finish up the dishes and we can celebrate with Chinese takeout tonight.” Despite my short-lived sarcasm, I decided to humour my partner (now fiancé)—and myself—by writing “Tasty Dragon Meat”. In general, when writing fiction, I prefer my protagonist to be an ordinary person thrown into extraordinary circumstances (cue drama and conflict). In “Tasty Dragon Meat”, a simple butcher becomes filthy rich, and then goes on to become one of the most important figures in that kingdom’s history (nothing to do with his being rich, though—that would be sending the wrong message).
But no one will remember the butcher’s name. No one will remember the sacrifices he made. In our modern world, on planet Earth, people sacrifice, work hard, and do extraordinary things to make our world a better place. Sadly, most of us will never know who these people are or why they make the choices they do. People are continually, silently, humbly participating in the endeavour to enrich the human race. Or so I like to believe.
It’s a lofty goal for anyone to set: to enrich the human race. But I think it’s one with immeasurable value and that is beautifully complex. Nogdo, the main character in my story, didn’t venture to become notable. I’d argue his initial acts were self-serving, but in the end, it was love and compassion that atoned for his mistakes. And it’s love and compassion that I believe motivates so many of us to make planet Earth a better place.
www.kjcolt.com
Transparency
by Alex Albrinck
NATARIA FLEW ABOVE THE CLOUDS. The droplets in the puffy sky ornaments hid the form of the water creature from the eyes of any creature below able to see the wavelengths generated by her body. Ice dragons argued among themselves as to whether theirs were bodies of air held together by water, or bodies of water held together by air. Those core elements gave the ice dragons a shimmering, silvery, translucent appearance, save for the golden eyes. Though she measured some fifteen feet in length, excluding her tail, Nataria usually weighed less than an average-sized dog.
Not today, though. The three eggs she carried weighed her down, straining her wings. She looked through the clouds to the surface below, looking for the welcome relief of a lake. The land, comprised of earth, was a poison to her pearly skin; she’d land there only in a dire emergency, and only after ensuring the hideous fire dragons had kindly absented themselves from the area. They’d take no sympathy on a pregnant ice dragon suffering the first pangs of dehydration. It wasn’t in their genetic makeup. The two dragon species had warred since time immemorial, and though her ancestors had driven the land dragons belowground, they still existed, lurking in hidden caves, lying in wait for the foolish ice dragon who dared approach the land alone.
They’d make sure she didn’t return.
She finally spotted what she wanted. Her natural affinity with the element told her the water was fresh and cool, exactly what she needed. She circled down, settling her feet into the shallowest water to mitigate the damage from contact with the land, dipped her head below the water, and drank deeply. As her water stores refilled, her senses came alive. She felt the warmth of the sun; the sun’s warmth and light were the only exceptions to her kind’s aversion to heat and fire. A gentle breeze rippled the water’s surface and ran over her smooth skin. She spread her wings and dipped them below the surface, the water a natural tonic to injury or fatigue for her kind. Her wings felt renewed, and she was now certain she’d have little difficulty staying aloft for the remainder of her gestation period.
She moved before becoming consciously aware of the threat, springing into the air just above the blasts of flame aimed at her from three sides. She heard the sizzle as the water fell from her body and diffused the flames. She kept flying, dodging, avoiding the repeated volleys fired her way, until she found herself three hundred feet above the ground. She looped around and hovered, assessing the situation.
They were there, three of those demons from Hell, glaring up at their mortal enemy, denied the kill they’d desired. She sneered back at them. Like all her kind, she found the very appearance of the fire breathers repulsive. Thick scales covered their hides. Horns grew from the heads of the males, including two of her three would-be murderers. They had six legs, rather than four, a necessity for creatures twice her size and fifty times her mass. And the colors! All manner of earthy, fiery colors: red, orange, green, brown and black. Each of the fire dragons possessed its own unique hue of one of those primary colors. Their affinity with the land meant a natural camouflaging effect took place, much as air and cloud camouflaged her in flight. She’d heard them and felt the warmth before she’d seen them.
She saw them now, though. Disgusting, evil, ugly creatures.
They’d stationed themselves as near the
lake as they could; the water that gave her life was poison to them. Now that they’d been spotted, they backed farther away from that poison.
If she thought rationally, Nataria would take advantage of the situation and fly away, living to fight another day… and, more importantly, living to deliver her clutch into one of her kind’s life-giving pools of water before they hatched a few weeks later. But instinct, borne of thousands of years of warfare, overrode even the basic instincts of self-preservation and maternal protectiveness. You did not leave fire dragons alive; you fought them until they were dead. If you did not kill them, you could be certain that they’d one day kill you.
One of the dragons roared, blasting a stream of flame in her direction. It was a challenge, daring her to resume the fight. It was the fire dragon’s way of calling the ice dragon above a coward.
She’d spill their blood over that insult. Ice dragons weren’t cowards. And she’d prove it.
Nataria flew higher, ignoring the telepathic taunts flowing her way as she did, and glided toward the far side of the lake. The clouds called to her, begging her to return home, but she’d not do so until she’d honored the ice dragons with a triple kill of the insult-laden fire breathers below. She angled herself downward and tucked her wings in, feeling the glorious wind on her skin as she accelerated toward the lake’s surface and shore with the waiting fire breathers, still bellowing their challenges. She reached her peak velocity as her body ripped through the surface of the lake, the speed alone generating a huge splash. Nataria altered her angle under the water and shot back above the surface, spreading her wings. The upward explosion generated a second wave of water, and as she rose above the surface, she relished the sounds of agony as the water found its mark. The fire breathers screamed; water droplets ate through their scales like acid and bored into their skin. The pathetic creatures rolled upon the earth, using the loose soil as a sponge that would suction the poisonous water from their bodies, writhing in pain, oblivious to the very real threat of a very angry ice breather hovering above.
Though she enjoyed their suffering, Nataria knew it was time to end them. She flapped her wings to gain a bit more height and then dove once more, a killing machine en route to her victims, prepared to unleash her icy breath upon them. Their bodies, consumed with expelling the poison inside, would suffer a severe drop in temperature. Cold affected the fire breathers like dehydration affected her. With additional passes, she could literally freeze them to death, encasing them in ice and then shattering their ugly bodies across the land they so loved.
She heard the grunt and saw the flash of brown in her peripheral vision as searing pain ripped through her. She crashed to the ground seconds after hearing a thunderous boom from the ground nearby.
She looked down. Something had ripped her abdomen open. Vital organs and fluid leaked out. The shuddering pains brought on by her contact with the ground shut down her capacity to feel. She knew only one thing with certainty: she’d die here. She’d not return to the air. She’d never lay her eggs, never watch her children hatch, never again know the joy of flight.
The brown male fire dragon who’d hidden nearest to the lake, the fourth dragon she’d never seen until he’d ripped through her hide, stomped over, a sneer upon his face. Suffer, you creature of evil. Suffer in agony until you breathe your last.
She felt the end coming on. Death brought with it a clarity she’d never before known. That clarity told her that her death came from a fire dragon jumping into the air. But fire dragons didn’t jump. They couldn’t jump. Leaving the ground for even a few seconds had deleterious effects upon their health. But there was no other explanation. She’d been too high for him to otherwise reach her.
She’d heard the rumors. She’d found the concept impossible, disgusting, unnatural. And yet here was tangible proof. She fixed her golden eyes upon him. There is something unnatural about you, dragon.
Her world went dark as he blasted her with the searing heat of his flaming breath, and she passed into oblivion.
* * *
Eirene, a fire dragon with scales colored a deep blood red, watched the fight unfold from the safety of the tunnel entrance. The cave, large enough to hold several massive dragons, was camouflaged, a mixture of earth and stone and vegetation maintained by the Guard, a subset of their kind dedicated to preventing a second desolation like the one that drove them from their rightful place on the surface into the bowels of the earth. She’d grown up doubting the existence of the ice dragons; generations of dragons grew up without ever seeing the surface. When a dragon never saw the surface, she might reasonably assume the sky did not exist, and if the sky did not exist, why should one believe in the existence of the puny, ugly, flying dragons formed of air and water?
Many also believed that with the existence of ice dragons reasonably questioned, it called also into question the necessity of the Guard. Why maintain a defense force against a non-existent threat? Those dragons, whether the younger volunteers or the older dragons taking a mandatory shift at the direction of Cato, their leader, could better spend time seeking raw meat to feed their slowly growing numbers, rather than dallying in fanciful rituals from times gone by, from eras when older dragons believed in the mythical flying creatures.
She’d met Damir years earlier, and had come to believe in the Guard, though she maintained the skepticism over the existence, numbers, and existential threat posed by ice dragons. That skepticism had vanished as she saw the creature land, watched it douse her friends and mate with poison, had watched Damir leap from the ground and drown the evil being with one swipe of his powerful claw.
She sensed the mood and telepathic thoughts of those, like her, claw-picked to watch the Guard in action. Like her, the others had never been to the surface; seeing the clear blue sky, the puffy white clouds, the green grass and trees and vegetation, the rocky mountains surrounding them, and even the poisonous stream-fed lake had proved to all of them, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the surface was real.
The dead icer proved that their enemies, likewise, were no mere figment of overactive imaginations. They’d been chosen for this trip for their demonstrated courage, for their fearlessness in defending their ideals, and for their youth. Damir would gain recruits for his Guard through this program, but he’d more critically gain vocal advocates to help reverse the tide of doubt and preparations that settled among a species so long untested and unchallenged.
With the single icer dead, Damir signaled to the visitors that all was clear, that it was now safe for them to venture from the cave. Eirene was the only one who moved. She relished the feel of the sun-drenched earth against the padding on her feet, and gripped chunks of fresh soil with each of her six claws as she moved. The tall grasses, swaying in the wind, brushed against her scales, soothing aches she’d not known she’d had. It was part of their construction, their magic. As creatures of fire and earth, her kind drew strength and healing from contact with those elements; pitch a fire dragon into a deep lake or hold them off the ground, and they’d deteriorate quickly to the point of death. Icers killed members of the Guard, driving them toward cliffs or large bodies of water with relentless barrages of their icy breath, overwhelming the large land dwellers with superior numbers. Woe to the fire dragon caught in such an ambush; Damir reported that they’d find shattered scales matching the description of Guard dragons gone missing on a regular basis.
The three who’d baited the icer were still burrowing themselves into the soil, their physical agitation clearly abating as the earth pulled the moisture from their bodies. Though soil naturally contained some fluid, the earth element overpowered water given the relative composition ratio. Swamp-like soil, more water than earth, wouldn’t help them.
Eirene moved to her mate. Damir gave off an air of power, and possessed a powerful personality that commanded respect despite his relatively small size. She loved the deep brown coloring of his scales. She gasped out, spotting a scale on his tale still sizzling from the geyser the icer had
unleashed.
Damir glanced at his tail, laughing at the lone damaged scale he’d sustained in the battle. Relax, Eirene. It’s just a scale wound. Just one scale. I’ll be fine. Look. He rutted his spiky tail into the soil, building a furrow of earth, and burrowed the damaged section of his tail inside. See? I’m fine.
She watched his face, reveling in his smile. That was impressive. They really are a threat, aren’t they?
That wasn’t too challenging; they’re rarely stupid enough to make a hydration run alone. We think the female was pregnant and couldn’t wait for others prepared to hit the lake. So we’ve effectively got four kills today. A good day. He glanced at his team, watching the female and the two males relax as their water-based injuries healed, and his face turned grim. We don’t always emerge from battles without sustaining losses of our own. Today was a good day.
Eirene had always thought his talk about the danger inherent in his work was made for dramatic purposes, the bravado of a young male looking to impress a potential mate. She knew better now. I can see why. You outnumbered her, out-massed her, and yet she still inflicted serious injuries on three of ours. She paused. The surface, Damir. It’s… it’s… it’s better and more beautiful than I ever dreamed or dared hope.
I know, he replied. It’s wonderful, isn’t it? Fresh soil. Meat available in larger quantities than we harvest below ground. And though the air today is tainted with the scent of one of those damned icers, it’s still far sweeter than the air we breathe on a regular basis. He stomped one foreclaw upon the ground. This land, the surface, this is rightfully ours, Eirene. We are the rulers of earth. The icers can have their sky and clouds and lakes full of poison. But they will not deprive us and our children of our land. We must fight, Eirene. We must!
The Dragon Chronicles Page 10
