Blood of Dragons

“There weren’t always dragons in the Valley,” She said, voice soft like candle light.

I bit my lip, not daring to breathe. The pause dragged on till I started to squirm.

She smiled down at me from under those tangled brown locks–the ones that tickled my nose when she held me in her lap.

“Before the founding of Empire City, nobody had seen a dragon south of the Black Fang Mountains,” she continued. “Nobody believed in dragons down here. The warlords and their clans all believed they were just bedtime stories told by savages to their children.”

“Who are the warlords?” I asked.

“The warlords, my boy, are the ancestors of the noble houses. When the conquerors rode down from the North on the backs of dragons, they defeated the warlords in a great battle. The rivers flowed with boiling blood, and the fields lay fallow for decades. Peace and unification paid for with blood and fire.”

My eyes widened, and I buried my head in her skirts.

“That was the power of the dragons,” she said. “The power of your ancestors.”

I looked up into her beaming eyes, tilting my head. I was a dragon?

“Yes, my brave little one. The blood of dragons flows through us. Your birthright is to be lord over the heavens.”

“But dragons are scary!” I hid again in the folds of her dress, and she patted my back.

“It’s okay, little one. You don’t need to be afraid of your own kind. Besides, I’m part dragon too. Am I scary?”

“No. You’re mama.” I sniffled and sat back up. “Wait, but if we’re really dragons, why do we look like humans?”

“Do we?” She pulled her hair from her face and her eyes glowed icy blue, her pupils narrowing into vertical slits. She smiled and her teeth grew longer and sharper.

“We’re dragons,” I whispered. A smile took hold of my face.

“Yes, my little dragon. Yes we are.” She pulled me into her chest, into her warmth, where her heart beat right in my ear. “And some day, we will reclaim what they took from us.”

...

Dragons weren’t always in the Valley–the one that stretches from the Great Fjord Gate on the edge of the ocean in the West to the seas of sand in the east. We weren’t always paraded around in royal marches, or forced to hide like rats in back alleys in our human forms.

When my mother told me the stories about how dragons fell to the treachery of men–betrayed by our closest allies and friends after handing them a kingdom–I was too young to understand. I wasn’t angry. I was just glad for the dreams that whisked me from hungry, cold winters, and took me somewhere far away, way up in the sky.

Even ten years later, I could feel her warmth, the tickle of her dangling matted hair, the desperate love of those too-tight hugs that squeezed the air out of me. Even after the fire that burned through the rain, and the choking, acrid smoke, and the screams, and the clanging of metal, and the way the air winced when blades sliced through it and meat and bone. Even though I waited all that night and all the next day in the alley coughing and crying. Even though she never came to get me–never made it out of the building. I could still feel her breath tingling on the back of my neck as we snuggled through the cold nights.

And now, I could feel her anger too. The dragons would rise again, and the humans who betrayed us, who burned me, who took my mother, would pay. They would know what it was to be livestock.

That night, of death and screams and burns and cold and shivering rain, I was afraid. I was alone. Days later, the ruin still smoldered. Those who’d come for us were gone, and I dug through the ashes. I found only her ring. It was just a lump of metal now. Even her bones were gone, dust that I choked on when the breeze swirled through the wreckage. I kept the ring, or the lump of metal, such as it was. I hid it from the constables that found me in an alley and took me to a place for lost children.

At first it was just fear and grief, tears and shaking and screaming in the night. But I started learning from them–the humans. The orphanage that took me in was full of fools and crooks. I appreciated them because they didn’t hide their true faces, not like other humans. Ugliness and selfishness were faces they wore openly. They were so lost in their scrapping and squabbling, they couldn’t look past the next coin. The perfect pawns.

I bided my time and studied them. Then, as the summer of my seventeenth year was ending, I’d waited long enough. I played with the lump of metal in my pocket and contemplated the past ten years.

“Yo Rel,” said Big Pete. He didn’t know my full name, Rellion’dre. Nobody did but the dead.

Big Pete was the biggest of us orphans, smarter than he looked, and my most loyal minion. Sometimes I even caught myself thinking of him as a friend. It was a mistake to feel that way. Humans weren’t worthy of true affection. Really, he was more like a favorite pet. Once I’d taken over and reunited my kind, I would make sure he got the best treats, supposing he lived that long.

“What’s up Petey?” I said over my shoulder, slipping through the crowd toward the docks.

“Didn’t the Headmaster say we were supposed to post up at Market and Lion street?”

“You think I care what that pock-ridden rat of a man tells me to do?”

“But we’ll get in trouble, won’t we?” He was too big to slide through the crowd like me, and he had to throw his shoulder into a fisherman who hadn’t made room. The man sprawled out on the ground, spilling his bucket of fish across the street. We kept on walking.

“Let me tell you something Petey,” I said. “I’m done taking orders. I know we can make more on the docks. And, you know what–you’ve convinced me. I’m not going to hand over the coin to that old goat today. You with me?”

After he’d sent the fisherman flying, the crowd wised up and parted before us as we walked.

“I don’t know Rel. What if he kicks us out or makes us skip meals?”

“You don’t think we can provide for ourselves? Tell me, how much did you hustle up yesterday?”

We reached the waterfront. Waves shimmered like a sea of hungry blades and seagulls shrieked. Old men dragged wriggling nets from their skiffs and brutes heaved crates off of larger vessels bearing foreign flags and died sails. In the distance, dark clouds gathered and raced toward the shore. What did the cities look like in the dragon lands? Or were dragons too civilized to pack so tight together?

Big Pete followed me into a shadowed awning and I began scanning the docks. His face was bunched up and he was rubbing his ear between his fingers. I knew this as his math face.

“Sixteen silvers, seven coppers, and ten bits,” He said, relaxing his face.

“And what did you eat?”

He paused again, looking up, trying to remember.

“I’ll save you the trouble,” I said. “It was maggoty gruel. It’s maggoty gruel every day. And you know the only way to earn anything other than maggoty gruel isn’t to earn more. It’s to be one of his ‘favorites’.”

“Thank the dragon blazing Aethers we aren’t one of them.” He shuddered.

I smiled. I always did when people used my kind in a curse. Not that anyone knew my secret. I simply enjoyed seeing that the fear was still with humanity centuries later.

In truth, I was lucky for the burns on my face, and he was lucky for being born ugly. We had never had to worry about attracting the special attention of the Headmaster, even if we were kept up at night listening to the less fortunate sob and moan into their pillows.

The Headmaster was on my list. It wasn’t that I pitied his victims. I didn’t allow myself to spare such feelings for humans. But I’d long before realized that it was the duty of more advanced beings to teach those beneath them. It was only natural for a human to train a dog, as it was for a dragon to do the same for humans. Part of that education was discipline, so I had been collecting names of those who would be punished when the time was right. It was almost his time.

“And Petey," I pressed my advantage, "what do you think you could get at the Raging Mule for Sixteen Silvers?”

“But it wasn’t my money.”

“Whose money was it then? Was it the Headmaster’s? Or did it belong to the poor sods you took it off?”

“But we all have to do our part,” he said. “The money goes to the little ones who are too young to work.”

“Oh, my poor, sweet Petey.” His kind nature really got in the way of his logic sometimes, but I didn’t blame him. He was only human after all. “You really believe that? Have you seen what the little ones eat? Do you remember what we ate? Have you seen what he eats? You can’t tell me you don’t think he’s skimming.”

“I know you’re right, Rel. I’m not stupid you know. It’s just- It’s just, who will take care of them if we don’t help?”

“Now you’re asking the right question. Who indeed. Who do you think would use the money better? Who would feed them chicken meat instead of bone broth and rotting barley? Tell me, what would you do with the money?”

I was still scanning the docs–ever since my dragon heritage had begun to manifest, my senses were amazingly sharp–and I sensed Big Pete's full attention on me now.

“I’ll let you in on my secret plan Petey, since you’re my closest friend. I’m going to take it all. I’m going to take over the Headmaster’s whole business. And I’m going to make him pay for what he’s done. So I’ll ask you again. Are you with me?”

“I’m with you Rel.”

“Good. I found our mark.”

A man disembarked from the big freighter at the end of the dock. No one bid him farewell. When he reached the end of the wood platform and stepped onto the stones of the waterfront path, no one was waiting for him. His hood was up. The cloak, to a layman, would have looked cheap. Visible stitching and patches covered it. But it was of good make. Heavy. Durable. It could keep my bones from rattling, come winter.

It wasn’t the cloak that I was after though. I could see, and smell, the outline of what I wanted underneath.

Time to hunt.

I pushed off the wall and drifted into the mass of shifting bodies. Pete wasn’t the most subtle tail, so he trailed behind me as far as he could.

The man flowed through the crowd, not rustling a single cloak or drawing a single glance. Except mine of course. He made his way over to Market street and turned up it. The yelling vendors, and the booming music from bars, and the body of a dead cat–flattened under a hundred feet–all failed to capture his attention. He seemed to know where he was going.

As I watched him, a strange tingling resonance rose up in my center. I’d never seen a human like him. He was graceful, flowing, stalking, owning the very earth he walked upon. What was he?

The man paused before a small shop. The sign was faded and crusted with salt, dirt and seagull droppings, and all I could make out was the image of a seven pointed leaf by the side of the unintelligible text indicating the shop's name. Not that I could read. That rat-catcher of a Headmaster didn’t care about anything but getting us kids out the door and hustling.

He tilted his head, then quickened his pace farther up the street before turning up an alley.

“Blazes,” I swore under my breath. No. There was no way a human could have detected my pursuit. But something had spooked him. I ran to the edge of the alley and slowed, catching a glimpse of his cloak as he disappeared into the maze of back alleys. I signaled Big Pete then ran at the wall, taking three steps up it before I kicked off toward the opposite wall. My fingers just barely caught the lip of the roof, and I vaulted myself over. Then I was running.

I leapt from roof to roof, the denizens of the alleys scurrying beneath me like the roaches they were. I knew I could follow my nose. Blade oil, the nice kind, had a very distinctive smell, and this one was nutty and tangy. Same as the weapons of the King’s Dragoons.

I found him standing alone in an open square where one of the passages opened up. His eyes were closed.

Then they opened and looked right at me.

My blood froze. He knew where I was with his eyes closed. How?

I hopped down into the alley and smiled at him.

He smiled back.

“I’m impressed you detected me, friend,” I said. “You’ll have to tell me what kind of trick lets you do that.”

“Will I now?” he said. His voice was gentle like a breeze passing over a wave. “Some nerve stalking someone then calling them friend.”

I wasn’t learned enough to tell the source of his accent. “I just want to talk.”

“You street thugs never learn, do you?” The man sighed and dropped his cloak revealing the glinting hilt of a curved short sword. On the other side of his belt hung a pouch that looked full and heavy. I thanked the Aethers that he’d decided not to go into the store and spend his cash. As he sunk into a stance his breathing grew slow and forceful. A stray breeze picked up several pieces of refuse and swirled them about him.

“If you wanna scrap, we can scrap,” I said. “Won’t change the outcome other than determining the state you’re in when you walk out of this alley.” The faint echo of heavy footfalls reached my ears and I smiled. Big Pete being such a lumbering oaf had advantages. He’d be mad if I didn’t wait for him. He was supposed to be the muscle after all. But prey like this didn’t come around very often. In fact, I’d never encountered prey like this. I drew my club–the one I’d nicked it off a city watch chump a while back.

The man unsheathed his blade in a flash, and instinct was all that saved me. A tear in the wind shot from his blade across the ten paces that separated us, but I’d already dived out of its path. I rolled as I landed and cursed, the alley wall splintering flecks of stone behind me. The rat-fucker had cut off the tip of my shoe. And these were nice shoes I’d just hustled off a drunk on Market the week before.

The man froze. Surprised, no doubt, that I’d dodged. It was only for a moment, but that was enough. I sprang at him, bounding in diagonal lines. He swung his blade two more times, and two more blades of wind flew out at me. I twisted and dove through the space between, coming up in front of him and swung the club. With superhuman speed he parried, knocking my weapon to the side. Turning with the momentum, I threw all of my weight into a punch right where his ribs met.

The air vibrated and an invisible wall hit my fist, crunching my wrist sideways before a tempest of force threw me back at the wall of the alley.

“Hey!” Big Pete had arrived. He ran at the man, roaring, his favorite weapon–a wooden table leg–raised above his head.

The man shifted his stance and slashed with his blade again. The air between them shimmered and Big Pete fell in a spray of blood. He screamed.

The man was breathing heavily, and sweating. His control was gone. I could smell it. Fear.

My chest was full of primal fire. On all fours I bounded toward him. This time no wind blade came. Instead, he smoothly slapped my club out of my hand with the flat of his blade and slashed down. Fast. Too fast for a human to dodge. Thankfully, I wasn’t one. I twisted past the blade with my momentum and kicked out at his knee.

This time I hit, and it crunched sideways. Even as he toppled, his blade found its way toward me again and the tip bit into the flesh of my forearm. I flung myself atop him grabbing the wrist holding the blade with my uninjured hand before it could come back for another swing, and I bashed my forehead into his nose. His head slammed down on the ground with a crack.

His eyes hazed over and I slammed my head into his again and again until blood ran down my forehead and pooled beneath him.

My ears were full of pounding. I stared into his crushed face. My eyes didn’t blink as blood ran into them from my forehead. I watched as a red puddle spread under him, soaking into the knees of my torn up pants. My body didn’t move away. Didn’t move at all.

“Rel?” Big Pete was clutching his chest, staggering over to me. “You okay?”

The pounding slowed, softened.

“Rel?” he said. A bleeding gash had bloomed across his chest, down to the bone.

“Ya, I’m fine.” I looked up at his face.

He smiled. Then he collapsed.

Before I knew it I was scrambling through the stranger’s pockets and pouches. I smelled it. I remembered. I needed it. He needed it.

Then I found it and I ripped the pouch off the belt and ran to Big Pete. His breathing was uneven, and bloody saliva stained his cheek. Pouring the powder from the pouch on to his chest, I massaged it in, eliciting a moan from my friend. It was rough and clumsy since my favored wrist was bent and swollen and unusable. His body was shuddering and shaking under my hands, but I kept working the powder in.

Just like my cuts when I was little, his wound stopped flowing under the influence of the powder. Just like mom had done. I sat with him, and put his head on my lap until his breathing evened out, then I went to the body in the center of the square and found a waterskin. I propped up Petey’s head and poured some water down his throat.

He was pale, but I heard his pulse evening out. Pumping a little stronger. He was stable.

It was only then that I noticed hot tears mingling with the blood on my cheeks and my own ragged, uneven breaths.

I went to rifle through the traveler’s belongings. It had to be worth it.

The sword was nice. It wasn’t normal steel. It was something else, and my gut quivered with an icy chill when I touched the bare blade. He had some other herbs, some pills, a pouch of biscuits and dried meat, and he had that pouch of coins.

I shook it. It was heavy, and the jingle was different than I was used to. I held my breath as I opened it. Gold. Gold!

I smiled over at Petey then remembered he was unconscious. The man's belt, with all its pouches and the sheath for the blade, found its way around my waist, and the cloak found its way to my shoulders. He had several rings which I dropped in with the coins.

I was about to go rouse Petey when I felt the stone floor of the alley under my toes. My Aether-damned shoe. I eyed the man’s feet. They were a bit bigger than mine, but I was still growing.

They were comfy leather boots. Well worn in, and still warm from their previous owner.

Now I was ready. Time to give the Headmaster what he was due.

“Gaaaah!” Big Pete was awake. He jerked up only to collapse into a full body grimace.

I ran over to him. “You’re safe, big guy. Let’s get you home.”

“Rel,” he said, his voice jagged and torn, “you’re okay. You’re okay. What happened to the- to the- to the guy?”

“Don’t worry about it Petey. He won’t bother us again.” But I was worried. If Petey hadn’t shown up when he did, I’d be the one swimming in a puddle of my own fluids. And Petey had almost died. I had to find out more about what had happened. The man had been fifteen paces away and somehow a swing of his sword had crossed the distance and cut to the bone.

I couldn’t let that happen again. Next time I’d be prepared. Next time they wouldn’t get to touch Petey. Damn humans.

Getting Petey home was harder said than done. With one working arm, and being only half his size, the best I could do was drag him. I rolled him onto my new cloak and pulled him through the alley with my good hand thanking my dragon blood that I could do even that much. Clouds had completed their conquest of the sky and the air grew heavy with the weight of impending rain.

Damn the Aethers. We weren’t going to make it back to the orphanage and Petey needed shelter and food like I needed to kill that wind-cutting bastard all over again.

The first drop fell, splattering off the tip of my nose. Then more followed. The stones that made up the alley floor were slick and shiny. My shirt and pants hung off me, soaked through and heavy. The only nice thing was that Petey slid across the ground a little easier. The fact that I nearly fell over every other step more than made up for it though.

The rain always reminded me of my mom. It reminded me of the leaky drip-dropping roofs in the slums, of the nights running through the alleys, cold and wet and crying, of her holding a hand over my mouth while we huddled under awnings, behind piles of trash.

When I was little, my mom told me quite a bit about dragons. I wasn’t able to make sense of it all at the time, but I’d burned the words into my mind. Each was more precious than the bag of coins on my hip.

“The thing about dragons,” she said, “is that we are the only pre-sentient awakened beasts.”

I just stared at her. I let her voice enfold me like the blanket I wished I had.

“Awakened beasts gain the ability to think through their connection to the Aether. You remember the story about the talking owls? Those were awakened beasts. What makes dragons special, is that we were the original awakened beasts. We were awakened before humans even knew how to build stick huts. That’s why we are the true lords of the sky and everything beneath it. Except the ocean of course. The ocean has other rulers. You remember the story about the creatures of the hungry deep? The tentacle monsters?”

I nodded. They were scary.

“They are like dragons, but they belong to the deep places, and they are the natural rulers of the sea.”

“The sea is scary. It’s too wet.” I shivered. “And what if they drag us down?”

She smiled and pet my damp hair, hugging me closer into her warmth, shielding me from the rain and wind.

“We don’t need the sea. We have the sky,” she said. She wasn’t shivering. At that moment she owned the wind because it came from the sky. “We dragons are the rulers of it all. We have minds even sharper than humans, instincts and bodies even stronger than beasts, and connection to the Aethers stronger than anyone. We are wiser and fiercer. You see how humans rule, they tear the earth and forests, trap and slaughter livestock, and they even subjugate each other. They are always trying to prove they have more power. The truly strong have no need to prove. A dragon knows the natural order, and the natural calling to protect that. All the lesser beasts exist both as prey for us, and as little pets. And we protect what is ours. We know that a true ruler maintains the balance and serves their kingdom as much as it serves them.”

I tuned out, and just let her words wash over me.

The rain fell thick this night just as it had then. Only, this time I was the one doing the protecting. Petey was shivering and moaning. My legs were shaking–about to give out.

On the back of one of the buildings, facing out into the alley, was a door of old splintering wood. A door I could break.

I kicked it. Once. Twice. Three times. It shattered inward and I dragged Petey in. Aethers, he was heavy.

Once we were in the far corner I stripped off both our clothes and wrung them out. They were still too wet so I left them in a pile. I needed to try something I’d seen my mother do.

I thought back to that moment of resonance when I’d been stalking the stranger. That feeling in my core. I breathed into it, and I thought maybe I could feel something there. Some kind of warmth, like a pulsing, buzzing bundle of energy. Maybe this would work.

In the darkness of the room I gathered a pile of the scraps of trash that littered the floor. I put my hand over the pile and I tried to push the energy out of my hand. I strained every muscle till my veins were bulging and my hand was tingling. Nothing happened.

Petey whimpered. His skin was cold as the winter seas. His lips, I was sure, were blue.

This had to work. I slowed down. I thought of my mother’s voice. Dragons were powerful because they were a part of the natural order, not because they fought against it. I settled into that ball of energy and breathed with it. It expanded and contracted with every breath. Veins of the energy wove throughout my body. I almost felt a hint of it out past my skin, flowing through the air itself, humming in the earth beneath me.

I tried to force the energy into the shape of fire. It began bending to my will, then snapped back like a whip against my bones and my mind. I collapsed in pain, convulsing.

This wasn’t going to work. Petey was going to–

No.

I sat back up and centered myself again. I touched the energy again. I breathed with it again. I fed it and traveled along its lines. It led me past my skin, into the stones and beams of the building. Into the roof, into the pattering rain. Into the sky.

I tried to remember what fire was. To feel it the way I felt the energy. The soft candle warmth of my mothers voice bloomed in my chest and grew. My palm began to heat. Then I remembered her screaming, pushing me out the door. And I remembered the flames. And the smoke. And I was coughing on it again, choking on it.

My insides burned. The air burned. The world burned. I burned. A great heat rose from my core and I was vomiting coughing puking hacking it up. Fire poured from my throat like a river, spilling onto the pile of trash, melting and burning the stones of the floor.

It wouldn’t stop. The fire spread. The rage grew. The fire wanted to burn the world down. It wed itself to my own rage and pain and we were one.

“My little dragon.” Her voice was so soft, I didn’t know if I really heard it. The whisper was full of joy and pain and pride and love.

The fountain of flames ripping out of me stopped.

“Mom?” I called out, looking around madly. “Mom!”

Silence.

An ocean crashed out of me and I wept, falling to my side beside the flames. I didn’t know how long I cried. I cried till my tears were dry and my throat was raw and my ribs ached and the fire was no more than smoldering, liquefied stones.

At least we weren’t cold anymore.