Fortnightly Writing Competition: Dragons, Dragons, Everywhere (Results)

[Frodo]

DRAGONS, DRAGONS, EVERYWHERE

I have a *slight* obsession with dragons.  There's so many different dragon species, and each of them just as glorious as the last. 
I find these mythical beasts to be magnificant, powerful, magical, and completely fascinating! 





But what do YOU think about dragons?
Are they the earth's savouir, man's protector, or the scurge of the earth? 

I want you to tell me a story about a dragon or dragons.
-  Are you trying to protect a dragon?
-  Are you hunting a dragon?
-  Do you have a pet dragon? 
-  Is your best friend a dragon?
-  Are YOU a dragon? 

Let your imagination soar!  Your story can be funny, sad, heroic, whatever you want.  As long as it involves a dragon or dragons, I want to read it. 


RULES
-  One entry per person
-  Submit your entry by Sunday 26 August, 2018


VOTING WILL BE FOR:
-  Best character
-  Best writing
-  Best story
-  Best atmosphere
-  Best dragon


TROPHIES
               

[WHAM]

I have an idea. Dragons A dragon will be involved. More to come at a later date.

[Frodo]

Looking forward to seeing your story, Wham. 

[Sinitrena]

Why are dragons so damned inspiring to me that I already have over 5000 words now? Maybe because I have a soft spot for them myself?

Spoiler

Not the best photo and just a small selection of my dragons.
(What are you talking about, I'm not trying to bribe the comp admin...)

[close]

[Frodo]

Wonderful photo, Sinitrena   
Dragons are the best!

Can't wait to read your story. 

[Mandle]

I always wondered who bought those random dragon statues in gift shops.

[JudasFm]

Why are dragons so damned inspiring to me that I already have over 5000 words now? Maybe because I have a soft spot for them myself?

Spoiler

Not the best photo and just a small selection of my dragons.
(What are you talking about, I'm not trying to bribe the comp admin...)

[close]

Do you have any Tudor Mint? I used to be nuts on collecting those dragons when I was a kid

[Frodo]

Do you have any Tudor Mint? I used to be nuts on collecting those dragons when I was a kid

Does that mean you're going to write about Tudor Mint dragons for your entry??? 

[Sinitrena]

Do you have any Tudor Mint? I used to be nuts on collecting those dragons when I was a kid

No, I don't think so. Most of my dragons are "useful" in one way or another, not just figurines: candle holders, a lamp, little boxes for bits and pieces, a bowl for bonbons and a coffee table.

Spoiler

[close]

[Mandle]

Do I see Griff The P.I. Bear somewhere in there?

[Frodo]

One week gone already - only one week left to go. 

Hope you're all busy writing about dragons.

C'mon, I want to see lots of entries! 

[WHAM]

Hard Bargain

Ferrungis planted his claws into the soft soil and took pause, his great serpentine eyes gazing miles away, at the mouth of a great pass. The passage through the mountains was sided by tall cliffs, banners fluttering in the wind above. People and carts, peddlers and traders and travelers from far off places all milled upon the road through that pass, coming and going on their endless business. Before the mountains that served as the wall of the King's city were the vast, rolling hills of green, and the great pastures with neat little fences around them. Sheep, like white, puffy clouds, dotted the vast expanse. It made his stomach rumble, seeing food like that, so easily in reach...

The great dragon stood taller than any house, his head atop a slender, scaled neck that allowed him to see for miles and miles. His wings were folded atop his back, while his great tail rose high behind him, so as not to knock over trees or buildings or farmers. There was a fine to pay if he did that. “A fine for everything...” -he rumbles, a swirling cloud of smoke emitting from his nostrils, rising up into the air, to be thinned out by the breeze. Even now he could feel the eyes on his back, and see the glint of steel in the towers atop those hills. Ballistas in all of them. Cursed things. The old wounds still ached, even now, after all these years.

“Move along, ya big lizzerd!” -comes the voice of some straw-hatted man wearing goofy suspenders and muddy boots. Not a hint of fear in his voice. No respect. The man was brandishing a rusty pitchfork while hauling a bunch of beets in his other hand. “Yer' scaring the flock! Move along ‘fore I call the guards on ya!” Ferrungis simply bowed his head and began to stride, moving along the right side of the road so as not to be in the way, leaving the farmer to his beets and his delicious sheep.

The plains and the hills brought many memories. Fiery battles had raged right here, with the Great King's armies driven to a rout before the Dragon horde, screaming in terror as the first line fell. Or so it had seemed, right until the dragons had followed them to that pass ahead. Great fortifications had been set up there, protected by spells even Ferrungis could not begin to comprehend. Cursed bolts from those great ballistas had darkened the sky, rending wings and shattering scales, while sending dozens and more of the dragons into a lifeless freefall. In anger the retreating dragons had set fire to all the lands and forests. Even now, barely a single tree stood tall here, thought the humans had planted countless saplings, brought from distant lands and paid for with the gold and gemstones from the Dragon reparations.

Reparations. That word tasted bitter in the mouth and brought Ferrungis' blood to a boil. He'd been wealthier than any mortal man in the realm! Worked hard, for centuries, to accumulate his precious hoard. And here he was now, loose gold coins from centuries past tucked away under his scales.

He entered the pass, where the narrow passage forced him to share the road with the carts and peddlers streaming toward the city ahead. He knew the odd looks now, and the pointing and the laughing. A child, no older than seven, too young to have known the war, pointed up at Ferrungis and shouted: “Show us your wings! Wings! Wings!” Finally his mother rounded the slow-moving cart and silenced the child. Again, the great and mighty beast could only draw in a deep, shuddering breath and swallow down the bile and the frustration. He could easily have spread his wings, take off and reach his destination in moments. He could, but only if he wished to be fined for entering a no-fly zone. Or perhaps he'd simply be shot, if the guard captain was in a foul mood today. It was not a smart gamble, and Ferrungis had known of a fine old lizard, too proud for her own good, who had suffered and died here, just for such a risk, hoping to save half a days worth of travel time. No fines, that day, but no reparations, either. Those only worked one way.

Finally the pass opened up, and Ferrungis could make his way to the side of the road, overtaking the slow moving column. There was, of course, a speed limit. No faster could he stride than a horse could ride, so as not to cause alarm. Some children tried to run alongside with him, but could not keep up for long. It was a petty and pyrrhic victory to leave them in his dust. No pride welled up in that old draconic heart.

“Name and number, big red!”
“You know me by now, Gate Warden. Must we do this every time?”
The fat man, Henry was his name, with thick glass lenses over his eyes that made him look like some kind of foul insect and a big, round belly barely contained by the leather strap that could be graciously called a belt, tapped his finger on the great leatherbound book set on a counter before him. “Name and number! I need ‘em for the books, see!” Ferrungis rolled his eyes once more, his reptilian lids closing in a slow blink to mask the impolite expression.
“Ferrungis of the Iron Cliff.” His home. “Four-seventeen.” His birth-year. “Nine-two-two.” Nine for a red dragon, twenty-two for his unique registration number. Prior to the war he hadn't even known there were twenty-one other reds, let alone more.
“Repeat that last part, please!” Hot air darted from Ferrungis' nostrils. An image of the fat man's bones laid out in a smoking pile before him flashed in his eyes. It was a pleasant image.
“Nine - Two - Two!” He made sure the numbers were clearly audible. Speaking slowly in that rumbling voice of his, a voice that could shatter stone if he willed it, made him sound slow in the mind. Someone laughed off to the side. The fat man flashed up a smile and nodded his approval. “All right, I'll send the word. Out of the gates by the sixth bell, wings and tail in check and watch those claws. Knock loose too many of the cobblestones and someone will make up a fine for that, too! Already came close last week, with a silver one.”
Ferrungis simply nodded as he took his leave of the man, carefully picking his steps as he moved onto the cobbled streets and passed beneath the Great Gate and into the marketplace beyond.

The city streets were narrower to navigate, and uncomfortable to be in. With each step Ferrungis had to care not to knock on the corner of one building or to crack the door on another. It was frustrating work to navigate this maze, built for creatures that were like insects to him once, but eventually he made his way to the old paupers quarter, the only part of the city that had burned down in the War. Now it was a very special marketplace, the construction work paid, once again, with Dragon gold.
“Ferry!” -came the far-too-friendly shout of an old woman, silvery in hair and wrinkled in face as she marched, brown robes billowing, out of her stall and right up to Ferrungis, smacking her hand on a scale on his forearm. He couldn't even feel it, but he knew her habits by now.
“Greetings, lady Mabel. I've come to trade.” She knew this. He visited every other week, especially this close to winter. “What is the price for a dozen heads of sheep?”

The old woman stepped back and begun to gesture wildly for the dragon to follow. The streets here were wider and more open, to cater to the draconic customers that visited every other day. Business was slow, but the profits, apparently, were well worth it. Only two other cities traded with the scaly kind, and the three formed a cartel that squeezed the dragons tighter every month. Some folk whispered, fearfully, of a breaking point, while others laughed and lined their pockets.

“Seven gold for a head, Ferry, but I'll cut you a deal and sell ‘em off at eighty. You know old Mabel likes you the best, right Ferry?” It might have been mockery, but it had gone on for a long time now, ever since the market opened. Ferrungis believed she had some strange fixation for his kind, which might explain why most of the other humans avoided her as best they could. Sometimes she seemed lonely. “Old coin or the new?” -she croaked up, trying to look like a sweet old lady as she scampered back to her little stall and pulled out her books. Her haste to make business betrayed her look. Ferrungis lifted his wing slightly, reaching underneath it to dislodge the bundles of coins hidden away. The old coin was much more valuable than the new, the coins wider and heavier, and pure gold rather than the plated copper the new King passed off for currency. Mabel's eyes grew wide and her mouth, with all four of her teeth, turned into a mighty grin. “Ooooh, dearie-dear! Let me just see, here...” She rubs her wrinkled hands together and turns the pages on her book. At least she could see better than the gate warden, and needed no help for her eyesight. “That makes twenty-two for the full dozen!”

It took a moment to register in Ferrungis' mind. “Don't lie, woman.” -he snorted. “Last time it was seventeen for a dozen! I doubt the sheep eat gold to fatten up!” His voice took on a loud, booming quality. Windows rattled nearby. Guards manning the inner gate turned to stare, hands on their crossbows and their horns, for alerting the knights. Mabel simply shook her head, looking small and sad for a moment, as if she pitied the great dragon, despite holding the upper hand in this little transaction. She was like a cat, and he her mouse. A plaything. “Two green drakes brought in stacks of the old coinage just this week!” -she explained. “Nobody even knew there was so many of those old things lying around, so they've gone down in value, see? That, and the King raised the tax on draconic transactions again last week, as you might know...” She paused as Ferrungis parted his lips, his great white teeth glimmering in the light of the slowly falling sun. He had to struggle to keep his voice down, to swallow the foul words that might get him thrown out. And fined. “Ferry! Please! It's only business, and you know how old Mabel likes you best!” It was as if she were talking to her favourite puppy dog, or a small, particularly dull child. “Tell you what, I'll give you thirteen for the twenty-two, so you can go home in good spirits. How about it?”

She drove a hard bargain. He had nothing more to offer than his gold.

The sixth bell tolled as Ferrungis already strode away from the gates, having stopped there to listen to rumours of the realm while being pelted with dung and small stones from time to time. Teenagers, wanting to be knights one day, proving themselves in the eyes of the giggling girls and smaller children. There was talk of great serpentine dragons in the west, over the sea, and of great harpoon ships being built to stop them from reaching the coast. The coastal nobles were upset and anxious to see their holdings defended. In the east there was talk of civil war, of an alliance of three dukes and their dragon servants wanting to claim a slice of the King's land for themselves. Ferrungis knew not whether to hate, pity or envy his eastern brethren. They, at least, had secured a steady income and food for the winter.

The sheep lay against his side, stunned with fear and pinned down by his wings, six on one side, seven on the other. They, at least, still knew fear and respect for the dragons. He'd likely eat one on the road, to sate the worst of his hunger, and to calm his nerve for dealing with the enforced landing checkpoints on the way. This week there were six, when two weeks prior there had been five.

It would be a long way home.

Somehow Ferrungis just knew it in his heart he'd need at least 30 of the old coins when he returned to trade a couple weeks from now. The humans always drove a hard bargain.

[Frodo]

AN ENTRY!  YIPPEEE!!! 

Brilliant story Wham. 
Can I give Ferrungis a big hug? 

[WHAM]

Can I give Ferrungis a big hug? 

He'd probably be fined if he declined. I'm sure he'll learn to appreciate it in time, though.

[Frodo]

Only 5 days left, people. 

[Ponch]

I have an idea... hopefully I'll find enough time this weekend to flesh it out.

[Baron]

I have time... hopefully I'll find enough ideas this weekend to flesh it out.

[Wiggy]

I think I'll have a lash at poetry this time, albeit from left field.

The following is a true story about dragons, there are two meanings to the word I hope you realise, and one is NOT loveable. It happened on the occaision of the 30th anniversary of my pilots' course graduation, and yes I was flying single engine jets since before most of you were born. The Queen paid for it, and it was a real hoot! Upside down at one hundred feet at 10 nautical miles per minute on my 20th birthday beats any roller-coaster you've ever been on! (and I was burning a gallon of kerosene per second) To reminisce over formative years is great, but there's always someone to spoil it. There's always a dragon...

DRAGONS

Dragons circling, dragons' flight;
Dragons waiting, hov'ring, in the night;
Dragons that must be fed, dragons on the prowl;
Well fed dragons, Prada clad, make their hunting howl.

Many miles they've come this night;
To strut themselves before their ilk;
And chatter unimportant things,
Before they make their kill.

Amongst themselves they chatter, bicker, and complain;
About "Useless bloody pilots, all they talk is aeroplanes!"
While totally forgetting who paid for that dress,
And the tennis club's membership, alas! I do digress.

The first and business travel that they got but for a song;
400 bucks London and back? Nice, but far too long!
The dragons, blue and red and green,
Wait for a signal, quite unseen
By men at least, Not man nor beast;
Can hear the huntress' call,
But soon the fun is over,
For us men, one and all.

The dragon is a mighty beast,
With sharpened claws and razor teeth,
Most splendiferous, and magestic;
With wings it flies across the skies
A scenario fantastic!
A mission bent, with great intent
To scratch out your very eyes!

Amongst our clan there stood a man,
Who would not be one outspoken;
When the dragons called 'We're all bored!"
He played the final token:

"Fifteen years I've spent with you,
and shower'd you with praise,
But to this man here, I owe my life,
If you'd heard you'd be amazed!
You begrudge me seeing him, once in thirty years,
and my 18 mates who defied the fates
and the lost that caused us tears."

The way to beat a dragon, isn't through a lance,
For it will always lead you through a very merry dance;
But if you were to rob it of its pompous gift of flight
You clip its wings, and then it sings,
"Oh Waily!" through the night.

"Yer'r'off my staff travel!" cried he; with a flourish of his phone!
"Unless you've got some money, seems like you'll be walking home!"
Some Dragons threatened everything; like "No sex e'er for you!";
One brave (and lucky) man then said; "Of girlfriends I have two!"

The next morn, we old "young men" return'd
To our homes and hearths, we'd had our laughs,
The dragons were very burned.
The greatest mistake we all can make
In life when we're confronted;
Is to take anyone, any thing or gift, for pity's sake, for granted.

'Coz you'll find your own freakin' way home! Bitch!

[Sinitrena]

I'm tired and can't think straight right now, but I'm finally done with my story. Unfortunately, nothing makes sense at the moment, so this is completely un-edited.

Part 1 of 3

Dragon's Guardian

Fire... Burning... Shadows... A claw... A throat... Fire... Running... Falling... Deep... Deep into the crevice...Blood... Ripped skin... Ripped flesh...

Pain.

Just pain.

It was the first thing he felt. The only thing. There was nothing else. The bones, the skin, the hairs on his scalp, everything hurt. It just hurt. The pain came before the consciousness, before awareness, before...

Coldness.

It was so cold. He felt so cold. His skin was burning and he shivered from the cold.

Next came the screams. His screams, not yet hushed, even though his throat was raw, even though the rest of his body had given up, had sunken into a state of shock. He drifted in and out of awareness and he heard the screams. They were loud, louder than his own screams. They were roars of anger, of pain, of hatred. They followed him, into his hiding place, into his dreams.

Pain, more pain woke him up, fingers brushing over his skin, washing the sweat from his forehead. A voice drifted into his mind, not soothing, not angry, nothing. Cold, neutral, assessing.

Broken arm, not serious. The hand bend his arm back and forth. He pressed his teeth together, stopping a new scream, and felt something between his lips. It tasted bitter.

It smelled of fire and freshly grilled meat. Breathed on the leg, whole left side burned to crisps. Could be better, could be worse.

The hand removed ripped clothes over his chest. It freed tatters from the blood. Claws. Deep, down to the rips, but no inner organs wounded. Lucky, very lucky.

He lay still, not able to move, not even able to really think yet. The hand touched his forehead again.

“Fever. You're dying, boy.” The statement was as matter-of-fact as the rest of the assessment.

His eyes sprang open, darting around. He couldn't focus, couldn't see what he was looking for.

Who had spoken? Where was he?

He tried to move, to get up. Strong hands pressed down on his chest, not gentle, not kind, just unmoving, relentless. A new wave of pain spread through his body. He tried to scream again and the scream was muffled by the gag in his mouth. The bitter liquid on it dripped into his throat, made him cough.

The pressure on his chest didn't decrease but the stranger still had a hand to remove the gag and turn his head to the side.

He waited for the coughing fit to stop, then he repeated in the same cold and distant tone: “You are dying. Don't expect any sympathy.”

“What...?” he pressed out between trembling lips. “Where...? ...who...?”

His eyes finally decided to open and register his surroundings. They first locked onto the stranger who still pressed one hand on his chest while the other held his head. The man was young, though his features showed lines of wear and strain that better fitted an older man. Dark hair hung deep over his bespectacled eyes. He had never seen him before.

The man did not answer.

“Where... where am I?” he croaked next but only received an impassive look as an answer.

He tried to look further around, but as soon as he moved his head, did the man entwine his fingers in his hair and held it straight, forcing him to keep looking at him.

“What... what happened?” Cold eyes looked down at him. “Please, what happened?”

“You don't know?” The tone wasn't as neutral as before. Instead, a so far suppressed anger found its way into his voice. “You don't remember?”

“N...no.” He really didn't. It was all a haze. Images of a boat flashed before his eyes, of a cave, of laughter, the prospect of money, of hope, contained in an egg. And then all was gone, gone in a whirl of fire and claws.

The man was patiently waiting for the memories to form a coherent picture. “You don't remember?”

“I... No... I...”

“Yes, you do. You remember. I see it in your eyes. You know what you did. And if the fever doesn't kill you, the dragons will. I will drag you out of here, throw you on the field and they will rip you apart. The only reason you're still alive...”

“Please, I...”

“You have anything to say for yourself?”

His mouth tried to form words but his tongue felt heavy and sluggish, too heavy to move. His eyes, his look, caught by the mesmerizing, magical eyes of the other man tried to stay focused on the other but again and again they dropped closed. The pain, indescribable before had become a mere background annoyance in the last couple of minutes.

The bitter taste. He remembered it vaguely from a long time ago, when he was sick and his mother had... The thought did not finish in his mind before he drifted back into unconsciousness.

*

Roars woke him. Angry screams that pierced his dreams, echoed through his mind and shook the brittle wall he lay against. It felt like thousands of them screeched at the same time, filled with pain and hatred, both so deep ingrained in them that nothing could ever reach them over it.

His pain was just a dull throbbing now. It was all over his body, but it was contained, limited to the background. He still felt cold, even though he could feel the sweat on his forehead.

It took him a while to even want to open his eyes. The memories had returned and the fear, real fear, with them. He knew where he was, what he had done, who the stranger was. He did not want to name it, did not want to think about it, but he knew.

He remembered sneaking through the caves and he remembered the egg, lying on a carpet of moss and flowers. He remembered how it glittered before their torchlight could even reach it, filled with a light deep inside. He remembered the specks of colours that danced on the cave walls and ceiling, danced in colours he had never seen before. How it seemed to give life to the blossoms around itself, touching their very innermost secrets â€" touching his innermost being.

He remembered climbing up the wall and putting the egg in a bag, letting it down to the other three because it was too heavy to carry on his back and keep his balance. He remembered two of them running as soon as they had it.

And he remembered the piercing scream as the dragon returned.

His eyes sprang open and darted around the room. He couldn't see clearly. The remnants of the pain the drug couldn't numb and tears clouded his vision. He tried to wipe them away, but his arms wouldn't move. He blinked them away instead, too confused still to wonder what held him back.

He wanted to look around, wanted to finally see where he was and where the dragon's guardian had gone to, but it was still too difficult to concentrate. The constant screaming of the dragons just separated from him by an old wall made it nearly impossible to think of anything but them.

The screams seemed to call to him, they seemed to fill him with all the emotions the dragons felt. It was hatred and anger but also fear and most of all pain, a pain so much stronger than the claw of a dragon or its fire could create. It sneaked into his mind and shook him to the core.

He didn't know how long he lay there, just thinking about the dragons, who tried to drag him again and again into his own memories, into his own memories of loss and grief. They forced him to remember, they forced him to think about the illness of his mother, about the fire his father had died in, but no matter how much he fought against it, they most of all forced him to remember the day he climbed up a wall and then fell when a dragon's roar pierced his mind for the first time and the fiery breath touched his leg. They made him remember the man on the ground, the only one who waited for him, even when the dragon came closer, even when the fire rushed from its throat. They made him look again and again as he lay helpless, half unconscious from the fall, as the mother dragon glided through the cave, majestic and fierce, and then pounced down on his brother and ripped him apart and chewed him to pieces. Even with the dragons' magic, the next memories were hazy. The dragon pounced on him next and her claw tore the skin from the flesh. He fell back into a crevice, too narrow for the dragon to follow, and then the screams started, the roars of all the dragons on the islands, coming into the cave, coming to him...

He lay there for days, that much he could tell, but the place he woke up in next was a different one.

This one. He lay on a thin woollen blanket that hardly protected him from the naked stone underneath and another kept the wind, howling through the cracks in the brittle wall, just slightly away from his shivering body. A couple of candles stood around him, their flames flickering in the wafting air, not giving away any warmth but at least spending some light in the otherwise dark room. He couldn't see far beyond them. Vaguely, he saw an old but still sturdy door and next to it a couple of leathern bags. Other than that, the room was empty. The other man, the guardian, wasn't there.

He tried to sit up again or to at least press his hands over his ears to keep out the constant roars from just outside the door, but his arms were to weak and the chains to strong. He hadn't noticed them before, now he did. They lay closer around his wrists than normal chains of iron. They sneaked around his forearm like the split tongue of a dragon, up to his elbows, and stretched with every movement of his muscles, more like a rope than a chain but heavier. They were warm, nearly gentle in their relentless grip and did not seem to have a beginning or an end.

“You are awake.” The neutral, distant tone was back.

His head whipped around to the door where the dragon's guardian stood, blocking the light from entering but allowing the wind to blow even stronger through the threadbare remnants of what must have once been part of a house or even castle but was now just a ruin and shelter to keep the worst weather away.

“And obviously alive. Regrettably.”

“Regrettably?” His voice sounded strange in his own ears, like the voice of a stranger, older, deeper, strained from pain and exhaustion, strained from screams that tried to rival those of a mother dragon who had lost her child.

“I would prefer you dead,” the guardian said, stepping further into the room and kneeling down next to his prisoner. “It would be easier, not having to keep you alive, not having to protect you.”

“I... I'm sorry?”

“You don't even know what you should be sorry for, do you, boy?”

“My name is Layim,” he protested just to say something, anything at all.

“I do not care, boy.” The words were spoken dangerously calm while the magic filled his cold blue eyes with a reddish shimmer that spoke of dangers as strong as a dragon's claw. “I do not care who you are. I do not care why you came here. I do not care for your sob stories and excuses. I do not care that you are poor, that you needed money, that you...” His voice became louder and angrier with every word. “No;” he stopped himself, took a deep breath and then continued as seemingly calm as before, “You are not worth my anger. You are not worth my thoughts. You are nothing. You don't have a story, you don't have reasons that are worth anything, anything at all. You are nothing. You want to know why you are alive? Why I didn't let you die? Why I don't kill you? Why I don't drag you out as food for my friends? Why I even saved your life with my magic?”

Layim tried to skid further away from the man but the bonds around his wrists and forearms wouldn't let him. His eyes darted between the other's face and the bonds, between his angrily shaking hands and the door.

“You have nothing to say? No idea? Well, then. You will tell me who hired you. You will tell me everything I might need to know to find the fledgling. You will do everything to get her back. You will do whatever I tell you to do. You will do so without grumbling, without lies, without falsehood and without hesitation.”

“And if I don't?”

“Quiet, boy! I did not tell you to speak. But, so be it. You shall see.”

With these words, the guardian flicked his hands in a impatient gesture and the tongues that held Layim's hands whipped back from his skin, leaving dark red bruises behind. The man buried his hands in the sweaty blond hair of the boy and dragged him to his feet. All Layim could do was grab the wrists of the older man to stop his hair from being pulled out. The guardian pushed him towards the still open door, over the candles that fell and expired, and outside, where he fell on his knees.

They weren't in a cave. Layim hadn't expected it, but he couldn't say where exactly they were either. It was some kind of ruin, that might have been, long ago, a strong castle. Now, except for the one room, only the remnants of walls formed bumps under green grass on the ground. Drizzling rain dropped down onto his head.

But his surroundings were of no consequence for him. As soon as he sat up, his eyes fell onto the beast that lay just a few steps away. It had its eyes, as big as a man's head, closed and its head lay relaxed on its front-paws. The long, spiked tail thumped up and down on the grass in irregular intervals and its muscular wings, clasped around its whole body, twitched from time to time as if it would shrug its shoulders. The scales, ocean-blue and violet, shimmered in the little bit of sunshine that found its way through the dark rain clouds. The dragon's tongue, split like a serpent's, hung lazily out of its half-open mouth in a cloud of its own smoke, coming from its nostrils. From time to time it licked up to a little horn on the tip of its snout, caught it between the two sides like between fingers and pulled. When it did, the dragon shook itself for a second, moved its head to a different position and then fell back into a deeper sleep.

The boy knelt completely frozen and stared at the dragon while the man just seemed to wait. Seconds seemed like hours.

Above their heads, other dragons circled through the air, most of them too far away to see their features or even to recognize them as dragons. Now and then, one or two of them flew one towards the other and it seemed as if they would collide but instead they danced around each other, sank deeper down to the ground and then, with heavy, strong strokes of their wings, they soared up again into the air. Once, one of the dragons swooped down fairly close to them, rushed deeper down than the ground they were on, behind the cliff and into the sea, and when it came back up, it had something in its mouth that it then threw up into the air before it caught it again.

Through all of this, the roars never ceased. They still echoed through his head, they still forced memories to the surface he did not want to have. And with a power he did not understand, they forced him to look for one dragon among them all, they made him search out the red scales he only remembered as flashes of danger. She was flying far above them, further from them than all the others. It was impossible to see her, but he knew which one she was and her screams, so far and still so loud, shook him to the core.

He shivered and dragged his threadbare shirt, hardly more than rags, tighter around his upper body. As soon as his numbness of fear left him at least a bit and he moved, the guardian pulled his hair and his head up, forcing him to look at the sleeping dragon.

“Chradragshza!” he said, calm but with authority in his voice.

The dragon's eyes opened slowly. It blinked a few times, the lids twitching both from above and below to the middle of the eye. After a few seconds, the dragon's eyes stayed open and it raised its head from its paws, unfurled its wings and pressed them against the ground, heaving itself up. It stretched its shoulders, first the left one then the right and swished its tail a few times over the depressed grass. The dragon yawned, spitting a small flame in the process, and then it stood in its full form before them. It looked around for a second and then settled on the guardian, looking at him with deep black eyes. It moved its head from one side to the other and combs of strong violet skin, of horn and muscles, where one would expect its ears, straighten themselves to impressive shields at the back of its head.

For another moment, the dragon looked at the young human, then it whipped its head around and stretched its long, spiked neck towards the boy. Its snout came to a sudden stop less than a thumb's thickness from the unmoving Layim.

It felt like years. Held by the guardian, the boy was unable to move, to shrink away from the monster before him. He tried to pry the older man's hands away but they were stronger than him, relentless. He had no choice but to stare onto the horn, studying every shade of colour on the dragon's scales. It seemed like an eternity, the dragon just standing there, staring at him, its nostrils stretching and contracting in fast and heavy breaths, a little bit of smoke coming out of them with every exhalation. Slowly, the dragon opened its mouth.

Layim waited for the inevitable to happen. He waited for the dragon to inhale the cold air around them deep and slow, for it to stretch its throat with air, ready to breathe out more than just this air. He could see the points behind the rows of sharp yellow teeth where the fire would come out. He smelled the breath of the dragon. It smelled of roasted meat, of camp-fire and summer storm. Too transfixed from the impression, he stopped trying to move his captor's hands.

And then the dragon did inhale the air and its throat expanded. It stretched its wings but this was just a blurry movement for Layim at this point. He felt the warm air, hot, stream around his ears, swirling his hair. But instead of fire, a roar filled the air. Not infused with as much magic as the other dragons used, it seemed stronger in its natural hatred and force. It did not drag memories to the surface, it did not make him remember, but it spoke to him. The dragon put all it felt, all it wanted to do to him, all it would do to him into this one, loud, deafening, constant roar.

It seemed to last for several minutes, starting loud and then getting more and more silent as the dragon lost its breath. Finally, when the tone had subsided to how a man would be able to speak, fire began to glow in the back of its throat. Slowly, it flickered over the tongue and danced between the two tips. Suddenly, the dragon's tongue rushed forward and it slapped Layim in the face. Layim pressed his hands against a red welt on his cheek.

Then, the dragon closed its mouth again and turned his attention towards the man. It lay its head on the ground. Finally, the guardian let go of his hair and he put his hand on the soft skin around his mouth. He stroked it slowly up and down and the dragon slung its tongue around his arm and, moving back and forth, imitated the man's movement.

“Do you know what I am, boy?” the guardian asked, paying attention only to the dragon but speaking with Layim in an even more distant tone than before.

Layim shook his head. He did know what the other was. Everyone knew of the guardians, five men and three women who had somehow befriended the dragons and were now protecting them. Few people took them serious. For one, dragons didn't need protection, they were wild and dangerous on their own. For another, they stayed in their own regions, on a deserted island or in the middle of a jungle that was too deep to get through. He knew this but it just seemed safer to let the guardian talk.

Layim still pressed his hands against his cheek and stared at the dragon. He wasn't really able to do much else at the moment and listening to whatever the guardian had to say seemed like a better idea than arguing with him and maybe angering the dragon.

“I keep peace,” the guardian said, leaning his head against the dragon's snout. “We negotiated for fifteen years, day in and day out, night after night, to stop the war. Men leave dragon alone, the dragons keep to their habitats. No revenge, no destroyed cities, no more fields burned to cinders, no more deserts because life has left the land. But a dragon's egg, stolen by a stupid child; you could destroy what we worked for so long and so hard.”

He put his calloused hand under Layim's chin and pressed his head up. “I keep peace. As long as I, as we, protect the dragons, keep stupid people like you away from them, they won't attack your people again. But now, now you broke the peace. And now, why shouldn't they attack you and your stupid kingdoms and meaningless cities. Only because they still follow the treaty and do not leave this place.”

“They are just animals!” As soon as the words had left his mouth, he regretted him. But a questioning look from the guardian still made him continue. “We won the last war. The dragons vanished into their regions. They are just animals. Everybody knows that. Big and strong but that is all. Everybody knows.”

The guardian looked at him incredulous for a moment, then he laughed in a bitter, pained way. “And what everybody knows must be true? You know nothing, and I think you even know that you know nothing. You've seen them. You feel them. You hear their screeches. You feel their pain. Do you really think they are nothing to be afraid of? Don't pretend to be even more stupid then you already are.” He knelt down next to Layim and the dragon put its snout onto his legs. “False bravado. False hope. Lies, because humans just can't admit that they lost. Let me tell you one thing, boy. Even if it were true, if the dragons lost and fled, do you know what would happen if they were all killed?”

He waited for an answer that didn't come. Layim just stared at the man who could snuggle with the snout of a dragon and not even think about it.

“Do you know what their magic is? Dragons are this world. They are all that keeps life on this world. The Karisha desert? Ghivertshim was the name of the dragon who infused this part of the world with life. He was old, so old that his power alone kept this part of the world alive. Seventy spears pierced his gums and he fell into the ocean. The same second, the Karisha, then a lake, started to dry. Three days later it was a valley. Fourteen days later a sea of stones. The hills around it, they were green for another year, because the sky cried for the loss of one of its own. The three cities that surrounded the lake, the farms and fields? First they seemed to drown, but then the water seeped into the ground and gave nothing to the crops and trees. Five years after Ghivertshim's death, there were only ruins left. This is the magic of the dragons. And still your people hunted them. And still you believe that you could win a war against them? And still you steal from them? And still you want their magic for yourself?”

“I... I didn't want magic.”

“No. No, you wanted money. It is always about money or power. What about the one that was killed? Did he want money or power? Money, I bet, because the one who hired you is the one who seeks power. And people who seek power are not so stupid to walk into a dragon's den. So, tell me boy, who hired you?”

Layim didn't answer, not for a long time. His mind seemed empty of all coherent thoughts. There were too many and too few. Instead, he watched as the guardian continued stroking the dragon that had closed its eyes again and was gently snoring under his touch. The tongue, that had played with the snout's horn before, now licked and caught the guardian's hand from time to time. He didn't even seem to notice it or the smoke that drifted up from the beasts nostrils and enwrapped him in a veil of warm shadows.

“You'll kill me,” he finally said. “If I tell you, you'll kill me.”

“I might.”

“You'll have no reason to keep me alive.”

“Punishment.”

The boy stared blankly at him.

“Understand this, boy. I can never bring the egg back. When a dragon's egg senses danger, it hatches. And if it hatches among humans, the dragons will never accept the fledging as one of their own. They would not come for it to bring it back. They would come for it for revenge. And they would burn cities to the ground, the whole kingdom if they must, to find the one responsible. If their anger was strong enough, their hatred uncontrolled, they might kill and it would be a mercy. But you, boy, you will remember. You will see the pain the young dragon has to suffer through, the loss. You will see it grow up without its people, without its home, without its family. You will be so close to it, you will feel everything the fledgling feels, know what it means to be alone, really alone, not just like the loss of the brother you have known your whole life, not like the loss of your freedom, not like anything you can even imagine. Dragons are life. You will see all the sadness of a life that can never be as it should.”

Layim had thought the dragon was asleep but now it opened at least the eye that was turned in his direction. The same magic that had caught him when the guardian had assessed his injuries now held him in an even stronger bond. When the guardian spoke next, he seemed to narrate what Layim saw in the dragon's eye:

“Chradragshza was chosen. She had no choice, a sacrifice for the greater good. Not even wizards like me can understand dragons, not just like that. But a dragon hatched for a human, they know their own language and they learn the words of us. She is a mediator just like me, a connection between two worlds. My father's people, they came too close to a den. They build their houses where they shouldn't have, they felled trees that stood for centuries. The dragons were angry. They attacked. It was a time of war. The dragon's wars, they were never coordinated in any way, just people coming too close to dragons and dragons getting angry. My father's people had legends. That a sacrifice to a dragon would appease it. First they brought sheep. Then cows. Dogs, cats, everything. In the end, they decided to draw a lot. My father was a fair lord. He didn't exempt his own children. Chradragshza and I, we were both sacrifices. I was seven. They dragged me into the forest and tied me to a tree as close to the den as they dared go. But dragons are life. As wild as they are, as angry as this one was, first and foremost he wanted to understand how another lost life was supposed to pay for the destruction people had done to his home. He cut cut the rope with his claws and grabbed me. He flew me away. I spend years with them and we couldn't understand each other. In the end, they took me away from their home and placed Chradragshza's egg next to me. She was lost ever since, but together we connect two worlds.”

When the guardian had finished his story, the dragon, Chradragshza, closed her eye again and started snoring again as if she had never paid attention to anything around her but the caresses of her guardian.

“Punishment, boy. That is why I will keep you alive.” With these words, the guardian gently pushed the dragon's snout from his legs and stood up. Without looking back he went back into the ruin. In the door he paused for a moment. “We leave tomorrow.”

Layim took a deep breath, relieved that the guardian was gone, and then his eyes fell on the dragon again. There was absolutely no reason to relax, even though Chradragshza lay completely calm on the ground, less than a step away. She seemed not to notice anything around her, but as soon as Layim raised his hand to sweep an errand strand of hair out of his eyes, her head whipped around to him again. Slowly, lazily, she opened her eyes, first just a slit and, when he paused in the middle of his movement, completely. She watched him, absolutely still, not even moving her pupils, that were only recognizable as a darker shade of black. She kept her mouth closed and not even the constant smoke still drifted from her nostrils.

After a while of motionless starring from both sides, Layim started to carefully crawl towards the only still-standing wall of the ruin. Her head followed, never getting any closer to him than it were before, but also never giving him more room. The wall stopped his fearful movement. He couldn't back off further. He didn't dare stand up. He didn't dare crawl to the side, lest she might think he would do something she didn't want, whatever that might be.

“Please...,” he whispered, not even sure himself if he spoke to the dragon or begged the guardian, who couldn't hear him, to return. Maybe he even send a prayer to gods he hardly believed him. Maybe he begged the dragons above his head to be silent. He couldn't tell. He still couldn't think clearly enough to form a coherent thought.

He sat there when the drizzling rain stopped and the sun peaked out behind the clouds for a last ray of sunshine over the cliffs before it sat into the ocean. He sat there when the moon rose and the stars glimmered in the dark. He sat there when the cold made him shiver even more than the fear, when the drug the guardian or the magic he had used started to fade away and the pain returned, adding to all he still felt from the roars of merciless dragons. He sat there when Chradragshza finally let her head sink onto her paws again and the smoke drifted up from her nostrils again. He lay, exhausted, when she shifted the head slightly so that the smoke blew onto his arms. And he fell asleep there when even fear couldn't keep his maltreated body upright any longer.

*

[Sinitrena]

Part 2 of 3

*

A kick against his unharmed arm woke him up. Even before he opened his eyes, he noticed that it was silent. The wind howled over the cliff even louder and stronger than before, but compared to the dragons it was nothing. Their constant, breathtaking roars had stopped. As long as he kept his eyes shut, he could even pretend they weren't there, though his memories still drifted back to the moment he took the egg and his brother died, as soon as he stopped thinking consciously about anything.

The pain was still there, though manageable. Maybe the guardian had used some magic again. He couldn't tell and he didn't want to think about it either. He knew that he should be dead, that it was nearly impossible to survive wounds like that and only magic could have saved him. Magic, feared and rejected everywhere.

He took a while to get ready to face the world again, waited to open his eyes, waited for a second kick that didn't come. Slowly, he blinked sleep and dried tears away.

The dragon was gone. He did not dare look around for her. He neither wanted to know where exactly she was, nor annoy the man standing over him. Slowly, he sat up and stretched.

The guardian passed him a piece of roasted meat and waited for him to eat, standing over him the whole time with crossed arms. “So, where to?” he finally asked.

Layim swallowed the last bite. After a moment, he swallowed his fear, then finally his resistance. “Pyandra,” he said, “Lord Hadren hired us.” He closed his eyes.

“Ah.”

Layim waited fr a blow that didn't come, for fire to rain down on him or for the earth to swallow him. He waited for something, anything to happen, but nothing did. No sword cut his head from his shoulders, no angry dragon ripped him apart. Nothing.

After a long moment, he opened his eyes again. The guardian still stood in front of him, or again, because now he held an old shirt and trousers in his hands. “Dress, then bring me my bags, boy.”

Layim took the clothes and nodded.

*

The guardian stood next to Chradragshza when he returned. He was busy tethering some kind of contraption onto the dragon, who nudged him again and again and tried to stop him from tying the leathern straps to her forelegs. Long straps already reached over her back and to her hind legs. He didn't seem to mind. He nudged her back, pressed his hand from time to time against the teeth that she had bared. Layim even believed to hear him laugh silently.

“Don't stand there, boy, bring me the bags.” H hadn't turned around, hadn't even stopped for a second what he was doing and even through the laughter he had for his dragon, when he spoke to Layim his voice sounded cold and distanced.

Layim didn't want to take even one step closer to the dragon. He knew that he had little choice, but that didn't make his legs move or his breath slower. It didn't stop his hands from shivering or his eyes from tearing up, due to fear, pain or memories that just wouldn't leave him, even he couldn't tell.

“Now, boy.” The guardian had finished attaching the saddle to Chradragshza and looked at Layim. They both did, waiting for him to obey. At the same moment, they cocked their heads and at the same moment they took a step forward.

Layim stumbled back, trying to keep his distance, but again a wall stopped him.

“You'll expect me to get onto this...”

“Her name is Chradragshza, remember it.” Chradragshza tail, twice as long as her back, thumbed the ground and a little bit of fire shot from her mouth. ”And yes, I do. Now get over here.”

“And... and if I don't?”

The guardian shrugged. “You will. I'm sure you prefer coming with me to staying here?”

No dragons were in the sky this morning and no roars filled the air, but that didn't mean that he didn't feel their presence. They were there, in his mind, in his heart, in the hardly suppressed need to throw up, in every bit of grass and in every rain cloud. This was their land and their home and if there ever was someone less welcome than every other human, it was him.

Slowly, he pressed his hands against the wall, not trusting his legs alone to find the strength to get him moving. The guardian grabbed his arm after a few steps and dragged him forward. Next to Chradragshza the stopped him and held him steady.

“These straps,” he explained calmly, showing him two that had buckles near the middle of the saddle, “go around your thigh and close like a belt. These,” he showed him two further towards Chradragshza's head, “are for your arms or your hands. You can hold onto them or lean forward and put your arms through them. It is uncomfortable but safer. This one goes around your waist.”

“I don't want to ride on this saddle,” Layim protested weakly.

“As you wish,” the guardian said with a shrug, ”Chradragshza's claws will do just as well. She wouldn't mind. As a matter of fact, she would prefer you in her claws.”

Layim couldn't help but look directly into the dragon's eye. For a moment it seemed to him like she was laughing. “Where do I put my hands again?” he asked quickly.

The guardian tied his bags to the saddle and then he strapped Layim in. Chradragshza didn't protest or try to nudge him again. She held perfectly still while the guardian climbed onto her back and knelt down there. There was only one pair of straps, the saddle was not made for two people and so he buried his hands under the rough leader of the saddle from behind Layim and held onto it in a way that Layim would have considered precarious if he had even one thought for the other's situation.

“You might want to close your eyes,” the guardian whispered gently into his ear but it was already too late.

With one smooth motion, Chradragshza unfurled her wings that started on her back slightly behind her forelegs. She stroke the air once with them, sending wind past Layim's ears, then she folded them in again and started to run. Her paws thundered over the grass towards the cliff. She did not stop when she reached it. She ran past it, stretched her neck into the empty air and then, when she started to fall, towards the ocean hundreds of meters below. She made her body as long and small as she could and rushed towards the surface of the sea. Then, when the water was close, she pulled back her head and stretched her chest towards it. Suddenly, she unfurled her wings again, stopping the fall just as her paws touched the water, sending ripples through the waves. Smoothly, she glided over the sea, the three segments of each one completely still and when she finally flapped them again, she created distance and height.

The fall had pressed Layim against the guardian's chest and it seemed like it had dragged his stomach so far back that it felt out of his body. With the slower, calmer flight of the dragon, it returned to its usual position and then into is throat. It was all he could do to turn to the side before he heaved up the little he had eaten and threw up into the ocean.

The guardian grasped his hair and pulled it back. Gently, he drew circles with his other hand on the thief's back until everything had left his stomach.

“You still might want to close your eyes,” the guardian said when strong strokes of Chradragshza's wings pulled them higher and higher.

He couldn't. The wind was whipping past him like a summer storm, bringing tears to his eyes. But the thought of not knowing what was going on around him was worse than the pain the air-stream brought to his eyes or the fear from a hight he couldn't even describe.

Chradragshza flew higher and higher towards the morning sun. At first, it started to warm them when she broke through the last dark clouds. Then the coldness from moistness and height seeped into Layim's clothes and his very skin. It was breathtaking, in the truest sense of the word. The air was thin and heavy. At least, the flight itself distracted him so much that he didn't look down and managed to stare on the scaly neck of the dragon instead.

“Breathe slowly,” the guardian said, knowing exactly what Layim experienced for the first time. “Don't panic. Stay calm.”

“That's… that's easier said than done,” Layim said through gasps.

The guardian laughed silently. “You'll get used to it. You have no choice. - Concentrate on your breathing. Don't pay attention to anything else. Don't look down.”

But it was already too late. The words reminded him too much where he was and his look drifted past the dragon's neck. Through a veil of white clouds he saw a world that was alien to him. They weren't over the ocean any longer. Deep, deep below he could see the coastline and the hills, fields that were yellow drops and a town that was nothing but red dots. It wasn't rushing past. They were so high up that everything below seemed slow and sluggish.

His breath came in gasps again. “I.. I can't. I...” Layim swallowed hard, then he begged: “Distract me, please, sir, I... Please...”

“Don't forget who you are, boy,” the guardian warned but there was little rebuke in his voice.

“Please...” He couldn't take his eyes away from a world that he had known all his life and now couldn't recognize.

“Or who I am.”

Something caught Layim's attention in these words. It was such a little thing but it was enough to bring other thoughts into his mind. “I don't know who you are,” he said weakly. “I know nothing about you.”

“You know enough.”

“I don't even know your name,” he protested, more courage and defiance in his voice than he felt.

The guardian laughed again and the laughter made Layim turn towards him. “And my name will tell you anything about me?”

Layim shook his head. “No, but...”

“Yes, but. It is Prince Vettian of Altri-Atron.” He paused for a second. “The title is a bit out of date. I somehow doubt anyone even remembers that I ever existed. Maybe in legends. 900 years are a long time. As strange as it might sound, I never ask when I return there.”

“You are 900 years old?”

“And you are a bit nosey, aren't you, boy? Yes, I am over 900 years old. And nearly just as long I have kept the peace between dragon and man.”

*

A journey that would take more than a week by foot took less than a day on the back of a dragon. Layim couldn't tell when they got closer to Pyandra. Everything looked the same down below them or at least too different to what he was used to. At least, he got used to looking down from time to time, though never for more than a few seconds. He had spend his whole life in Pyandra and now the high walls were hardly more than an uneven circle around something that was just a brown and grey mass. The castle, where he had spend three weeks in the dungeon before Lord Hadren ordered him brought before him, stood only out from the rest because it was higher.

This time, Vettian warned him early enough to close his eyes and this time he listened.

He only felt the muscles on Chradragshza's back contract as she folded her wings onto her side and stretched her neck and head down and forward. Wind pressed him back against the chest of the guardian. Layim knew that the ground was rushing towards them, like it had done when he fell in a dragon's cave, he knew that the grass was coming closer at a pace that was unfathomable for his mind. His ears felt as if they pressed themselves deep into his head. He couldn't hear for a moment while the dragon fell and then her wings unfurled again and he couldn't stop himself from tearing his eyes open. The ground, just seconds ago only a mass of colours, had now shapes he knew and sizes he was used to. The air seemed to stop for a second, the dragon stood perfectly still in the air as Chradragshza flapped them against the atmosphere just meters over the ground and then she landed as gentle and still as only a feather could. She took a step forward, shook her head from side to side for a moment and then turned her neck around to them. She put her snout against her own shoulder and then she blinked.

Vettian laughed and then reached past Layim and petted the little horn on Chradragshza's nose. Before Layim had fully comprehended that they had reached the safety of solid earth again, slipped Vettian from the dragon's back and untied Layim's legs and waist.

Layim fell more than that he climbed and landed next to Chradragshza's sharp claws on his knees, panting and dry-heaving. Everything hurt and he wasn't sure if this came from all the wounds his body had suffered not too long ago or the most unpleasant journey imaginable. Probably both, no matter how well Vettian's magic had obviously healed him. In fact, the only wound he still noticed individually and not just as part of the mass of pain his whole body was, was his cheek where Chradragshza had slapped him with her tongue. Curious, distracted by this sudden realization, his hand touched his cheek.

The guardian must have noticed his movement. He paused from untying his bag and the saddle from Chradragshza's back and said: “She marked you. It's a spell. Every dragon will know what you have done and every dragon will know that you receive your punishment. Don't think too much about it. We have work to do.”

“Where are we?” Layim asked, standing up and looking around.

They stood on some kind of meadow, surrounded by hills and the outskirts of a forest less than a hundred steps from them but Layim didn't recognize anything here.

“To the west of Pyandra. About two hours away.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

Layim stepped further away from Chradragshza. As long as his two companions allowed it, he preferred not to be too close to the dragon. “Um, no, not really. I mean, why are we so far away from the town?”

Vettian looked over to him. “You think its a good idea to bring a dragon close to so many people? We walk the rest of the way. The only thing Chradragshza could do there is burning it to the ground anyway and I would rather avoid killing a whole town just to get to a few people.”

*

Layim already limped after a few minutes. They had left Chradragshza behind at the edge of the forest where she rubbed her back against a tree with obvious pleasure. She had given off a short, annoyed roar that was much more subdued than what he had heard so far when Vettian bid her farewell but other than that she did not protest.

“Dragon to dragon. Man to man. We're used to it, unfortunately,” the guardian had said with a shrug and not looked back.

After that he had said nothing else and only pulled the young thief along when he slowed down due to the pain in his leg and the general exhaustion he had no time to shake off. Even when Layim tried to ask questions, manly just to talk because talking was easier to bear than silence and knowledge was preferable to not knowing what the guardian planed to do, the man just shushed him with a simple gesture.

The sun stood deep in the sky when they finally reached the top of one of the hills surrounding the small town that was only more than a village because an important castle stood there. As did all towns, it welcomed visitors with cages hanging down from the city wall where criminals found a usually slow and painful death. Sometimes, they were already dead when they were put into the cages. It was a warning to everyone coming close that law and order reigned with a hard hand there.

Layim hadn't often left the town, but when he did he always looked up to the cages. This time, the faces of the two prisoners stopped him in his tracks.

“Someone you knew?” the guardian asked, dragging him further towards the gate.

“Yes.”

“Someone I should have known?”

“Yes.” He could not take his eyes from the limbs that hung down through the grate in a way that was just wrong or from the faces that seemed to still scream, not from the eyes that had bled over their cheeks or the fingernails that were gone, just gone.

“Did you expect anything else? Nobody likes witnesses. No matter what happened to them, it's better than what I would have done.”

Layim shuddered. The worst was not that his two accomplices had found an end like that or Vettian's statement or even that the cold and distant tone that seemed otherwise gone that day and was replaced by a slight bit of humour had returned but this one single traitorous thought that maybe, just maybe they deserved it, everything that had happened to them and worse.

He knew, or believed, that this was the dragons' magic talking, the spell they had ingrained into him with roars and screams, with memories of pain and loss. He hated them. Every last bit of him, every fibre of him hated them. And at the same time he mourned them. They were not really friends. He hadn't even really known them before they were hired together, force together to steal a dragon's egg, and they had fled as soon as they had the egg in their hands, leaving him and his brother alone in the cave. But to be killed by their employer, to be tortured, to be murdered, that still seemed too much.

“They did not deserve this,” he whispered.

“They deserved this as much and as little as you,” Vettian said gently. “They probably didn't know the consequences. They might not have cared. Nobody really remembers what it means when dragons get angry. What you feel, the hatred? It's subdued, I know, and it can't remove your own feelings, but imagine it a thousandfold and you don't even come close to what the dragons feel.” They walked through the gate unchallenged, Layim's look still stuck to the cages so that Vettian had to steady him and pull him along. “They have so very few offspring, their numbers are still not back to what they once were. And now they lost another one. The fledgling might not be dead but it can't ever return either. It can never learn the full magic of its mother, it can never fly with its coven, it can never just be a dragon. It will be welcome on the island but always ever as a guest and it will never find another home, no real home. The other dragons of the guardians were chosen and brought to friends, but this one is with its enemy. And believe me, it knows. For you, dragons are just wild animals, but do you really think that Chradragshza is an animal. Or a pet, for that matter? She did not chose to leave her coven but she did chose to stay with me, so that she is not all alone. Not all dragons that get separated do this, especially those that are not close to humans. There is such a short time between a dragon hatching and it learning to understand the people around it. When there is nobody, they can never really connect with anybody. And this fledgling might learn, it might become a mediator but it might also end up completely alone. And worst of all would be if it befriends its captor.” He hesitated a moment, then he turned Layim towards him and fixed him with cold-blue eyes. “In the eyes of the dragons and in mine, these two were murderers, nothing else. It doesn't matter that they didn't know. It doesn't matter what the law, human law, says about it. It doesn't matter that you feel different for them or that they were betrayed by someone else. They did deserve it.”

Layim said nothing. He just stood there and stared into eyes that were as deep as an ocean and as old as the dragons themselves. He expected the same hatred the guardian felt for his accomplices to be there in them, but it wasn't. There was just the pain he had heard in a mother's cry and a searching look. The young face that was really as old as time itself showed the lines of strain and a long life clearer than before. It almost seemed to beg him, beg him to understand or to at least acknowledge that he recognized the truth of the words.

Layim could not free his eyes from the other's, caught in the same spell he had used before, the spell Chradragshza had used as well. Memories, restrained for a while at least, memories he was so familiar with by now, were dragged to the surface again, mixing with the new loss of two accomplices, of two strangers that had become partners in a week of travel and traitors in a single step.

Layim swallowed hard. “Why am I here?” he finally asked. He knew the answer and at the same time he knew that it was different.

“As punishment.”

“What do you expect me to do?”

“Everything. Everything you can.” Vettian laughed and it seemed to Layim like the spell evaporated and had never been there. “We are about to steal a dragon, after all, and you are the thief. An accomplished thief, if I'm not mistaken.”

Layim still stood still when Vettian had already reached the next street corner. He wasn't looking back. Now was the time to disappear, now was the time to run. He followed the guardian as quickly as he could.

“You want the dragon back and you want to punish Lord Hadren. Why don't you just...”

“Attack? Have Chradragshza attack? How many innocent people live in this castle, do you think? And how would the king react when a dragon destroys a castle of one of his allies? No, we free the fledgling and we punish Lord Hadren but we leave everybody else out of it.”

“How?” Layim had to jog to keep up with the other's long strides.

“Lord Hadren is a wizard like me, so I'm not surprised that he is interested in a dragon all for himself. It also means he is probably interested in other wizards, considering how magic is usually treated. Besides, I know of him. We share acquaintances, though it's probably better not to mention Sjilli. He knows that she is a guardian.”

They had reached the castle's gate. Pyandra was a small town and the castle, while important from a strategic point of view, was not that impressive. It was hardly more than a group of larger house surrounded by their own wall. The kingdom was peaceful, it had been peaceful for over seventy years and so the two guards leaned lazily against the wooden wall of their guardhouse. They watched the comings and goings of countless visitors, servants and clerks and only stopped some when they did not recognize their faces immediately, never even picking up their halberds which stood in the corner of guardhouse and castle wall.

Vettian did not stopped, he walked directly towards the gate.

“He'll recognize me!” Layim said quickly before the guards were in hearing distance.

“You're my servant. Servants tend to be invisible. And even if he recognizes you, it won't be too much of a problem for me. - Stop protesting. I know what you are doing.”

What was he doing? Layim wasn't sure. He didn't want to go into the castle, that much was clear, but why? Was he afraid? Was he not on the guardian's side? Was he on his side? Why?

Thoughts rushed through his mind that made little sense and he couldn't even tell if all of them were his own. What was the magic of the dragons, forcing him to feel what they felt, what was his own anger that he could not expect help from Lord Hadren, what was remorse, what fear of a war that seemed so far away, what fear for a little dragon that was just an animal for him just days ago? But Chradragshza wasn't...

He had to jog after Vettian again.

“... stories of times long gone, the legends of old,” Vettian was saying, “I sing of the time of the dragons and of the heroes that fought them. I tell of the fall of the twins or the rise of Roppri the great, I play dances old and new on the flute, I lead your lord into adventures of love, of magic, of...”

“Yes, yes, yes, it is enough,” one of the guards interrupted him, “You may wait here for the chamberlain. He'll probably hire you for a day or two.”

Vettian cocked his head and bowed it in a way that seemed respectful and mocking at the same time, then he leaned against the wall and sank slowly to the ground, letting the last bit of sun of the evening fall onto the tip of his nose and waiting for the return of the other guard and probably the chamberlain in the most relaxed way possible. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

“A bard?” Layim whispered when the guard was distracted by other visitors, “You pretend to be a bard?”

Vettian smiled. “No pretending. I am a bard. What do you think how I earn my money? Dragons only pay in freshly roasted meat and a place to stay when I'm visiting and people don't really care about me or what I do. I don't need much, but from time to time I have to pay for something.”

*

[Sinitrena]

Part 3 of 3

*

“It is close, isn't it?” Layim asked, suppressing the fifth or sixth shiver that tried to run down his spine.

The chamberlain had lead them into a small room in the servants' house in the grounds of the castle and left them alone for an hour, not more.

“Yes.”

“Is that... Why can I feel it?”

“You know why.”

It was as if he heard it cry. It was so loud in his head, like the roars of the other dragons, but there was no anger in this voice. It was the cry of a baby, lonely, confused and, in a way, silent. This cry did not pass his ears or his mind on its way to his heart. It did not allow his own thoughts to stay stronger than it, it did not allow him to feel anything but what it felt.

Tears started to run down his cheeks, burning in the wound Chradragshza had left behind.

“Does everybody...?”

“No, only people touched by magic. Lord Hadren and I, who were both born with magic, you, because the dragons made you so.”

“It's... it's so loud.”

“Yes.”

It was as loud as the fire rumbling on a dragon's throat, as loud as thunder right next to him, as loud as a dragon falling from the sky. It seemed to get louder and louder.

“Please, make it stop!” The cry pierced him through and through. It filled every thought. It was as if it had found him and as if it knew that he was responsible, that he was... “Make it stop!”

“No. You are the only one who can make it stop and there is only one way. - Stay here while I entertain our host.”

Layim hardly noticed when the guardian grabbed a flute out of his old bag and left the room. He had sunk to the ground and pressed his hands over his ears. It didn't help. Flashes jerked in front of his eyes from a pain that wasn't really pain and from emotions he didn't want to have.

The guardian had said that he could make it stop. It was easy. He just had to leave, run away, run as far and as fast as he could. The dragons wouldn't hunt him, the guardian wouldn't find him, and even if he did, nothing could be worse than the cry that had suddenly filled him through and through.

He pressed his hands against the bed frame to steady himself, pressed them against the wall to keep upright. It had only started when they got close to the fledgling, it would stop when he was gone. He knew this. He didn't understand magic very well, but he knew that distance would help.

How can Lord Hadren stand this? He knew the answer. As it was so often in the last few days, he knew the answer. He knew both reasons: The dragons hadn't put him under their spell and he felt nothing for the little dragon imprisoned somewhere in this castle.

No, not somewhere, in the tower, where no window allowed the dragon to see. He had stumbled outside and his look whipped around to the tower. To the left was the gate, to the left was freedom and an end to him having anything to do with dragons, the guardian or magic, and to the right was the tower, was a prison that was far worse than the one underneath the castle where he had spend some time with his brother. To the right was magic, to the right were people who hated him for what he had done, to the right was eternal bondage.

The young dragon called to him, it cried out to him, again and again. It seemed to catch him with invisible chains, to drag him towards the tower. He fought against them, step by step, breath by breath.

And then he stopped. And then he turned around. The dragon was alone. It had no-one. Just the dragons' magic speaking..., he tried to think, he tried to believe it. He fought the thoughts down, fought against them with all his might, looking for his own thoughts, his own feelings. His brother was gone, killed by a dragon. His accomplices were dead, killed by Lord Hadren. Nothing was the same any-more. The world had changed. Slowly, the cry ebbed away, leaving room in his mind again, leaving him alone, allowing him to decide. He was alone and alone he made a decision.

He must have been there in front of the servants' house for a long while. The sun had set and lamps burned bright at the corners of the various buildings when he finally looked up again. A cold autumn wind, earlier than usual that year, blew his hair gently into his face. The courtyard was nearly empty and the few people still there at this hour did pay not attention to him. He took slow steps towards the main building, expecting with every one of them to be stopped, either by guards or by a magic that would have brought him to his knees again. But the gates of the castle were closed by now and everyone inside was allowed to be there.

And so, no guards stopped him when he pushed the heavy doors of the keep open and entered a small and empty hall. He knew the way he had to take, upwards through staircases decorated with tapestries and old swords. As these tapestries so often did, they showed scenes of heroic knights riding into battle against a large beast, lance and sword ready to strike, the horse never wavering from its path. And the dragons, colourful but not majestic and instead eerie and dangerous towered over them, flames coming out of greedy mouths, waited stupidly on the ground for their enemy to strike them. But the knights, never fearful, fought them with all their might and on the next tapestry the dragon lay on its back, a lance in its chest and a knight standing over it with one foot on the beasts stomach. They were small, no matter how imposing and worthy of conquest the artist had tried to make them out, compared to the mother dragon that had attacked Layim and even compared to Chradragshza, who he know knew was rather small, they seemed minuscule and unimportant.

Layim felt bile rising in his throat. He averted his gaze from this display of pretend victory and pressed on, taking two steps at a time as long as he could, tired and hungry as he was. He knew the room he was looking for. It took him a while to remember, but he had taken these steps before when guards dragged him out of the dungeon and into the Lord's study.

The halls and staircases, hallways and rooms, were empty of servants and guards. When he had passed a room on the second floor, he had heard voices and laughter but he did no stop to take a closer look. The little dragon wasn't among people. It was alone and lonely in the tower and so he went higher and higher.

The door was locked but Layim had grabbed a knife at some point during his walk through the castle. He didn't remember when, too focused on the one goal that led him, that dragged him towards this one room. The lock was simple and he didn't bother trying to mask his breaking it.

Now, the dragon's cries were real, not just in his mind. He heard them before he opened the door and louder once he was inside, though the dragon was not in the study. But a dragon's cry and a dragon's magic are both strong and so he knew where the hidden doorway was found behind a heavy tapestry.

At first the room was completely dark. Nearly no light fell from the single burned down lamp Layim had taken from the study into the room. The dragon's cry echoed helplessly through the darkness, filling the shadows with ghosts. Long, steady cries alternated with short ejections and sobs, steadily interrupted by hiccups and coughs. From time to time, there was a longer pause when the dragon gasped for air, only making the cries that did make it through the breathlessness all the more painful. The dragon fought against his own body, hoarse and exhausted but not willing to stop weeping.

Sometimes, little bursts of flame accompanied the dragon's sobs and allowed Layim to see. They danced around golden bars of a cage that hung from the ceiling and was too small for the fledgling but they couldn't pass an otherwise invisible barrier. They pushed against the empty air between the bars as if it were a wall. And when they touched the bars they made them glitter, vibrating with energy. The dragon was pressed into a corner of the swinging cage but never touching the bars themselves. On the wings of the dragon, that it â€" no, not it, he, Layim corrected himself immediately just knowing that this dragon was male â€" had slung around his body like a shield, angry red welts, as long and as thick as the bars, were burned into the still soft scales. His colour was beige or a dirty white, making the welts all the more prevalent and visible. A chain around his neck, made from the same golden material as the cage, fixed him to both sides of the cage, leaving hardly any room for him to move. The chain, too, had left a fiery red ring on his scales.

With every sob, the dragon's body shook and with every shiver it touched the bars again, making him flinch away again.

“Shhhh,” Layim said, stepping forward, past a bookcase and past instruments he paid no attention to and put his lamp on a table with bottles and boxes. “Shhhh, I'm here to help you.”

The dragon's head, about as big as a fist, whipped around, every muscle in his body tensed. He pulled on his chains, now ignoring the pain they obviously caused him, his wings unfurled and stretched. He snarled, baring his teeth and sending a steady stream of fire towards Layim, that was stopped nearly immediately. He opened his mouth dangerously wide and filled the air with the loudest roar he could muster. But hoarse, tired and young as he was, it sounded more like the yapping of a dog.

“Shhhh,” Layim said again, “I'll get you out of there, Fchvuch, I promise. That's... that's your name, isn't it? Fchvuch?”

The dragon narrowed his eyes to slits, fixing him with more panic than anger in his expression. For a long time, he stared at the boy, still trying to scream. Layim came slowly closer, not sure if the cage would really stop the dragon's fiery breath. He stretched his hand, the one not holding his knife, towards his snout when suddenly one distinct roar left the beast's mouth.

Liar!

He only heard a roar but the word still echoed through his mind, vibrating against his skull.

Fchvuch snapped in Layim's general direction, too far away to touch him.

Thief!

“Shh, Fchvuch, I'm really trying to get you out of there. Really. Please, please calm down, I'm trying to help. I'm sorry. I want to help.”

Go! Away!

“I'll leave, as soon as I've got you out of this cage.” With every word, he made one step forward towards the cage. He only hesitated for a second before he touched the bars, not sure if its magic would burn him as well or if the little dragon would bite or roast him.

The cage felt warm, vibrating, but otherwise like every other bar of a prison. Layim felt around its edges for a lock, not able to properly see in the faint light. He found the lock at the bottom of the cage and snapped it open with the knife. It offered little resistance. The cage was built with magic to keep a dragon inside, not to keep a magic-less thief out.

The dragon had flinched back again, eyeing his hands with tense expectation. He snarled and growled while smoke puffed out of his nostrils in small clouds but for the moment he waited silently.

Carefully, Layim put his hand into the cage, always waiting for Fchvuch to react. “I'm really not so bad,” he murmured just to say anything, while popping the chain from the dragon's neck. “And I'm really not going to hurt you.”

You! Did!

He had obviously said the wrong thing. Fchvuch's claws dug deep into his skin, pinning his hand to the bottom of the cage. Little flames shot out of his mouth and engulfed his fingers for a second. They stopped right away in the coughing fit of a little dragon and in light that fell suddenly on his back.

Layim spun around and Fchvuch dug his paws against the ground, grinding his claws for a moment deeper into Layim's hand and then he flapped his wings and used the air to jump on Layim's shoulder, hissing at the man who had just entered the room.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here? A thief who wants to steal from his lord? Or one that fancies himself a guardian?”

The little dragon hissed and used Layim's shoulder as a springboard to propel himself into the air, flapping with his wings wildly, trying to keep steady for the few steps he was from the man's face, his claws unsheathed. Fchvuch had trouble flying straight, his body fell and rose and the only energy moving him forward was the power from his legs when he jumped.

The man, Lord Hadren, grinned, watching the struggles of the little dragon. “I think not,” he said lifting his hand. A golden shimmer formed around his. “Go back to your cage.”

Won't!

Fchvuch tried to pounce onto the man, but it was more a falling than a striking and his claws padded helplessly through empty air.

The hand, filled with magic, backhanded the little dragon, throwing him against a wall.

“And you, I know you. Come to get your hard-earned pay?”

“I know how you pay...,” Layim  said and pressed his hand harder around the knife. He held it in front of his body, aware that it would do him little good against a wizard.

The grin became wider, showing bright white teeth in his lean face. Snorting, he ran his hand through his long grey hair. “I can't leave witnesses, you understand. I can't risk an actual guardian coming here, now, can I?”

“There already is!” Layim said - everything to make the lord pause, everything to give Vettian some time to come and rescue him. Please, please be close, please. Vettian, Chradragshza, anyone...

Lord Hadren laughed. “Yes, that is likely. I have no idea how you survived, boy, but... - Argh!”

Fchvuch had bitten him in the leg, making him jump. The little dragon moved his head from the left to the right, shaking it, trying to rip a piece of flesh out of the leg.

Deeming the dragon more dangerous and more painful than the boy, Lord Hadren readied another dose of magic in his hand. In that moment, Layim jumped forward, the knife about to strike.

In the last moment, magic struck them both, sending them both flying. This time Fchvuch was ready. His wings flapped mightily before he hit the wall a second time and steadied him. Fire shot out from his mouth, accompanied by a tiny roar.

Layim, lying on the ground with his head spinning, saw them bump against an invisible wall between the lord and the dragon.

“I said: Go back to your cage, boy. Behave!” He came towards the Fchvuch, his wall moving with him.

Fchvuch coughed, sending the flames out in little puffs instead of one steady stream now.

Layim couldn't get up, couldn't think. His head throbbed. The knife was gone, fallen somewhere he couldn't see. His muscles didn't want to follow his orders.

The wizard put his hands around the dragon's neck, catching him out of the air, forcing him closer to himself, no matter how much the dragon hit the air with his wings. His claws scratched the man's arm but he ignored them, turning towards the cage. “Didn't think of protecting it against normal magic-less thieves,” he mused, “An oversight that will be rectified.”

Quick steps could be heard from the staircase and Lord Hadren wheeled around, the helplessly fighting baby dragon still in his hands.

“So he wasn't lying. I'll kill it if you try something.”

Vettian observed the scene for a moment, looking from the helpless Fchvuch to Layim on the ground. His look stayed for a moment on the boy, noticing the bleeding hand and the bruise on his head, but then his eyes drifted back to the dragon. For a second that seemed like eternity he just stared at the other man. But his attention was not on him but on the dragon. He bowed in the same way he had before, the head slightly to the side and only nodding once, while his eyes never left him.

“Fchvuch,” he said, ignoring the man threatening the fledgling, “honoured am I. Do you wish him to suffer or die?”

Die!

Vettian bowed again. Layim started to shiver when he saw the golden light form in the hands of Lord Hadren again but then...

Then the air was filled with heat. The walls, impenetrable before, not even letting light into the room, now melted before his eyes. Something, magic probably, though Layim really couldn't tell, pried the hands from Fchvuch's neck and the dragon bounced again through the air while Vettian stood impassive before him. He hadn't moved a muscle to free Fchvuch and he now moved only his cold blue eyes as he pushed Lord Hadren towards a hole forming in the wall. For a second, moonlight added to the confusing light in the room, then a big head obscured it again from Layim's view. Fire shot through the hole, engulfing Fchvuch and his former captor. The little dragon cried, for the first time, with joy, turning so that his wings could catch the hot air underneath and boost him higher up. The tips of the segments of his wings seemed to dance on the stream of fire that stopped right in front of Vettian, not held by any kind of magic but controlled by the dragon outside the tower. A small smile played in the corners of his mouth while he watched.

Lord Hadren stumbled towards the hole and right into the flames. His magic shield protected him and so he stood engulfed, the fire branching at his body. Chradragshza's fire didn't stop, melting the wall and enlarging the hole, and the flames sizzled and cackled through the room. But other than that and the weak cries of joy from Fchvuch, all was silent. The bigger dragon did not roar or cry, she did thunder with her legs against the side of the tower, she did not strike the air in deafening beats of her wings. Impassive, like Vettian, she grilled the inside of the room, never wavering.

But Hadren wavered. He stumbled forward, towards Vettian but the guardian held up one hand, stopping him in his tracks without touching him.

“He is yours,” Vettian said, still mainly ignoring the other man and only speaking to the little dragon.

Fchvuch hissed and then he pounced on the man, scraping the skin away from his face with unsheathed claws.

Chradragshza's fire ceased and she landed on the edge of the hole now big enough for her with her hind legs, shoulders and head stretching into the room. Everything still burned. Tables and chairs had caught fire, the glass bottles had shattered in the heat and the cage, impervious to the magic of a baby dragon, dripped golden tears onto the floor.

Layim still lay on the ground, watching, too confused and too hurt to get up and do anything.

Screams from Hadren now filled the air. He was too weakened by the constant stream of magic fire to protect himself against Fchvuch's claws and he ripped his face to shreds. Hadren had sunk to the ground and the dragon clung to his head while he bit him again and again. Red streaks of blood added to the red welts on his dirty white scales. Finally, after what seemed far too long, with screams filling the air the whole time, Fchvuch snapped at the throat of his former captor. His teeth went deep into the flesh, silencing him and when Fchvuch breathed his own fire into the wound, there was no magic left to protect the lord. Foamy blood boiled out of the wound and silenced his last screams.

Standing on the man's chest, Fchvuch spread his wings. With his paws he pounded onto his ribs, than he roared into the fire.

Dead!

Yes, a different voice throbbed through Layim's head, deep and old, never will he hurt you again, Fchvuch of Sacham, the Island of Storms.

Vettian, who had never moved at all, his hand still in the air, while the dragon killed the man, now knelt down next to him. He waited for Fchvuch to allow him to touch the man, then he verified that he was really dead. He took a dagger from his belt, opened Lord Hadren's shirt with a quick cut and then he carved a sign into his chest, never showing any kind of emotion the whole time.

When he was done, he looked up at the little dragon, who watched him curiously, and smiled. He put his hand underneath the dragon's little mouth, never touching him, but waiting for him to do whatever he felt like. After a while, he asked:

Friend?

Chradragshza's head came close to them both and her split tongue licked over Fchvuch's head.

As good a friend as you could wish for.

With that, the dragon put his head into Vettian's hand.

“We should leave,” he said, “Chradragshza, extinguish the fire, please.”

This place shall burn to the ground. The fire shall eat the tower and everything in it, it shall...

“No, the people here are not responsible. The rune shall be their warning, nothing else. Extinguish the fire.”

She looked at him questioningly for a moment, then she blew air into the room, letting the fire flicker to soot like a candle. One smooth swing with her front leg later and Layim found himself between her claws.

Chradragshza jumped from the edge and stood flying in the night air, now in complete darkness, just a shadow in front of the sky. Vettian took Fchvuch onto his shoulder, then he jumped after the dragon, landing on her back.

Layim closed his eyes.

*

The landing, just minutes later, was surprisingly gentle. Chradragshza took extra care to come down soft, only on her hind legs, and to put the young thief on a green patch of grass, close to where they had landed earlier in the day. Layim couldn't tell, not willing to open his eyes again or move at all. He just lay there, breathing in and out, listening to Vettian calmly and quietly talking to the little dragon.

He didn't understand the words and didn't want to anyway. Only when he felt a presence next to him did he move slightly to the side. Chradragshza had put her head down next to him and her long split tongue probed and prodded him gently.

Forgiveness is hard earned. Usually, stupidity is not the best currency, Chradragshza chided him gently. There was laughter and playfulness in her voice he would have considered impossible from a dragon just days ago.

Vettian looked over to them. “You are one to talk. Attacking a castle? I'll have to spend hours, maybe even months, with the king to make this right again. What were you thinking?”

The human youngling called me! He was in danger, she defended herself.

“And you listened to him? That's great, just great.” Vettian came over to them, Fchvuch on his shoulder, sleeping and nuzzling up against his neck. He knelt down next to him and held his hands over the throbbing wound in Layim's hand, healing it. “You think he was worth saving?”

So do you.

“Maybe. Tell me one thing, boy: Did you save Fchvuch because the dragons' magic forced you or because you wanted to?”

“It... I... It was the right thing to do.” If Layim was ever sure of anything it was this.

“No, it wasn't. It was stupid and impulsive and it nearly cost you your life. And Fchvuch's life. And because of this decision, a whole kingdom might be up in arms soon. Probably not, we'll see, but it is possible.”

“I'm sorry.” And in this word, there was so much more than an apology for just this one decision.

“I know you are, Layim, I know you are. - Was it your decision?”

“Yes. Yes, it was.”

“You may leave, should you wish to do so.”

Layim just shook his head and leaned against Vettian, too tired, it felt, to ever get up again. He fell asleep, tickling a dozing and silently weeping dragon under the chin.

[Frodo]

Fantastic entries, Wiggy and Sinitrina. 

Only 1 day left, people. 

[Durinde]

This was the first bit of fiction that I've written in a while so this was a tough one for me. I tried taking the story in a few different tangents that didn't work out, so that's why the whole thing feels truncated and a piece of a larger world. Very rough around the edges.

Green and Me

    The all-too-familiar jolt of something landing on the bed pulled me from sleep. The first few times it had happened, I had bolted upright, my sleep-addled mind unsure of what to make of the very alien presence landing next to me. Now, it was a daily occurrence. I knew if I kept my eyes closed and didn't move much, I might be able to snatch a few more precious moments of rest before going about my day.

    I felt the presence shift as it curled its cat-sized body into a ball next to me. I knew by now that the “intruder” was attempting to absorb body heat in the cool autumn morning air. I remained still, trying to cling to the last vestiges of a half-forgotten dream. It was fruitless, sleep would not come again this morning.
   
    I opened my eyes to a darkened room. The sun hadn't risen yet and it was Saturday, meaning I could relax without the rush of getting ready for work. A glance at the clock confirmed that it was a good half-hour before sunrise.
   
    I looked at the curled mass that had balled itself up next to me. Occasionally, I would catch a white wisp rising from its nostrils, and the faintest scent of woodsmoke. As somebody who enjoyed camping, I loved the smell. It was a benefit of owning a green.
   
    I gave myself a few more moments of relaxation before I pulled myself into a sitting position. A snort of annoyance broke the morning silence as the animal was suddenly robbed of a very warm and very comfortable spot.    
   
    Reaching down I began to scratch the creature under its chin. The animal that I uncreatively dubbed “Green” nuzzled my hand. It repositioned itself on the bed and looked up at me expectantly.

    It's not that hard to describe what green looks like, take western description of a dragon and scale it down to the size of a large housecat. Wings(check), scales(check), claws(check), ability to breath fire (eh… best we can do is smoke).

    And if your wondering why I haven't called Green a he or she, well that's because dragons are sexless. The last thing D-Pet wants is for private citizens to cut into their profits by breeding their own dragons.

    Swinging my legs from beneath the warm covers I sat on the edge of the bed. Green quickly moved onto the still-warm pillow and settled in. They would probably snooze a couple of more hours in that spot if I'd let them.

    The whole idea of owning a dragon was a still very new concept to myself and the world. Until a few months prior, they simply didn't exist. Although altering human genetics was still a very big no-no, recent lobbying had relaxed the rules on other species A LOT and a few companies jumped on the chance to create “Designer Pets”. Up until that point, they were fiddling with lifespans and intelligence, making sure that Fido lived to a ripe old age and Mrs. Pussypants would leave the dead mice outside. Fantastical creatures were a completely new development.

    I guess I should explain how I got Green. At 18 I had finished high school without any real plan for my future. After a failed attempt at college and a year working retail jobs, I joined the military as a vehicle technician. Aside from 6-months in a hot and sandy country, I spent the next three years working in the motor pool of an unremarkable base smack in the middle of the country.
   
    When it came time to renew my contract, I decided that I didn't want to spend the next few decades of my life in the army and decided to strike it out on my own. Applying for pretty much everything and anything that wasn't retail, I found a job listing for a maintenance worker for a national park.
   
    The maintenance job was a pretty good gig. The pay was OK, and housing was included in the form of a smallish, rustic cabin. A lot of my day was keeping the ranger's ATVs and trucks running as well as maintenance on various generators and pumps in and around the park's facilities. I'm was also an extra hand if the rangers need help with anything.
   
    It was early spring, and I had gotten a call from management to “take a look” at a private vehicle had broken down inside the park's boundaries. Normally I wouldn't be called to work on a non-park vehicle, but it turns out that this particular truck was owned by D-Pet. The same D-Pet that had made a fairly sizeable donation to the park. Subsequently, they had gotten permission send a team of scientists to study wildlife behaviour in the park during the off-season. Management wanted us park employees to treat any member of the D-Pet team as VIPs.
   
    I grabbed my toolbox and headed out on one of the park's pick-ups. The gravel roadways of the park were still extremely pitted and rough from the winter's snow and frost, so it made for a bumpy ride.  It would be a couple of weeks at least before we would open to the public, so there was still plenty of time to get the roadways graded to make things a little more public friendly.
   
    I rounded the corner and saw a group of people standing around a white truck with the D-Pet logo. The truck was parked next to the entrance of a hiking trail with its hood propped open. The open hood concerned me a little, the last thing I needed was an amateur poking about an engine and possibly making things worse.
The small group consisted of one very bored looking man of considerable height, a woman on a cell-phone. Off to the side was Andy, the park ranger that had been assigned to “guide” this particular group. It had been Andy that had called in the breakdown in the first place.
   
    I stopped the pick-up and pulled the toolbox off the passenger seat.  Andy strolled over and gave a head-shake. “Not sure what the issue is,” he said. “Ran fine on the way in. We hiked out to the D-pet monitoring site and made our way back after a few hours watching some deer. Couldn't get it to start when we got back”
   
    “What's with the popped hood,” I questioned as I brought the toolbox towards the truck.
   
    “I checked the oil,“ he admitted. “That's about all I know how to do in a situation like this.”
   
    “And?”
   
    “Seemed fine, “ he shrugged. “I figured I'd leave the hood open so you could take a look when you got here.”
   
    I nodded and walked to the front of the truck. The large man gave me a quick up-and-down before returning to looking bored. The woman seemed absorbed in her cellphone conversation. I could hear snippets and I could only hear one side of the exchange. Talk of beta testing and shareholders. Must be less of a science-type and more of a corporate-type.
   
    Everything looked OK inside the hood. I bent down and pulled the voltmeter from my toolkit and tested the battery. I found my problem.
As I unhooked the voltmeter, I noticed the phone-woman had finished her conversation and was headed my way.
   
    “It's the battery isn't it,” she asked.
   
    “Seems like it,“ I confirmed. “Going to give you a boost. You'll probably want to replace it ASAP.”
   
    “Thought so,” she said, seemingly self-satisfied by this. “Name?”
   
    “Alec McEvoy,” I said extending my hand.
   
    I should mention that during my youth I had decided to get a tattoo on my forearm. I read a lot of fantasy when I was a kid and decided I wanted a fire breathing dragon because… well dragons are awesome. It was a nice piece of art, super stylized and vibrant, but I became more self-conscious of it as I grew older. The woman's eyes locked onto the ink on my arm for a few moments before taking my hand. “Dragon,” she said.
   
    “Yeah,“ I chuckled, a little red with embarrassment. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
   
    “I like it,” she said. “McEvoy… Dragon.”
   
    Without giving me a chance to respond, the woman turned and headed towards the large man who was near the back of the truck. I shrugged at the abruptness of our exchange and headed towards my own truck to retrieve the jumper cables. I could see her saying something to the large man, who now had a notepad open and was scribbling something down as she spoke to him.
   
    The boost happened without much fanfare and without any further exchange from the woman or from her large friend. Andy pointed them in the direction to the park exit before climbing into my truck for a lift back to the ranger station.
   
    “They've made arrangements with one of the local garages to get the battery replaced,” Andy said as we drove along the bumpy gravel road.
   
    “Quite the… interesting pair,” I said.
   
    “Yeah, corporate muckety-mucks here to check on the scientists in the field. Studying animal behavior. The guy didn't talk at all, and the woman… well my few exchanges with her have been kinda odd.”
   
    “I uh noticed.”
   
    “She did ask me what my favorite fantasy animal was,” Andy shrugged.
   
    “Yeah, she took a weird interest in my tattoo.”
   
    “Genetic manipulation…” Andy said. “As if mother nature didn't have enough to worry about with her own creations.”
   
    I dropped Andy at the ranger station and things pretty much went back to normal after that. The D-Pet folks departed a few weeks later and I had pretty much forgotten about the encounter. Mid-summer, I received an e-mail from park management, asking if it was OK for them to give a D¬-Pet representative my phone number.
   
    “They want to thank you for your help in the spring,” the e-mail said.
   
    I e-mailed back and gave permission. Looking back at the interaction in the spring, I expected the call to be very brief and very formal. The call came a few hours later.
   
    “Mr. McEvoy,” a woman's voice inquired. It sounded familiar.
   
    “Yes, that's me.”
   
    “Mr. McEvoy, “ the voice paused for a moment. “I'm Ellen Keats, CEO of D-Pet. We met in the park a few months ago.”
   
    So, it was the woman. She continued. “I personally wanted to pay you back for helping us out.

    “It was no big deal ma'am, I was just doing my job.”

    “Mr. McEvoy,” she continued, ignoring my last statement. “I would love to offer you a free beta-testing opportunity for or new line of products. You love dragons right?”
   
    Baffled, I didn't know how to respond. “Dragons?”
   
    “Yes Mr. McEvoy, have you ever considered owning one?”
   
   

[WHAM]

I've yet to read it, but... HOLY HELL, SINITRENA!
Are... are you all right? Need an ice bag, either for the brain or the fingers?

I look forward to reading all this!

[Frodo]

I've yet to read it, but... HOLY HELL, SINITRENA!
Are... are you all right? Need an ice bag, either for the brain or the fingers?

I look forward to reading all this!

I'm SO glad Sinitrena got her entry in! 

[Sinitrena]

Thanks, I just hope quality is as good as quantity. And I'll take a nice glass of white wine for my head please.

[Baron]

My experience of white wine is that it's bad for the head.  Really, really bad for the head....

My entry is about two-thirds done.  I'm pretty confident I can flesh out the rest this evening.

[WHAM]

My entry is about two-thirds done.  I'm pretty confident I can flesh out the rest this evening.

*eyes the clock in a worried fashion*

[Frodo]

Do you want an extension, Baron? 
Also, does Ponch still want to submit anything? 

I'll leave this open until Tuesday evening - an extra 2 days. 

[Baron]

If you keep extending the deadline, I'll keep procrastinating!   As it stands now I'm already planning to retire further west so that I can eke out a few more hours before the comps officially close.

Quest for Concord

   â€œDecay, destruction, ruin, and woe,” Carla Fae pronounced as she surveyed the devastation of the ruined city.  Great skeletons of steel stood sentinel over the tumbled concrete and rust that made the whole terrain a treacherous web of danger.

   â€œThat's catchy,” Debbie Lee replied as she spat dust through the gap of her missing front teeth.  “You gonna put that in your dairy book?”

   Carla Fae shook her head.  “I think it's Shakespeare.  And it's a diary, not a dairy.”

   Debbie Lee took a big swig of brown water.  It might have been clear once, before she added a dram of whiskey to kill off the bacteria.  But chances were it was brown from the start.  “One forgotten word's as good as another,” she said.

   There was a long moment of silence as the two women listened to the distant bleating of a motorcycle echoing through the desolation.

   â€œThere are still those of us who believe that there is much knowledge to be gleaned from the Olden Days,” Carla Fae said at last.

   Debbie Lee waved her hand over the ruined landscape.  “Yeah, looks like them folk had it all figured out.”

   â€œMaybe older Olden Days,” Carla Fae conceded.  “Before the Tyranny of Science, people believed in powerful beings that could raze the Earth and remake it again.”

   Debbie Lee spat again.  “I'm not interested in you running your mouth on about Gord.”

   â€œIt's god, not Gord.  And I'm not talking about some invisible man in the sky.  I'm talking about the dragons.”

   Debbie Lee rolled her eyes skyward but said nothing.

   â€œThink about it,” Carla Fae continued.  “The metal-faced wizard visits in the night.  The king meets with his council and summons all his knights for a quest.  The knights all charge off on their bikes into this nest of shrapnel and debris.  There's something important going on here, and I think it has to do with dragons.”

   â€œWhy dragons?” Debbie Lee asked skeptically.  “Why not something real, like sky spiders or zombie coyotes?”

   â€œBecause of the mark,” Carla Fae said simply.  She remade the complicated design in the dust.  Debbie Lee recognized the stick-boy kicking the ball next to the number five, above an A and an E, both with too many cross lines.  The men had all painted it on to their shields before roaring off into the purple haze of dawn.  “It means dragon in old take-out speak.”

   â€œSo what?  The knights couldn't find shit if it was dangling from the ends of their noses.  Remember that Grail fiasco?”

   Carla Fae shook her head.  “We both know the men folk are all just quish junkies and paste heads.  That's why we have to do this.”

   Debbie Lee looked sideways at her bookish friend.  “You said we were raiding an abandoned hooch mart!”

   â€œThat was just to get you out of the brooding hall.  I tell you, Dee-El, there's something to the legends, and the metal-faced wizard sure thought he was on to something this time.  What do you say, old pal?  Care to show the boys how questing should really be done?”

   *   *   *   *   *

   The purple glow of dawn receded into the dull green glow of their third day in the ruins.  Debbie Lee rolled off the rusty springs that had provided her with a surprisingly comfortable night's sleep.  She  horked her morning loogie and wondered idly if she'd be lucky enough to find another pigeon to juice today.  Carla Fae was carefully reading some graffiti prophecies by roach-glow in the deeper recessions of the underpass.

   â€œWhat's that smell?” Debbie Lee asked as she approached, suddenly noticing an enticing waft.

   â€œWhat?  Oh, I couldn't sleep, so I rustled up some roadkill bacon.”

   â€œNice!”

   Debbie Lee tucked happily into her breakfast while Carla Fae continued to study the wall.

   â€œWell?” Debbie Lee asked, licking the last of the grease from her fingers and picking the hair from between her teeth.

   â€œThe text is damaged,” Carla Fae said absently, gesturing at the pock-marked wall.  “But, I think it's indicating the presence of a dragon temple in a pavilion on a floating mountain.”

   Debbie Lee knew most of her letters, but struggled to make any kind of sense out their infinite combinations.  “It looks like the scribblings of a booze-mummed toddler.”

   â€œLook here,” Carla Fae pointed.  “It's stylized, but if you squint you can see the dragon symbol.”

   Debbie Lee squinted real hard, but... wait.  Now that it was pointed out to her, it did look an awful lot like the dragon symbol they'd been chasing.  “Well, I'll be a floating brain-squid's mother.  I do see it!”

   â€œI'm just struggling with the floating mountain bit,” Carla Fae confided absently, deep in thought.

   Debbie Lee scrunched up her eyes and let her own mind-gears spin.  She was well aware that she was more the muscle in their partnership, but she did enjoy firing the odd neuron now and then.  “Maybe we can see the mountain from up high on one of these steel towers?” she thought aloud.

   Carla Fae shook her head.  “No, they're too precarious.  If we don't fall off, we're as likely to die in a collapse.  And there's not a lot of cover up there if it starts raining sky spiders.”

   â€œGood point,” Debbie Lee agreed.  She picked her ass to help get her thinking juices flowing.  “What if we went to the edge of the dust bowl?  It's nice and open there-?”

   Carla Fae snapped her fingers.  “Debbie Lee, you are a nerd-lord!  In ancient times the dust bowl was flooded by a great brine puddle.  The floating mountain was probably a hill that stuck up out of the brine, appearing to float!”

   Debbie Lee was getting excited, too.  “So all we have to do is find a hill in the dust bowl with a monument on top!  Well, that and cross the dust-bowl without being attacked by zombie yotes or sky spiders....”

   Carla Fae frowned briefly, then brightened.  “I think it's time we jacked a hog.”

   Debbie Lee smiled back.  Jacking was one of her strong points.

   *   *   *   *   * 

   The two friends climbed the great stairs in front of the monument.  Behind them stretched the parched barrens of the old brine bottom, and behind that loomed the stark skyline of the rusty ruins.  To the west a cloud of sky spiders seethed menacingly in a growing wind that was beginning to churn up the dust.

   Debbie Lee spat an impressive fourteen-footer downwind.  “Storms brewin',” she said.

   Carla Fae was entranced by the carved stone decoration of the ancients that towered above them.  “Storms are but a symptom,” she replied absently.  “They spawn from a far greater evil unleashed by the hubris of the ancients.”

   â€œEr....?” Debbie Lee responded.

   Carla Fae shook her head and smiled.  “Perhaps the dragons can help us?”

   â€œI reckon we're about to find out.”

   Together they climbed the remaining steps and passed over a great serpentine seal carved into the floor stones.  Even Debbie Lee could decipher the unmistakable pattern of the dragon's mark.  The building itself seemed to moan, and then the floor vibrated perceptibly.

   â€œSo... what exactly is a dragon?” Debbie Lee asked with an affected calmness.

   â€œHeh, how silly of me not to share.  I've read a lot of conflicting accounts, but there are some basic similarities.  They are powerful armoured beasts, capable of flight and making fire out of thin air.”

   â€œHuh,” Debbie Lee sniffed.  “Kinda like men, then.”

   Carla Fae furrowed her brow pensively.  “Some accounts mention great wisdom,” she said at length.

   â€œAh,” was all Debbie Lee replied.

   â€œ...But others stress the qualities of greed and gluttony.”

   Debbie Lee arched an eyebrow, but said nothing.  A sudden clap of thunder made them both jump.

   â€œThey are extremely long-lived,” Carla Fae continued in a quavering voice.  “And they have impeccable memories.  They will remember the Olden Days, and the many eras before that.  They will remember what brought the desolation upon the Earth.  In their great wisdom, they might even know how to-”

   They both froze in place as a fell shadow swooped over them, but in the merest blink it had vanished as suddenly as it had come.

   â€œUh....  So what do we do when we meet a dragon?” Debbie Lee asked.

   Carla Fae opened her mouth to respond when suddenly a much louder clap of thunder crashed through the interior of the monument.  The ground lurched sideways and they both lost their footing.     

   Debbie Lee was the first back up on her feet.  “See-Fay!” she hissed, straining her senses to detect the direction of the attack.  “What do we do now?”

   But Carla Fae just lay on the ground, the most peaceful look glazed over her face.

   â€œOh shit,” Debbie Lee muttered to herself.  Then there was another clap of thunder.  Almost instinctively she leapt, the sideways lurch of the ground this time sliding her unconscious friend to rest against the statue of an ugly serpent, but she herself landed safely on the ground once it had steadied once more.

   â€œImpressive...” a booming voice echoed.

   Debbie Lee squinted through the gloom in all directions, but she could not detect the source of the voice.  “Er.... Thanks,” was all she could manage.

   Two glowing eyes appeared against the blackness of the high ceiling, and they slowly grew until a monstrously huge face of a bearded lizard resolved out of the gloom.  “Hmmmm....  Brave and skilled, and yet also well mannered?” it rumbled.  “What is become of men at the end of days?”

   Debbie Lee did not quite know what to make of the giant talking beast.  Her bladder had already made up its mind and had completely surrendered, but something inside her mind screamed at her not to follow suit.  So, despite shaking inside worse than the floor had just moments ago, Debbie Lee drew herself up her full height and replied: “the men are a bunch of cunt-faced idiots!”

   Great.  A quest to the death to find salvation for the world, and that's what comes spilling out of her word hole?  Inwardly she kicked herself, but was careful to keep her eyes locked on the dragon's.

   To her great surprise, the beast reared its head in laughter.  The building shook, and she couldn't help glancing at her unconscious friend to make sure that no further misfortune had befallen her.

   â€œToo true,” the dragon boomed.   Then a guileful expression crossed its face.  “I suppose you know better?”

   Debbie Lee considered this.  She figured it was mostly true, but in her experience it had never paid to play up one's smarts.  Better to be underestimated and surprise, rather than come across as arrogant and disappoint.  “Me, I don't know nothing.”

   The dragon blinked, then lowered its head again, thankfully to a less threatening distance.  “Humble as well...  Tell me, are there any noble qualities that you do not possess?”

   â€œEr... I'm ok with no bull.”

   At this the dragon laughed once more.  “Tell me, my straight-talking fellow, what is it that you are trying to achieve in your quest?”

   â€œUh.....” Debbie Lee stalled.  “Well, see the thing is, my friend was kind of in charge of most of the figuring on this trip.  I think....  I think she wanted to know how we could go about fixin' up this shit hole.  Or something like that.”

   The dragon stared at her for many long moments.  “Quite,” was all he said.  In a flash he struck with his tail, shattering the statue looming over Carla Fae's body, sending debris flying back away from her, but leaving a shiny orb floating in the air just above.  On the backswing the dragon caught the orb with his tail and brought it with impossible speed up to Debbie Lee's face.  “There is something you will want to see, then.”

   Debbie Lee stepped back despite herself.  “Uh, no.  I'm afraid I'm not very smart when it comes to figurin' and such.”

   The dragon's head lurched forward so that it was eye to eye with her.  “That is precisely why it must you,” he rumbled, and then his tail slowly brought the glowing orb back between them. 

   The orb seemed to open into the yawning chasm of history, and suddenly the nature of the world was perfectly clear to her.
   

[Frodo]

Okay, that's it people.  Time to start voting.   
Thanks to everyone who entered. 
Sinitrena, hope your brain, and your hand, has recovered from that mega-epic story. 



We have 5 brilliant entries: 

Hard Bargain by Wham
Dragons by Wiggy
Dragon's Guardian by Sinitrena
Green And Me by Durinde
Quest For Concord by Baron


Please vote on:
- BEST CHARACTER
- BEST WRITING
- BEST STORY
- BEST ATMOSPHERE
- BEST DRAGON


You can vote for the same story in more than one category if you wish.  e.g.  If you think Story X has Best Writing and Best Atmosphere, that's fine. 
Voting will stay open until Tuesday 4 September.

[Wiggy]

It's a "lay down misere" as far as I can see, Sinitrena gets all my votes in all categories; that wasn't just a story - it was a novella, and probably should be expanded into a short story or series of same. Google "Pantera books" and follow the directions - you'll be published! (If you can find the descendants of the publishers of Alexandre Dumas and Charles Dickens, then you're in clover 'coz they got paid by the word!) Saucer of milk please...thank-you, where was I?

There's no point in embellishing the other worthy entries, 'coz all my points are gone. Once again I pay tribute to the conveners and participants and applaud the high standard demonstrated. My next story will have to start with; "Rikki the magic pixie went to visit Daisy Bumble...."

[Sinitrena]

WHAM: An interesting idea: dragons that need to get used to the bureaucracy of a human state where they just don't fit. I like the concept and I feel a bit sorry for Ferrungis, but at the same time he comes across as very "toothless", just not very dragon-like. Granted, he is in a bad situation, but he also seems slightly stupid. After all, he apparently has enough money to buy his food alive, so why not start to grow his own herd? Okay, it's probably not allowed, and the taxes and fines... Yeah, poor guy

Wiggy: I like poetry and the different definition of dragon for your work is a nice variety to the other stories. The execution could use some work. The meter is all over the place and the rhyme scheme is also very irregular. Both isn't bad in itself. It works for a lot of pieces, but when it becomes difficult to read a poem fluently (is that the right expression in English?) without stumbling, it might need a bit of additional work. It's not bad from a content point of view, though, just missing a bit of structure.

Durinde: A dragon story that doesn't dragon enough. Again, a very interesting concept: genetically engineered dragons as pets are inherently interesting, which makes me all the more disappointed that the story is actually about someone servicing a car. I think the reason why Alec is chosen as a beta tester is a bit flimsy. There are countless people who would love to have a dragin as a pet (me included) so it couldn't be difficult to find testers. And if they don't want just countless, irresponsible fan-boys and -girls, a randonly chosen person with a dragon tatoo also doesn't seem like the best choice. I'd prefered reading about life with a pet dragon.

Baron: I'm not sure when and where this story takes place. It feels like a post-apocalyptic world based on our own. Which makes me wonder where the dragons come from? This story has the beginnings of great world building but it needs a bit more. And it feels like it ends too suddenly. That's a compliment on the one hand because it means I wanted to read more, but on the other hand it means that the story feels unfinished to me. But, as always, great writing otherwise.


BEST CHARACTER: Baron, I like the two girls.
BEST WRITING: Baron. I tend to give this category to poetry, so Wiggy is a close second, but Baron's writing is just this tiny bit better.
BEST STORY: WHAM, it has the best structure and plot.
BEST ATMOSPHERE: WHAM, I felt so sorry for Ferrungis
BEST DRAGON: Durinde, Green just reminded me so much of a cute little cat.

[Durinde]

Durinde: A dragon story that doesn't dragon enough. Again, a very interesting concept: genetically engineered dragons as pets are inherently interesting, which makes me all the more disappointed that the story is actually about someone servicing a car. I think the reason why Alec is chosen as a beta tester is a bit flimsy. There are countless people who would love to have a dragin as a pet (me included) so it couldn't be difficult to find testers. And if they don't want just countless, irresponsible fan-boys and -girls, a randonly chosen person with a dragon tatoo also doesn't seem like the best choice. I'd prefered reading about life with a pet dragon.

Totally agree with most of the points. I had a really difficult time choosing a focus for the story. I didn't want it to become too long and kept cutting things back. In hindsight, I should have gone ahead and fleshed things out a little more.

[Frodo]

I need more votes. 

[WHAM]

Just got home from yet another 5 day stint at the hospital. Will try to read through the stories tomorrow and cast my votes.

[Frodo]

So sorry you were in the hospital, Wham.   *hugs*   
Hope you're okay. 

[Baron]

BEST CHARACTER - Ferrungis by WHAM.  He's like an overworked middle-aged dad, once all powerful but now ground down by taxes, inflation, and the general indignities of growing ever more feeble.  Not exactly charismatic, but he sure played to my demographic.

BEST WRITING - I'm going with WHAM, with Sinitrena as a very close second.  Both painted terrific pictures in my mind, but some editing lapses in Sinitrena's work broke the spell.  Tickling a dozing?  Er....

BEST STORY - Now this category must be Sinitrena.  That... was... EPIC!  Before I started reading I was a little apprehensive of the length, but on finishing it I'm thinking it's actually too short.  You've got material here for at least five chapters in a larger novel.  I'm with Wiggy on this one: flesh it out as a novel and try to get it published.  I'll even offer my editing services for a discounted fee....

BEST ATMOSPHERE - Again Sinitrena, for creating a complex world of magic and misery.  I should note that I liked WHAM's grungy world as well, but I think Sinitrena's spoke more to my soul.

BEST DRAGON - Eeeee....  I think in terms of character it must be Ferrungis by WHAM.  Sinitrena's dragons didn't relate enough at our human level (until the end) to really get to know them.  Durinde's dragon did a cute little cameo, but I never really felt like I knew... er, them.  And Wiggy's ladies seem, uh... a little less than magical.

Overall another good outing, folks!

[Sinitrena]

BEST WRITING - I'm going with WHAM, with Sinitrena as a very close second.  Both painted terrific pictures in my mind, but some editing lapses in Sinitrena's work broke the spell.  Tickling a dozing?  Er....

I don't doubt that there are countless errors in this story, especially because I did no editing at all, but what is wrong with tickling a dozing and silently weeping dragon? I mean, as a non-native speaker of English I obviously make mistakes, but as far as I can tell, this is exactly what I wanted to say. Layim tickles the dragon. The dragen dozes and weeps silently at the same time. What do I miss?

But thanks for your votes. This story was actually planned to be longer but I was so running out of time. Originally, Layim was not supposed to know who hired him, only an intermidiary (one of the two who escape) and only one of the two who get away from the dragons is found outside the city. There would then be some investigation going on. Also, the villain is supposed to have more of a personallity then “raw,I'm evil“, illustrated through the scene where Vettian actually does his performance as a bard. I also skipped most of the backstory for Layim, and removed all possible obstacles for him while going up to the tower.

All in all, I shortened the story considerably from my original idea and still had no time to properly proofread.

[Baron]

Oh man, I was so tired when I read that the "dozing" just didn't register as an adjective, even after I went back and reread it to make sure.  Sorry Sinitrena!

[WHAM]

- BEST CHARACTER: Baron for his protagonist pair
- BEST WRITING: Baron, for solid use of dialogue and inventive descriptions
- BEST STORY: Baron, for painting a world with a sense of history and plenty left to discover
- BEST ATMOSPHERE: Durinde, for the cozy atmosphere present in the first half of the story
- BEST DRAGON: Durinde, for the cutesy and cat-like Green


> Dragons by Wiggy
I ended up reading this out loud in a pseudo scottish accent for some reason. Poetry isn't really my thing, however, and the line length and weight seemed off to me, making this a bit of a slog to read. A for effort, though many of the lines didn't seem to rhyme. I guess that's more of a modern poetry thing?


> Dragon's Guardian by Sinitrena
Impressive. All around impressive amount of work went into this tale. I really hope you take the time to clean it up and, perhaps, expand it out in the future.

Sadly I will not be voting for it in any of the categories, despite you surely deserving several of those votes in the strict sense of the competition rules. The reason for this is the length. There is no real rule or guideline about this, but personally I feel that fortnightly stories should be kept to a reasonable length, so that they might draw in readers and voters from people who did not participate. If one or more stories are of such overwhelming length and complexity that they turn away potential casual readers, I fear it might detract from the voter pool of the competition. Imagine if we had 10 participants who all wrote stories of your caliber! We'd need another fortnight just for the voting process! I hope this makes some sort of sense, and you can forgive me for taking such a harsh stance, despite it possibly seeming unfair. I know I struggle to keep my stories from overflowing in lenght sometimes, and I am pleased to see your work growing in size as it provides more potential for advancement of your writing. Perhaps stories of such length should not be contest entries, however, or they should be cut down for purposes of the contest and then expanded later elsewhere? Not having to bow to a deadline would allow you to edit and refine these tales further, turning them into something much more. You clearly have potential for that!


> Green And Me by Durinde
The story is distinctly divided into two segments. First off is a part of cozy, warm and comfortable descriptions of Green acting like a sort of draconic housepet. I very much enjoyed the mental image of this, and the description here was fantastic. The latter half of the story was a flashback into, I'm sad to say, boredom. After a fantastical setup that invoked all sorts of warm, fuzzy feelings in my tired soul, reading up about a coincidental meeting during a car repair trip seemed like a downer by comparison. Rather than reading about dragons I ended up, for most of the story, reading a conversation between people who were not very interesting. Especially compared to dragons. In my opinion the story should have focused more heavily on Green's daily life and the story of how Green came into the possession of Alec should have been reduced to a shorter, less important sidenote, as now it serves only to drag out the story, turning it from fantastical to mundane.


> Quest For Concord by Baron
Well, that story did not go the way I expected it to, but then again the nature of it had me quite uncertain of HOW it was about to go, anyway. There was history here, but too little of it was made clear and understood, or maybe I just lacked the imagination to piece it together. I did like the language here, though, and the two characters were quite interesting, although the dragon ended up something of a non-character due to the brief appearance and abrupt ending of the story. There is potential here, but this one needed a bit more time in the oven, dear Baron. It's not quite done!

[Ponch]

BEST CHARACTER: Baron
BEST WRITING: Wiggy (I'm terrible at poetry and tip my hat to you)
BEST STORY: Sinitrena
BEST ATMOSPHERE: WHAM
BEST DRAGON: Wiggy

[Frodo]

Sorry for the delay guys, I've been really busy. 

My Thoughts:

Hard Bargain by Wham
Poor Ferrungis, I kinda feel sorry for him.  The mighty dragon, reduced to obeying laws, worrying about fines, and being tormented by everyone.  And the resentment is just bubbling under the surface. 
I love your descriptions - I could really imagine myself walking down that road with Ferrungis (although he would probably hate that, lol), and in the market with Mabel.  A brilliant entry! 



Dragons by Wiggy
It's nice to see a bit of poetry, since it stands out from the other stories.  And kudos to you for writing about something that's obviously personal to you (flying jets).  However, I found mixing dragons with planes rather confusing.  Yes, I know they both fly, but I still found it rather odd.  Brilliant effort, though. 



Dragon's Guardian by Sinitrena
Wow!  Just Wow!  This is an amazing story!  I love how you convey what the dragons are feeling, especially Chradragshza.  And I love the relationship between Chradragshza and the Guardian.  Layim, who started out as the nasty thief, ended up risking his life to safe the baby dragon.  Whether that's down to the dragon's magic, or Layim gradually understanding the dragons, I don't know.  But I love how he develops over the story.  I got so involved with the story, and really felt little Fschvuch's pain. 
You say you shortened the story?  I'd love to see the full version sometime. 



Green And Me by Durinde
Genetically engineered pet dragons is an interesting idea, and I love how 'Green' snuggles up on the bed with Alec every morning, just like a pet cat.  But then the story shifts focus, and becomes a story about a maintenance worker in a park.  The dragon aspect of it seems forgotten.  Sorry Durinde. 



Quest For Concord by Baron
I get the sense that this story takes place in the far-distant future, in a world devastated by war.  The 2 women are searching for the ancient dragons, in order to save the human race.  The dragon comes across as really powerful and knowledgabe, which I love.  But then the story seems to end kinda suddenly.  It seems like it could be fleshed out more.  Is the dragon going to give the orb to Debbie, then leave her to it?  Is he going to become her 'guide', and help her save the world? 




- BEST CHARACTER:  Layim by Sinitrena.  I love how he changed from only wanting to steal the dragon egg, to wanting to help the dragons. 

- BEST WRITING:  Hard Bargain by Wham.  I could really picture myself in that world, with Ferrungis. 

- BEST STORY:  Again, Dragon's Guardian by Sinitrina.  Fantastic story of man and dragon co-existing.

- BEST ATMOSPHERE:  Dragon's Guardian by Sinitrena.  You really pulled me in, and tugged at my heart-strings. 

- BEST DRAGON:  Hmmm, a hard choice for me.  Ferrungis or Chradragshza?  Both are brilliant dragons, in completely different ways.  But I'll go with Chradragshza.  Such a powerful beast, yet so gentle with her guardian. 


************************************************************

So by my count, the final votes are:

First Prize, with the Golden Dragon, goes to Sinitrena, with a very impressive 12 votes. 



Second Prize, with the Silver Dragon, going to Wham, with 7 votes.



Third Prize, with the Pink Dragon, going to Baron, with 6 votes.
   


Thanks again to everyone who participated.
Over to you, Sinitrina. 

[WHAM]

Congrats on the win, Sinitrena! An impressive amount of work well rewarded!

[Sinitrena]

Thank you all for the votes and kind words, guys.

The next round is coming right up.

[Baron]

Congratulations Sinitrena!

[Wiggy]

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep;
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep."

Oh crap! That doesn't meter Terrance!
That doesn't matter Phillip!
It's from a Robert Frost poem - one of the best in the 20th Century
"On a walk through the dark woods"
But if it doesn't meter, yet it's good Terrance, that means that I
don't know my arse from my elbow!
Here, Phillip - pull my elbow!
PPPPHHRRRRAAAT! Hahahahahahahahaha!
<you don't think it's supposed to be about the content, do you?>
Pull my elbow again!
PPPPHHRRRRAAAT! Hahahahahahahahaha!