by Karine Green
Fabian swore. “The poor saps from Yellow Hollow had been nothing but an intelligence gathering exercise for the Mad King. No wonder they call him mad, what an atrocity–his own troops. At least, that is a sign that he has no direct spies in Blue Valley since he spent his own troops’ lives getting the information." He spit on the ground. “Disgusting. I can’t wait to see him executed.”
Méi and Suki returned, looking rather pleased with themselves. "They won't be sending any messages home. Their village will just have to figure it out on their own," Suki said, jumping down, and taking off the tactical jacket.
Méi nodded, then head-butted Mack hello. He head-butted her back.
Romayo nodded to Mack. "I understand, and I'll make Fabe understand. We all need the dragons to return to their capitol, and take their rightful places back in society." He patted Fabian on the shoulder who still looked very unsure about the whole dragon's-leaving-the-village plan.
~~~
As expected there was a huge celebration, and the entire village was there. They offered a full cow to them. Mack and Méi ate until their stomachs were visibly bloated.
Later, he settled into his bed by walking around in circles. Mack knew he should be on top of the world. The harvest was safe. Despite the brilliant celebration, doing a dragon dance with Méi, and then eating themselves fat, he went to bed worried about how to get everything in place. He had to somehow keep living this beautiful life with Méi.
Méi looked physically uncomfortable since she no doubt, also ate earlier. He wrapped his tail around hers, noticing her labored breathing.
"Are you alright?"
"Yes, I just ate too much today. It will be days before I have to eat again." She gave his tail a squeeze.
His last thought before drifting off to sleep was that the villagers seemed eager for him and Méi to have pups of their own. That was something he couldn't do right now. Romayo's observation that both he and Méi had outgrown their adolescent saddles six months ago, and wearing adult saddles was not a sound argument to mate for the sole purpose of procreation. If dragons were going extinct, his pup would not be the last one. He needed to find more dragons before he did anything like condemn a pup to be alone. He knew what it was like to be alone, forgotten, and he would die before condemning his own future family to that.
Méi rolled over, nudging him. He gave her a look. "Don't worry, I am not acting on any human's convoluted advice to have pups. You just seemed lonely, even when we danced. I thought I would let you know that you have people and dragons who care about you here too. We remember you. This is your real home."
"Romayo said that Elemental Dragons don't usually mate outside their element. Why is that?" He wasn't sure why he’d asked the question, it had just popped out. The truth was he would love to have pups with Méi, just not lonely ones.
She paused. "I don't know why we stay in our element. I very much look forward to meeting the Earth and Water Dragons when, and if, they return.” She gently rubbed her cheek on his, “I have enjoyed our carefully planned nights together, but given the circumstances, I am with you, no pups." She nestled closer.
He smiled and laid his head down on her paw. "Not that you aren't attractive and brilliant, but bringing a pup into this world to live like you did, or like I was forced to, isn't high on my priority list."
"Agreed, because if we are really the last ones, who would our pups have as mates? If so, we are better off being the last ones, together. Now go back to sleep. I am sorry I disturbed you."
"You could never disturb me." Mack smiled. He wondered if Méi would pay any attention to him at all if there were other dragons around. He nudged her neck. "I love you."
"I love you too."
Blue’s Notes
Dunia sat, silently reading a scroll at her dragon's desk. It had been a month since her mentor Blue had passed away peacefully in his sleep. She’d buried him where he had indicated he wanted to be, a large pond not too far away from here, and then she’d cried for a week.
"I am alone again, forgotten." She sighed. "And, apparently not above talking to myself."
She shook her head and forced herself to refocus on trying to understand the meaning of this scroll. She had read it twice since his passing. She remembered him reading and writing notes about it often, but couldn't figure out what had fascinated him so much that he would read the scroll over and over. "What were you looking for, Blue?"
It was a basic overview about adolescent and dragon pup care, aimed at a human reader. It read like a textbook for a human who may want to study to be a rider, or live in a dragon barn with pups present.
There were sections for each of the Elemental Dragons and all of the Common Dragons. The section with cross breeding dragons had notes written on it, but they weren't in Blue's handwriting.
"Someone else wrote this, but who was he looking for?"
A note on the side read Blood King with a question mark after it.
"The Blood King is in that scroll." With her tail, she pointed to a scroll on the top shelf, dedicated to the reign of the Blood King. “Not, this one.” She was sure he wasn’t mentioned.
There was once an Earth-Fire hybrid who could cause liquefaction of the ground while turning it to lava. This had frightened the humans of a neighboring Secular village. However, they still threatened war against the king because of high taxes and import/export tariffs. Simply put, they could not afford to live beyond a level of profound poverty. Their society was collapsing because of his policies regarding trade with other villages.
The villagers planned a raid but had been betrayed by an Earth witch. She was later renamed Ja Hua, or in their native language, Chrysanthemum. It was her sole act of treason that had caused the hills to be covered with fields of the death flower – chrysanthemum - to mark the graves of over thirty thousand dead villagers; men, women, and children. After Ja Hua’s village fell the armies of the surrounding villages laid down in surrender...to just one dragon and his teeny, death-flower of a rider. Next to the Great Losing, it was the worst slaughter of innocent life in the history of Shestafa.
The dragon population had been very healthy during the Blood Dragon King's reign. But, he needed no army to take over once he took Ja Hua as a rider. Because of her, all non-magical humans were seen as not qualified to be a dragon rider. Soon, only non-ridered dragons could join the Blood King’s army, to keep them from being as powerful as him. Above all he was paranoid about a takeover, even killing his own Crown Princess heir when she suggested she needed better training to one day take the throne.
This left only the Lilac Princess.
The Blood King and his rider were the worst of the Earth element traits. The two reigned Holy Elemental terror over the Secular population, and sometimes a few select Spiritual villages, Blue Valley included, more than once.
"It would suck to be his enemy," she said to herself. She made a note to check her small library of scrolls to see if there were any other scrolls on the Blood King or the Lilac Princess.
She turned her attention back to the dragon care scroll.
"Is there a cross-reference between this and the Blood King that I am missing? Or maybe it’s the Common-Elemental connections specific to this scroll?"
There weren't many Common-Elemental hybrids. There was a huge class divide between them, and most Elemental Dragons would not step-down to have pups with a Common Dragon.
“If I have anything to say about it, the class divide will stop.” She smiled. “I have a dream, and a position of power to put it in place. I just hope I am not the only one.”
She re-read the little note in the margin, Stone Dragons, and Water Dragons seemed to make the perfect combination. They were Fire, Earth, Water, and could learn the most important elements of air. That meant they could master all the elements - as long as the right genes lined up. There was also a note to check the spell book to see if the genes could be magically lined up to produce the Elemental effect on the magical ability of the pups. A
scratched out note ended with human trials- but she couldn’t read the entire note.
She wondered if it was the Blood King’s book reference here. “These have to be the Mad King’s notes.” Was he trying to make a magical human? Or dragon hybrids? Or both?
A separate note suggested that the scroll's owner had Stone Dragons, but was desperately seeking a Water Dragon. It also suggested that the pup's parents needed to be removed so the pup could be raised as a loyal dragon to the scroll's owner.
"Just what does removed mean?"
She frowned. She had grown up without her parents. They had been killed, she put it together. She had been old enough to live without her mother's direct care. The four Noble pups all had their parents assassinated on the same night.
"We were to be the pups in question here. So, this nut job could crossbreed dragons like we're dogs." She paused; again, as it sunk in "I was the pup in question. I was to be crossbred like a dog." She heaved a heavy sigh, and for the first time in the last year, she was thankful she had been hidden away. "No wonder the White Witch took us. We all would have been killed if we stayed, because even though we were pups, we were too old for his science experiment. They were going to kill little pups – execute us for crimes committed over a hundred years ago."
She sighed. Blue had warned her of the Mad King's plans to perform biological experimentation with dragons. That was the main reason he had hidden her in this cabin upon her return; to protect her from an oppression of the worst type. If the Mad King found her, her future family wouldn't really be hers, and the father of her pups wouldn't be her choice either.
"My pups would be raised to be a terror, loyal to the Mad King, who would use them to reign down more terror. If he gets his hands-on dragon pups, who look up to him like he was their father...the story of the Blood King would hardly make the footnotes in terms of tyrants once the Mad King's plans played out."
She put the scroll away and searched around the loose papers Blue had kept in a box. They were messages sent by a bird. She pulled out one dated just a few months ago. She opened and read it.
Blue, Greetings Dear Friend,
A Water Dragon has been discovered at the Mad King's Castle in North Dragon's Ridge. He has escaped to South Dragon's Ridge and is living there with his mate – a Stone Dragon.
Your Sister in Magic, LaDeara
"If this message is true, and the Mad King found both of them, a Fire-Earth-Water dragon would literally have the capability to make the land unlivable for anyone, except them. That's probably why the Spiritual block citizens call him the Mad King. He isn't thinking his so-called selective breeding program through to its natural conclusion. Only the hybrid-dragons will survive, and once they realize the position of power they are in, and how they got there, they would end it, they would crush everyone both dragon and human in their path." Dunia didn't want to think about it.
She read Blue's notes on a scroll that was wrapped over the Dragon Care scroll.
Blue’s note read: The Mad King is going to crossbreed the remaining dragons, to gather an army of invincible dragons to conquer what was left of the world. Or more to the point – be able to control the entire world.
She tapped the desk with her claw. She had done this so often while trying to figure out Blue’s notes she had worn a little hole where the tip of her claw hit the wood.
"No surprise, but nice to know I am on the right track."
She read on. “The Mad King thinks he will have complete control of all the elements with a loyal dragon army that only he had nurtured since they were pups. He foolishly thinks that dragons are like pets; loyal to their masters. But, dragons don’t have masters. They, like humans, make partnerships until both sides move on.
The most frightening part is that dragons aren't dumb animals. They are highly intelligent, and their emotional needs are the same as humans–revenge and retribution among them. At some point, as these pups grow up, they would realize that they do not need him. Then the world will know a terror like no other. Angry, vengeful, adult dragon hoards would most likely wipe out the Seculars altogether before starting on the Spiritual block of Shestafa. Dragons need their parents, just like humans do, and for the same reason; to teach them how to be responsible adults.
She frowned; exchanging one genocide for another was not the answer. However, she respected Blue's ability to reason. She didn't want to believe what he wrote here, but she feared he was most likely dead-right.
“Such terrible things have happened over history. The big difference here is that dragons are not as powerless as the Jews were against Hitler, or as the African-American slaves had been against bondage. On the contrary, Dragons are all powerful, and the Mad King’s pups would eventually learn that. Meaning the second generation of the Mad King's pups who grow up watching their parents oppressed by him, will sanitize the land of humans without regard to any facts. And, if they got a hold of the Blood King's spell book..." She shook her head. Maybe Blue was right? “That book is dangerous.”
She unrolled another note from Blue
“The Mad King's biggest problem right now is that his propaganda campaign from long ago has worked too well. It is long out of his control. After the Royal Dragon Massacre at Blue Valley, Seculars everywhere snuck in and killed thousands, if not millions of dragons in their sleep. Even the Mad King was taken aback by the level of genocide he had inspired. He had only meant to remove the Royal and Noble Elemental Dragons and replace the dragon government with dragons loyal to him, not wipe the entire species out. Soon after the Great Losing, he declared it illegal to kill dragons and instituted a dragon training program. But, the only dragons he could find were Stone Dragons. The others seemed to be gone. I can only pray that the Green Witch - Daphne has them.”
"You mean a conditioning camp." She scoffed at the scroll like that would somehow offend the Mad King. "Dunia, you are still talking to yourself. You can't do this. Do something. I need to go find the others. Blue said they would return soon. Then we would be a complete set of ruling Elemental Dragons."
She rolled Blue's notes scroll up around the Dragon Care one, and put them back on the shelf. She would have to venture out of the safety of this place soon. Blue had written down the timeline for the others to return. Since he had passed on, she would have to go look for them alone. She would have to pull her fellow dragons together and set them against the Mad King to restore balance – if it was even possible to restore balance.
She combed through the scrolls for one that might be a map.
In the morning, she would venture out to look at her immediate surroundings. She would continue further and further out every day after that, and the peace and harmony Blue had worked so hard to preserve for her, would come to an end.
Arlen’s Loss
Arlen swam in his healing pool while the villagers waited by the edge. Rini had arranged for them to visit. He swam back and forth, lazily swooshing his tail. Rini was sitting on the edge of the pool, with her front paw dipped in. He smiled at her paw.
That's as far as she'll come in, and the only reason she is doing that is to allow the healing power of the water to nourish our egg. She will be such a good mother. I never thought I wanted a family, but life is so happy with her. I can't wait to meet our pup.
There was a noise and a commotion. Rini pulled her paw up from the water. He poked his head up out of the water. Luca was running toward them screaming.
"Invasion!" He ran faster than Arlen thought possible for a human. "It's the Red Wizard and his tactical team."
Arlen spread his wings and flew up out of the water, landing over a crouching Rini to completely shield her. Luca ran to hide behind Arlen. "Arlen, ice now! They’re on my tail."
Three Stone Dragons with enemy soldiers were entering his backyard. "Get the pampered Stoney." One yelled, referring to the fact that some villagers had given Rini some gold dusted scale polish.
"She is not a Stoney." Arlen reared and roared his ice shards at them. The
riders of the Stone Dragons were impaled. Only one was able to jump free.
"Healing pool," he said staggering to the pool and falling in.
Arlen smiled. "Idiot," he said, roaring at the water, the entire pool froze with the rider trapped at the bottom. He looked around; the invading Stone Dragons were gone.
"Red," a voice came from outside. "You were right, she is at home. The front team is down. The dragon killed them. Their Stoneys ran out the back."
The same calm voice Arlen remembered from his time in the cell said, "Kill the Water Dragon, use the Fire sword I gave you, and get that pampered Stoney. I want that egg, Captain."
Arlen didn't wait for anything else. He gripped Rini with all four paws and took off, flying away from the village.
"Arlen, we can't leave them." She pointed. “Look.” There were, at least, a thousand troops descending on the village.
"I am taking you to safety first, then I'll come back." He banked right and flew south until he was sure that the enemy Stone Dragons couldn't keep up. He set Rini down by a cave. "Are you all right? Our egg?"
"We are fine. Go help our village. Secure our pup's future, and make it so people will not hunt him." She brushed her cheek on Arlen’s snout, he head-butted her back and flew off toward home.
He smiled, I am flying - - to my home – to make it safe.
A few minutes later he descended on the troops approaching from the mountains. He whistled to them, landing next to a small river. "Hey, back here, fellas."
As soon as they turned toward him he flicked his tail in the river. A flash flood engulfed about three hundred men. Arlen roared at the water, they and their Stone Dragons froze in place. He easily took out the other Stone Dragons. They ran panicked from him, afraid of the water, not to mention the ice.