Death's Dragons

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.

But now they cluster the sky, bruising the light that filters down to illuminate the small villages that dot the space of land we call home. Before the appearance of the dragons, the days were bright unless stormy, the nights softened by stars and moon. Now the Valley resides in constant shadow, its people flinching every time one of the shadows crests closer, sinuous and threatening.

But none of the dragons have ventured down. No deaths have marked our days or nights, no animals have gone missing, no pools of blood have been discovered. The dragons remain aloft, abreast with the clouds, shining eyes locked below, wings steadily beating, thrumming a cacophony of sound that reminds me of a series of low-toned drums. No one can say why the beasts suddenly appeared and crowded the sky, and no one understands how they stay in flight for so long. They have clustered above us for nigh on six months, and now the year is drawing to a cold close, ice creeping in the mornings, snow impregnating the steel clouds that roam alongside the dragons.

This morning is no different. I glance up every once and while as I go about my morning chores, the winter air sharp against my uncovered head. The chill brightens the darkness that resides within me, a darkness that has claimed me for years. Some call it grief, thanks to the void my dead twin leaves behind, but I’m no longer sure if that’s what it is. Perhaps it had been at one point, but now it is simply a thick cloak that drapes my mind, suffocating and wearying.

Though winter always manages to keep the darkness at bay.

Winter means languid evenings by a merry fire. Roasted nuts and melted chocolate. Snippets of freedom on the Valley’s frozen lakes and rivers. Winter brings with it the Deepest Night and its celebrations, the one time darkness doesn’t mean pain for me.

The presence of the dragons threatens an empty winter, one void of celebration. I cast a glare towards the seething mass of scales above my village, only fragments of pale sunlight managing to break through their bodies, limning them in a weak luminescence that is both eerie and frustrating. Frustrating because the light that manages to fall towards the Valley is barely enough to see by, and eerie because the vague illumination leaves much to be desired. Are they dragons with four limbs and two wings each, or beasts with eight wings and several legs, all of them monsters of chimerical proportion?

Personally, I don’t care. I only feared the dragons for a brief moment, when they first bled into the sky and hung there like sigils of death. When it became clear that they weren’t harbingers of immediate doom, my terror slipped away, replaced by annoyance. My parents think me daft and are always telling me to keep cautious, to only leave the safety of our home to ensure our animals are cared for. I listen to their pleas, though I chafe at the prison that has enclosed over our days. My father never leaves the house, and I find that I now loathe the man I used to worship. He has lost weight and has grown paler than the ghosts that flit about the Valley during the darkest hours of night. Before the dragons, he used to train our horses with a firm hand. Now he trembles in the corner of the house at all times, eyes vacant, nonsense falling from his mouth. “They come, they come, they come…” is his chosen phrase of the week, and even my mother has taken to ignoring him. If he speaks about the dragons, he is behind the times. The beasts have been here for months. They have already come.

The horses nicker in greeting as I approach their pen, my arms laden with buckets of grain. Our stores are running low, our ability to trade outside the Valley broken. No merchants dare enter our territory, not with the horde of dragons. In consequence, I am forced to feed our horses only half of what they are used to, and they have lost much of their muscle. Even if the dragons did decide to land and feast on us and our livestock, they would discover a banquet of haggard prey, worn to the bone.

“Something’s changing,” a male voice interrupts my solitude. I drop the final bucket and turn to face Theo. For once he isn’t ogling me or trying to rekindle the flame between us that had, in my opinion, barely been an ember. He had been a distraction for me during a time when my darkness had threatened to overtake me completely. Few things manage to keep the darkness at bay; sex, winter, and a powdered drug that is incredibly expensive and currently impossible to find.

“What do you mean?” I ask him. He’s staring up at the dragons. I follow his gaze and only see the same sight that has greeted me for six months; a mass of scales and shining, alien eyes.

“They seem more excited than usual,” Theo breathes. I narrow my eyes and look carefully at the dragons, but I don’t see what he does.

“I suppose so.”

The little light that struggles through the dragons begins to dim. As we stand there, the world becomes almost pitch dark, and an ethereal whine curls around the village. My skin prickles.

“Willow, where are you?” My mother’s panicked call makes me blink. I look down from the dragons. Theo’s form is barely visible in the grim half-light. He’s staring at me. Lightning must flash behind the dragons, because whiteness breaks around them and illuminates the Valley for a split-second.

I wish it hadn’t.

Theo’s face isn’t Theo’s.

It is a mask of bleached bone with a gaping mouth, the corners dripping a dark substance that I think is blood. His eyes are entirely white, the pupils gone, and his rough spun clothes have been replaced by tattered robes.

He looks like the Reaper. The demon that graces the pages of our GodBook, the being that takes any soul it chooses, at any time it wants.

“Willow,” Theo-the-Reaper speaks, his voice similar to the clacking of bones. “Your second soul is weary of sharing.”

The darkness that has accompanied me for years grows heavier. I can feel its fingers claw up my throat. I choke. More lightning flares beyond the dragons. Snow begins to fall, thick and rapid. A voice laughs in my mind.

The Reaper lifts a skeletal hand and lovingly brushes my cheek. An immense agony spreads from his touch and grasps my head. I can’t breathe.

“My army requires a commander,” he whispers to me. “It craves you. But you are a twin, and the two beings within you cannot command together.

“You have two options, Willow. Die today or eradicate the soul that is choking you.” His gaping mouth stretches wider. More blood spills down his chin. “Survive and ride the Dragons to a glory you can’t even begin to imagine.”

I faint just as another bout of thunder shakes the Valley.