Dessandre's Restart

Silthier the scorned let his facade fade away as he observed the small girl, a human girl, sitting amongst the broken trees and rubble. He was in no danger. No human had ever harmed Silthier. No human would dare. But still… wasn't it strange?

Thinking, as such a thing was his most favorite thing to do, Silthier contemplated the circumstances. What was a human female doing here? How did one so young, get so deep within the forest, without his notice? The human child stopped fussing and then did something that shocked Silthier to his core… She looked at him.

Strange… Silthier thought. He half expected the girl to notice him, pull his mottled green hide from the surrounding forest, and then, when she realized what she was looking at, she would scream. They all did, eventually. He gave half a thought to moving, expediting the process, but didn't. His muscles didn't so much as twitch as he stood stock still, and watched, and waited, and thought. Strange.

Dragons were magical creatures, created in the earliest days of the heralding. Maura, the first witch, mother of magic and all that was mystical, had made them from the mist and ribbon, the very fabric of life itself. Nobody knew why, other than, in a fit of rage and agony, Maura had torn the world asunder and warped almost everything within it. She had changed reality. Ended it. Began it anew.

Rebirth was the inevitable goal of every living creature. From the smallest insects, to the mightiest of dragons, everything had one goal in mind… well, maybe two if survival was in fact considered a “goal”. For a Dragon, a dragon such as Silthier, survival was a trivial thought.

No material could puncture a dragon’s hide. No poison or venom could harm him. No weapon could do so much as scratch his belly, or carve his wings, although some days he wished they could. Sometimes, when he was in a particularly foul mood, his only desire was a good scratch. Anything to tame the itching.

On occasion, Silthier had attempted to entice humans into doing his bidding. In the process, many of them died. It was so hard to keep such fragile creatures whole, and alive, when they were so small and… dainty. And their smell… Silthier did his best to not inhale, to not partake in the aroma of fresh meat but… it was almost too much for him to resist. In the end, he did though. He had the mental fortitude to resist, at least for a few moments more. He wanted to see, to figure out, this strangeness.

Utilizing abilities, he had developed over the past two or three hundred years, Silthier focused his eyes to a different wavelength of light, one that could distinguish magic and magical force threads, from the rest of the world. Without moving much more than the inside of his pupils, the world shifted from its normal drab greens grays and browns, and exploded into a world of swirling light and color. The little girl inhaled sharply.

Silthier stopped. For any other creature, “stopping” might mean ceasing movement, holding your breath, standing still so a predator doesn't see you, or so prey doesn't dart away. For a dragon, for Silthier, stopping meant everything. The world stopped. The breeze stopped. The air, and the rain, and the sand, and the leaves, stopped. Time itself, stopped. Color swirled through the girl.

“You don’t… do you.”

Silthier blinked. He moved. His mind raced as only a dragons could. Millions of years of evolution and magical might weighed in at lightning’s pace. How? If- She- It- must. No other way.

“Hmpf.”

She should be running. She should be screaming. Screaming, and running, and crying for her life.

“Dessandre?” Silthier asked, his voice, his spoken voice, sounding more like a hiss poured out of a deep mountain pass, than words.

The girl smiled and stood up. Without giving him another look, she brushed her dirty little hands against her skirt and started walking his way.

“Stop!” he roared.

She barely slowed for a moment, but she did look up, a cute little smile forming on the left edge of her mouth.

“You haven’t answered me!” Silthier growled. He considered moving backwards for a moment before he thought it might convey weakness or uncertainty. Unsurety at the very least.

“It’s me!” The girl squeaked, skipping for a moment and then kicking a nearby stump with her bare foot. The stump shattered, throwing broken shards of ancient wood in a spray. “I’ve gone and done it. Restarted.”

“Restarted?” Silthier questioned, finally moving and bringing his massive body closer, sliding over the broken trees and rocks and boulders. “How? When? More importantly… why?”

“Why?” The girl cocked her head towards the stump as if considering its unspoken opinion as advice on how to answer. “Why do anything? Why breathe? Why move? Why sleep and dream, and think, and live? Why indeed?”

“But I thought you-”

“No.” Dessandre said with a smile and her eyes flashed with the color of molten gold. “Nope. I just… got tired of everything how it was. This was my only option.”

“Your only option?” Silthier questioned, still unable to believe what he was seeing. “A human child? A weak, feeble, female child?”

“Weak?” Dessandre said, her high-pitched female child voice taking on a hard edge, if it was possible. “My dear Silthier… Rebirth, is not weakness. It is a purging of the filth and the toxins we bring into ourselves. Rebirth is a purification. A personification.”

Silthier turned his head dismissively, but did not take his eyes off of this… strangeness. If it was Dessandre, then he knew to dismiss her would not bode well for him. She was known to be self-centered and prone to irrational outbursts of violence and destruction, not that he had anything to fear of course, but if this was not Dessandre…

“Still debating amongst yourself, hmmm?” the female human child asked. “Considering whether I’m telling the truth?”

“Maybe,” Silthier said in a low rumble.

The child sucked in a deep breath herself and then turned around, stretching her arms out, as if presenting the world to him anew. “This… this is just a taste of what I can do.”

Silthier dismissed her words as incoherent rambling, inconsequential “talk” that humans displayed when their attempts at foolhardy boasting failed but then, he noticed.

The mountains in the distance looked closer, more vibrant, more… alive? The forest was greener. The sky was bluer. The wildflowers all around… Silthier focused on them.

Eyes able to see things from miles away, magnified the detail of every plant, petal and stalk. He gasped when he saw what was happening. Tiny nubs grew from the ground at a fantastic pace. Tiny hairs formed, clutching and grasping at nothing, and then hairs turned into stems and shoots, stalks rose like voracious caterpillars, pods expanded, grew fat, and then exploded with colors. The world was alive. The world was… new.

“I can feel it, Silthier,” Dessandre said, curling her fingers into fists and then slowly uncurling them again.

“Feel what?” Silthier asked.

“Magic,” Dessandre said.

“Magic doesn't have a feel,” Silthier said, now doubting her claims. Dragons were the most magical thing in existence. Few other things could make the same claim, and even dragons knew, magic didn't have a feel. It could make things happen. It could have devastating and dramatic effect. But it didn't feel like anything. The results, were what was felt.

“It does!” Dessandre laughed. “Here! The rock!” the girl said, waving her hand as if saying “hi” to a boulder. “Watch it! See? Its cold.”

“Yes,” Silthier said, narrowing his eyes. “I suppose in your infinite wisdom, you're going to tell me it’s hard, too.”

Dessandre, or the child imitating Dessandre, he still couldn't tell, gave him a contemptuous glance.

“I’ve eaten women for less,” Silthier said, growing bored.

“You haven’t eaten me,” the girl quipped.

Silthier gave it not even a moment of consideration, but when he pulled his giant maw back, expecting bloodied stumps of a human child to be standing on their own, bodiless, he saw nothing.

“How rude,” came a voice from within his mouth and then, he felt something he had not felt in a very long time. Pain.

“Arrrggg!” Silthier roared. His neck came up, coiled and then whipped forward. He spat the child “thing” out as quickly as he could, and saw it go flying, along with a number of his own teeth. “My teethhhh!”

“Serves you right!” Dessandre shouted as her body spun head over heels once before exploding into the form of a ruby red dragon ten times the size of a full-grown human. Her form banked, strong crimson wings cracked the air, catching it so hard and beating it away, the gusts made the mountains rumble in response.

Silthier took a step back, knowing he had made a mistake, but it was too late. Faster than he could track, anticipate, or understand, she was on him.

Silthier turned and threw himself backwards, seeking to put distance between Dessandre and himself, but there was nowhere to go, and she was with him from the start. Her hind legs raked his belly and her front arms and talons dug into his shoulders, ripping scales and tearing flesh. He squirmed and rolled, smashing her against rock and tree alike, trying to dislodge her like a deer fending off a bear, but she was too strong.

Dessandre coiled her neck and Silthier knew she was going to bite him. She was going to bite him, and then, then… for the first time since magic had spawned him, and the world, into existence, Silthier would be… no more.

“No,” Dessandre said then, pushing herself off of Silthier, and into the air. She flapped her wings twice and then transformed again, her beautiful bright red body twisted and tightened in on itself, and then fell to the ground. When her tiny human female feet hit the ground, the world shook.

“No?” Silthier asked, confused, yet, glad to be alive still.

“No,” Dessandre, the child, said. “I forgive you. You didn't know it was me of course. Not really. You had doubts. I assume those doubts have been erased?”

“Yes,” Silthier said quickly. There could be no doubt now. This was Dessandre, reborn.

“Good,” she said, the edge of her mouth turning into a smile once again. “You… look like you need a minute.”

“I’m fine,” Silthier said, rolling over and assessing the damage for the first time in a very long time. In fact, he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt pain, or injury. He craned his long neck around to see the long gashes in his shoulders, and the vicious gouges in his lower belly. He was lucky, he decided. If she'd put much more effort into any of her attacks, they would not be speaking right now. He didn't notice she was right there next to him again, until she spoke.

“Let me-” she said, but Silthier flinched away from her, stopping her words for a moment. When she saw he wasn't pulling further away, she continued. “Let me help you.”

“My wounds will heal,” Silthier said. He knew there was magic, words that would unlock an accelerated form of healing, but the exact phrases and sounds escaped him just then.

“Yes,” Dessandre said, “but they will heal quicker, if I help you.”

“I-,” Silthier began to say, but he stopped when Dessandre reached out and her fingers touched one of the wounds on his flank. “I- …uuuuughhhhh,” Silthier moaned as the feeling of cleansing purity grabbed his flesh and pulled it back together.

“Just a little here,” Dessandre said, running her hands up the wound, pinching it back together and smoothing her hands across his scales every so often. Newly healed flesh crusted over with glistening green scales as quickly as it had been destroyed, and within moments Dessandre was climbing up his massive form, healing every little gouge and scratch. When she was done, she climbed down, and then gave him a wicked little girl smile. “All done.”

“That…” Silthier had no words to express his wonder and amazement. Dragons, while they were inherently magical, they were also notoriously slow growing, slow to heal, slow to mature, and slow to age and die. Dragons were so slow in fact, Silthier knew not a single dragon that had ever died of old age. Not one.

“Was nice?”

Silthier nodded before taking in another deep breath. “How?” He asked.

“How what?”

“How did you do it?”

“I told you. I can feel-”

“No. How did you… how did you restart? Your rebirth. How did it happen?”

“I…” Dessandre paused a moment. “I’m not exactly sure.”

“You’re not sure?”

“No. I remember wanting to… wanting to start over. Wanting to… make things right.”

“Make things right? With who?”

“With the world,” Dessandre said cheerfully. “I’m not talking about all the goats and sheep I eat. Food is food. But the humans, and the giant folk, the half breeds and the hill people. The world. There’s only so much destruction one can do before you realize… enough is enough.”

Silthier considered her words for a moment. There was an enormous amount of joy one could get from slaughtering humans and humanoids, but Dessandre was right. After a while, it just got old. And it wasn't like you could eat them day after day after day. Fully grown humans tasted awful with all the alcohol and smoke they put in their bodies. And while the small ones were absolutely delicious, if you didn't allow them to grow old and multiply, you quickly ran out of the little delicious ones.

“Do you not eat humans anymore?” Silthier asked.

“No,” Dessandre said more quickly than Silthier has expected. “No… I… I think I want to live among them.”

“Live among vermin?” Silthier asked, shocked with disbelief.

“Yes. Live among the vermin, and elevate them. Maybe we can educate them. Have you considered what they go through?”

“No,” Silthier said in a completely dispassionate tone. “Nor do I care. Disgusting cattle. No. Cattle taste better.”

“Cattle taste better, because humans care for them!”

Silthier acted as if he was ignoring the comment, but he was considering it all the same. What if Dessandre was right? What if she was onto something?

“Humans mature quickly. Their juvenile stage is but a blink of an eye for ones such as us.”

“They die so quickly,” Silthier said in a non-committal tone.

“Yes. Because they reproduce just as quickly. But, what if we can teach them to live longer? We can learn from them-”

“Learn what?”

“Learn how to learn! Some of them can wield magic! They teach each other how to smelt ore, forge weapons, wood working, farming, cattle raising, reproduction… They learn so much in so little time, its really bind boggling!”

Silthier narrowed his eyes. To him, Dessandre sounded like a zealot. A human lover. But what she was saying made sense in a certain kind of way and Silthier, if he was being completely honest with himself, was growing bored. Not much entertained him nowadays. What is this was the next great adventure? What if he could restart? Be reborn in a body that was a hundredth of his current size, yet contained powers that rivaled his own, even now?

“So? Are you up for a little adventure?”

Silthier turned away while he considered his options. He might not be able to best Dessandre in a fight right now, but given a bit of time, a few centuries yet, and he might grow powerful enough. And what was the rush? It’s not like he was dying any time soon…

His mind made up, Silthier turned back to give Dessandre the bad news, when a shiver run up his spine. From the tip of his bladed tail, to the very base of every horn on his head, a deep seated wave of pleasure coursed through his body and he growled at the sheer ecstasy of it.

“Whhaaa, whaaat arrrre you dooooing?” Silthier asked, almost unable to control his bodies functions at the pleasurable feeling coursing through him.

When his eyes could focus again, he saw Dessandre running her hands up and down his flank, the tips of her fingers had reverted back to tiny ruby red dragon claws, and she was busying herself, giving him a good scratching, exactly where he needed it the most.

“Oh, sorry,” Dessandre said, finishing up and then stepping back from him. Her fingers morphed back into the little pink sausage like digits of a human girl. “I just thought you looked… like you could use… a good scratching.”

Silthier sucked in a deep breath and looked back to the base of the mountains in the distance, a place where he knew humans lived amongst the cattle and the goats. “I won't fit in,” Silthier said flatly.

“You can, if you turn into a human.”

“I don't know how.”

“I’ll teach you.”

“I don't know,” Silthier said after another long moment. He just didn't know if anything was really worth it anymore.

“And whenever you want, I’ll give you a good back scratching,” Dessandre said with a rueful smirk. “Deal.”