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Dragon Wing

Balruk's Final Prophecy

By Rudy VenerPublished about a year ago Updated about a year ago 25 min read
4

Dragon Wing

Balruk trod steadily along the forest path, his great clawed feet making surprisingly little noise for a dragon so huge. But then, he'd had quite a lot of practice moving silently during his ten thousand year lifespan, especially when motivated by hunger. And he had not eaten in three days.

When Balruk reached a glade with a pool of clear water in its center, he left the path to worm his jade green bulk into a thicket of trees and brush near its edge.

There he remained motionless, and waited. Waited. Waited until a deer, a young buck with just two prongs on his antlers, stepped into the clearing, raised his head, and sniffed the air.

The buck neither saw nor smelled Balruk, stepped forward to the pool, and lowered his head to drink.

Balruk squeezed his crop, grinding the quartz, flint and pyrite stones within to make sparks, and puffed out a cloud of methane that burst into a fireball as it left his mouth.

The deer jerked its head up, straight into the path of the perfectly aimed fireball and died instantly.

Balruk forced his way out of the brush with much crashing of bushes, snapping of branches, and creaking of tree trunks. He walked over to the dead deer, but paused at a flicker of motion at the edge of the clearing. A wolf stared arrogantly at him from across the water just within the trees. He too must have been stalking this deer.

Balruk had no objection to a side of wolf to go with his venison dinner if the supercilious little predator cared to make this an issue.

When the wolf melted back into the forest, Balruk smugly lowered his head, tore off a leg, and swallowed it.

He finished the deer, with the charred antlers and head making nice crunchy bits at the end, then stuck his head into the pool and drank long and deep.

Lowering himself onto his belly, Balruk rested his great head upon his clawed feet, and closed his eyes.

Wistfully he recalled the many times he had swooped down upon running deer from the air, to bear them away in triumph. He hated to hide in ambush and blast them with a fireball. But his days of swooping down on prey were long over.

Balruk snorted in disgust. He had lived for more than ten thousand years despite the prophecy, only to be brought down by old age. A small tongue of flame spurted out his nostrils as he considered the prophecy, and the many despised men who tried to kill him because of it. They'd made his last thousand years miserable, and his last ten days a harrowing race for his life. Soon he would have to resume his flight, but first he would rest. The men were far behind him. For now, he didn't have to worry about them.

Thump, thump, thump!

Balruk woke, recognizing the sound of running feet. So close. Why hadn't he heard them sooner? Trying to leap to his feet, his stiff and creaky muscles protested and he collapsed back to the ground. Fool! How had he underestimated his pursuers? How had the men with their swords and spears found him so quickly?

Thump, thump. Pause. Thump, thump, thump.

That was strange. The footsteps sounded too light, too soft, too stumbling and uncertain to be the hard men who hunted him.

Before Balruk could regain his feet and sneak away from the clearing, the footsteps rushed forward.

Balruk blinked in surprise as a small man child stumbled into the glade, tottered up to him, and bounced off his foreleg. The toddler sat down and stared up at Balruk with both eyes and mouth forming equally wide circles. Balruk guessed it was a boy, though he couldn't be sure.

"You dragon?" asked the small boy, barely more than a baby.

"I dragon," confirmed Balruk, wondering if it would be worth the trouble that would certainly follow, to eat this child in a single bite.

Balruk heard a second pair of running feet. This pair ran faster, more sure of themselves, but equally unshod.

And then a woman's voice called, "Dunny! Dunny! Where are you?"

The woman was approaching fast. He would never get out of sight in time. Thoughts racing, Balruk closed his eyes and dropped his head onto his foreclaws, feigning sleep.

He cracked one eyelid just the tiniest slit, just enough to see the woman burst into the clearing seconds later. He watched her choke down her scream, tiptoe up to her child, snatch him up, and flee back the way she came.

The small boy raised a pudgy arm over the woman's shoulder and waved. Balruk raised a great claw, somewhat sardonically, and waved back.

When the woman was out of earshot, he heaved himself clumsily to his feet, berating himself, his ploy to avoid a confrontation had worked well enough, but had it been the right move? Perhaps he should have eaten both the child and the woman. Now she would raise an alarm, along with a small army of frightened neighbors.

But hindsight was always perfect, and it was too late now, so Balruk stumped along the path, searching for the edge of the forest and a hill. Any hill would do, so long as it was high enough to let him launch himself into the air and hopefully reach a nearby thermal where he could circle and soar for altitude. Gone were the days when he could flap his wings and muscle his way to the heights. Ten thousand years did that to a dragon, even him.

Eventually the forest thinned, became grassland, and Balruk found his hill. At the top he ran down the grassy slope, stretched his wings and let the air catch him. He flapped a few times and gained some altitude, but the painful twinge from his right wing quickly forced him to quit and resume soaring when he was only three body lengths above the ground.

Where were the thermals? He scanned the skies, his sharp eyes searching for clouds and eagles, and the ground for rock outcroppings, but the few thermals he found were weak, and barely lifted him enough to maintain his present altitude.

Now Balruk saw smoke off to his left. A village. Probably the one where the boy and the woman lived.

He veered right and flew between two medium sized hills and out of sight of any skyward searching eyes. But as he straightened from his turn, he saw that he'd lost more altitude then he'd expected. Worse, the ground between the two hills was rising.

Balruk saw rocky cliffs ahead. There were always good strong thermal updrafts above such cliffs. But they looked over six dragon lengths high, more than twice his current pitiful altitude.

He spotted a notch on the left side of the cliff face. It looked at least three times his wingspan and extended halfway to the ground. If the notch reached deep enough into the cliff, he could fly into it, catch a thermal and ride it up beyond the cliff top. Turn or risk it? He must decide now.

Balruk aimed for the notch. As he grew near, the updraft from the edge of the thermal lifted him. Closer, and the updraft grew stronger. He entered the notch, dead center. Far ahead the notch narrowed and ended. But the thermal was lifting him higher. In a few heartbeats he would be above the cliff. He was already within two lengths of the top. One length. Just below the top. Almost there. Plenty of clearance on either side.

Then his right wing cramped. It seized up. A bolt of pain lanced deep into his chest. His wing collapsed. He was falling, tumbling, crashing onto the rocky floor of the notch.

Later, Balruk woke to pain. Pain was nothing new to him. The countless scars over his thick hide bore witness to many injuries over the centuries. Almost all of them were from fights with other dragons. Fights to test his mettle challenging larger, older dragons, then fights for status among the squabbling dragon clans, then fights for dominance as he rose to become a clan leader and finally the king of all the clans, and one final fight, over two thousand years ago when he fought to defend his kingship. And lost.

This pain was worse than all the others combined. As if his right wing had been ripped off his shoulder.

Balruk stirred where he lay, sprawled over the rocky ground in the bottom of the notch. Ignoring the agony that was his body, he lifted his head and looked at his right wing. It was still there. That was something.

He tried to move it, and with a searing white hot bolt of pain, knocked himself back to unconsciousness.

The next time Balruk woke, he didn't try to move his right wing. Instead he slowly took stock of the remainder of his body, and except for a long gash on his right foreleg, which he licked clean, and massive bruises and scrapes over most of his hide, he had come through the fall with no other severe injuries.

His wing damage was bad enough to make up for everything else he had escaped. He must have torn muscles and tendons, and broken at least one wing bone.

He could not leave his wing dragging on the ground, so fighting the waves of agony and dizziness that accompanied his efforts, he carefully picked up the skin of the injured wing, his front and rear right claws gripping it ever so gently, and folded it onto his back. When he was finished, he folded his good left wing to cover the right and hold it in place.

This agonizing chore done, Balruk rested, letting the waves of torment slowly subside. At last he staggered to his feet and walked along the bottom of the notch toward its opening in the cliff face.

Gazing out over the valley, he contemplated his situation. It could have been worse. He could have crashed onto the valley floor, easy prey for an army of sword wielding men. The valley itself was small, only four glides wide, about two miles as men counted distance, and ten glides long.

Standing in the entrance to the notch he was three dragon lengths above the base of the cliff. Balruk peered over the edge and examined the cliff face below. The vertical wall, with rough, protruding sections few and far between would be a slow careful climb for him. Men, who were only one sixth a dragon length lying down, would find it even more difficult.

Balruk lowered himself to his belly and examined the valley in detail. A stream trickled over a tumble of stones at the bottom of the cliff and meandered across the valley floor. On the distant slope of a hill, a deer stepped out of a grove of trees and began browsing among the grass. Yes, thought Balruk, he could stay here. At least until his wing healed.

How long would that take? Balruk didn't know. In all of his ten thousand years, he had never injured a wing. Dragons did not attack each other's wings in fights. It was considered shameful. Any dragon who deliberately attacked an adversary's wing was likely to face serial challengers, one after another until he had been torn to pieces.

He would just have to wait until it healed, probably a few moon cycles. A clawful at most. He could be patient. You didn't live for ten thousand years without learning patience.

Too tired and hurt to move, Balruk lay for two days at the mouth of the notch, watching the comings and goings of deer, wild boars, a wolf or two, and countless rabbits, birds and foxes. But so far, no men.

Hunger and thirst finally drove Balruk out of the notch shortly after sunset the second day. He climbed slowly down from the notch, ignoring the tearing lances of pain in his wing. Finding a hiding place in the bushes by the stream, he waylaid a deer with a well aimed fireball.

After dinner, Balruk considered just staying in the valley. But caution overcame pain and he climbed back into the notch. If men found him so helpless, it would be his doom. And there was the prophesy to consider. No, he must be careful.

Healing was taking its own tedious time. Every few days, Balruk tried to move his injured wing. Each time, the pain brought him to his knees. A clawful of days passed. A half moon cycle. A full moon cycle. And another. Still his wing did not recover.

Slowly the season changed. As summer turned to fall, Balruk stuffed himself on deer, wild pigs, and even a fox or two. At last the weather turned cold and a white blanket of snow covered the land. And his wing still hadn't healed.

With no other option, Balruk constructed a snug, cave-like shelter for himself by piling rocks in front of a deep overhang at the rear of the notch. He settled down to wait out the winter, careful not to stress his injured wing.

Maybe by spring, he thought as his eyes closed for the long wintersleep.

When Balruk opened his eyes the following spring, his first thought was for food. His hollow stomach clenched, demanding to be filled. Rising to his feet, he was pleased to discover that his wing no longer hurt quite as much as he remembered. Once he crawled out of his rock shelter, he tried to move the injured wing.

By enduring the intense pain, he was able to shift it. Not much, but at least it was healing. Heartened by even this slight improvement, Balruk crept to the front of the notch, surveyed the valley, and seeing no sign of men, climbed out to hunt for his first meal of the year.

Balruk's second year in the valley passed uneventfully. One evening in the late summer, he climbed to the top of the hill for a look at the man village. From there he watched the smoke rising from its houses and the lights shining from their scattered windows. He noted with relief that the farmland surrounding the village ended a good distance away from his valley. With luck they would never come here.

During the third year, Balruk kept up his wing exercises. He tried not to fret over the slow pace of improvement. At least it was improving.

When he woke from wintersleep in his fourth year, Balruk was finally able to open and fold his wing on its own. It was still painful and weak, but at least he could do it.

It was during the late summer of this year when Balruk grew careless. His cropstones were to blame. Lately they had not been sparking reliably, forcing him to squeeze his crop more than once. Sometimes it took several tries before his fire would ignite. When he lost a deer because of this, he located outcrops of pyrite, flint, and quartz. He had just finished regurgitating his old cropstones near the deposit of quartz on the edge of the streambed when he heard the gasp from behind him.

Balruk turned and saw the child. Taller, skinnier, and not so clumsy as the toddler he had met three years ago, nonetheless, Balruk was certain it was the same boy.

Dunny started back in alarm and fell over his feet.

Balruk snorted. How had he missed hearing this boy approach? And how many others had come? They must have entered the valley after he left his notch this morning. He should have kept better watch. More important, what should he do about it? Should he eat the boy now?

No, Balruk decided regretfully. There would certainly be a search for the boy if he did. And any search would find Balruk instead. Maybe there was another way.

"Don't worry," he said. "I'm not going to eat you."

"You can talk!" said Dunny, scrambling to his feet and taking a wary step backwards.

"So can you," said Balruk. "But you don't hear me making insulting comments about it, do you?"

"No," said Dunny, swallowing and looking away. His gaze landed on Balruk's wing.

"Does that hurt?" asked Dunny, pointing.

"No!" Balruk snapped, annoyed that even a man child could see his weakness. "Not at all."

But Dunny's hummingbird attention was now on Balruk's regurgitated cropstones. The yellow flecked pyrite stones, worn smooth and shiny, gleamed brightly among the glittering polished quartz.

"Is that your treasure?" asked Dunny. "I know dragons got treasure. Me mum says so."

"Treasure enough, boy," said Balruk, reminded that his crop was empty, and he was fireless until he refilled it. "Suppose I let you take a piece? What will you give me?"

"I don't got nothing to give," said Dunny, looking disappointed.

"Yes, you do," said Balruk. "You have something I want."

"What?" asked Dunny, hopefully.

"Your silence," said Balruk. With a claw he flicked the biggest, shiniest pyrite rock over to Dunny where it landed at his feet. "If you take it, you must promise to say nothing to anyone about me, about seeing a dragon in this valley. It must remain our secret."

Dunny's face brightened. "I promise!" he said, snatching up the worthless pyrite stone.

"Dunny!" called his mother's distant voice. And without a backward glance, Dunny ran off.

Balruk immediately gobbled down several chunks of quartz, then pushed into a deep thicket to lie low until nightfall.

From his hiding place he saw the boy reunite with his mother. Soon they were joined by a man with the same sandy colored hair as the boy. Undoubtedly his father. The father was armed with a bow and a long knife. Neither of the adults looked alarmed or excited. Good. The boy had kept his secret. But Balruk knew his time here could not last. Not with men coming to this valley. But no one else came, not even the boy or his family.

In his sixth year in the valley, when Balruk first tried out his wing after his wintersleep, he could trot forward with the injured wing outstretched and feel it lift and catch the air. Another year and he would be able to put some weight on it.

One morning in early spring, Balruk peered out from the entrance of his notch and saw a flock of sheep scattered across the grassy valley floor.

Why now? Balruk raged to himself. Just another year or two and I would have been able to fly out. Thankful that he had eaten a wild boar yesterday, Balruk settled down to watch from his notch.

Soon he spotted the man. No, actually it was a human boy. It was Dunny. A little older than the last time he had seen him, a little taller, but definitely the same boy. Hope began to beat in Balruk's heart. Perhaps all was not quite lost.

As Balruk watched over the next several days, he saw that Dunny was usually alone in the valley. The father came the first day to help Dunny build a small cabin, but left that afternoon. The mother came the next three days, bringing sacks of food or other supplies, but left well before noon. After that, another small man child came every other day.

Balruk was almost certain it was a girl. She always brought a sack of food which she shared with Dunny. She spent the morning visiting him as they watched the sheep. More often than not they played a game that involved a lot of running and climbing trees. Then in the early afternoon the girl would leave, and Dunny would be alone with his sheep.

Balruk thought he could live with this limited man presence in his valley if he was careful. What he couldn't live with was the absence of deer, wild pigs and other game that had left the moment Dunny and his sheep had arrived.

Perhaps, thought Balruk, it was time for him to go. Just go, even if he couldn't fly yet. But in the end he decided to stay. Just a little longer.

That evening he climbed up the back of the notch and for the first time, hunted in the woods and meadows outside the valley. He flushed one deer and flamed it before it had taken three bounds, but two nights later his hunt was unsuccessful, as was the next evening's hunt. The following morning, Balruk lay on his belly at the edge of the notch, hungrily eyeing a lamb that was following its mother as she cropped grass, totally oblivious of his presence. One quick slither down the cliff, one quick snap, and he'd return, hunger at least blunted if not exactly satisfied.

"You can't eat my sheep," called the voice from the base of the cliff.

Balruk peered over the edge and saw Dunny staring back up at him. How had the boy gotten so close without his hearing him? Had age dulled his ears so much?

"Perhaps I'll eat you instead," said Balruk grumpily.

"I remember you," said Dunny.

"I'm not surprised," said Balruk. "I tend to linger in people's memories."

"I met you twice when I was little," said Dunny.

"You're still little," said Balruk.

"You didn't eat me then," said Dunny.

"Very observant of you," said Balruk.

"Why not?"

"I had my reasons."

"Are they the same reasons you aren't eating me now?"

"Very close."

"Why are you still here?"

"This is where I choose to be," said Balruk, putting as much frost into his voice as he could manage.

"Can't you fly yet?" asked Dunny, looking directly at Balruk's healing wing.

Inwardly Balruk winced. The boy was far too observant.

"No," he said, knowing it was pointless to lie.

"I'm sorry," said Dunny. "When did you hurt your wing?"

"The first day we met."

"But that was ages and ages ago!" said Dunny.

"Not so long," said Balruk. "Besides, dragon wings heal slowly, at least old dragon wings do."

"Are you old?"

"Over ten thousand years," said Balruk.

He watched Dunny's eyes widen, then his face twist into a frown, and finally his mouth quirk to one side as he thought. Clearly the boy could not grasp periods of time much beyond yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

"I never told anyone you were here," said Dunny.

"I know," said Balruk. "And I appreciate that."

Dunny pointed to the hill farthest from the village. "About a mile over that hill is a stream and some pools where deer like to come and drink."

Balruk glanced in that direction and nodded his great head. "I'll hunt there tonight."

The year passed, then another. Balruk's wing grew stronger. He could now trot down a slope and glide for several body lengths before he had to touch the ground. Soon he would be able to soar again. Soon.

One summer evening when Balruk admitted to Dunny that his hunting had failed to yield a single deer, wild pig, or even a porcupine, the boy showed up at the base of the cliff below Balruk's notch, staggering under the weight of a deer only slightly smaller than Dunny himself.

"I brought it for you," said Dunny.

Balruk climbed down the cliff, opened his massive jaws, and swallowed the dead deer in four bites.

Then he turned his head and belched, expelling a brief burst of flame.

"Why such a generous gift?" asked Balruk.

"I thought your wing might heal faster if you had more to eat."

"It might," said Balruk, telling himself to ignore that strange warm relaxed feeling in his chest. "Thank you."

The girl who had been coming to the valley to visit Dunny every other day was normally as predictable as a juggler's tossed balls. Balruk, watching from the shadows of his notch noticed that lately, their running, playing, and laughing had turned into walking, holding hands, and talking. Then one day she failed to appear. Nor did she show up the next day. Instead the father appeared, along with a clawful of other men from the village.

Balruk watched from his notch as the men talked to Dunny, then split up and began to search the valley. Balruk kept his eye on Dunny as the boy slipped out of sight of the men and raced to the base of the cliff.

Lying motionless in the shadows, Balruk listened to the occasional scrape of boot on rock as Dunny climbed the cliff face. At last the boy's head poked over the edge and he scrambled into the notch.

"Leena is missing," announced Dunny, his face scrunched in an expression that Balruk assumed was worry.

"Leena is the girl child that visits you?" asked Balruk.

"Yes," answered Dunny, his voice shaky. "She was supposed to come yesterday, but never got here, and never returned home. Can you help me find her?"

Me? Help search for a man child? Don't be ridiculous, was Balruk's first thought. But the more he looked at Dunny, the more he reconsidered. Men were always unpredictable, as he was still learning after ten thousand years dealing with them. And none were less predictable than children.

"Possibly," said Balruk. "But only when darkness comes and the adult men from your village return home. Remember, I still must not be seen."

"Alright," said Dunny. He returned to the front of the notch and lowered himself over the edge onto the cliff face. "Meantime I'll help my pa search."

Shortly after sunset, Dunny returned.

"Balruk!" he called.

Balruk slid out the front of the notch and flowed down the cliff like a shining green waterfall.

"I assume this means you did not find her," said Balruk.

"No, we didn't," said Dunny. "And we searched every inch of the path between here and the village."

A dragon's eyesight is many times sharper than men's, even at night, and Balruk easily spotted where the girl's trail left the path and ran into the woods halfway between the valley entrance and the village.

"She was being chased by a wolf," he said to Dunny, delicately tracing out the paw prints on a muddy patch of ground with one sharp foreclaw.

"A wolf?" Dunny jumped to his feet from where he knelt to examine the track. "We've got to find her!"

"She went that way." Balruk waved a claw and Dunny raced off.

With a harrumph of disgust that flared in the darkness, Balruk loped after Dunny, now and then directing him to veer left or right when he wandered from the trail.

Every minute or so, Dunny stopped and called, "Leena!"

"Listen," he said after one such stop.

Balruk listened. "I hear nothing," he said.

Without replying, Dunny raced off again, only to stop a few seconds later and spin around, peering in every direction.

"Leena!" he called.

"Up here!"

This time Balruk heard her too, and before he could stop himself, he skidded into a clear patch of ground beside Dunny at the base of a tall oak tree. Balruk glanced up to see the girl high in the branches, staring down at them, her eyes wide with terror.

Balruk backed up hastily, knowing it was already too late.

"Come down," called Dunny.

"No!" called Leena. "There's a wolf, and now there's a dragon!"

"The wolf is gone," said Dunny, looking around for the wolf, but not seeing him.

"The dragon isn't," called Leena.

"Oh, but he is," murmured Balruk, who turned and shaded silently into the forest.

There, out of sight, he watched Dunny try to coax and cajole the girl to climb down from the tree. Finally the boy climbed up himself and after much persuasion, guided her exhausted feet onto lower branches until they reached the ground.

Dunny and Leena both screamed when Balruk's gout of flame leapt across the open space and caught the wolf in mid leap, incinerating him instantly.

Balruk felt a little sorry for the wolf, it had been old, slow, and too feeble to catch deer. He knew exactly how it felt.

Once recovered from their fright, Dunny half carried the exhausted Leena as they stumbled back to the path, and then to the village.

Balruk followed them, thinking he should eat them both right now before fleeing the area. Knowing he would do no such thing. After all, he had promised the boy. And a dragon's promise still meant something. Especially if it was one of the few things he had left.

When Dunny and Leena reached the outskirts of the village, Balruk stopped and watched them stumble to one of the houses. Dunny opened the door, looked back and waved to Balruk, then they entered.

Balruk trudged back to the valley, not letting himself look too closely at the source of his sorrow. Under a black sky speckled with stars, he reached the base of the cliff and climbed up into the notch. He settled into his rock shelter for his last night in the valley. Tomorrow he must be off before the men with swords, bows, and armor showed up to cut him into small pieces.

But as he drifted into sleep, the words of the prophesy ran through his head:

A son of man who has no fear,

Will come without a blade or spear,

To touch the ancient dragon's claw,

And yet avoid his gaping maw.

But then the man and dragon part,

With slivers of each other's heart.

Prophesies, thought Balruk, as he climbed to the top of the cliff at dawn the next morning. Stupid, useless things. But true, he admitted, for his heart ached from the sliver he had left with Dunny. At last, with a heave of his legs, and a beat of his two strong, powerful wings, he launched himself into the air. And fled the coming of men.

Fantasy
4

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Nice work

Very well written. Keep up the good work!

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  1. Excellent storytelling

    Original narrative & well developed characters

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    Writing reflected the title & theme

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  • Nicholas Schweikertabout a year ago

    Thanks for writing this! I enjoyed reading it.

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