Embers of Defiance

Morning broke over the rolling green hills of fair Cyphrol and the warm rays of the rising sun cast long shadows beneath Lyrigor’s massive form. The great red dragon eyed his target; a small out-of-the-way kingdom that lay unprepared for what loomed over its eastern horizon.

Due to its position along the northwesternmost edge of his growing territory, Cyphrol had long gone overlooked by High King Tyrol’s crusade. But as Lyrigor the red and two of his blue-scaled brethren–smaller in stature but still noble of heart–glided forth bearing riders in black armor on each of their backs, Cyphrol’s last night of peace came to an abrupt end.

Lyrigor unfurled his mighty wings from where they were tucked close to his chest, spreading them out to the full extent of his imposing wingspan in order to pull himself and his dark rider out of their headlong plummet. The wind sighed in easy obedience as he carved a new path through those open skies with his wings. Such was the way of the world. The land was carved into a thousand jagged pieces and ruled by men and women wearing crowns. The sky, however, knew no master but the dragon.

Or so it had been in ages past. Now things were quite different.

Treetops fluttered beneath his sudden and terrible wake as Lyrigor swooped low over the old-growth forest, following the natural curve of the valley. No animals dared make a sound lest they draw his attention. He sailed over the rushing waters of a broad river and angled his wings slightly to follow it between two more forested hills.

First Lyrigor and then his two blue-scaled companions burst over the trees and glided toward their riders’ dreaded destination: a lonely little village nestled away in the hilltops of this peaceful, unsuspecting valley.

Smoke curled from a large bonfire keeping the chill away as night gave way to dawn, and three dragons descended upon the sleepy village. Aside from a pair of stone buildings flanking an old well, the majority of the structures here were simple houses. Wooden frames adorned with roofs of straw, walls of dried manure and mud, and stone floors.

The great dragon's nostrils flared reflexively, already dreading both the foul smells he was flying towards as well as the even fouler deeds he would soon be made to commit.

Lyrigor's rider, a human woman known by the name Kallanti, pressed her wicked spurs into the open sores under her stirrup, where his impenetrable scales had been surgically removed to allow his masters easier access to his vulnerable flesh.

The great dragon hissed in pain and drew up short, flapping his mighty wings to hover in the air above the village. To his left and right his kin glided past his position at their riders' bidding, taking up positions above the village on the far side, ensuring that the villagers below received the message.

None shall escape.

Through his sharp eyes, he spotted dozens of tiny villagers glancing up in fear at the winged serpents triangulating over their thatched roofs. A curious (some would say unnatural) mixture of lowborn elves, dwarven exiles, gnomish farmers, wandering satyrs, and—curiously—even a handful of orcs all stared up in varying degrees of horror.

Some even started to run.

Knowing their efforts to flee were in vain, Lyrigor let his eyes lose focus as he stared at the centermost point of the village. A cracked well around which the muddy walking paths twisted their way through the cluttered nest of buildings. He did not want to commit his next actions to memory. His conscience was heavy enough as it was.

With a crackle that bespoke the magic arcing across her forearm, Kallanti amplified her voice to reach the ears of all the frightened villagers cowering in Lyrigor's shadow. "Denizens of Naer-Etla! For the crimes of crossbreeding, harboring fugitives of the crown, and practicing foul magics, High King Tyrol sentences you all to burn!"

Her spurs dug deep into Lyrigor's flesh, eliciting a sharp hiss of pain that echoed the sounds drawn forth from his kin on either side. As one, their chests and throats glowed like embers in the forge, and upon their cruel riders' command, they unleashed three torrents of bright orange fire down upon the doomed villagers.

In spite of his efforts to look away, he still caught sight of an elven woman. Hands clasped. Lips moving in gentle prayer before his inferno reached out and consumed her.

Dragon flame took to the dry homes with enthusiasm, reducing to ash in seconds that which had taken their former denizens weeks and months to construct.

Likewise the flesh and bone of all the village's inhabitants succumbed to the heat of Lyrigor's fiery breath in similar fashion, ejecting their untethered ghosts into the cold air as their bodies were rendered unfit to hold them.

Vaporous stalks of innocent blue or guilty red bloomed from the ravaged soil that was their corpses, their souls ripened for the reaper's harvest. This detail went unnoticed by Kallanti and the other riders, but Lyrigor and his draconic brethren possessed the Sight; an enhanced vision by which the spiritual realm was made visible.

When the deed was done and none of these supposed ‘rebels’ were left standing, his rider yanked at his bridle and jabbed him with her spur. Urging him to climb up and away from their smoldering sin.

Lyrigor snapped his jaws shut and lingered for a painful moment in spite of the stinging pain in his neck. Both of the blues rose into the air, their heads hanging and their scales barely reflecting the light of the rising sun as their obedience weighed heavily upon their hearts. Ignoring Kallanti’s insistent jabs, his eyes lingered upon the charred corpse of the elven woman for a moment longer. His grasp over the common tongue left much to be desired–after all the spoken word paled in comparison to the accuracy of draconian telepathy–but unless he was mistaken it looked as though her final prayer included the word 'daughter.'

Lyrigor hoped that whichever daughter the woman spoke of was somewhere very far from here, for his sake as much as hers.

"Up, you disgusting serpent! Rise!" His rider cursed and yanked at the reins to no avail. The bit of her reins cut into his cheeks as she pulled with all her might. Her spurs dug into the open wound beneath his removed scales, stinging both his flesh and his pride alike. Yet still in lingered; his eyes resting on the ashen destruction he and his kin had just unleashed.

Huffing in annoyance, Kallanti tried a different tactic. Her voice came to him dripping with venomous delight. "You know, my men are quite hungry. Perhaps I shall order the cooks to prepare them a hearty omelet. One of your mate’s eggs would likely feed a whole platoon, wouldn’t you say?"

Lyrigor’s eyes bulged, knowing such a threat was not made idly. Deep in the bowels of King Tyrol's dark castle, Lyrigor's mate and her clutch of eggs were kept under constant guard. She was chained in place within her impenetrable stone prison, forced to wear an enchanted muzzle that snuffed out any flame she attempted to conjure. Men with giant hammers stood over her eggs, ready to smash them to pieces at a moment's notice should Lyrigor fail to obey his rider's command.

The red dragon flapped his massive wings, rising swiftly enough to overtake his fellow blue dragons and ignoring his rider's harsh laughter as he did his best to put this place far, far behind him.

Fate, it seemed, had other plans for him that day.

Out of the corner of his right eye, he spotted movement. Ygri and Ploren, the two smaller blue dragons flying at his sides, both stiffened mid-air. Their reactions were too subtle for their riders to notice. Lyrigor followed their gaze and spotted what gave them pause.

Down below the smoldering hilltop, out onto a natural rise in the terrain, a small figure emerged from the trees. A child carrying a woven basket filled with freshly picked berries. The bright juices staining her face and hands betrayed her minor transgression of eating the same fruits she had been sent to retrieve. The fear on her face at facing the consequences of her indulgence morphed into a very different, much darker, kind of fear as she looked up to see her home being consumed by flames.

Don't do it. Don't scream, Lyrigor silently pleaded.

She screamed.

An open-mouthed, wordless declaration of denial. Her basket filled with berries bounced off the forest floor and scattered everywhere as she ran–nay, stormed–towards her village. Tiny fists clenched. Braided hair bounced as she ran half-blind from the tears spilling from her eyes and flooding her freckled cheeks. Through their Sight, Lyrigor and the blue dragons all saw the same rippling shockwave waft up from the girl as she let loose her scream.

She was one of the gifted.

Damn.

All three riders turned back to locate the source of the scream, and Lyrigor exchanged solemn glances with his blue-scaled brethren. Through his Sight, he peered deep into their minds and each dragon’s mind was unto an extension of his own: echoes of their thoughts and feelings coursing through him at a lower frequency than his own, as distinguishable from one another as the voices of two humanoids.

Ygri looked away, dissociating from the present entirely as he focused his brilliant mind on the years to come. To his mind–which was as always an open tapestry Lyrigor could witness weaving itself into new patterns–these transgressions were necessary to ensure the survival of their children. He did his best not to think of it any more deeply than that.

Lyrigor could scarcely blame the dragon for disengaging from this dark world they found themselves in, heavens knew he had done the same as his rider demanded ever-more-horrible things of him.

Ploren, however, met Lyrigor’s gaze and sealed his eyes in a gesture of trust and respect. Upon opening them once more, he gave a subtle nod of solidarity, and the blue dragon’s mind refocused upon last month’s memories, playing with his freshly hatched son in Tyrol’s dungeons. It was no place for a dragon to be raised, but it was better than having no future at all. Or so Ploren chose to believe.

Lyrigor hovered in between them, stuck in the present moment.

Once again those spurs dug into the sore in Lyrigor's neck as his rider suddenly yanked him to the side, dragging him back towards the village to silence the last voice that might dare stand against King Tyrol's indomitable will. He set his sights on the child and dove at his rider's behest, dreading what came next with every fiber of his being.

But, for the sake of his eggs, he would do whatever he had to.

Kallanti yanked back on his bridle to pull Lyrigor out of his dive a moment earlier than intended, making his deceleration sloppy and buffeting both the child and the forest clearing she was standing in with a powerful downdraft of air as he flapped his wings powerfully. The ground shook as he dropped onto the cold green soil dotted here and there with mossy stones.

Ripples appeared all along a thin rivulet of water weaving its way through the clearing. Runoff from the same water source that fed the village’s well, Lyrigor presumed. Little more than a trickle, trembling before the indomitable weight of his presence.

Lyrigor rose to his full height, daring anything dwelling in the forest to try itself against his might. None dared, save for one.

Standing before him, tears streaking down her cheeks yet somehow still standing defiantly, was the little girl. Her sharp ears were an elven trait. The freckles adorning her cherubic cheeks were all-too-human. King Tyrol's stance on crossbreeds was clear. Even before his rider could bring her spurs to bear or raise her voice, he knew what her command would be.

Lyrigor’s pale yellow eyes met her bright greens and the little girl glared up at him in open defiance. She clambered to her feet and grabbed the nearest pebble, hurling it toward Lyrigor with all her meager might. The pebble bounced off Lyrigor's snout harmlessly, and the great dragon did not even blink as he continued staring her down.

Curse this day. Curse it all.

"Burn her," commanded his rider.

Lyrigor hung his head and took two deep breaths to settle himself before gathering his inner flames to his chest and sending them rushing out across the clearing with a roaring gout of blue fire. He hoped that the extra heat would end the girl's life in an instant. He told himself it was more merciful this way, a kindness, but some part of him was performing a gruesome calculation in the quiet recesses of his mind.

How did five eggs and one dragon measure against the lives of how many humanoids? Sixty? Six hundred? Six thousand? Where would this end?

Tearing his head away, Lyrigor extinguished his flames, swallowing the bitter heat of his grief and shame. The clearing and dozens of trees beyond were scarred black as night from the inferno he breathed forth.

Nothing could have survived that.

Lyrigor turned and raised his wings, refusing to look at the charred and undersized skeleton that surely rested amidst those ashes. The sun warmed his back and his wingspan cast long shadows across the clearing as he angled his head skyward and prepared to lift off.

A pebble bounced off the ridge of his eye.

Lyrigor and his rider both swiveled their heads in unison to regard the small girl standing in the ashen wake of the dragon's flames, very much alive, clutching a fistful of pebbles. She threw three more stones before the rider finally regained her senses and pressed her spurs into Lyrigor’s neck.

"I said burn her, you wretched wyrm!"

Lyrigor gathered himself together and released a fresh gout of blue flames across the girl. Sweeping his head back and forth, he scorched the landscape with everything he had and relinquished only when the air in his lungs was spent.

Still, the girl stood tall, glaring through him with her nebulous green eyes.

Impossible. Dragonfire was the ultimate weapon. The only thing it could not harm was... No. Another impossibility. The only thing that could withstand dragonfire was another dragon!

Lyrigor's mind swirled as he glanced up at his brothers wheeling about in the sky overhead. They too had mates and clutches locked away in Tyrol's dungeons. They too had ample reason to follow their cruel masters' every command, and their actions were in keeping with the code their ancestors had laid down for all of them to follow.

That code was clear: dragons protect their own.

But this, a humanoid born with fire in her veins, was unprecedented.

"Fine!” With a disgusted grunt, his rider swung her leg over his spine and dismounted. Sliding from the saddle and dropping several meters into a practiced roll, the darkly armored woman strode away from Lyrigor. Her spurred boots clinked with every step. “I shall carry out the King's justice myself."

From her hip she drew a black-handled sword with a blade of white steel.

The little half-elven girl kept throwing pebble after pebble at the woman, her tears clouding her vision and making most of her throws miss. Those that landed proved as effective against the rider's black armor as it had against Lyrigor's red scales.

"Curse you, child,” Kallanti spat. “Come here!"

Lyrigor took in the scene unfolding before him. Kallanti bore down upon the little girl–who had, impossibly, survived dragonfire–sword drawn and ready to commit a terrible act in the name of her oppressive king.

The only true dragon is a free dragon. That was the first tenant of the code Lyrigor had learned from birth. In order to be a real dragon again, he must first be free to make his own decisions. Lyrigor and his brethren had allowed themselves to be chained and turned into weapons for the sake of the second tenant: dragons protect their own, at any cost. And thirdly, a dragon takes what is needed, not what is offered.

High King Tyrol had stolen no less than seven clutches of eggs from Oroubyr–the dragon’s winter nesting grounds which lay at the northernmost edge of Tyrol’s influence–a feat unthinkable in ages past. No one knew how he had managed it, only that he had. In doing so, he had claimed fourteen fully grown dragons as his personal retinue in one fell swoop. In order to keep the eggs unharmed, they all served Tyrol’s will without question. Any defiance was met with the harshest of punishments.

Just as much as the memory of the burning villagers was permanently stained into Lyrigor’s memories, so too was the sound of his sixth egg being savagely smashed apart by a one-eyed orc before his and his mate’s very eyes. He remembered every disgusting, heart-wrenching detail, and he remembered the way his mate’s scales had lost their lustrous sheen in that terrible instant. They had taken from her something more valuable than life itself.

They had stolen her shine. Her spark. Everything that made her… her.

Gray-scaled dragons no longer bore names, for they had given up that essential piece of themselves that was often called the soul. Her soul had abandoned her body and fled into the Afterlands, leaving only an instinct-driven husk behind whose only purpose was to protect the clutch of eggs. It would be up to Lyrigor to teach his children the codes of their species, and how to listen to the many songs the world sang to them.

Lyrigor stared at the fire-blooded child: a living, breathing paradox, at least for what few moments she had left until Kallanti reached her and ran her white blade through the child’s minuscule form.

Many humanoids possessed a gift. Some even possessed several. But there were none who had ever before possessed fire in their veins as dragons did.

Until now.

“Oh for Fengrul’s sake, child, stop running!” Kallanti howled.

“Never!” cried the tiny girl.

Lyrigor felt an unmistakable thrum of power in the child’s voice, a note of authority all dragons carried. Despite coming from one so small, it vibrated his very bones. She was a dragon in all but form. Wingless, with pink flesh instead of scales. Yet, in Lyrigor’s eyes, she gleamed with a power that even Ygri and Ploren’s dull scales lacked.

Kallanti was far less impressed, and soon stopped chasing the girl entirely. She fell very still, concentrating. The black-armored rider reached up to the medallion hanging around her neck and took hold of it.

To Lyrigor’s sensitive ears, her heartsong slowed, reverberating throughout the clearing with enough force to shake leaves free of the trees and send cold chills racing across Lyrigor’s mighty back. Power of a different frequency–lesser than the girl’s, but sharper and more refined–leapt from Kallanti’s chest and collided with the small girl. The power curled around her like a hungry snake, lifting her two meters clear of the ground. With a sudden drop in frequency, the ribbon of power abruptly and unceremoniously dashed the girl to the ground at Kallanti’s feet, dispersing like a candle before a puff of air as its purpose was fulfilled.

This was it. All Lyrigor had to do was wait five seconds and this ordeal would end.

Kallanti would kill the child, and his eggs would be safe.

For now.

But tomorrow? He could be asked to burn more villages. More praying mothers. More children. And the day after that, what? Whole armies? Countrysides and crops? Cities?

No.

No more.

He was only one dragon. His mate was already gone, and better their eggs were smashed to pieces than allowed to hatch under the tyrant’s thumb. A dragon who could not fly free was no dragon at all.

Lyrigor rushed forward and spun in place, whipping his tail around in a tight, destructive arc. Kallanti’s heartsong came to an abrupt end mere seconds before she could thrust her blade down and silence the child. He was not even sure she recognized the whistling wind of her approaching demise before the barbed tip of his tail collided with her side and flattened her against the cold earth and unforgiving stone.

Flesh, bone, and darkened steel succumbed to his attack with as much resistance as dried wood before dragonfire, and Kallanti was no more.

Those tiny green eyes shot up to meet Lyrigor’s, and the mighty red dragon lassoed her with a psychic tendril, connecting to her mind as he rotated his gaze up to observe Ygri and Ploren. Both blue dragons were diving headlong toward him at their masters’ command. Their scales glittered with flashes of concern, confusion, and despair.

This was unfair to them, he knew. They did not make the same decision that he did. Yet, the lives of their mates–their children–were just as much on the line as the lives of Lyrigor and his progeny.

Ploren was pulling ahead of Ygri, the memory of playing with his son likely echoing in his mind and spurring him on faster than even his rider’s urging could manage. He plummeted with the speed of a dragon who knew what he was fighting for.

Ygri fell behind, spreading his wings to catch the wind and slow his descent enough that he could take up a hovering position and provide fire support from above. He moved with the reluctant acceptance of a broken dragon, doing what he was told.

Neither of them were true dragons anymore.

It hurt him to connect to their minds and see himself as their sworn enemy. So, he did the unthinkable. He severed their connections, blocking their voices out of his mind even as they fell down upon him. Every glinting trace of reluctance he saw dancing across their scales hardened to a dark matte resolve as they both made up their minds.

Now it was a fight to the death, and Lyrigor was outnumbered.

A new voice, so much smaller than those of his brothers, spoke to him in his all-too-quiet mind. <Are you really going to kill your friends? Over me?>

<They are not my friends, child,> Lyrigor replied. <They are my brothers. And yes, I must kill them.>

<Why?>

Lyrigor hesitated.

<Because we dragons have a code. Without it, we are but mere monsters.>

Without further explanation to the confused child, Lyrigor ordered her to run and sprang into the air just ahead of Ploren’s arrival.

He released a jet of fire into the path of Ploren’s dive, blinding him for the briefest of moments as Lyrigor leapt to the side and pumped his massive wings; gaining altitude as quickly as he could manage and angling towards the reluctant Ygri.

Ygri breathed a wave of orange flames over Lyrigor’s red scales, searing shut the open wounds on his neck and burning the saddle off his back, but failing to damage the red Dragon.

Lyrigor called upon the winds and dragged himself higher into the air; moving faster than he had for many moons. In an instant he had closed the distance between himself and Ygri; far faster than what the poor blue dragon was capable of in his current state.

Lyrigor’s teeth found purchase in the blue flesh of one of his oldest friends, a brother by bond if not by blood. He gripped Ygri’s chest and shoulder with his forelimbs and wrenched as hard as he could, drawing upon reserves of strength he had not felt since his mate lost her shine.

The black-armored rider on Ygri’s back unsheathed a white blade and slashed at Lyrigor’s snout; leaving a long scratch just below his eye. But by then it was too late. The rider’s broken mount had given up his fight.

Lyrigor ripped Ygri’s head off the blue dragon’s shoulders and spat it out.

The unfortunate rider screamed as gravity had its way with the massive body, which twisted madly in mid-air on its way to the merciless earth. Caught between the frozen ground and a 20-ton corpse, the rider’s scream was silenced upon impact.

To Lyrigor’s Sight, the rider’s red-hued spirit emerged from the carnage and was quickly swept away by one of the unseen reapers, undoubtedly swarming the area as they had caught the scent of death from the still-smoldering hilltop village.

By that time Ploren had already recovered and zeroed in on a new target: the girl.

Even as Lyrigor tucked his wings and dropped, Ploren drew back on his haunches, pulling in great lungfuls of air as his chest took on a white glow. With a deafening shriek he unleashed a wave of blue fire upon the girl. His rider was staring dumbfounded at Ygri’s body.

Lyrigor fell upon them both at top speed, scraping his talons across Ploren’s back and shredding his rider apart in the process. Splattered with red blood, Ploren rotated in place; still pouring everything he had into producing the hottest flame he could and scorching everything in range.

The small rivulet of water turned to steam, blanketing the clearing in a thin fog as Lyrigor tumbled over Ploren and lashed out with his tail. The clubbed tip of his tail came around and struck Ploren across the skull.

Dazed and furious, Ploren finally ran out of flames and rushed forth blindly; all claws and teeth and fury. Lyrigor stepped back into the fog and let the enraged dragon follow him. From the mists came the sounds of giant claws scraping across scales, gouts of flames splashing out across the forest, snapping jaws, and the tearing of flesh.

After a few moments, Lyrigor emerged with blood dripping from his maw. His eyes scanned the battlefield and found the young girl standing in the epicenter of fiery destruction. Ash floated through the air and embers flared all across the darkened ground. Yet she remained unharmed, a stone still clenched in her tiny fist.

Her green eyes drifted up towards her smoldering, ruined village, then swept down and around the clearing and all the carnage strewn across it. Through their connection, Lyrigor read horror flash across her mind. Yet her expression hardened and she turned to meet his gaze steadily.

Defiant and powerful. As a true dragon should be.

<What now?> She wondered.

Lyrigor padded over to her, shaking the forest with each heavy footfall, and lowered his neck so he could look the child in the eyes at her level.

<Come with me, child. This is no place to raise a dragon.>