Everyman For Hire

There weren't always dragons in the Valley.

They need not stay for long, for my business is all about making them go away. Should you so choose to hire me,-

He walked with magicked quill in hand, one uncapped sealing stamp deftly suspended on his far fingers all the while, taking care not to blot or smudge any of his carefully-chosen words, even while warning bells rang through the streets of the rapidly emptying town around him. He was down to his last sheet, again, and had to make this one count. Writing with his warded gloves on was never easy, but opportunity rarely roared at convenient times.

“Excuse me,” he said with a raised voice, squinting his eyes when the wide brim of his chapeau yielded to the glare of the setting sun. He was addressing no one in particular, but any among the upcoming stampede of panicked peasants now coming his way, spooked like so many panicked horses that slipped their reins, would suffice. “Who is your lord-”

“Gods help us,” cried the loudest of them, a heavyset rotund man with jowls that bounced with his gout-stricken limping strides. His plea to the divines was loud enough to render the rest of the crowd's lamentations incomprehensible.

No time to ask again. Fine. Improvisation would have to do.

- o prospective patron,-

He continued scratching away at his last sheet of expensive enchanted parchment, only stopping to lift his shoulders and dip his chin to weather the searing hot gale blowing against him, rippling his long hair like so many silvery feathers and flattening his hat's brim against his face. His tall buckled boots proved their worth once again by keeping him standing even as his loaner cloak flapped loudly and pulled him like a lariat. Tufts of burning thatch, dislodged roof shingles, and a Verdantian banner freshly torn from the nearby gatehouse all soared overhead.

Verdantia, those banner colors reminded him while his ensorcelled chapeau straightened itself out, permitting only its white moon-phoenix feather to continue flailing and fluttering like a weathervane in the heated breeze.

The elf-blooded wine-sippers around here expected humility, at least from their “help.”

I swear on my life that this beautiful land, blessed by the gods and once known only for peace, song, and wine, shall be troubled by dragons no more. Speak but my name to the wind, and I shall answer your call.

Humble enough, he assured himself. There was no more parchment left to try again. Judging by just how hot that last blast of wind was, there was also no more time left for anything else but to close the proposal with practiced penmanship.

Ever and always at your service,

Ashen Everyman.

Ashen lifted the brim of his chapeau and blinked the sooty sweat from his stinging eyes. Up ahead, Verdantia Keep's parapets were already lit up with dragonfire. He noticed that the shape of the place was decidedly ill-chosen for dragon deterrence, considering the width and breadth of the highest structure in the city-state that could stand up to dragonfire was all but perfectly shaped for the haunches and posterior of Verdantia's doom-in-progress.

Ashen sucked in a smoky breath, rolled up the scroll, then finally sealed it so he could shake the cramp out of his strained fingers. He then stuffed it under his surcoat and broke into a jog, sealed scroll gripped tight, toward the blazing business opportunity.

He knew he might already be too late, but it was part of his painstakingly-maintained reputation to be seen only shortly before the gloam and not long after the morn. The unspoken part of that preference was for the sake of escaping the worst of the sun against his easily-burned bone-white skin and his light-sensitive moon-blue eyes.

It was a difficult strategy, but mystique was more important than practicality. Practicality was for ferrymen and porters.

A scream of distress carried on the hot smoky wind from amid the chandelier-like glow of the keep's conical burning tower tops.

Ashen's jog became a sprint as he eyed the foundations of the burning keep. He almost instantly identified the keep as the work of masons from Vigar, identifiable by the buttressed bottom-heavy tapering architectural motifs with deceptively ornamental-looking spiked protrusions all along the arches and other load-bearing structures. Unlike the prettier and more flammable parts of Verdantia Keep, such sturdier stuff beneath the burning bits bore a uniform dour lusterlessness that heeded the Vigarian superstition that dragons would trouble them less if nothing glittered and nothing shone. Those were the ways of such a gruff and joyless kingdom, the only one among the Pentian Realms familiar enough with ongoing dragon attacks to actually prepare for dealing with them. Ashen couldn't be happier to discover that fretful Verdantian architects had built such a fancy facade over an old Vigarian fortress.

He couldn't fly, not now anyway, not without his good cloak. The loaner he now wore was just for show. His boots were magicked with enough traction to, hopefully, permit him to stride up the steep buttressed inclines that were made for withstanding the weight and thrashing violence of dragon attacks.

“Hey! You there! You deaf to bells, you daft foppish fool?”

Ashen turned his attention away from the roars of the dragon circling above and saw the stoic and stubborn guardsman who had just yelled at him, his carefully-trimmed brown beard and mustache flecked with soot from the ongoing blazes consuming everything that could burn around him. He was the only soldier in sight, indicating that he was either the most foolish of the lot, or the least fortunate in a drawing of lots. Such heavy mail and such parade-bright surcoat colors were naught but invitations to be the dragon's next meal.

Ashen seethed under the brim of his sorcerously-steadfast hat, but he held his tongue and took a relatively-deep breath. The rude guardsman wasn't the ideal recipient of his business proposal, but he would have to do. Time for just a little deception.

“On my life, brave guardsman,” Ashen melodramatically wailed, feigning a stagger to match the his foppish, fashionable outerwear as he pulled the sealed scroll from his trembling gloved hand, “I swore I would not fail to deliver this to our lord in our most desperate hour.”

“Our lord?” the guardsman shook his head incredulously, but then flinched as a piercing feminine scream resonated from the burning keep above him.

Ashen stifled his displeasure at his fumbled bluff, but also dropped his feigned fraility and sharpened his tone while waving the scroll at the guardsman's coif-encircled face. “Do you want your lady saved, or not?”

The guardsman twitched his mustache, lifted his chin indignantly, and swiped the scroll out of Ashen's hand and clenched it in his gauntlet. “Now what am I supposed to do with-”

Ashen shrugged with palms offered as if inviting laughter for the cheap seats of an invisible theater, then consigned the fate of that scroll to chance, dashing to the side of the burning keep's front doors away from the baffled guardsman.

The magicked soles of his boots proved they were worth their coin by carrying him like an upward breeze higher along the buttressed side of the stone wall. He ascended higher and higher, maintaining enough momentum for his weight to remain suspended by the magic propelling his ongoing strides.

He knew he looked like a fop to the unwary, but beneath his red feather-topped finery was an athletic and strong body sculpted by years of serious and strict training to become the next of the storied Everyman line.

Maybe he would even become the greatest Everyman someday, but that would remain to be seen. One monster at a time.

He ascended toward the burning parapets and candle-like burning rooftops with the ill-advised decorative Verdantian touches to the Vigarian fortress. He made it nearly as high as where he had heard that ladylike scream before a vast winged shadow blew by.

The dragon was done tormenting the town and was now spiraling closer, likely preparing to land after a few more fiery twists above. The process was predictable, usually. Once a dragon took a liking to a mortal dwelling of sufficient size, it would wait for fire to weaken the more-flammable roof, then deliberately collapse it under its own weight, crushing whatever skittering mortals were stupid enough to hide beneath. After any necessary skewering of remaining defenders with its spear-sized claws and severing bites from its sword-like teeth, the arrogant scaly demigod would then start counting the treasures of its new lair. Such shortcuts to lair-building began with the great mead-halls of far-away Residia, the scaly opportunists driving meek kings from their overturned tables and scattering their honey-fattened thanes to the icy winds, but it did not end there, as the Verdantians had just found out.

That shadow didn't circle as many times as Ashen had hoped for. Instead, with the strongest searing wind yet, the dragon swooped in close enough and with enough hurricane-like force to catch in his loaner cloak and blow him off the Vigarian wall as if carried aloft on a gnomish kite.

There was a brief mid-air moment where Ashen had nothing to do but contemplate his inferior cloak. It had nothing in common with his good cloak except a red-enough color and it was now, obviously, his greatest liability. Even so, its presence was non-negotiable, because he had long maintained that consistency of appearance was everything, especially because every troubadour embellished tales of derring do a little differently. But in the present moment, his long-term business plan was now imperiled by his accelerating plummet back down toward the bone-crunching cobblestones of the keep's courtyard below.

“Oh for gods' sake,” Ashen cried out in frustration, missing his good cloak more than ever as he triggered the spring-loaded wrist compartment of his glove and caught the pyromancy wand loaded inside.

With an aggressive swirling twist of the wand and some appropriated flames from the collapsing guardhouse of the keep's outer wall, the next spiral of hot air blew upward, this time in his favor. He had no time to stow the wand so he let it fall away, instead remembering what he learned during his brief but exciting year as a sideshow acrobat.

He landed hard all the same, almost breaking a lot more than his fall judging by the jolts of pain that surged up his ankles while he staggered with a grunt of pain.

The dragon swooped overhead once more but did not descend as much as it could have, instead squandering its latest gout of flame with performative bluster, followed by bellowing laughter that resonated across the sky like rolling thunderclaps.

“Laugh it up, gold-for-brains,” Ashen grunted through his gritted teeth, reaching for one of the narrow compact potions specially fitted for his heirloom bandolier, uncapping it with a flick of his thumb. As he quaffed it, the soreness and tingles shivered soothingly away just like the parched dryness in his throat did. “While you can.”

He glanced around for his wand. It was nearby somewhere, but with no more time to waste, he shook his head and dashed once more up the side of Verdantia Keep.

The entire side of the keep darkened with a rapidly-widening shadow.

“Can't wait?” Ashen remarked as he slammed both feet against the nearly-vertical surface mid-stride and hurled himself off, now on his own terms while brandishing Fated Light from his scabbard. Fated Light was one half of the legendary dueling rapier set known as the Fated Pair, but even while part of an incomplete set, what he now wielded was worth at least as much as the rest of his magicked ensemble and the rest of his dwindling inheritance combined.

He averted his eyes away from his unsheathed blade, knowing that the first light to catch on the blade every time it was freshly brandished reflected off of its enchanted steel like a stroke of lightning. The original intent of such a quirk was unknown, or at least Old Dusk refused to share more, but its practical purpose immediately paid off. The dragon knew not what it had coveted, stared at, gazed greedily toward, until that flash dazzled its eyes.

Temporarily blinded, the dragon failed to correct its ongoing flight and instead smashed against the ribbed buttresses of Vigarian stone. Those spikes weren't just there to be demonstrated. The dragon let out a wheezing groan of pain and curled up around the point of impact, raking its claws over the damaged but unbroken Vigarian stonework while flinging erratic curls of fiery breath.

Ashen stabbed Faded Light's blade through the outermost wing as it flapped and flailed, stopping his own fall with just enough time to pull himself in closer, now raking and digging in with the star-like pointed guard over the hilt, embedding it deep inside the soft ruby-red flesh just behind his quarry's outermost starboard wing phalange.

The dragon must have sensed an unexpected but present imminent danger, because it then launched straight upward with aggressive flapping, wounded wing and all. Hanging on took all the strength in his wiry body, made even harder when the dragon started twisting while ascending higher and higher, thrashing its entire body in spiraling mid-air spins that were trying to shake him off like an oversized flea.

Unlike Ashen's lost pyromancy wand, however, his grip on his most prized possession was ensured by the thief-defying chain capped over the rapier's pommel, its other end locked tight against the hidden bracer beneath the leather of his glove. He held on with both arms, hand over wrist, waiting for the dragon to tire from its airborne ballet. He hoped it would tire first, anyway. Until then, he could only hold tight while the spiked guard of his blade gradually and continually tore downward through the dragon's wing flesh as it kept trying to throw him off. He had been taught that were few things dragons hated more than being unable to see, bite, claw, crush, or burn something that was wounding them.

Such a sense of accomplishment of harrying his foe was hard to cling to as the flame-seared villas and vineyards of the Verdantian Valley and the blazing keep and the evacuated township all blurred together with spin after spin higher and higher into the reddened sky. He could only continue to hold on to his grip and try to hold on to his wits. He knew he couldn't survive a fall from so high, not while so out of tricks, but he also knew that the dragon did not necessarily know that.

“Curse you, mortal,” the dragon bellowed, punctuated by searing flames of rage.

Ashen could not hold on much longer and he couldn't pop another potion while holding on with both arms for dear life, but he realized something that gave him hope. That dragon was so bothered by their ongoing struggle that it had just cursed him in the common tongue.

Dragon hearing was at least as keen as their eyesight, so Ashen risked some hard-earned breath to reply. “Mortal, aye, doomed to die,” he said while he felt his own cheeky grin spread during his next breath. “You risk losing a lot more than me here.”

The dragon ceased spinning and thrashing and stopped flapping its wounded wings, instead suspending itself entirely by the buoyancy of its own fiery innards and now maintaining its height just above the misty overcast cloud layer that was common to late autumn all along the vast and abundant Verdantian Valley.

There was something peculiar about the dragon's pause. Ashen considered striking while he could, plunging his legendary blade toward the fiery heart of his foe, making his first dragon kill a spectacular if fatal one. Instead he relented, holding on without twisting his blade or further digging its spiky guard into that bleeding ripped wing, leaning the weight of his body closer toward his foe's shoulder so as to not further provoke it with deepening the wound to its wing.

“What do you want?” the dragon snarled without pretense, gritting its sword-like teeth with something between frustration and resignation.

“I'm an Everyman,” Ashen admitted but wished he didn't, just after he said it. He realized just how loaded such an honest claim probably was among such a near-divine sort of creature, no matter how selfish and territorial they were, even to their own kind.

The dragon puffed smoke out of its nostrils. “That means nothing to me.”

That hurt Ashen almost as much as the strained muscles in his arms and the aching in his nearly dislocated shoulder, but as if it was in theater, he adjusted his performance to suit his audience. “I suppose not. Mortal fame can be fleeting, after all-”

“Everything mortal is fleeting.”

“Right, right,” Ashen huffed, taking a moment to carefully reach with his free hand for his bandolier for one of his remaining potions, all the while keeping his deeply-lodged blade right where it was to not further wound the dragon. Even attempting to pry it free might break the unexpected truce he now found himself in. After his next potion-cooled exhale, only remembering how far it was back down to the ground after thoughtlessly dropping the empty bottle to follow the discarded cap, seeing just a vanishing twinkle passing into the blanket of clouds beneath, he shivered with just a hint of mortal terror.

“I ask again and for the last time, mortal,” the dragon warned, “what do you want?”

Ashen hated being at a loss for wits. The contest with the dragon, however brief, had exhausted him more than he dared to let on, and potions could only do so much.

He, reluctantly, chose the unlikely pair of honesty and humility. “I came to slay a dragon,” he quickly added as the dragon snarled with a brimstone-scented hiss before his situation worsened, “but reports of your size were greatly... understated.”

“You thought I would be younger, didn't you, mortal?” the dragon sneered with almost the entire side of its sword-like teeth flashing, its neck bent just enough to finally see the mortal riding its back.

“Truthfully, yes, yes I did,” Ashen admitted while pondering his next move. Maybe a fatal blow killing them both would still win him some divine favor. Then again, what if his early end angered Mother...

“I am no whelp,” the dragon rumbled, but the way he slowly shut the huge bright globe of its molten eye, teeth still bared, was body language that was not in any of Ashen's studies, confusing him. “But I am without hoard, without lair.”

“At your age?” Ashen said under his breath, but that was still enough to make the entirety of the dragon's back rumble with his roar of anger.

“Lost,” the dragon clarified, flame and smoke seeping from its teeth, “taken.”

Dragons rarely survived the loss of their lairs, let alone the treasures of their hoards, according to Ashen's childhood studies. “That nice sturdy stone keep down there, far below, must have seemed like a fine enough place to start again,” Ashen assumed, “you saw vineyards all around, softer people. You saw no Vigarians, no dragon hunters of any kind for that matter, did you.”

“In my hunger, in my impatience, I did not see the spikes hidden upon the keep, so far from Vigar. Nor did not expect to be so hard-pressed by such a small pale girl-”

“Man,” Ashen grunted indignantly while dropping his voice down an octave. For some reason that made the dragon's fanged maw curl into a slow but unmistakable grin.

“Man,” the dragon snorted with the closest thing that Ashen could mistake for respect.

“I must live,” the dragon spoke with a firm sort of ultimatum, “I must lair. I must hoard.”

“You would have killed me already if you could be sure you could do that without me killing you as well,” Ashen suspected.

“Yes.”

“You must not lair in Verdantia,” Ashen said. Bragging might get him killed and he knew it, but at that pivotal moment in his young life, failure would sully his family name worse than if he died fighting.

“I must live,” the dragon restated, but its voice sounded subtly less stubborn, “I must hoard.”

“I might be able to help you with those,” Ashen offered. “I am expecting a reward...”

“For slaying a dragon,” the dragon rumbled, felt through Ashen's sturdy bones. To his relief, its fury did not yet return, instead sounding contemplative. “You are a liar.”

“I might be a liar, but I haven't lied to you, not yet anyway,” Ashen felt his cheeky smile return, replacing his fear. “I could lie for you.”

“Fool,” the dragon snorted, its chuckle rumbling like thunder. “If I do not take Verdantia, another dragon will. There are many that will come.”

“Many as old and powerful as you, or moreso?” Ashen asked, daring to challenge the lairless, hoardless creature's pride.

“Younger, by far,” the dragon corrected. “Weaker... somewhat. Many more than you might imagine.”

“How can there be so many more dragons than before?” Ashen wondered out loud. “The Pentian Realms have rarely seen your kind, except Vigar of course. Did something happen in far-away Residia...”

“I tire of talk,” the dragon warned. “I can yet kill you. Then I could tear the treasures from your tiny broken mortal body, devouring the rest...”

“Probably,” Ashen admitted but then retorted, “but you have much to lose if you're wrong.”

“I ask for the final time,” the dragon warned, with flaming emphasis wafting from its sword-like teeth and brimstone billowing over its back, making Ashen cough in the thin lofty air. “What do you want?”

Ashen realized the dragon had nothing to give him. Unless... “Tell me your name, dragon.”

The dragon squinted its molten eye, clenching its jaw with more smoke but less flame. “Laskur.”

Ashen immediately knew that was no true dragon name, not the one spoken among their own kind, nor the different one cried out by a dragon's cowering supplicants, nor the one invoked by wizards when doing whatever wizards did while daring to summon them for reasons that were beyond Ashen's education or interest. It was no name at all, but it was a word with meaning in the dragon tongue.

Like other dragon words, the breadth of the concept exceeded simple translation, but “Laskur's” syllables, when taken together, were defeat, hunger, and loss. They were rarely said together at all, being so shameful among such proud and terrible creatures, unless...

“You didn't name yourself Laskur,” Ashen suspected. “The dragon that took your lair and took your hoard called you that.”

Laskur slowly closed his molten eye and nodded with an almost-chilling shame as dusk descended closer toward nightfall. The flames that smoldered beneath the cloud layer across the Verdantian Valley were now the most persistent light to see because the blue light of the moon was presently absent, leaving naught but starlight above. It was as if an otherwise-watchful eye was ever so briefly turned away.

“My mate,” Laskur confessed, “called me Laskur when I was wounded and weak. She claimed all that was once ours, including our eggs. She then left me to die.”

Ashen briefly felt bad for Laskur, but he was getting cold up where he was and he finally decided how to end the impasse.

He grinned at his own idea so much that his face hurt, unless that was just the cold.

“Another lie,” Laskur accused, “before you even speak.”

“Yes, a lie, but not to you,” Ashen promised. “If you want to live, and if you want a hoard, and by the gods if you want a chance at a new lair, I need you to fall.”

Laskur snarled.

“Alive,” Ashen emphasized. “And I will fall with you, all the way down to where we started.”

“They would butcher me, fool,” Laskur writhed defensively, his molten orbs aglow with agitation. “They would tear my scales away and wear them...”

“Not if I made claim to your remains first,” Ashen offered. “You may not know the Everyman line, but many mortals do.”

“Your family slew many dragons,” Laskur assumed, but with what might have been grudging respect, or at least acknowledgment.

“They have, and I aspire to do the same,” Ashen admitted, “but with your age, your size, your power, even lairless and hoardless as you are...”

“Whether or not it kills me, mention my shame again and I will kill you.”

“Right, sorry. I will get to the point. Fall, play the part of a dead dragon, and the reward, all of it, will be yours. I promise.”

“You are a liar, Ashen Everyman,” Laskur accused, with good reason perhaps, but the out loud utterance of his full name was startling.

“You said you didn't know the Everyman family!” Ashen shouted, startled and indignant. “How do you know my name?”

“A mortal woman, wearing much treasure, is calling that name from the burning keep,” Laskur answered. “She spoke it just loud enough for me to hear. Then spoke it again, louder. Then she spoke it again, louder still...”

The lady of Verdantia Keep must have gotten his scroll after all, Ashen realized. He tried to stifle a laugh, but failed.

“Why is that funny to you, mortal?

“Do you want to find out, Laskur?” Ashen offered, not sure how curious an aged, lairless, and hoardless dragon might be, but it was worth a try.

“You will lie,” Laskur accused, correctly, “until the words of mortals reach other dragons. That Verdantia has slain a mighty ancient worm.”

“That... that is the plan,” Ashen confessed, wondering just how much Laskur already understood the machinations in his own mind, if not all of the details.

Laskur slowly closed his molten eye, but instead of answering with more words, with a bitter, perhaps grim final rumbling chuckle, the dragon began to fall. He had to know that Faded Light was still lodged in his wing, but he tucked his wings all the same and groaned with bone-shivering force all throughout his downward plunge.

Ashen clung on as tightly as he could, gritting his teeth as the cold air and the near-freezing dampness blasted over him, but in his efforts to keep from falling away during the accelerating speed he felt Laskur's hot blood spurting from the widening wound in his wing, warming Ashen's freezing body and putting his flame-resistant warding to the test.

His legendary dragon-slaying blade suddenly slipped free of Laskur's severing meat and bone and briefly tumbled away before being stopped and pulled in by Ashen's wrist-chain.

That was then Ashen realized that one of Laskur's wings had just fallen completely away.

“I will live,” Laskur bellowed, his flaming maw steaming through layers of gloaming rainfall. “I will hoard. I will lair.”

Ashen, still startled by the lost wing, found himself respecting Laskur's full commitment to playing the part of a massive, mighty, and freshly dead dragon on his way down from the sky, but with only one wing and dubious buoyancy left from all the waning flames spewing around the sides of his groaning mouth, he braced for impact as Verdantia Keep sped ever closer, ever faster.

His wealthy prospective patron down there, after all, had spoken his name enough times already, in remarkably louder intonations.

Time for an Everyman to be, ever and always, at her service.