Forgotten Skies

"There weren't always dragons in the valley. Of course, our relationship with them hasn't always been this peaceful either."

The old man reaches down and gives the small dragon sleeping next to him an affectionate slap on the shoulder. The black dragon cracks one eye open and stretches a scaly leg. Small, of course, being a relative term, the Razor-Back is the size of a large plow horse. It's wingspan would easily cover two wagons end to end.

"Nope, when they first showed up, the smell of death drew them to us." He looks out from the front porch, the dark golden skin and purple tattoos on his face making his eyes seem more sunken as old memories try to resurface. "Like vultures, they can smell it hundreds of miles away."

The view that the old man and the young traveler took in was nothing short of breathtaking. Jagged mountains reached into the sky, white clouds hiding the peaks. Below, a broad valley stretched more than twenty miles North to South and double that East to West. The Valley of the Sun was something out of a dream. The sunlight sparkled like diamonds on the lake at the far end. The lake below them had been turned into a shinning pool of light, and the various sun idols spreads throughout the valley reflected golden light up to where they sat. Neat brown ribbons of road cut and wound through emerald green fields. Dark green squares of orchards and hops filled the spaces between the rivers and lakes. There were no cities to speak of here. Just small villages and homesteads spread across the valley, and many people still lived up in the mountains. In the distance just tiny dots, dragons could be seen swooping through the sky. On occasion one would climb to great heights, then pitch and dive towards the ground pulling up at the last second. Just skimming the tree tops.

The young traveler couldn't imagine anything here except peace and abundance. When he made mention of that, the laugh from the old man was dark and almost cruel sounding. Feeling slightly startled by the sudden change, the traveler gave the old man and dragon a nervous look.

"No. I speak of a time long before your father even made his way into the world. There was a foreign king by the name of Gul'dral. His people worshiped the cruel sky gods; blood and metal were their way of the world. They conquer lands and enslave the peoples. Using every last resource till a wasteland is all that is left. At some point, the existence of our valley reached his ears, much did he desire to control it." A cloud passed in front of the sun, and a chill followed it. Battered and scared hands gripped the arm of the chair for a second before he continued.

"We were at peace here, not paying attention to the passing of the outside world. Thanks to the mountains surrounding the valley, strangers seldom ventured into our lands. There were times when whole generations would pass without ever seeing an outsider. It turns out that our ignorance of the world outside our borders would prove fatal. King Gul'dral and his horde crashed down out of the mountains like a steel wave. We are not war-like people. Skilled in the hunt and living with the land is our way. Our first attempts at resistance were laughable and pitiful, but we never stopped fighting. The butcher bill was staggering. It soon became impossible to bury all the dead. It seemed that our beautiful valley would become a graveyard and nothing more.

"For five bloody years, we held out. That's when the dragons showed up. You see, war and death are a dinner bell for dragons, especially wars with no end in sight. Soon the ground was nothing but a charred hellscape, and the rivers and lakes were choked with mud and ash. It became impossible to move above ground. You couldn't even stand and piss without one of the scaly bastards coming for you.

"We took to the caves deep in the ravines and hollers. The metal king built massive stone buildings to protect himself and his men. In an attempt to move and forage without too much danger, we dug, building tunnels and covered trenches. Soon we discovered our enemy was mirroring our efforts. Like armies of ants, we dug and tunneled our way towards each other, intent on continuing our killing. It wasn't long before the dragons realized that their food had become something akin to gophers. Soon, they identified weak points in the trench roofs and discovered that dropping large boulders from a great height was an effective way to crack open the tunnels.

"Once again, it looked as though the end had come. Starving, weakened to the point that the suggestion of a last stand would have been laughed into the grave. Hope was discovered deep in one of the tunnels! A hope many dared not even breathe. Such a wisp of hope can be a dangerous thing you see. Is it real and worth pursuing, or would it simply allow us to die as fools?