From the Far Lands

Prologue:

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. However, there have always been dryads in the forests and trolls in the caves, so the humans living in the Borough near the Valley were not caught completely unawares.

“The mothers are afeared,” Hubert murmured. The older man was watching a woman scuttle after her child to whisk her back indoors.

Aaron chuckled, “The wee ones don’t care, they all want a glimpse of the beast. Reckon it’s true they are as intelligent as my mother’s stories say?” he scratched at his freshly sprouted peach fuzz as he spoke.

“The children?” the old man joked, his eyes sparkling.

“If the children are as smart as stories tell, we should all be afeared. Not a one of us shall survive their uprising over sweets. In all seriousness, should we send out a delegate?”

“Which of us shall we sacrifice to sate your curiosity boy? Not a soul here has seen such a beast, there is no basis to those theories except old wives tales.”

“We still ought to try, besides, my mother was never a wife, so her storie0s don’t count.”

Hubert ignored the joke, “How you suppose we go about that? Stride right up and ask after the weather?”

Aaron was silent, but the topic continued in his mind as he worked through options. Dragons were dangerous, that much was true, the Valley was already blackened, and soot rained down on the Borough for two days following the fires. Aaron knew that if the dragons did not move on, the families here would have to. Other creatures could be managed, either by habit changes, skills or by culling.

The dragons in the valley would not be so simple, they were too large and strong for a culling, sneaking around them would be pointless if they continued to burn the Valley. There were so many natural herbs and resources that the inhabitants of the Borough relied on betwixt the three mountains.

As Aaron saw it, if negotiations were possible, that was their only option to stay.

Aaron got up ahead of daybreak, got dressed with his hunting dagger at his hip and his herb satchel over his shoulder. Aaron grabbed his walking stick from under the eaves and hurriedly left for the Valley before the others woke.

He was only slightly inconvenienced by the sentries as Aaron skirted around an outlying building and used the shadows to hide his movement from the tiring watchmen. It was almost the end of their shift, and most hazards would have come long before.

Aaron couldn’t help but harvest a few items along the way, a handful mint leaves here, an entire dandelion there. He used his stick to deftly uproot a single young barberry from a copse whose roots had the ability to alleviate symptoms of miasma.

There was a stench of putrid flesh that wafted through while he pocketed the tiny young shrub. Aaron froze, eyes scanning for signs of the troll. He heard its lumbering gait next. Aaron moved slowly with a slight sway in his movements to mimic the natural shift of the plants around him in the wind as he inched slowly in the direction he was traveling.

He knew trolls had a horrible sense of sight this close to daybreak, seeing in only shades of grey, they homed in on their prey via sound and sudden exaggerated motion. This was why Aaron was taking measured breaths to keep his heart rate slow and quiet, and his movements mimicked the foliage around him. He drew a rock slowly from his pocket if the situation called for a distraction, however, this troll seemed intent on heading into its cave before daybreak. It already had some mangled carrion it was dragging and wasn’t looking for new prey.

Trolls loved the cold, dark and damp. They would sometimes coat themselves in the entrails and blood of their rotting prey mixed with mud to keep their skin moist in the hotter months. The fact that one was out so close to sunrise in early summer was already a surprise, but with the dragons in the Valley Aaron was sure the pattern had changed due to some disruption in the supplies or the heat from recent fires. He made a note to mention this to the others, though all extra precautions were already in place for the time being, it wouldn’t hurt to relay the types of changes that are possibly a threat.

As planned, Aaron walked out into the valley entrance just as the sun rose. Hubert would be cross with him for leaving before dawn, but he didn’t let this thought distract him. There was some strong, intense urge to prove his mother’s bedtime stories correct.

The stars how he missed her. His birth had been a hard one, leaving her permanently disfigured and incapable of walking, but she never let that slow her down, the men of the village made her a sling that could be used to move her thin wispy frame to the gardens, and as soon as Aaron was strong enough, he always made a point to take her himself. She taught him everything he knows about herbalism and botany, and never failed to have majestic stories of dragons, wolves, nymphs, and kingdoms of the Far Lands.

Aaron blinked hard, this was no time to reminisce, but when he looked over the burnt Valley, more memories flooded his mind. His mother showing him a trick with the curcas stems to make shiny delicate spheres float on the wind, and learning to skin his first rabbit with the very knife at his hip right now-

Aaron shook his head violently. He was here for a purpose, what place does such frivolous thoughts hold in the current situation? He tried to walk forward, but the sound of a crunching hunk of charcoal under his foot reminded him of the time he and Fredrick were trying to sneak up on a dryad but it was a banshee instead, so when they had stepped on a loose patch of rocks, instead of disappearing into cotton fluff or maple leaves it turned and screamed at them. Fredrick slipped in fright as he whorled about so the creature missed him, but Aaron had not been so lucky, and his arm took a huge 4 lined gash which looked much larger now that his body had grown and stretched out the jagged scar-

A resounding SMACK carried over the field and echoed back from the nearest mountain lining the valley. His hand and cheek stung from the self-inflicted impact. Something wasn’t right here, and Aaron felt every hair on his skin bristle as static swept over him.

When he opened his eyes, the swirling gold and silver orb that filled his vision confused him, rooting him to the spot, his heart ached with the need to beat but having nary the will to do so. He barely had a moment to notice the black slit that ran vertically down the center of the orb was not his shadow, but a pupil, before a clear film seemingly like congealed broth slid across it from left to right. Followed immediately by a charcoal-colored sheet of scales pulled up in a slow blink, freeing his heart to thunder at will.