Harlem's Quest

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.

Although to be fair, there still weren’t. Not really anyway. In the entire history of One-Road Village -- one of two villages existing in Furthersouth Valley which itself sat deep in the southern regions of Kingdom Cox -- there had only ever been the one dragon attack. But for those who have ever been unlucky enough to find themselves on the business end of a fully grown dragon having a bad day, they’ll know that this is no small thing. Even now, a sign exists just outside of One-Road Village which reads ‘Here be dragons, sometimes,’ as a warning to any would-be travelers. (The added ‘sometimes’ was decided on by a village wide vote which went 73% in favor of, as they felt that to leave it out would be dishonest).

The fact that they put up a sign at all should suggest at the horror that was felt that day by every single villager. Lives were lost. Families were torn apart. Homes and livelihoods passed down through generations were turned to cinder and ash in a matter of hours. Devastation ruled supreme.

A shame too as the day itself had started off as a typically gorgeous one -- that was before the dragon got to it. What was once a peaceful little one-road village made of timber housing with straw-thatched roofs, sat nestled in a forest valley surrounded by rolling sierras, was soon transformed to a literal hellscape. Houses burst into balls of fire as the dragon swept down the village’s one road. Villagers screamed for their lives as flames licked at their skin and set them alight. The luckier ones soon found themselves trapped in the monster’s gigantic talons instead, plucked from the inferno and then torn apart midflight by rows of jagged teeth each as large and sharp as any sword.

And then there was Harlem Dink. Eight at the time, Harlem had found himself right in the thick of it as he waited outside his home for his friends Randy and Eddie to come collect him for a day of age-appropriate adventuring. He watched wide-eyed as the winged beast swooped right past him, turning its flame on the Tanner residence across the street. Awe next, as the dragon landed on the road no further than three hundred feet away, stretched out its great big wings, reared back its monstrously sized head and screeched into the sky. And finally, pure elation when Harlem dared a glance down the road only to spy a lone figure on horseback staring down the dragon as a lion might its unfortunate prey.

It. Was. Awesome.

The lone figure was one Lannis the Lionsmane, as great and noble hero as there ever was. So great was Lannis that he had just been judged Hero of the Year by the Troubadour’s Guild, not to mention coming in the top ten the previous five years before that. To Harlem’s little eyes, the Lionsmane looked a giant on the back of his steed. His hair was blonde like the sun and flowed to his shoulders like a river of gold. His face was square and handsome and hard like iron, the stare he fixed on the dragon was even harder. He wielded his sword above his head, its long blade shining like a beacon sent from the heavens as he screamed a gallant scream and charged the dragon without fear, hesitation, or consideration of one’s own mortality.

It was around this point when Harlem had felt a hand grabbing at him from behind. A moment later and there was another one. It was his father, dragging Harlem from his front row viewing and toward apparent safety. His mother and younger sister were with him too, and together, as a family, they fled into the forest and hid until the danger was over -- and the action too. While Lannis the Lionsmane braved the torrid flames of the raging dragon and saved the village from damnation, Harlem ducked for cover under some particularly enthusiastic shrubbery.

It wasn’t until later that day when Harlem would finally hear tales of what happened between hero and monster. Randy, as he nursed severe burn wounds that scorched his right arm, shoulder and face, told Harlem of how Lannis charged the dragon head on, leapt from his horse and then landed on the beast’s back. And Eddie, between his pained screams of wretched anguish over the deaths of his mother and father and little brother, regaled Harlem with stories of how the Lionsmane wrestled the dragon and then forced it from the village by riding its back like a horse until both were gone from sight.

Harlem hated that he had missed the heroics, and for a brief moment there, he had wondered if that might be the only time in his life where he would get the chance to witness something so resoundingly wonderous. But then a better idea came along, quickly shoving the other much lamer idea to the side. Harlem, he decided then and there without care or second thought, was going to become a hero. Even if it killed him.

Heroic aspirations weren’t a particularly unique thing in Kingdom Cox. In fact, if one was so inclined -- not to mention, and this cannot be stressed enough, competent and able -- then they could make a very good living being a hero. Even before the dragon attack, Harlem had known of at least four other boys around his age who had voiced their desire to become a hero once they were old enough. Of course, two of those boys ended up dying the day of the dragon attack, both turned to hideous crisps of charred flesh and burned bone, while the third died five years later after falling off his horse (the fall didn’t kill him, that was on account of the suicide committed three months later, after his wife left him for a man who’s back hadn’t been broken falling off a horse), and the fourth had since married the owner of the bakery, and he and his husband are said to even be thinking of adopting soon.

Many young men suppose at one time or another what it might be like to be a hero. How could they not? To venture into the wide expanses of Land with nothing more than the wits in your head to get you by, a sword by your side to fight off foe, and the knowledge that the world was a better place because of noble men like you.

Most of these men would eventually stop wondering. They would wise up and get themselves real jobs, ones that offered a decent paycheck with minimal chances of a gruesome bloody death. But most men weren’t Harlem Dink. And once that idea settled nice and snuglike in his excitable -- and susceptible -- young mind, he knew there was little chance of displacing it. Little chance that he wanted to. From that day on, Harlem knew what he had to become: A hero.

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. But when there were, they changed young boys’ lives, shaped the destiny of kingdoms, and rewrote the very fate of Land itself.