Last Resort

The purple dragon’s stomach was bellowing in pain; it hadn’t eaten in two weeks. All the dragons in the brood had been hunting nonstop for years now. The humans had gotten too good at hunting and were stealing all the big game, leaving the dragons with nothing to eat but small hares. The humans even outnumbered the dragons ten to one, making an attack on the humans suicidal.

Suddenly, the dragon’s partner, a dragon whose pure white scales reflected the sun as the snow on the ground, noticed something through the dense foliage.

A lone human.

The white dragon looked at the purple dragon in pure joy, they had finally found prey after days of searching, and a human no less! This would not only feed the whole brood but would no doubt taste incredible. This was the first human anybody had seen alone ever since they migrated into the valley; humans exclusively hunted in packs.

Without a word both dragons swooped down and landed on either side of the human. Expecting resistance, both dragons bared their razor-sharp teeth. Something was wrong with this human, however. It was tiny and had no hair, perhaps a youngling. Unlike their previous assumptions, the human wouldn’t be able to feed a single dragon, let alone the whole brood. The white dragon slumped under the blanket of snow, incapacitated with crippling grief. The white dragon had two younglings on the verge of death, and this tiny, pathetic excuse of a human was all they had to show after sleepless nights of hunting for a single bite to eat.

In the dragon’s moment of weakness, the purple dragon took this chance to lunge at the white dragon and, in one swift swipe, cut its throat. The purple dragon felt no remorse. It needed to eat, and it was the white dragon’s fault for letting its guard down. The dragon buried the white dragon under a pile of snow to hide the body to eat later, then snatched the youngling and started to fly away to a secret spot only it knew of.

As the dragon flew, barely able to flap its thinning wings, it passed by the human settlement. The dragon immediately did a sharp turn to avoid it but noticed something strange. There were no people wandering the streets, no smoke coming from the houses, no guards in the watchtowers. Since the dragon likely would not be able to make it to its hidden spot, it decided to land in the village and investigate.

When the dragon landed, no humans jumped from the buildings to ambush it, in fact nothing happened at all. Now that it had a moment of peace, it dropped the child and investigated it. It had made no noises while up in the air to the surprise of the dragon. The youngling was dressed in a simple cloth covering the groin, and how it stayed warm was beyond the dragon’s understanding. Small tufts of blonde hair sprouted from its head, but not nearly as much compared to the other humans. Even more unsettling, though, were the child’s eyes. The blood red eyes embedded in the tiny head stared past the dragon’s emerald eyes into its soul, unblinking. The dragon shuddered; it had a very uneasy feeling about this infant.

Slowly, an unfamiliar smell crept into its nostrils, causing the dragon to snap its gaze from the youngling. The mysterious smell was coming from a large hut with a cross on it. Curious, the dragon crawled slowly towards the building, roaring at the building once it got within ten feet. After getting no reaction, the dragon peeped its head through and immediately recoiled with horror. Inside the dwelling were dozens of human bodies strewn across the room, but none were intact. Every human had been cut cleanly in half at the waist by some mysterious creature. The dragon ran back to the infant to investigate it further. The child stared at it with a blank stare. It was likely the last human from the town, having had escaped whatever monster that had killed the rest of them was.

The youngling broke the dragon’s gaze to look up, and the dragon followed it. Approaching the dragon was the rest of the dragons from its brood, all nine flying in a v-formation. They had found the white dragon’s body and knew who had done it. In a panic, the purple dragon started to take off without the child, but something stopped it. The dragon stopped flapping and dropped to ground once more, staring at the human. Something seemed to be keeping the dragon here, whether physically or mentally, it wasn’t sure.

The brood landed in a circle around the purple dragon. They wanted answers, and they wanted vengeance. They had one rule, and that rule was never to kill a fellow dragon. The oldest dragon, one with scales that glimmered orange like a sunset over the ocean, spoke first.

“Why have you killed our kin, forsaken one?” asked the old dragon in a powerful voice that echoed across the buildings of the village.

The purple dragon, the now forsaken dragon pleaded, “For the child, wise one. I am hungry, much like the rest of you, and we all know one human youngling cannot feed more than one of us. You would do the same in my situation!”

The old dragon was not convinced. “You have ashamed us all. We may be hungry, but we are not beasts, stabbing each other for personal gain like these humans.”

“Those beasts are the reason why we are hungry, maybe we could learn something from them!”

As the forsaken dragon spoke, a blade of air cut through the sky and split the old dragon clean in half, much like the humans found in the hut. In shock, the forsaken one turned around to find the source was the infant, laughing in glee with what it had done.

The remaining eight dragons, in a bloody rage, started to attack the forsaken one. The purple dragon tried to defend itself, but to no avail. It was outnumbered, and no being could take the combined might of eight hungry dragons. The forsaken one perished, and as its spirit rose to the heavens, it saw the brood gorging themselves on its remains, and the baby clapping and giggling with pleasure.