Overtaken

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. There was a time when the largest thing I saw flying in the sky was an eagle or a crow.

Before they came, it was a simpler time, a happier time. I was only 10 years old on the day they first appeared. My father was a blacksmith, so most days I would wake up in the morning and watch him work, helping out whenever I could. And I'd spend every spare minute of the day reading a book or playing with other kids in the village.

But one morning, when everyone in my village was simply carrying out their daily tasks, baking bread, tending to crops, a gigantic boom rang through the air.

Everyone went running for cover in their houses, holding their family members close while they waited for the noise to die down–including me. It sounded like an avalanche, but it was summer, and there weren't usually avalanches at that time of year. Slowly, though, after the ensuing silence, everyone in the village began opening their doors, ready to step outside.

Everything looked normal at first. I stood beside my father, peering at the village to see if something had changed. But it was exactly the same.

“Well, that was strange,” our neighbor Alaric said. “Fortunately, it seems to have passed.”

But just then, large black creatures began pouring out from behind the mountains.

At first I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I thought maybe they were just birds flying away from whatever the source of the noise was. After all, we had plenty of birds passing over the village every day. But as they grew closer and closer, it became clear that they weren’t merely birds, especially when the largest one began to blow fire.

Dragons.

The flames rushed out of the dragon’s mouth, much redder than the flames in my father’s forge, almost like a blood red. And then they all began to descend at an alarming speed, their pitch black wings in sharp contrast to their crimson fire.

When we saw them descend, we all began to run. The air filled with the sounds of screams and footsteps. My father grabbed my hand and we started sprinting out of the valley, knowing our houses didn’t stand a chance against the fiery breath of a dragon. My heart pounded like it never had before. As I ran, I kept checking behind me to see if they were getting closer. Fortunately, they remained hovering above our village rather than pursuing us.

We ran nonstop until eventually my father found a cave in the mountain. We hid there, along with several other villagers, until sundown. None of it seemed real at first. I thought I must be dreaming. Dragons? I’d read stories about dragons, but that’s all they ever were, just stories. Seeing them paint the sky like black brush strokes was just… too much to absorb at once.

At night, despite fear gripping me, sleepiness began to take over, as with the rest of the villagers who were taking refuge there as well. Moonlight shining into the entrance of the cave was the only light source we had.

Because I’d brought nothing but the clothes on my back, I simply sat with my back against the cave wall, my eyes slowly closing. My father and the other villagers did the same. Despite the discomfort of the rocky wall digging into my back, my sleepiness grew stronger and stronger. I drifted off and jolted awake several times before I eventually fell into a deep sleep.

Then, suddenly, once I’d fallen deep asleep, I jolted awake again.

There was a sound like a soft thumping against the cave floor. It seemed to be growing closer. When I looked around, I could hardly see anything because the moonlight had nearly disappeared. I stood up and turned in the direction of the noise–whatever it was, I wanted to be ready for it.

And then I heard a voice begin to speak.

“The rest have awoken, haven’t they?”

The voice was incredibly deep, deeper than any human voice I’d heard.

I didn’t know what to do, so I just stood still. Every muscle in my body stiffened.

The thumping started up again until the creature was clearly in front of me, though it was too dark to see any detail.

And then I looked toward the cave’s entrance and saw a shadow–the creature’s shadow–take up almost the entire space. For its size, its footsteps were relatively quiet. From a creature that size, I would expect booming instead of thumping. But the shadow remained, and I knew the creature was still there. It stayed there for several moments in silence.

“We weren’t always like this,” the creature said. “And if you wish to know more, meet me where the sun rises and the earth falls, where violet stars are born.”

Then the creature left. After the initial shock wore off, I sat down again, resuming my sleeping position, unable to believe what I just saw. Slowly, I fell asleep again.

The next morning, I woke up to my father’s voice.

“Emrys, wake up. Wake up,” he said.

I opened my eyes and looked around, wondering if anybody else had heard the creature last night. Sunlight poured into the cave.

“We can’t go back there,” a woman said.

“We have no other choice,” a man responded. “We need to see the damage they caused, and rebuild if we must.”

Mostly everyone agreed, so we all began to travel back to the village. And when we got there, to everyone’s horror, several of the houses had been burnt down.

Including our own.

My father dropped to his knees upon seeing it. It was the first time I’d ever seen my father weep.

We eventually rebuilt our house with the help of the other villagers, but it wasn't easy starting over. For years after that day, I often thought of the riddle the creature told me. While I had hardly been able to see anything in that cave, I was sure it was a dragon speaking to me. I never tried to find the place he spoke of, but I still couldn’t get the riddle out of my head. I repeated it every night before I slept so I wouldn’t forget.

After the dragons first appeared, they continued to periodically return, circling over our village, sparking fear in everyone. Every time it happened, everyone would run from their houses and take refuge in the wilderness, hiding in caves scattered throughout the Valley. Surprisingly, they never attacked again, leaving all of our houses unscathed each time, although they often ate our livestock.

But on my 16th birthday, six years after the initial attack, I made a decision.

I was tired of living in fear. I couldn’t think of anything worse than always waiting for the dragons to return, worrying that one day they’d attack again.

I had to solve the riddle and find the place “where the sun rises and the earth falls, where violet stars are born.”

One night, as my father slept, I packed my bag, taking along one of the swords in my father’s forge. Then I wrote a note that I left on the dining room table, telling him what I planned to do.

Afterward, I stepped out into the night.