Ransom

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley, though it proved to be less of a shock than if they’d appeared anywhere else in the realm. For centuries, as far back as the written accounts had been able to trace the Grovensky dynasty, the Valley remained the last great unbroken frontier, full of brigands and opportunists that lurked in the cavernous faults cut into the mountains towering to kiss the sky in every direction. A lawless place that could stand to be governed by no man, the only ones cunning enough to live within the depths of its lush, green dome were those brave, or perhaps foolish, enough to make their living fencing dragon eggs across the great jade sea.

They were a plague, a pestilence on the land. The ravenous terror they inspired only served to heighten the legend surrounding the paradoxical land that was lush in vegetation and yet so hostile to thriving life. It was in this fruitful wasteland that a peculiar boy who shouldn’t have lived to see his first sunset yawn into a second came squealing across the sleek emerald grass, his mother heaving and exhausted as his father swept him into a blanket and wrapped him tight in a bundle of burlap. Separated but not far from their caravan, the eerie beauty of this verdant land pock-marked with burnt swaths of land and haunted by the looming shadows of the great beasts flying overhead, blooms of fire plumed from their long, sinewy throats speckled with scaled armor.

A sight to behold, surely, but one that filled the couple with dread on their sojourn through the Valley, the most treacherous but direct path to Hellgate’s Eye, the last mecca a once-great dynasty had to offer the remnants of a once-great civilization. Turmoil had long gripped the land, and as far as the new parents were concerned, a half-day’s journey unprotected and vulnerable, a baby left to the wilds was the least of their worries.

A runty, squirming tangle of cells too feeble to sustain a cry, the boy was not expected to live through the next sunrise. His mother, resigned to losing him, never named him. Left at the foot of a cave, the baby simply chewed his fist and stared blankly at the clear blue sky, unbothered by retreating footfalls.

Though greatness would one day seize him, for now the baby was no more than a helpless wriggling eel choking on his own spit, a powerless creature pitifully snuffing for a teat to suckle at and finding only open air.

Enter a pale rider.

Sleek blond hair shone like rivulets of seafoam caught beneath the white hot gaze of high noon, face full of sharp angles and eyes like two ripe plums, wide and perpetually surprised though there was a hardness to them that suggested softer genetics than the hulking weapon strapped to his back and his basilisk armor would project. Handsome features, unmarred by the battles waged by the rust-stained mace never far from his grip, twisted in confusion at the tiny arm lifted to the clouds. The baby was momentarily obscured by the swooping shadow left by a Sharpspitter’s hulking form, screeching as it chased two little specks in the distance.

A shadow of calm certainty obscured all doubts from the forefront of his mind, and the rider gave no second thought to his next course.

“You are the son of Vladimir now, every dragon you meet will bend a knee to your will, the rivers will always flow toward home and your harvests will always be plentiful. Come now, little one, it’s just us two.”

The baby, squirming in his burlap sack, never made one errant cry, even as he was swept onto the back of the monstrous black beauty harnessed with a saddle and reins, onto which Vladimir fused with so much grace the behemoth looked like an extension of it’s rider rather than the other way around.

And so the boy was saved, raised by uncertain hands that knew little but weaponry and combat, but lathered with all the tenderness easily mustered. The baby grew, and eventually a name was needed, and so he became Ransom, Vladimir the only father he’d ever known, as his first rotted in a scaled belly full of flint. The Valley remained the only home he’d ever known, a life forged from dragon eggs as big as geodes and just as shimmering with promised treasure as if they’d been jewel encrusted. The days were eaten up with tricks and thievery. The boy grew, his limbs lengthened and turned to roping sinewy muscle, his wits sharpened as seamlessly as his skill in combat, his natural proclivity for stealth focused and lethal. The topography shifted as others tried and failed to settle the vast Valley overwhelmed by an infestation that spread through the realm until there was a dragon on every continent. At least, that’s what news from across the sea reported last it’d reached his ears.

Now that boy was a man, a pale rider, astride a mid-size electric blue Marsupial Dragon, roughly the size of a dozen hefty steers, as it lazily sailed through the breezy summer afternoon, clouds making a rorschach of shadow and light across those great leathery wings. In a pouch at the beast’s belly, a miniature snout sniffed the air, two beady black eyes peeking out to survey the scene. The rider, dark hair a mop of sunkissed chestnut, face dotted with freckles, green eyes pale as hanging moss alert and vigilant, studied the landscape for… what? Down below there was nothing but jagged rocks and the hissing call and response of dragon nests as territorial as a fledgling king drunk on sacrament wine.

“Not much further now, Maisie.” An affectionate slap of his hand against the dragon’s invulnerable belly, scales iridescent in the blistering sunshine. A sound like the rumbling of deep, shifting mine upset a flock of migrant wyverns, their squawks of surprise carrying them a mile or so north, and Ransom laughed as though a joke had been told. Even the scaly joey down below seemed to snort. “Come now, he’s not that bad, even Henry agrees.”

Maisie, reptilian as she was, fixed coal black eyes as the rolling hills below looped on and on like an endless green pasture before the dragon made a seamless and direct descent into the mouth of a well-kept secret cut into the base of a looming mountain to the east. Inside the air immediately smelt acrid, the brimstone singeing the very hair from Ransom’s nostrils. His eyes watered, but he made no mention of it as Maisie dropped to her haunches, immediately moving to tend to her child. Henry made no protest. “It won’t be long, I promise.”

The dismount as smooth as his father’s would have been, Ransom slid down the curve of her spine, landing on his feet with a rucksack securely fastened to his back, heavy as a tombstone. The cave was deep, stalactites catching the rogue rays of light from suspended candles, the stench of blood and incense thick in the stuffy air. In the very heart of the cave sat an old man at a desk carved straight out of the cave wall, a stone stool from a stalagmite that’d been blunted and decorated by clever, gnarled hands. The same hands that slaved over the geodes lined up in neat rows before the burning fire, only adding to the acrid stuffiness of Aleksander’s oppressive home.

Front to the fire, he pounded steel into a claymore with an ornate, ruby hilt, the sound of his efforts adding to the cacophony that echoed through his cave. “Greetings, comrade!” There was no warmth in the gaze that Aleksander fixed him with, but Ransom seemed entirely unbothered, a dragon egg plucked from his rucksack, shimmering crystalline even in the dim lighting of the cave, as he dropped it only the stone table with a clatter. All at once, a howl pulled mossy gaze into the shadow of one vast wall where, slowly then all at once, the gnarled form of an old, bent hag swayed to and fro, the rusted shackles around wrists and ankles a chorus to accompany her incantations, hissed underneath her breath like a snake charmer mid-trance.

Embers crackled and spit as Aleksander flung his sunflamed blade in her vantage, sharp teeth blackened and stained from years of neglect. “Quiet, enchantress! I know your tricks and I won’t be made victim to the meager pull of your black magic and neither will the boy!” But Ransom was no longer the boy that still lived in the concrete, sterile expanse of Aleksander’s imagination. As pale forest eyes met those deep electric orbs pressed into the crone’s doughy face, flashing all manner of dreamy purple before they balmed blue once more, that gnarled, bent woman melted into an earlier form, agile sloping limbs of porcelain alabaster erected tall and tight like a Grecian statue. Even as he watched the cracks of old age smooth and fade before his very eyes, Ransom could hardly yank his attention from the black magic display, swallowing the avocado pit in his throat though the discomfort lingered.

The enchantress stood silent and stony, an extension of the jagged walls that caged her, and Ransom unsteadily coaxed his eyes from her, Maisie’s nervous chittering at the cave’s mouth not lost on him. “Even in the Valley, kidnapping is frowned upon. What are her crimes, comrade?”

If Aleksander noticed the shadow of disgust that cloaked his companion’s face in the flickering light of his forge, he did not show it, a wicked grin settling on his worn, hard features. “She is a witch, are you unfamiliar with their dark depravities?” Though he was, indeed, the amused disbelief that tinged the elder’s tone stilled his honest tongue. If his dear father had taught him anything, it was to keep his truths secure and tightly guarded, lest they be exploited by those that sought to elevate themselves at his expense.

You must help me.

The words grew like moss in his brain, independent of his own inner monologue, and Ransom’s brow twisted in confusion that receded as quickly as it had overwhelmed him. The mystic bore through him, steeped purple and full of promise beneath her intense observation, entirely uncertain how much of the thoughts that gripped him next were organic and rooted in his soft heart, for all that mattered by the time he sucked in a new breath was the knowledge that he would leave this cavern with this woman saddled on his dragon behind him, arms wound round his waist as a lover might.

He means to carve my heart out, there are no deeper depths than the darkness that fills men’s souls when they are without morality. You have seen him, you know what he does.

Though her mouth made no quiver, no utterance breathed aloud, Ransom heard her lilting, feminine voice in the echoing halls of his mind, and he knew that she would not steer him wrong. At least, he thought he did.

Panic seized him, holding steadfast and oppressive over his hammering heart, Aleksander none the wiser to his errant thoughts as the molten shaft of his impressive weapon sizzled in a pool of liquid that would showcase the faults in maker’s skill. “You bring me only one egg this time? Surely you’ll not waste my time with such triviality.” Aleksander’s eyes hardly lifted to the shimmering egg on his steel table, crackling with untapped magic. “Has Vladimir run out of secret hiding places so quickly?”

Ransom hated the sneer that painted Aleksander’s angular face with malice, the saliva clinging to sharp canine’s reminiscent of the slobbering guard dogs that used to stand at the mouth of his cave, teeth sharp and stained rusty. But Aleksander had long since eaten the dogs and worn their hides to combat the creeping, breathless winters that had come to claim the Valley since the second moon burnt out four harvests back. The path out to the sloping, rolling hills would be clear aside from the old man and his tools, no matter how masterfully they were forged.

Though he never asked the question aloud, Ransom burned to know, a whisper at the back of his brain, selfish and simple as a child’s deepest treachery: what’s in it for me? The hag, now a beautiful nymphian display of lithe limbs and delicate curves that would hitch the breath of the most chaste men, could be anything at all underneath. Not a soul that breathed would be able to resist the creeping slit of her dress, the pale, milky flesh of her thighs parting. How many bedtime stories warned of man's foolishness? Ransom tried to silently tally his memories as the seconds yawned on between what was and what could be. Whether the images before him were real or a transgression of his most vivid imaginings, Ransom could never be certain, but what happened next was written in the stars as unwaveringly clear as a prophecy spoken aloud from her once-crepey throat might have been.

Acutely aware of the glossy veneer behind which the enchantress lurked, Ransom leaned into the cloud of deceit which choked the vault of Aleksander’s treasures and was momentarily overwhelmed by the calm loss of control. Was it the will of the witch or a heady need for adventure that simmered just below the tepid surface of his carefully constructed existence?

It mattered not now.

The ruby hilt of Aleksander’s own design sat molten in Ransom’s calloused palm, wielded with such stony indifference the maker could not stop a miserable smile devoid of mirth from climbing the terrace of his lined face as realization bloomed. “You think she’ll steer you true, boy? You’re a bigger fool than your father.”

Bile rose up his esophageal lining and Ransom, no longer the boy that shivered beneath Aleksander’s oppressive gaze, swept the blade in one fluid thwack! across the sinewy muscle of the blacksmith’s throat, eyes wide as severed neck spurt bursts of sanguine lifeforce in chaotic swaths, the blood hissing as it evaporated in speckles across the forge. The headless man sank to his knees, rivulets of deep crimson coating the rocks worn smooth by leather heels while, overhead, a thousand pixie dragons awoke at the sound and, disturbed and screeching, tore from their upside down perches to flap pointedly into the blinding sunlight, hinged fangs in full display. Wistfully, he watched them go, left staring into the empty dankness long after the sound of their fluttered migration ceased.

“Waste no time, Ransom of the Valley, your destiny awaits you due north in the cracked earth of the barren red mountains. One day the whole realm will bend the knee to you, but now it starts with a leap of faith.”

For the briefest flashing glimmer of a second, the crone that had previously stood in place of this beautiful enchantress was remembered and suspicion stopped him cold. “How am I to trust you, witch? All that you show me could be nothing more than a projection. You will say anything to get your way. So speak plain, then. What do you want?”

The enchantress, her hair like a crop of saffron, turned her ethereal smile upon him, head canted in the gentle chide of a worldliness Ransom had yet to fully comprehend. “Can’t you see, Ransom of the Valley, our destinies are intertwined, braided by the fates long ago. It will always go this way because it always has.”

The certainty that coated her tongue chilled him, an eerie calm that took his breath away, but his legs moved without his conscious effort, carrying them to Maisie’s saddle and onto the next flitting breeze. Though the beast chittered and snuffed, there was no outward protest to the witch’s presence, and soon they were airborne, Aleksander’s cavernous tomb and the grisly horrors it held lost to the roaring wind tunnel that propelled them north as the witch had said, the creeping suspicion of her malevolence clinging to him like a skunk’s perfume. No matter how he tried, Ransom couldn’t rid himself of the dread that loomed over his every thought since abandoning his father’s forged path. While it hadn’t been a noble one, it’d been honest enough. A life devoid of coldblooded murder, at least.

“I see what troubles you, child. You linger too long in thoughts of regret when there is only the future sprawling before you like an endless map. Do you want to never carve out the topography of your journey with your own hand?” The witch’s arms wound tighter still around his belly, the fear growing in pits of coiled regret as the realization that all he had known was long lost in the howl that carried him further and further still into lands he knew little of with only a witch and a transport dragon in his arsenal. At least he’d been too dumb-struck to leave the sword. “I see the fear in your heart, but you must throw yourself into the wind. Your success is written across the ages, you need only trust.”

The impossibility of her advice choked Ransom like a reaper’s breath at his throat, but there was no other choice but forward now. Lush, green hills gave way to the cracked expanse of the desert, heat simmering the lizards splayed on their bellies, cacti wilting in the blistering bake of a high noon sun, and there was little to quench the roiling nausea of an uncertain future spread out before him like a black velvet sky waiting to be pin-pricked with constellations. “Then what comes first, witch?”

“You’ll do well to call me by my name, ingrate.” Voice like ice, Ransom felt it first at the nape of his neck like frostbite, the terror spreading until it relented all at once, the black magic smile at full bloom. “Methilda. You’ll not yet know me, but our fates are braided together, there is not a strand of you that doesn’t know a strand of me.”

A roll of his eyes punctuated her words, but Ransom spoke no hint of his dissent aloud, whether the result of a spell of madness brought on by the old crone’s true form or destiny at work, it no longer mattered. What was done was done and the only thing left to do was persevere. The heat spilled oppressive and wet, salt caking his skin in a thin sheen that would take days to wash away once they reached their final destination, the first discomfort of many his new life offered.

For now, one little speck could be seen in the distance, a tiny meandering ant on an interactive map slipping across the landscape like a beetle circumnavigating the shade, and the witch breathed a sigh of relief against his shoulder blade.

“Just as I said, Ransom of the Valley, your destiny awaits just there.”

The rider never even turned his head to see the wicked grin he knew blossomed on the witch’s rosebud lips, the radiance of which could be felt just as fiercely as the scorching sun that pressed against his back, propelling him farther and farther from all he’d ever known.

As though reading the expression through the back of his skull, the witch’s arms wound tighter still, oppressive at his waist, and though her words should have brought comfort, there was an edge to them that licked goosebumps up the column of his spine, spreading relentless across his skin like ink caught in a wet page.

“Do not worry, child, you will see your father again. His story is not yet all told, either.”