Riders of the Valley

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. But oh, are they there now.

Their wheeling forms cast dancing shadows upon the earth below that change and twist every second, as the dragons do. Their massive wings blot out the light above you when they fly past—sometimes screeching, sometimes roaring, sometimes spewing flame, but always, always, they pause for a millisecond to notice you. Their ancient eyes, glittering with wisdom and wildness, forever change every soul they choose to gaze at—and whether their subject comes back alive or not is an unshakable testament to one’s inner courage and fire. Wind rushes up in their wake when they fly, enough to make even the mightiest pine tree bow. Over the course of hundreds of years, explorers have noted everything about the dragons; from their feeding (they love meat, and surprisingly, berries) to their mating dances (an elaborate sky spectacle with many males swooping and calling around a single female, before she finally chooses her mate after hours of intent scrunity of each male, and wraps herself around her chosen in a dive, both pulling up the second before they’d smash into the ground).

Their territorial duels are the greatest spectacle to witness. Their screeches shake the foundations of the sky; when claws slash down and rip through flesh and bone, one can physically feel their pain—and more than the dragon’s, if they stay for too long: dragon’s blood is flammable, and great roaring tongues of flame burst from it in the flicker of an instant, gone in the blink of an eye; but leaving great scorching marks upon the earth as evidence of their passing.

Even in death, they are magnificent; as their eyes roll back into their heads and fade to black, the deep, raging fires inside the dragon’s being erupt the instant the dragon’s soul departs, and after three seconds, all that is remains is memories on the wind.

It is all this that drove me to the lair of a dragon queen, answering a wrenching call deep inside my heart.

The call had tormented me over several months, building and growing and snarling, until it felt like my soul was cracking apart. I had tried and tried to ignore the thing growing in my chest, had desperately fought back by throwing myself entirely into the mundane chores of the farmstead I was living at. Until one windy autumn afternoon, the call had shattered my control, and the pain I had been suppressing nonstop burst open like a floodgate and ripped through my soul. My jaws had opened and my face had twisted in agony, until finally, writhing on the old cobble floor of the stables, I had begged the thing inside me for a way to make the pain stop.

Instantly, the ripping agony had stopped, roiling with something new, and then there was an image flashed into my brain over and over again, of the lush valley where dragons flew. And so I had trembled and protested, until the call started up again to such an unbearable level that I barely remember anything but what felt my entire essence being thrown apart in the worst pain I had ever felt, and of screaming my promise to go to what I knew was the everknown Dragon Valley. Of the call immediately subsiding, of numbly heaving my fractured body off the floor, and then darting to a water trough, needing to see the blood and what had to have been my insides coming out of my stomach, and then standing before the water and checking myself over, unbelievably shocked to find not even a scratch upon my skin. Of the next thing being some instinctual, shrieking urge to set off right now, and so I frantically threw some things together, desperate to avoid the impending pain if I didn’t move as fast as possible, and I set off into the hills, looking for the vision.

And once I found the scene of the vision, an entirely new one flashed before me, of a dark flickering sphere, warmth and a strange fire that warmed my insides and made me feel more at home than I ever had, and of an impossibly massive shape unfurling in the dark, and the knowledge that the sphere was protected with absolute fury being the last thing before the vision had ended. I had toppled right off the cliff face backwards, unconsciousness sweeping me with a wave as huge as the rip-roaring swells of the sea, and I would have been smashed to a pulp if it were not for the giant, dark claws that wrapped gently around my waist and shoulders, and had lifted me up high, high, high…

Which is how I awoke hugging a giant dragon snout.

“Gwaaaah!” I scream and leap back, startled, which turned into amazement and absolute terror as a leviathan of a dragon reared up before me.

The dragon is huge; all darkened, glittering scales that even shine faintly in the moonlight, and muscle, so much muscle, moving sinuously with predator’s grace beneath the scaled hide. One front paw alone‘s bigger than me! And its four toes are topped with black, serrated claws, to boot. I move my gaze down to the tail, and I see that it is thicker than a tree trunk, complete with hundreds of lethal, giant spikes running down that can easily skewer a man with one flick of the tail. The rest of the tail ripples as the dragon slowly gets up, and I realize the tail, thick as a tree-trunk, can wrap around and strangle even the biggest of the dragon’s enemies. What interests me, though, was that it narrowed to a whip-thin end. The dragon’s bones creak as the giant wings stretched out, and I gasp in awe as I gaze upon the great, mighty, dark pinions that would, clearly effortlessly lift the beast into the sky. My reverie shifts when the dragon gazes directly down at me, and I am lost in gigantic yellow eyes that are the color of a sun rising.

Why have you come? I suddenly hear, rushing through my head with a distinct feminine tone.

I gag and stumble back, staring up at the dragon, thinking I am insane. “You can talk?!“ I whisper, in awe and disbelief.

You can listen? says the dragon, and I sputter with sheer disbelief, clutching at my head. A dragon. A gigantic dragon. A gigantic female talking dragon.

“I guess I can,” I say, and before I know it I am laughing at the sheer absurdity of it all. Once again, I gaze up at the dragon, reveling in her majestic form, realizing deep in myself that she was the most beautiful and terrible creature I have ever had the pleasure of laying my eyes on. My eyes run over her, my soul marveling at the majesty and rippling power of such a great, gargantuan dragon queen, who abruptly opens her enormous mouth with a creak and hisses at me.

I recoil in horror as she gives me an up-close view of her gaping wide gullet; her forked black tongue was at least five feet long, a dark saliva flicking off the ends of it. The teeth, hundreds of them, some little and some in a distinguished row, were sharper than any blade I’d ever seen. I gulp as I realize they are still bloody from the dragon’s last meal!

Why have you come? the dragon asks again.

I take in a deep breath and lean a little closer to the roiling pain in my soul. It leans back, whispering of relief. “I came here because there’s a desperate call in my heart, a-and it’s filling me with agony!” I blurt out, then I realize how absurd it sounded. I look up at the dragon plaintively. “Please, there’s something I have to find, and it’s here, in this mountain, and the pain is so unbearable that every second my soul is cracking apart.”

The dragon queen stares down at me. She blinks her giant eyes.

Then her lips curl, and she rumbles in her throat. My heart stops and time slows down, and I wait for the fire, and as the rumbles continue, I realize that she’s laughing.

You have come to be a dragon rider, she says, and her voice is heavy in my head.

I dart my head up. “A dragon rider? What’s that?”

If you choose to accept it, that is your new life, the ancient dragon says.

I stare into the eye of a painted dragon on an ancient, crumbling tapestry. The eye stares back.

“These are the dragon riders?” My voice is hushed with awe.

The mighty dragon behind me dips her head as I gaze around the room. The entire place is filled up with carvings, trinkets, and tapestries, all of dragons with humans riding on their backs. There is something special about each one, a shared glint in the eye of both depicted creatures.

I slowly pick up one carving, tracing my finger around this dragon: carved from stone, its head is thrown back in an open flame. A human rider crouches low on its back, his legs wrapped around his dragon’s neck.

My eyes flit to a tapestry. This one depicts a massive turquoise dragon, with the rider crouched close against the scales, her head pressed against her mighty dragon and her eyes closed. Judging from my dragon’s look when she had laughed, I’d say that the turquoise dragon is smiling. The pair looks in complete bliss, happy with the freedom of the air and with each other. Sudden longing pierces my chest, and I almost fall to my knees as it engulfs my senses.

Instantly a giant dragon snout, scaly and warm, is snorting and snuffling at me, concerned. I smile, and I slowly try to get up. It takes about a full minute before I can and do. I look up at my ancient dragon, amazed that she cares.

She rumbles deeply in her throat and regards me with gentle eyes. I am not your dragon. That title goes to the dragon who will be under you for your scenes. She waves a wing at everything in the room.

I choke on my breath. Wh-what?! My heart slams fast, with anticipation and confusion and sudden, spiraling hope, moving up so fast my eyes widen as it threatens to engulf me. I slam down to my knees again, overwhelmed with the feeling.

Say ‘I will’, a voice whispers into my head, a tendril of internal sound. Promise the call you will. I look desperately up at the ancient dragon, and I know she’s right.

I will, I promise, breathing deeply, entranced by the rush of love that engulf my own heart, a caring love so deep I never thought it could exist. I will. Together, we will have scenes like this, I know it… I kneel there, my eyes closed, my body swaying, as I croon to the call within my heart. And slowly, slowly it works; the pain fading to bearable levels, but still waiting eagerly, and the pressure in my head fades and my senses come rushing back. The hard cave floor underneath me. The smell of dragon around me: musky, tinted with fire. Gingerly, I get up, and I breathe. I nod my thanks to the dragon queen.

Her eyes spark with new fire. Come, she says, and sweeps gracefully out of the room. Much else to see.

“Uh,” I say, as I gaze upon the biggest pile of gold I have ever seen in my entire life. “Uh.” The shimmering coins piled even higher than the mother dragon, heaps upon heaps of them, all glittering much like the dragon herself in the dim light of the cave. “UH,” I say, as the dragon steps towards them and I realize that one wrong move from her could cause a full-scale avalanche.

Do not worry, she says, her voice the gentlest I have ever heard, I would never risk my babies.

My heart stops, then starts again. In a daze, I follow the mother, whose entire frame exhumes pride as she noses aside some of the gold. I desperately scramble over some of the mountain of gold and peek over, needing to see.

“Aaup!” A giant snout snags me from behind and lifts me up in the air effortlessly. The dragon queen’s neck arches as the hoard gets smaller as I am lifted, slowly, through the air, and deposited with an “oof!” near the cavern we’d come in from.

“H-hey!” I protest, scrambling up as soon as she lets go of me, thinking, I’ve just been carried by a dragon, but still moving to get closer.

Earn my trust, the mother dragon says, and her eyes glint again. Earn my trust, and then I will let you near my babies.

I hesitate, and my longing presses against my heart, and a lump forms in my throat. “How?” I ask hoarsely.

She smiles. First, ride.

“AAH!” I wobble, and I only don’t fall off when the mother tilts herself, ever so gently, and I throw myself back against the great scaly neck. “Y-you said this was going to be easy!!”

Not so. She rumbles deep in her throat. Bend over more. Clutch my scales with the confidence of a dragon rider, not a halfwit scrap of terror. Slight disdain punctures her mental voice.

I scowl and I do it. I will make myself into the rider I am meant to be!

She suddenly angles upwards, pumping her wings slowly and easily. Mist dances upon my face, and I gasp when we crest the horizon. The sun has just begun to rise, and the clouds are only now gathering, as we break them and glide. Ohh, it-it’s so beautiful…

The mother turns her head and smiles at me—well, as close as a dragon can get to a smile, anyway. Does this feel like your purpose? Does it fulfill you your top to your end?

I nod numbly, and she opens her mouth and roars, the mighty sound echoing all across the Valley, and deep in the distance, I squint and I see another dragon opening its jaws to roar back at her—a coppery dragon, much smaller than the mother. Without hesitation, she spirals down into a dive that takes my breath away with adrenaline, and before I know it we are rocketing gloriously through the sky, her wings cutting through the wind, and I am screaming like a banshee, and then we are drawing up, up, up, into the wonderful sky together…

I groan with contentment and hold back a belch.

One wouldn’t think dragons can cook, but when the mother brought back an entire bristly boar after our dawn flight together, she had delicately ripped off a piece and cooked it to perfection for me, and there was no way I was saying no.

I smile, and the call cries along with me, happy and anticipating more, tension still ringing its voice.

Soon, I promise it, and the call fades again.

I look up at the giant dragon queen towering before me. “Can we see the eggs?” I plead, and she nods and gets up, and I follow her out of the giant main chamber which, I am amazed to see in the light of day, is actually a perfectly natural cave that connects to the hoard chamber and the dragon rider’s chamber. I smile, remembering the mountains we had seen that ring half the valley, feeling indescribably lucky to be a part of all this.

We reach the hoard chamber, and I am anxious to get a look, but I note the mother’s presence and I stay still until she lets me go forward, putting out a wing to let me know my boundaries.

I look as close as I can get without arousing ire from the mother.

Deep in the center of the mountain of gold, I see the nest, a surprisingly small thing, made mostly of stones and just big enough to keep the eggs secure, and I count, holding my breath, one, two, three, four eggs. They are almost disappointingly plain, the grey color of the stone, and then it clicks within my brain that the color is for camouflage against bare, smooth rock. The mother rumbles in approval and moves her wing a little farther back, and I rush to get closer.

From this angle, they look like they come up just to my chin, and when I look back at the mother dragon, I am amazed that eggs so tiny—well, compared to her—can grow into THAT.

The mother’s thrumming laugh echoes through my head, only to be cut off by a hiss when I overstep. Quickly I back up, my eyes still focused on the eggs, wondering about the certain sheen to them…and when I realize it, I laugh.

They sparkle, almost like diamonds. I had seen a diamond once, back on the farm, which had recently been washed up by a flood in a stroke of incredible luck. I had been disappointed when its finder had thrown it back, as everyone knows it’s more than bad luck to hold onto any sort of jewel with dragons living right next to you. The mother grunts, and scales the massive hoard in just two steps, laying with her body coiled around the egg-nest, settling with her tail facing me and her mighty wings stretched out to either side, planted on the ground in a way that displayed her sheer size. I gawp as she settles down—that hoard’s height had been insane, and she just climbed up it like it was nothing. Smiling to myself as I realize this was the most normal thing I’d seen today, I take another moment to marvel at the feat I had just seen, then I wondered what the eggs were made of. Diamond? No, then they’d be white. Some kind of quartz? No, then they’d be too heavy…

A growl from the mother dragon, atop her colossal hoard of gold.

I turn, curious and startled, to the enormous mother coiled around the eggs. Made of what? I silently ask, pressing back.

Her eyes glint with a sharp protectiveness. Not for humans to know, she says, and she pushes me over with one wing when I attempt to get closer. I scowl, and I push myself up as her giant wing folds back again.

My eyes focus in on the eggs, needing to see what I can, and before I know it, I am retorting, If I were to harm your eggs, I would have shown my treachery by now! Do not hold back knowledge from me when I have never wronged y—

In the blink of an eye, the mother’s tail has slapped me down, amazingly keeping my bones intact as the shock of it ripples through my body. Waves of terror pulse at my brain, as images of my face being eaten by a dragon rampage through my head, over and over, magnifying to a horrifying scale when the mother actually does creak open her mighty jaws, exposing razor-sharp teeth and a void of a gullet.

It takes seconds of maddened thrashing before I slowly realize, she’s not moving towards me. I stop thrashing, my entire body shaking wildly at the terror.

She closes her jaws with a magnificent creak, I dimly note, and as relief washes me, she gazes at me with one soul-piercing eye. The yellow veins and slashed pupil are marred by anger.

I am a drakones of over a thousand years, she rumbles, her voice amplified inside my brain, and you think to decide my actions?

“No,” I squeak, and as soon as the coils of her tail relax, I thrust myself forwards in a bow, my eyes wide with terror and desperation as my pulse slams against my throat.

Her eye stares deep into the folds of my soul. Will you ever do it again?

“Never,” I croak, lowering myself more. “N-never again, gr-great queen.”

She opens her jaws and hisses, the hiss revertebrating across the giant cavern, loud and long. I shut my eyes and whimper, my limbs shaking as I try not to fall over from the fear.

Eventually I open my eyes, still shaking, terrified, as I look up at her. Time means nothing as I get lost in her golden gaze, until abruptly she turns her head away. My instincts scream at me to move, but, out of terror and a desperate need to prove my loyalties, I stay bowing, until she looks at me with a glint in her eye that tells me, unmistakably, to get out.

I scramble to my feet and rush from the chamber.

I sit, huddling against the corner in the dragon rider room, holding the carving of the stone dragon and rider. I trace my finger over the head of the rider, wanting desperately for this to be me, and I feel the call shifting inside me, chastising me for my reckless act in the egg chamber.

I feel the floor shaking with the mother dragon’s arrival. Shutting my eyes for a second, I stand up to face her.

Her yellow eyes have a surprisingly regretful hue about them. I am sorry for being so extreme, she rumbles, but I must protect my babies. She moves her head down closer to me. At all costs. Her voice rings out in my head with all the deadliness she possesses, and I shudder at the thought of this great creature’s wrath.

I understand, I reply back huskily, and I should have not been so reckless, I just needed to answer the call in my heart….

The glint in her eyes turns to one of understanding. If you show me respect and an open heart, I may allow you to touch my babies tomorrow. Something unidentifiable turns behind her eyes. But only if you earn it.

I will, I say, and then I grin.Did I just talk to you in my head?

The mighty dragon gives me the faintest of grins back. So you did. She tosses her head at the main chamber behind her. It should be midday soon. She glances at me quizzically. How many times do you humans eat?

A lot, I admit, still finding it unreal that I am talking to a dragon in my head. I’ll probably have to eat again around sundown.

She rumbles at me, and turns around, and when I follow her, she turns her head around and says, I will hunt again, but I cannot do this so often.

Don’t worry, I tell her, with a slight smile. I’m a human, and humans can eat plants, meat, fish, birds… I can literally eat anything able to be eaten by a mammal.

The mother dragon grunts, and with a rush of wings, she flies out of the cave. I smile as I sit down with the dragon carving again, looking it in the eye, promising I can make it.

“What?”

The powerful dragon queen’s eyes glint at me. Put on the armor set.

I let my eyes wash over the thick leather of the full-body outfit, noting with interest the way the material of the shape for knees and thighs looks made to be bendy and flexible. Do I need to repeat myself? She asks quietly, the tiniest glint of pure danger beneath her voice.

I hastily shake my head as I set to putting on the armor. To my surprise, this armor is comfortable, and fits me almost perfectly. “How did—“ I cut myself off as a flashback of the dragon rider room… and how many artifacts lie in there… and that there were no more riders now… and that so many of them must’ve..!

I choke, tears brimming in my eyes as an unspeakable sadness grips my heart. All those riders and dragons, dead! And all those bonds, gone! The sheer magnitude of all the deaths grasps me in an unreality, and almost unconsciously I open my mouth and let out a mewling sound, and I probably would’ve fallen over in tears and never gotten up if it weren’t for the mother dragon.

Come now, her calm, gentle voice says into my thoughts, piercing the thickening despair and grief with an unexpected rush of so much love and fondness, for each of those dragons and riders. Do you really think they all fell at the same time?

I jerk my head up, hope cresting my darkness. “Wh-what do you mean?” I croak hoarsely, hardly daring to believe some had survived.

The mother dragon throws back her head and chuckles, the sound thrumming around the cavern. She lowers her head and levels her eyes with me, and gentleness shimmers in them in a golden glow. Those pairs lived, died, and fought together with honor. She pauses. There were many events to wipe them out, she says huskily, but the dragon riders always bounced back. Something like grief washes over her eyes, accompanied by the faintest hint of an emotion I had never seen her display—fear. But in the instant it appeared, it was gone, as quick as breath leaves one’s body in any exhale. This armor, she says as she lowers her massive head and nudges the helmet towards me, it’s the armor of a true dragon rider. Wear it with pride, and love your dragon well.

The second she finishes saying those words, my heart is swamped by a rush of unspeakable love, not a crashing wave this time, but a powerful force meaning no harm. I close my eyes and whimper hoarsely as I realize—I have the exact same love deep inside of me. Closing my eyes, I do my best to push my own loyalty, love, and need to love this feeling back. Deep inside, something cries out for joy and I can almost see the shape of a small dragon rearing up on its back legs and dancing…

The mother dragon jerks up her head, but I barely notice: I rush to put on the armor, knowing it is the exact right thing to do in this moment.

Love, gratitude, and power surge through me as a force, more powerful than the last one, and I lift my head and scream, a torrent of sound coming from my own mouth, louder than I thought I could produce; a tide of ferocity and love and a vow of protection that is completely my own. The mother dragon jerks her head towards me as I continue, then I finish my call with a long whistling moan.

She stares at me for another moment, and I see so many emotions flicker across her eyes: fear, love, ancient knowledge, and the terror of somebody with everything to lose. Heart-ripping pain burns as hot as the brightest fire in her eyes. Come, she says, in the hoarsest tone I have ever heard from anyone, and moves out of the dragon riders’ chamber. It is time.

We move back to the mound of gold, but this time my heart is pounding with excitement, and the dragon rider’s folds on my body move so smoothly with me it feels better than any regular armor ever would feel. I close my eyes and laugh as the hoard sparkles, as the mother dragon wastes zero time lifting me up and down to the eggs.

For a moment, I just stare at them. I am mesmerized! I couldn’t tell last time, but this time, I know these eggs are brimming with hidden power, just waiting to burst out of the shell.

I scan each egg deliberately in turn, hoping for a call.

You must touch them, the massive dragon queen rumbles, and shifts her great body into a sitting position. Touch them, and find out which one of my babies is yours.

I slowly reach out towards the biggest egg, a little back in the nest. As soon as I do, a bright flash of pain sears my mind. “Ow!” I cry, and clutch my head. Then I clear my resolve. Not that one. I move to the next egg.

I get a shocking this time, slightly more powerful than the first egg’s had been. “Ach,” I complain, and I look at the last two eggs.

Something about the third one, a little one, calls to me. Something mysterious. Something that could change my life forever, if only I had the guts to reach out and touch it with my hand. Without hesitation, I reach for it, and the pain of the call immediately splits into my soul—not held back by me this time; but as it spreads and cracks like lightning, I am forced to scream and writhe around on the floor. Despite my best efforts, I have to let the egg go, and I try, only to find out that I can’t! I gaze down in horror at the egg as the pain moves up to my skull, and I throw my head back, my eyes widening and my mouth open as screams rip from my mouth.

Time passes, and before I know it, it’s over. One instant I am keening on the ground, my hands wrapped around the egg, and the next the pain vanishes. Shock rushes through me, and I jerk my eyes around to stare at the egg before ripping my hands off the shell. Huddling on the ground and taking deep breaths, I whip around to glare at the mother. “What was that?!” I hiss through clenched teeth, saliva still coming from my mouth.

Touch him again, is what she says, her voice thick.

As I turn to the egg, it beckons me and draws me in closer, and before I can stop myself, I throw my torso forwards and lay both hands on the shell.