The Age of Talon and Brimstone

There weren’t always dragons in the valley.

The earth hadn’t always been charred and the wind hadn’t always wailed mournfully over the barren mountains cresting each side of the lowland area.

No, once, the valley of Agrarius had been lush, peaceful — the skies clear and brilliantly blue.

Before the age of talon and brimstone the valley had been beautiful. Picturesque really, with cobblestone cottages dotting the hills, plumes of pure white smoke drifting up from their happy little hearths.

I remember it vividly, how simple things had once been. The memories of the quiet valley resurface occasionally with a vehemence, like a knife to the heart, curling my fingers into shaking fists.

It had been teeming with life. The children meandering about - their mothers and fathers watching over them from a distance, barely worrying after them as they chased each other through waves of rolling green.

Their parents hadn’t been watching too carefully of course. Their valley had been safe. They had been safe; the children, their mothers, and their fathers. Safe to live their quiet little lives, nestled in the bosom of Agrarius’ abundant Valley.

They had tended to livestock, and feasted beneath stars that had once been so bright the night sky seemed to be adorned by thousands of miniature suns.

My elder brother, Cadmus, and I had played on those very same sloping hills, feasted beneath those very same stars.

Laughter had carried on gentle gales, twining with the smells of heady spices melting into broiling meats and the blooming of wildflowers. There had been other scents too of course - the tang of salt from the sea over the distant ridges and of the sheep, their musk, that permeated it all.

Things changed with the birth of the Scourge.

Those smells are long gone now, the laughter long since silenced. The winds have blown the residuals of the valley’s past far beyond the reaches of here and now.

There are times I swear that in the grey smoke that now seems to perpetually rise from the scorched earth, I can still see the children playing. And on the winds that howl over these now desolate lands, I hear the tinkling sounds of their laughter.

Now is not one of those times. Very real voices murmur from the doorway behind me.

There is a heated conversation taking place. I can barely make out the words. I don’t really care to. “What is it?” My voice is hoarse. It feels as though ages have passed since I’ve uttered a word. And perhaps it has been — ages. These days, time seems to fly faster than the winds.

The voices - there are two of them - whisper again, before silence falls. As silent as silence can be with the wind pounding against the crumbling stone walls. Boots scuff across the floor. “Captain Orinda.” Comes the reedy voice of one of my soldiers, Azur. I straighten, the scaled armour on my arm clinking softly against the rough hewn chair as it falls. “Milady-,” Azur begins again. I can picture his jaw working, fingers twisting together as he tries to find the right words.

“I won’t repeat myself, Azur. Speak.”

“They- The-,” Azur is cut off by a roar that shakes the dilapidated keep. Tiny pieces of gravel skitter by my booted feet. The vibrations hum along my bones, calling to a visceral part of me, quieting my thoughts and straightening my spine. My gaze focuses on the open window. Dark shapes bank around the smothering grey clouds that scatter the crimson sky. “The Dragons, they’re here.” Azur finishes meekly. I can hear the fear in his voice, how it squeaks along the syllables of his breathy words. They’re here. They’re here. Dread trills through me.

I stand and brush past him, my hand on the hilt of the sword at my side. More dragon cries boom through the valley. The great beasts extend their wings - gliding on currents of air, streams of fire surging from their maws as they circle the sky.

The valley has gone silent, not even the wind dares a whisper against them. In the distance, however, thunder grumbles.

The sound of my footfalls echo through the empty corridors. This place had once been the house of a lord. It was one of the only buildings left standing after the Scourge had lain waste to almost everything else. This fortress has been repurposed for the war waging in the valley. I know it by heart, have stalked through these halls day after day, gone over battle plans with my comrades in the dining hall.

Pausing before the doors to the balcony to gather my courage; I roll my shoulders back, and loose the breath I had been holding. I know what I must do.

I push open the doors, stepping out onto the large platform of stone. The air is thick and promises rain. Storm clouds have gathered above and with them a sense of foreboding. Perhaps the gods are sending me an omen, warning me off this path. It’s too late for warnings.

The dragons are closer now, a wing-length or two away from where I stand with the wind pulling my hair for its tie.

The smaller of the two dragons lands before me, the sound of its impact muffled by a peal of thunder. I step forward my hand finding the hilt of my sword. The dragon is lithe, with blue scales and serpentine amber eyes. She surveys me, nostrils flaring, wings tucking in tight, before inclining her head to me. With relief threatening to steal the strength from my knees, I incline mine as well.

I don’t know what I expected to happen, I invited them here after all.

A light flashes and a woman stands in the blue dragon’s place. She rolls her neck, long white hair tipped by blue sliding over a naked shoulder. “Azur!” I bark and he runs forward, none too steadily - tripping over his feet before bowing low, a plush robe offered up on extended arms.

She is older than I expected, light indentations of crows feet around her eyes, my mother’s eyes. But unlike my mother’s eyes, hers hold no warmth as she gazes at me. The woman tilts her head at me looking utterly predatory, and amused of all things. “Hello, Niece.” She croons with a sneer. I inhale sharply, can feel the distain twitching at my lips.

As she dresses the other dragon lands behind her. This one is much larger, with midnight scales and a thick ridged scar down the left side of its face.

A crack of lightning splits the sky and rain begins to fall. “Oh honestly,” the woman gripes shrinking back as if she can avoid the fat droplets falling from the sky. “what I wouldn’t give for a sun warmed rock right now.” The man now standing behind her laughs darkly, shrugging a robe over his muscular shoulders. “And you wonder why we are so stereotyped, Serpahina.” “As if anyone would prefer bone chilling rain to sunbathing.”

“Come inside.” I call, waving Azur off to the kitchens. “We have much to discuss.” “So much for formalities.” Seraphina murmurs. With that I spin on my heel, hand still white knuckled around the hilt of my sword, and stride back into the fortress behind me.

✶

Seraphina, the queen of dragons sits across from me at the table, looking more like a petulant child than royalty - her fingers drumming an irritated riff on the wood.

The other Dragon, Nithe, stands behind her. Unarmed and dressed in only a simple robe, he somehow still manages to look both imposing and frightful. Though I suppose, if the reports I have received on Nithe are true, the General of his Majesties Draconic army has no need for a weapon. He is one.

Seraphina and I have been engaged in a silent battle of wills for the better part of a quarter hour, each of us holding each others gaze without breathing. Each of us waiting for the other to break first. I don’t have time for this. I take a steadying breath, tamping my pride before blinking. “I have summoned you here to ask the help of your clan.” My heart beats once, twice, and thunder rumbles in the heavens above.

“I don’t think you are in a position to be asking for anything, child.” Her voice is lilting. The graceful cadence of it so at odds with the wolffish gleam in her eyes and frigidity of her words.

“Allow me to rephrase then, you will lend me the help of your clan.”

One of her eyebrows quirks upwards, a mirthless smile pulling at her thin lips. “Oh? What has led you to draw this conclusion.”

“Is it not your sworn duty to protect your kin? Is it not your obligation as queen to defend those of your blood?”

She sucks at her teeth, irk narrowing her eyes before she raises her hand to study her nails. “My duty is to those of pure draconic lineage, not volatile children with muddled blood.” She looks to me as her lips curl around the word blood, dragging her gaze over my face before returning to her nails.

My grip tightens on the arms of my chair, her fleeting appraisal and apparent disapproval raking their claws over my shoulders. I try to take a calming breath, try to loosen my fingers, try to push down my bruised pride. It’s an effort, my jaw clenched so hard I swear I can hear my teeth cracking. My mother always said I was too much like her for my own good. She would chide me for being too indulgent with my emotions - for lacking control. So I try, for her sake and the sake of my comrades, to reign in my anger. I try and I fail.

My chest tightens as my fingers dig in harder, the wood groaning beneath them. “Don’t you see what I’ve accomplished? What I stand to accomplish if you lend me your support—” A musical trill of laughter cuts me off, her eyes snapping to me once more. “It is hard to miss your supposed accomplishments, Scourge.” I almost flinch as she spits that name at me. Scourge. The name bestowed upon me by the human rebels. “The fields of fire beyond these walls were sowed by your hands, yes?” She doesn’t wait for me to respond, nails forgotten she leans forward. “This valley used to be fertile. Overflowing with flora and fauna,” Her tone is clipped. “with children.” The word is a dagger to the gut. My heart beats louder, bile rising up in my throat. The wind whines past the window, and try as I might to ignore it, beneath it’s moaning I can hear the laughter of those children.“There is blood on your hands, Orinda.”

I have tried so hard to keep those two halves of myself separate, to lock the Scourge into the deepest recesses of my mind and only free her when absolutely necessary.

“I would do it all again.” My words are a whisper. Not soft, but sharp — violent. As much as it sickens me, its the truth. For my brother and my father, I would do it again.

My penance would come later, once I had won this war. Only then would I atone for the sins written in the blood staining my skin and gristle in my teeth.

Seraphina’s eyebrows draw together, before she drops her chin and pinches the bridge of her nose. When she looks back to me, her face is full of pity. Pity. That look feeds the anger roiling beneath my flesh. The air around me becomes stifling. Heat radiating from my skin. I can taste smoke, acrid and biting with rage. I exhale through clenched teeth, twin tendrils of smoke twisting up towards the ceiling. Talons snap out from the tips of my fingers. Nithe takes a step forward but Seraphina lifts her hand, halting him. I can feel the brand of his gaze on my face, swear his eyes flash with warning. The queen takes a deep breath.

“I understand that you have lost your brother and…” She pauses before sighing out “your father—”

“Lost? No, it is not as though they are missing. They have been taken from me, murdered by the people of this valley. The very people my father called family.”

“Well perhaps that was his error of judgment—”

“This is your fault and no one else’s, Seraphina. The dominos have toppled and it was your hand that pushed the first piece. It was the calls you made all those years ago that lead to the deaths of my family.” Flames flicker in her eyes, the amber twisting with shades of red and white hot blue. “You forget yourself.”

“I forget nothing.” I growl. “You live a cushy life in the safety of your mountains while families that you have ostracized, families like mine are forced to fight tooth and claw for their lives.”

“Your mother knew what she was getting herself into when she wed your father.“

“She was your heir.”

“Was indeed. Ember disobeyed me and was met with consequences. She willingly yielded the crown and her right as my successor when she lay with that— that human man.”

“His name was Tovi.” I snarl.

Seraphina spits. “She tainted our bloodline. I should have had her drowned for such a crime. I think I was rather benevolent when sentencing her to exile.”

“The fate you bestowed on her, on our family — your family — was hardly benevolent. My mother used to pray that her Draconian gifts had not passed to my brother and I. Do you know why, Aunt?”

She sniffs, rolling her shoulders back and tilting her chin up. “I won’t pretend to know what would motivate my sister, a formerly proud Draconic princess, to beseech the gods for such a thing.”

“She knew that the emergence of our gifts would be our death sentence. Here among the humans, exiled from our people, she knew they would kill us, knew they wouldn’t understand us. That they would fear us.” Seraphina’s lips are pressed into a thin line.

“Fear is an ugly thing, Aunt. It cocoons hearts and rots them from the inside out.” I can see the emotions warring in her eyes, see that Seraphina at least agrees with that. I continue, breathing ragged. “She prayed for us until the day she passed on to the ether. Though, I guess her prayers fell upon deaf ears, for not long after she died, Cadmus’ dragon woke. He and my father paid the price of our bloodline with their lives.” I roll my shoulders back, force my talons to retract. The part of me that is the Scourge fights it, wills me to loose the dragon that prowls beneath my flesh.

My father had been born in this very valley. Pitifully human, soft and weak. Papa had been raised — nestled in Agrarius’ bountiful valley— alongside its people. They had watched him take his first steps, sang songs with him.

Not that it had mattered, they had killed him anyways.

They had strung Papa up to a stake, a son of their own soil, and burned him alive. His crimes, they said, had been bringing his monstrous spawn into their quaint little valley — putting them and their peace at risk.

Their children had watched with wide, excited eyes from behind their jeering mother and fathers.

The heat of that fire, stirred by his screams, had woken my dragon.

“While I may have blood on my hands, the people of Agrarius spilled the first drops.”

Their fear and fire had taken my family from me, woken the beast that lay dormant beneath my skin and all I had been able to see was red. And thus, the Scourge had been born.

The winds had stopped echoing with their laughter soon after. It soon wailed with their screams. Their cries.

These people had destroyed my life, so I destroyed theirs. My fires had been their retribution.

“Ember would not have wanted—”

I cut her off with a sharp shake of my head. Her words prodding at the anger I have only just put back to sleep. “Do not claim to know anything about what my mother would or would not have wanted. She is gone, and it has been years since you have known her. I miss her, I do, but I am glad she did not live to see the light leave their eyes.”

“I am sorry for what you have been through, child.” Her words are tentative but honest. I tilt my chin up, gazing down the length of my nose at her. “I don’t want your pity. I want your help. The human rebels are amassing forces east of the valley, dragons have been plummeting from the skies like shooting stars and I am all but helpless to stop it. This is war. We need to act accordingly.” The understanding in her eyes snuffs out.

“We don’t need to do anything. This campaign is one you have instigated on your own. I don’t know how you have rallied the draconic forces you have, gods only know why anyone would fight alongside you for this doomed cause. I only hope the others have enough sense to take to the skies and leave this place and you with it.”

Truthfully I don’t know how I amassed such a loyal following either. I had been prepared to die in this valley, alone and heartbroken. But word had apparently reached the Draconian capital, for other dragons had arrived, to back my cause. To fight alongside me.

They had come baring a letter written by a high ranking member of the Draconian armies, conveying his support and well wishes.

I look to General Nithe without thinking. A subconscious tick of the eyes. High ranking member indeed. The world around him narrows as I glare at him. He has not spoken a word this entire meeting, his savagely handsome face remaining infuriatingly neutral.

“You should have left well enough alone, Orinda, but you let your fires consume you and the smoke cloud your vision. We had an understanding with the humans—”

“Oh,” I laugh, the sound dark, humourless; it rumbling in my chest like the storm clouds above the valley, “oh yes, an understanding. Letting them slaughter our kin, without repercussion, is obviously a compromise.” Nithe’s face tightens, his jaw tensing at my words. “I have done what you could not, Aunt. They fear me. They will think twice before taking the lives of our children.”

The sounds of wind and rain fill the silence.

“I beg you, Aunt. Please.” The word is broken and meek. And it hurts, that simple word, tearing up my throat before leaving my lips. “If not for me, do it for your people.”

Cadmus’ face flashes at the back of my mind but I will it away, instead looking to Nithe, silently begging him to say something, anything. Speak. Help me. I am met by his silence once more but his dark eyes flash again.

What I had thought to be warning before… appeared to be pride. He nods to me, an almost imperceptible tilt of his chin, and hope swells in my chest.

Seraphina, my aunt, queen of the dragons, pushes herself up from her chair. With her hands splayed on the table she levels me in her amber eyes. “I won’t help you, Orinda.” And with that she retires to her rooms, leaves me blinking after her the hope crumbling in my chest.

✶

Panic and anger trill a curious melody in my blood. For the first time since I waged this war I am worried. I am frightened. Seraphina’s support had been my last hope in stamping out the rebellion. Summoning her had been my final resort to save my comrades. I haven’t had the nerve to send word to them yet. To know that their hope will be as thoroughly pissed on as mine had.

I am pacing the length of the dining room floor when a deep chuckle stops me in my tracks. “You did well.” A voice calls from the doorway. I spin slowly. Nithe leans in its frame. “Is that a joke?” I hiss. “She refused me. We -,” I gesture wildly to the keep around me, “are doomed. No thanks to you.” He straightens and walks towards me. “Leave me alone. I need to think.” He doesn’t stop. “Ori—, can I call you Ori?” My eye twitches, talons tearing out from my skin. “I would prefer it if you didn’t address me at all.”

Stopping before me, he tuts, tilting his head to the side. His curtain of dark hair brushes over his scar. “Maybe I wasn’t clear; Get the fuck out.” The light flashes off of my talon as I point towards the door. “Be a good dog and go find your master.” I snarl.

“You wound me.”

“I wound you?” I scoff. “That’s rich. You lied to me, Nithe, told me she had long since forgotten about my mothers transgression—,” the word is acid on my tongue. I spit on the ground before looking back up at him, lips peeling back from my teeth. “You told me she would help.” Tears sting my eyes, I try my best to blink them away. “When you wrote me all those months ago, you gave me hope. I expected a vicious draconic general who would back me in my pleas for her support. Imagine my surprise when I come to find he is nothing but a toothless lapdog instead.” A corner of his mouth tugs upwards at that.

“I never said she would help.” His voice is low, soft. “Then why?” I demand viciously. “Why have me summon her here if you knew it would all be for nothing?” I square my shoulders, glaring up at him. “What do you know of Draconic order of succession?” A question for a question. I don’t have time for this, for his games. I need to devise another plan, another way to win this war. My hands clench into fists, talons digging into the soft flesh of my hands. A frustrated garble of words escapes my lips before and I turn to leave. He catches my arm spinning me back around. “Seraphina is without an heir, Ori.” “Don’t call me that.” I warn.

Unfazed he continues, “She has no child of her own, and Ember is dead. Draconic law states that the throne must be passed to an heir. If there is no heir,” He pauses, flashing me a smile that has his canines glinting. “then it can be seized by a blood relative.” My body tenses as his words sink in. “You don’t mean…” I trail off, fixing his gaze with mine. “I do.” His hand trails down my arm to my hand, unfurling the fist and trailing his fingers along my palm.

He swallows thickly, anger and pain tightening the muscles of his face. I watch his fingers trace the lines of my hand, his scarred hand in mine. “Seraphina has turned a blind eye to the hardships of her people for far too long. The Draconians have long since been craving retribution for the crimes committed against their mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers.” His voice softens on that last word and my heart squeezes in my chest, dragging my gaze back up to his face.

“You are their vengeance, Orinda. You are the queen who will restore the power and glory to the Draconians.” I gape at him, eyebrows pulling together. “I can’t—” “You can. I didn’t convince her to come here because I thought you could change her mind,” He laughs. “she is far too prideful for that.”

He draws my sword from its sheath with his free hand. The metal hisses. “I brought her here so that you could seize the throne.” He places the hilt of it in my open palm, closing my fingers around it. “Seize it — by force and steel and blood.” His voice is deep and impassioned. So much so that goosebumps rise along my flesh and tears prick the backs of my eyes once more. “I am with you, Ori. Your people will back you and fly here to your aid.” He kneels before me, bowing his head as if pledging fealty.

The tears finally fall from my eyes. But these are not tears of anger or sadness, no. These tears are those of relief. Of resolution. I tighten my grip on the hilt, inhaling deeply. What difference will more blood on my hands make? I will repent later. He looks up at me through his lashes and I feel a savage smile pull at my lips before nodding. His features relax, relief and pride shining in his eyes. “Perhaps you do have teeth afterall, little pup.”

There weren’t always dragons in the valley, but if I have anything to say about it - here the dragons will remain forevermore.