The Dragon's Charge

Heavy and cold was the gloom of the forest, and pale, as though color itself had been leached from the world. Silver barked trees reached high into the canopy, their dark green leaves now black under the heatless and fading sunlight. It was there, in the forest of Dyn, that Gristurm found the toddler. He had heard its cry, the unmistakable wail of a child in distress, and felt duty-bound to investigate the source of the noise as quickly as he could. It was not an easy feat given his size, and many a young tree was felled in his haste. He was also nearly spent, his energy reserves dwindling after a long flight at a breakneck pace.

Before long he found the child, no more than a handful of years old, sitting alone in a small glade with its back to him. On his approach, Gristurm heard several wolves flee his presence. Not a creature in the forest would challenge a fully grown dragon, no matter how hungry or desperate they were. He peered with a single, great, yellow eye through the trees that made up the glade and wondered why the youngster was all alone in a dangerous wood. Looking closer, Gristurm saw pointed ears peeking through a head of long, dark hair: this child was an elf. The dragon instinctively uttered a thundering groan of sympathy. The child’s gaze snapped in his direction, clearly afraid of whatever belonged to the intimidating rumble.

Moving with deliberate care, Gristurm stepped out from behind the trees and into the glade. The face of a beautiful little boy tracked him, his puffy, reddened eyes round as saucers. The gray dragon tried to appear less menacing, if that were possible, but the toddler’s chin began to quiver nonetheless. He screwed his eyes shut and let out a coughing sob. Gristurm winced from the piercing note, but he stayed the course. His size quickly filled the glade, his scales rustling the surrounding trees and stripping their bark clean as he circled the noisemaker. He lowered himself to the ground, careful not to jostle the little elf, and completed the circle with a tuck of his tail.

In his mind, he reached out to the child. He reasoned that the babe was too young to converse, so he impressed his intent onto him. He felt his spirit, a bright, but tiny light amidst a sea of dark, murky blue, and poured a sense of peace and calm over it like a small stream over pebbles. After a moment longer, the child ceased his fussing and looked up at the great creature that was suddenly all around him. He sniffled and rubbed a chubby hand over his eyes.

Right, let’s have a look at you, Gristurm thought, glad to be free of the grating cry.

The dragon craned his head slightly to get a better view of his other side. At first, he thought the boy's arm was caught in his red tunic, but now he understood: one of the arms was malformed. Where the left arm should have been, there was only a small hand attached to a short stump, as though the upper part of his arm never grew. Gristurm’s forepaw on the outside of the circle, hidden from the child’s view, flexed and dug into the earth, peeling it back like flesh from bone. His great jaws clenched shut, and muscle bulged at his cheek. It took every measure of control he had within him to not leap into the air and lay waste to the first elven dwellings he found.

Elves were a beautiful and ancient race, but they sought purity above all else. In times long passed, their quest for perfection resulted in magnificent works of art – furniture, paintings, clothing, jewelry, sculptures, ships, and buildings that defied description or belief. But their attentions eventually turned inward, and wicked voices took over their high councils. Before long, they were bent on war and forcing their will on the other races in the land. Their beauty became terrible instead of welcoming, and fear traveled ahead of them wherever they marched. The elves had become a cruel and cynical people. So cruel even, that a horrid practice arose sometime in the last several centuries: if a newborn was deemed less than standard by their parents, the child was discarded. The most common method of disposal came in the form of walking far from civilization and abandoning the child to the elements. In the elves’ view, the children were simply being reclaimed by the natural order. To others, it further reinforced their wariness and the image the elves had cultivated; one of malice and disdain.

Gristurm contemplated these things as he gazed into the alabaster face of the foundling elf he encircled. Bright blue eyes the color of an autumn sky stared back at his own. The boy had the high cheekbones and thin features typical of an elf, though softened by his tender age. To the untrained eye, one might have assumed he was a girl given how delicate his features were, but Gristurm’s eye had been quite trained to spot the telltale marks of elven masculinity. As a dragon in the oldest order of riders in the known world - the Order of Angharad, a quasi-religious peacekeeping group founded by the ancestral dragon herself - he had borne many an elf into battle.

At almost two thousand years old, Gristurm was a living legend. The Ghost of the South Winds, they called him. Over the course of his lifetime he had turned the tide of more than a hundred battles and several dozen wars. His riders had come and gone - elves, men, and dwarves alike - either falling to the sword or to old age. One rider stood out from the rest, however. His name was Cadfayl Sionson, a human born to peasant tailors, and Gristurm was bonded to him on the eve of his seventeenth birthday. Cadfayl and Gristurm traveled together through the long years of the human’s life, facing innumerable challenges. Both sharpened and spurred the other on to greater heights. As a paired dragon and rider, there was not another coupling in all of recorded history that achieved as much as they.

But those days of glory were gone now. The elves had conquered all but the last bastions of the other races. The dwarves were beaten back into the keeps built deep in the hearts of their mountains. Men fell on the field of battle and behind the walls of their cities in droves, and only a smattering of resistors was left alive, carried away by the wind to the far corners of the world. And Gristurm’s order was broken, splintered into rival factions as politics and racial divides drove the riders apart. The infighting amongst the riders was untenable from the moment it began. In the beginning it was merely heated arguments between friends, but bitter words soon gave way to open conflict. Many of the elven riders and their dragons defected to join their kin in war, seeking to lay claim to the newly subjugated lands. Those opposed to the elves rushed to the defense of the few strongholds the undying army had yet to reach, but their efforts were in vain. This was a war of attrition, and the elves had attacked too swiftly and decisively to properly counter.

One last battle was the death knell for all who dared defy the elves on their mad conquest. It was during this final confrontation, not four days passed, high above the human city of Goldspire that Cadfayl was slayed by a disgraced rider and former friend named Vheridar, who spurned the Order of Angharad to be the right hand of the elven king. The empty saddle and constant reminders of his rider’s absence sat heavy and oppressive on Gristurm’s heart. The lack of his rider’s weight particularly became an ever-present awareness not only of everything he had lost, but of the state of the world he was once able to protect. With considerable effort, he wrenched his focus away from those dismal thoughts and back to the child.

The elf pulled himself to his feet and teetered back and forth as he took in the dragon's size. His brilliant blue eyes followed the line of spikes down his neck, over the leather saddle that looked a bit like a child’s pack being carried by a giant, and down the spikes of the dragon’s back around to the right. When his gaze arrived back at Gristurm's thickly scaled and toothy face, he fell back on his bottom with a huff. Gristurm pondered what kind of parent could desert their child, especially one so helpless. While a part of him hoped that he would never have the displeasure of meeting such a person, another part knew exactly what he would do if he did.

He licked his chops, lost in a daydream.

A shiver ran through his young companion, and Gristurm shook himself from his musing. He shifted slightly on the ground, exposing the softer, more skin-like side of his underarm. Perhaps the toddler felt he no longer posed a threat, or maybe it was the calming sensation that the dragon had washed over him, but he seemed to understand that he was no longer in danger, and crawled to him. Gristurm bent his neck down as the boy nestled against him and yawned, his eyelids suddenly too heavy to keep open. In under a minute, gravity won out and his lids fell, head resting against the dragon’s massive gray foreleg. For the first time, Gristurm noticed a dark ruddy stain on his scales that was not there before. Curious, he sniffed at the smear and a memory overtook him.

Cadfayl let loose a battle cry as Gristurm dove after another rider and dragon.

A ferocious roar. His own? Another’s? He could not recall.

Air ripped past his locked shoulders so fast it screamed.

A clash of dragons and a flash of steel.

The dragon in his clutches howled out in agony as Gristurm bit down hard on his neck.

A painful collision from behind. Claws dug sharply at his back, but did not find purchase.

Confusion. They tumbled through the air before he leveled out and created ample space to recover.

A tug at his shoulder.

Cadfayl’s lifeless body slipped from his saddle and fell past him above a blanket of clouds.

It all happened so fast...That betrayer! He growled to himself, mulling over the treachery of his partner’s killer. Then he made a promise to Vheridar as much as to himself. We will meet again; I’ll make sure of it.

From that dreadful moment, the battle was lost, and the survivors fled or were run down. Gristurm was one of the former, escaping the steely talons of his enemies, flying as far to the north as his wings could carry him. He rode the wind currents for several days, until hunger, thirst, and the need to rest compelled him to land. For all the miles he placed between himself and defeat, the image of his rider disappearing into the cloud layer stubbornly clung to his mind. A part of him knew the memory would never leave. He could only become more comfortable with its presence. The sooner he did that, the sooner he would find peace...but for now, peace was something he did not desire. He wanted to grieve a while longer, to be driven by his pain. Men of Cadfayl’s quality were rare, and Gristurm's life would never be the same without him.

Emotional fatigue took hold, but Gristurm drove it back. Instead of giving in to sleep, he extended a wing over the child to provide shelter from the elements, and stood guard against the setting of the sun. He heard the elfling coo every so often, and twice he checked on him, but he was fast asleep, bewitched by dreams. Gristurm hoped they were peaceful ones. He stared on towards the west, a stalwart protector of what precious little innocence was left in the world, listening closely for signs of danger as the forest grew still. Eventually his mind reached its exhaustion point, and he laid his head down, closing off the child from the outside and lapsing into sleep himself.

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Hours after the sun fell and night enveloped the forest in a veil of stars, Gristurm awoke. He craned his long neck, stretching languidly, and checked on the elfling. Still asleep, arm wrapped tight around as much of Gristurm’s forearm as he could hold. The dragon sniffed him. Everything seemed to be in order - so what woke him?

A chill ran down his scales as he registered another’s eyes on him. He looked to and fro through the silver trees now bleached in the moonlight, careful not to wake the child, as he searched for the source of his unease. A shadow crossed the moon above and Gristurm tensed, extending his claws, readying himself for anything. Silence fell, thick and expectant. Not a creature or leaf stirred beneath the full moon and starry expanse. Just as Gristurm decided to stand and have it over with, a flash of light overtook his vision. His eyes remained open, but they saw nothing beyond the picture in his mind.

No longer was he in the glade with the elf in the forest of Dyn, but on a flat field that spread out wide in every direction at the foot of a grand mountain fortress. He recognized it to be Castle Malagoss, which sat deep in elven territory. On either side of him, stretching as far as his elevated perspective could reveal were armored figures of every size and shape. Legions of dwarves in their thick plate stood in tight formations, scores of men with their scaled cuirasses were mustered along the vast swathe that made up the line, and much to Gristurm’s surprise, an army of elves in brightly decorated plate befitting their exquisite craftsmanship manned the flanks. These armies were not meeting in a maelstrom of blood and steel, but were standing together, side by side. The Ghost of the South Winds peered across the field towards the castle. Opposing him was a veritable sea of darkly armored figures, each company bearing a banner of raging white hot fire on a red background. He could not hope to count the number of soldiers that made up the immense host.

Gristurm spied a figure walking towards him betwixt he and the army far afield. He looked closer, but a shadow blotted out the sun above and drew his attention away. Glancing to the sky, he beheld a large onyx dragon circling his location. Gristurm found himself unable to move, his legs firmly affixed to the ground. Dead grass and dust swirled all around when the dragon flared its landing with several powerful wing strokes. It came to a running stop, then padded over to him, flicking its tail back and forth. As it drew near, Gristurm saw that its scales were not purely onyx, but adorned with shots of pure color three paw spans long at the longest that occurred at random, without pattern - scales that shimmered under the sun and reflected every color that light possessed. Each colored scale was the night sky for the points of light that sparkled lustrously inside. As the dragon moved, the stars in the scales whirled as though the heavens contained within were racing to see dawn. Gristurm immediately bowed his head in recognition of his master, for this was Angharad, Sovereign of all Dragons, the Bearer of the Night Sky, the Progenitor of Fire, and namesake of his order. She remained upright as he paid obeisance, and closely watched him take in the forces arrayed about the two of them.

“Greetings, Gristurm.” Her voice rang in his head. It was regal and powerful, ancient and wise, all at the same time.

“Your majesty.” His aged and world-weary voice still bore an undercurrent of strength despite recent events. “What is this you are showing me?”

“This is the future - your future. Merely a glimpse, but a critical glimpse nonetheless.”

“But my lady,” he said, casting a look to either side of him. “How could this be?” He shook his head despondently. “We are leaderless, betrayed, and defeated by a foe who knows no match.”

“Gristurm,” she chided gently. “You know well that circumstance changes at the behest of only one, and the tapestry of your life is far from finished. Evil has triumphed for a day, yes, but hope always remains. Goodness carries out a purpose even in defeat - for evil cannot exist without the very same good against which it is judged and found wanting. Your task now is to preserve,” she added.

“Preserve what?”

Her ruby red eyes burned with the intensity of a blast furnace when she met his questioning gaze. Gristurm thought he glimpsed a tongue of flame dance across her pupils. “A remnant,” she said, turning her head to observe the approaching figure.

The lone combatant between the armies was nearly returned to the front line. From this distance, Gristurm could make out more of the individual that was trodding a direct path in his direction. It was an elven prince with noble stature and proud armor. A royal, azure cloak hung from his shoulders and wrapped around his left side, covering his arm. Long jet-black hair framed his face, spilling down from a regal circlet at his brow. His lithe figure, tall and resolute, was clad in the most intricately and expertly forged metal that Gristurm had ever seen in his long life. Thin plates were layered all across the elf’s upper body, hugging his form. Etched and shaped into the breastplate was a single dragon, its wings spread wide to guard the wearer’s ribcage. His lower body was protected on the outside by armored riding chaps of the same quality. Beneath the chaps, the prince wore black leather leggings that fashioned snuggly into a pair of sturdy looking greaves.

“What would you have me do, my lady?” Gristurm asked, looking back at Angharad. “I trust your words, but Cadfayl-” he broke off, his heart clenching within him. After a breath, he continued, “My rider is dead. I have no partner and no way forward - no path to this promised future.”

Angharad’s eyes glinted in amusement. “Don’t you?” she replied mysteriously, and watched the elf take his position at Gristurm’s left shoulder.

Befuddled, and growing increasingly frustrated, Gristurm bent his neck to observe the elf and ask him his name. The prince gazed up as he reached his mind out to speak to him, and suddenly Gristurm was staring into a pair of smiling blue eyes. This stopped Gristurm cold, but before he could catch up to his racing thoughts, the vision began to fade and the present came steadily back into focus. Try as he might, he could not retain a hold on the image, and every attempt to grasp it further was thwarted. It was gone. He had answers to questions he did not ask, but was stumped with what to do with them. The vision as a whole was logged in his memory, but the elf prince's face was all but burned into his mind. He blinked a few times, and shook his head, forcing his eyes to work again.

It was now twilight just before the breaking of the new day. A rosy hue grew brighter on the forest’s horizon. Gristurm yawned grandly and released a breath so warm that it raised the temperature of the entire glade. He was freshly dewed all over, and rivulets of water ran freely as he retracted the wing he used to cover the sleeping child. The elfling stirred and stretched. He looked around, confused for a moment, and when he saw the scaled forearm he was clutching, he leaned his head back to see Gristurm’s large, angular face again. While only a day prior he felt fear, already the boy was more comfortable around him. The ancient dragon brought his head level with his ward and deliberately studied his face. He noted the particular blue of his eyes and nobility of his features. The foundling clambered to his feet, and reached out his good, right arm. Gristurm leaned forward, touching his snout to the elf’s proportionately miniscule hand. The child ran his fingers over the leathery scales of his slate gray nose, utterly transfixed. Gristurm’s breath ruffled the elf’s dark hair and billowed part of his tunic, eliciting a sweet giggle from the boy. It was at that moment that Gristrum knew what Angharad had shown him, and why. What she told him about goodness connected a string of thoughts in his mind that began an avalanche of dire consequences.

The elves’ wicked practices and obstinate refusal to change their ways had become their undoing - a realization they would arrive at much too late. For it was in their rejected progeny that hope was kindled. This child at Gristurm’s feet, this wonderful and innocent little boy, whose life was decided for him before he ever had a chance to object, would lead the downtrodden and vanquished into a new age.

And Gristurm would bear him.

Having only one arm for fighting did not instantly disqualify the elf from becoming a great warrior, either. In fact, Gristurm had known several champion swordsmen across his tenure in the order that fought with missing limbs. The boy only needed the right teacher. His disability might even give him an edge in fights that regular swordsmen would lose.

In his mind, Gristurm felt Angharad’s approval at his epiphany. “That which the elves have rejected will be their undoing,” she said. Her voice sounded distant and faint, like an echo across a frozen lake. “The boy’s condition will rally sympathizers to your cause. It is but one of the reasons he was chosen to bear his burden, just as you were chosen to preserve my order.”

A new question nagged at Gristurm. As respectfully as he could, he asked, “Am I to become bonded to this child only days after Cadfayl’s murder? Am I not to give myself time to heal from such a grievous wound as this?”

“The child will be your rider. The bonding will not be for years to come.” Angharad’s voice was kind, but firm. “He is your responsibility for now. Take him to his family.”

“His family? But they scorned him, my queen.” Gristurm tried not to sound skeptical, despite being immediately repulsed by his master’s order.

She whispered, “They were never his family,” and then her presence left him.

Renewed purpose filled Gristurm from the end of his nose to the tip of his tail. He shivered from the feeling. The Order of Angharad would rise again, as would the kingdoms of men and dwarves, and the true kingdom of the elves. All that was lost would be replaced or made new. Gristurm believed this wholeheartedly - he had to, or else the sacrifices of valiant guardians like Cadfayl would be in vain. He would find the last free remnants of the conquered races even if he had to fly across the face of the entire world to do so. He was determined to find a safe place and good people to raise the child - somewhere he could reside as well, to teach and prepare the little elf for what he would face. Already his mind was racing with leads to chase down, friends of the fractured order that held closely guarded secrets and would see the former days of peace restored.

But those thoughts could wait for now. He needed to eat and drink, and find something to feed to the child. First though, the boy needed somewhere on Gristurm to ride. He considered this for a moment, then remembered that Cadfayl kept gloves and a scarf in one of his saddlebags. It was not ideal, and Gristurm sincerely hoped he would not get ill from the jostling, but he would be safe and warm while they traveled to his new home, wherever it was. He rose to his feet and shook the water from his body, standing over the boy to keep him dry. Reaching back with his snout, he tore off the clasp that held the right saddlebag closed, and used his barbed tongue to push the flap into the bag itself. A honey colored wool scarf was folded at the bottom of the bag under a pair of sheepskin gloves. It took some fussing, but he managed to unfurl the scarf and roughly line the inside of the saddlebag, leaving the gloves as a padded cushion. He would make sure to wrap the child as best he could before they took off.

The elf got to his feet while Gristurm fiddled with the saddlebag and tottered out from under the dragon’s tremendous width. He gawped in wide eyed amazement at the colossal and menacing creature, and Gristurm chuckled within himself. The boy may not have been afraid, but it would be a while yet before his stupefied expression evolved into one of familiarity. Gristurm brought his head level with the boy and reached out with his mind. He opened his jaws and impressed on him that he should stay calm. With exceeding care, the dragon used one of his lower teeth to hook the scruff of the elf’s tunic at the back of his neck and lift him off the ground. The young boy squealed with delight at being hoisted aloft and kicked his tiny feet in the air. Not wanting to nick, drop, or otherwise injure the child, he moved quickly, depositing his precious cargo in the prepared saddlebag that proved to be quite roomy. He watched the child with concern as he shifted around and found a comfortable position. The boy stared up at him expectantly and smiled.

Gristurm’s stomach rumbled loudly, and he realized that he did not know when the child had last eaten. Swinging his neck around the other way, he sniffed at the saddlebags on the opposite side. It smelled like Cadfayl did not finish his jerky rations. They were sweet venison strips, and Gristurm hoped they were soft enough for the elf’s young teeth. It would have to do for now, though the old dragon did not expect they would need to travel too far before they found help. One step at a time. He dropped the strips from his jaws into the elf’s new home, then retrieved Cadfayl’s half-full waterskin from the same saddlebag. The boy snatched up the nearest strip and gnawed on it contentedly.

Satisfied that his rider-to-be was taken care of, Gristurm finally addressed his rumbling stomach and parched throat. He all but drained a nearby pond, and a young doe sated his hunger for the time being. He tried to hunt his food normally, but the child was unable to stay quiet long enough for him to close the distance between him and his prey. Gristurm would have to rely on an old trick unique to dragons in order to eat.

He found the doe making her way through the silvery trees that camouflaged her so well in the early morning twilight. He crept his way in front of her, using the landscape as cover, then revealed himself. Her ears bolted upright in alarm, and her eyes went wide - Gristurm was fine with that. The moment her eyes locked with his, she was finished. Her demeanor relaxed, and her head drifted slowly side to side. Gristurm’s eyes seemed to draw her in and engulf her. His fierce gaze kept her frozen in place as long as he stayed focused and kept eye contact. The last thing she saw was a ravenous dragon growing ever larger as he stalked closer.

Gristurm blinked his eyes and shook his head. Entrancing his prey always made him feel dizzy, so he only used the ability when he had no other choice. His breath fogged in the cool air as glanced around. The sun’s first light peeked through the branches of the silver treed forest. His needs now met, renewed purpose in his heart, and the child secured and bundled in his saddlebag, Gristurm readied himself to leave.

If a dragon could smile, Gristurm would have been.

This might just work, he thought to himself.

“Come little elf,” he spoke to his charge's mind. The long haired boy straightened at the unfamiliar and cavernous voice in his head. "We have many miles to cover and much to do!”

He crouched, low and catlike, then leapt into the air, pumping his wings to clear the tops of the trees. The blast of downdraft broke the serenity of the morning, scraping the forest floor bare, kicking up fallen leaves and twigs, and even threatening to snap the closest saplings. In seconds, the forest shrank into the background as the world expanded broadly in every direction. Gristurm closed his eyes and relished in the new day’s sun, sensing the wind under his wings holding him aloft, and felt the full measure of his strength once more. He cast a glance to the south, where he knew Goldspire sat in ruins, and bittersweet remembrance tugged at him. Cadfayl was somewhere in the rubble, and for a second Gristrum considered turning back and searching for his former rider’s body. But he knew Cadfayl would want him to move on - closure would come with time. Steeling himself, Gristurm thought briefly about where they should go, then banked to the left and charted his course away from the past into the promised future.