The End of Ages

“There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.”

The Elder Dragon’s voice boomed across the pitch-blackness of the cave as the new generation of dragons surrounded him. Every murmur and whisper that escaped the young ones’ lips were hushed the instant he spoke; every wandering eye was now glued to his.

“I am Elder Maer. Millions of years ago, our ancestors - the first generation - founded a land far across the Endless Sea; it was warm, lush with vegetation, and the food was plentiful. Thus, it was there that they settled, and there that the first mating ritual began.”

Pacing across the raised ground with his enormous leathery wings fading with age flat across his back and his footsteps shaking the stalactites on the ceiling, the Elder looked out into the crowd. A maze of purples, greens, blacks, and reds stood before him. Bright, young eyes followed his every move. As he aged, his eyesight had evolved to adjust to the dark almost instantly, but he knew that if it were not for the flames pirouetting on their torches, all the young dragons would see was a floating pair of bright yellow eyes. But they could see every detail of his face - from his once-shiny scales now beginning to corrode, to the wrinkles that outlined his massive yellow eyes.

“That is where generation after generation of us dragons were born and raised,” he continued. “Not long after the nine hundred and ninety-ninth generation had hatched, however, the humans found us, and they wasted no time trying to take it from us.”

Below him, he heard soft murmurs and whispers of bewilderment from among the wyrmlings.

“Nine hundred ninety-nine?” he heard one whisper from his left.

“How can that be?” said one to his right.

“That’s impossible!” said another in a muted cry.

The Elder stood and listened as his audience talked amongst themselves, waiting for the realization to find them. His wait, however, was soon over when a girl in the back of the crowd jumped up on her hind legs and yelled out over the growing loudness of the conversations.

“You mean our parents?”

In a single instant, the cave was hushed once more, until all they could hear was the sound of water trickling down from the ceiling into the puddles, and the crackling of the flames on their torches. The wyrmlings stood frozen in quiet anticipation, waiting for the Elder to confirm what they had just heard.

Atop the stage, the Elder said nothing for a while, but simply began pacing back and forth once again. And once again, their bright young eyes were glued to his, looking at nothing but the gigantic dimly-lit dragon above them.

“When the humans came upon our land, they decided that we were unwelcome. We, who founded the land a million years before, where hundreds of generations of us were born and raised, were unwelcome. Instead of coexisting in peace, they instigated chaos. They raided our homes, stole our food, burned our crops, and murdered our children and our elderly.”

Small gasps and more murmurs of mystification rose from the throng.

“They tried to starve us of our resources, and we endured and fought back for as long as was possible, but the humans were greater than us in number. They are smaller and lighter-footed than we. They have weapons and tools with sharp edges. We battled for a hundred years, but when we realized our imminent loss, we could no longer justify remaining in that land. And so, in order to keep not only ourselves, but the yet unborn one thousandth generation, we were forced to flee to the Valley which you now call home.”

The Elder stopped and paused for one transient torturous time. He hung his head low and shook it slowly, wishing with all his might that this moment was not happening.

Ancestors, guide me, he thought. The prophecy must not come to pass…for the sake of our race.

With his head still hung low and his voice soft and sad, he spoke again: “You are the One Thousandth Generation.” And he stopped.

But when the Elder ceased to talk, the young ones this time did not fill the silence with murmurs or whispers. They simply stood and stared. And when the Elder glanced at his audience, one of them spoke up: “Why are we so special?”

“Yeah, what’s gonna happen to us?” spoke another.

“If we got away from the humans, we’re not in any more danger, right?” said one more.

The Elder sighed, a single puff of air from his nostrils. Finally, he sat down on the stone platform below him, cold and wet from the dripping water, and brought his head up to face the young dragons. As he looked out upon them, he thought of Ludo, his firstborn son. The title of Elder had previously always been passed down from parent to child, and once Ludo had come of age, he was to be crowned. Just a day before his coronation, however, an army of men infiltrated the dragon camp where he and his son resided. He remembered how hot it was that day, and the way the sun reflected on Sea as it hung high in the atmosphere. He remembered, too, how the blood that was spilt turned the Sea where it met the shoreline a deep, scarlet red. His mind brought him back to that moment he’d heard his name in the form of a scale-rising scream that rose from Ludo's throat. Then, his eyes were wide with shock, and his eyebrows furrowed with anger. Now, however, they were solemn, vast pools of liquid as tears began to flood them. And now that his mind returned to the stage in that dark cave and his throat no longer swollen shut, he could speak his next words:

“From the dawn of one

To the dawn of another,

One Million years shall pass.

But One Million ends

With One Thousand;

For the rise of one

Shall cause the fall of the other.

“Our ancestor, Arlus, the first Generation's Elder, wrote those words as a warning to all of our future generations. He prophesied that the Dragon Age will end at the hands of men with the one thousandth generation - that is you. So take heed, children. We may have escaped their wrath once before, but we are not safe yet. Henceforth, you will spend every waking moment preparing for war.”