The Hunting Grounds of Old Zafar

There weren't always dragons in the valley.

And some said they were gone now.

But he wasn't convinced.

Locke moved through forest in an unnatural way.

Or too natural, as some of the elders said, as though Locke was a part of the forest. He slinked through forest in a manner that the best trackers in his village would lose him, even as a child.

That’s the only reason he had ventured this far, to the land of the time before, the hunting grounds of Old Zafar.

There were monsters in the forest they said. The governor of their small hamlet, one of the last refuges of the human race, told him a group of men disappeared there when he was young. Only one man survived.

He returned scarred and screaming. He said there were dragons in Old Zafar, and since that day no one had ventured past the cleft in the forest, the boundary between their lands and Zafar.

Locke didn’t listen to governor. He spent his life in the forest. He was every bit a part of it as the trees and the dirt. His long green cloak more often than not had moss sticking to it. And if he stayed still he all but disappeared into woods.

Food was getting scarce. The game was moving farther away, past the cleft and out of the reach of his people.

Only Locke would venture so far out. Only Locke could walk in Old Zafar and come back.

His mother begged him not too. To hunt closer to home.

The elders did too.

But Locke was one with the forest, and he feared nothing in it. When he was a boy he slew the cave bear that killed his father. His arrow was true when his father’s wasn’t and the great beast fell.

These were his woods.

Locke’s woods.

He stalked them alone, with his dragonwood bow and three arrows each tipped with a griffin claw. He'd spent the last week making them. They flew true and straight and they would kill whatever they hit.

He heard a rustle in front of him. He stopped and waited. Not far in front of him, a two headed deer walked out from the underbrush. Locke nocked his arrow, and drew. One head fed while the other watched. He waited for it to look the other way, and the moment it turned its head Locke let the arrow fly.

The creature jumped when it was hit and ran off into the trees.

Locke waited a moment and followed after it, spying the blood trail. Its black blood easy to spot on the leaves.

He trailed the animal for another hundred yards. He found the spot where the deer dropped, but something had dragged the body off. It was large, whatever it was.

This didn’t deter Locke. For him, it meant he would be bringing home something bigger.

He took off after his new quarry, reaching where the forest met a cliff. He saw a cave among the rocks and reasoned whatever carried the deer off was in there. He nocked an arrow, and entered the cave. It was hotter than he thought it’d be.

He heard a low rumbling.

This was it he thought.

The village would eat for a month. They would write songs about him. He would be the greatest hunter in the world.

He stepped closer. Now he saw the scarred and burned bones. The remnants of meals past.

Locke was too busy looking at the bones.

He didn’t see he great red eyes glowing in the dark, and just before the flames hit him.

Locke looked up and saw that dragons did in fact exist.