The Last Heartbeat

Never are they intent on changing their ways…and yet it is we who are called the beasts of the world.

Mahlka craned her neck low, her narrowed green eyes gazing out at a grim display of violence. Clouds were layered densely through the evening sky, smothering the sight of the stars and nearly causing her to blindly crash into the land. Had she not the keen senses of one so old and knowledgeable, she may very well have painted herself as part of the portrait before her. If only that same luck could have been shared in abundance.

This place had once been a small human village, its inhabitants a quiet people that busied themselves with no affairs but their own. Hidden away in a valley surrounded by dense woods and ancient mountains, called the Haraak Mountains by those who dwelt in Taedrinor, not a shred of the exterior civilization should have born any reason to touch it. But Mahlka knew the nature of humans, and had been given first glances at the furthest extents of their cruelty for thousands of years. What lay before her now was no different from all that had come before.

The rising slopes of the mountains cocooned the village in claws of colorless depths. Both the stars and the moon were concealed by gray night, leaving naught but glowing embers and small flames to illuminate that which Mahlka could already see perfectly. What was once a cluster of wooden homes and stone buildings were now piles of ruin, well-crafted foundations smashed by weapons and by hands. Wagons and stables looked to have been thrown at random at both smaller buildings and unfortunate corpses. The prosperous and quiet streets she had seen from afar had become bleak scenes of chaos.

More gently than she had done in two centuries, Mahlka moved her sinuous body across the remains of the village. The black-green shimmer of her scales found color in the smoldering embers that still lingered in several homes, her colossal weight barely noticeable as she moved her four limbs with great care. She curled her tail higher into the air and tucked her enormous wings close to her back, wary of doing more damage than had already been inflicted. With great inhalations, her long snout took in the scent of the entire valley, seeking any signs of life that might still exist among the carnage.

But it was to no avail. Everywhere where she crawled, the dead surrounded her. Dozens had perished by way of swords and arrows heads, others brutalized in much crueler ways. From one end of the village to another they lay face down in the dirt, smashed against stone walls, or crushed under piles of rubble. It was not just the inhabitants of this town that Mahlka saw, either. There were also men of war, soldiers dressed in armor and chain-mail that bore the symbols found in the armies of the west. Defenders, she knew, that were charged with the protection of this hidden place, and had ultimately failed. She also recognized the armor and cloths that had not come from this land, from the invaders that had struck and fled like a shadow from the sunlight. For whatever reason the warriors of Parthea had come to Taedrinor, they had done their duty well.

By all conventions of living sense, this display of warfare should not have caused anger to stir in Mahlka’s three hearts. Yet she was utterly furious.

For centuries, humans of all lands had regarded her species as beasts of flame and destruction. Dragons were a fearsome and proud race, she would not deny that, but to say that all of her kind were intent on burning the world to ash was utterly ludicrous. She herself had spent most of her long life exploring the skies and watching the world of Diatonea change with each passing century. She always chose to bathe her wings clean of the sins of her kin, dissociating herself from all the other monstrosities that lurked in the far reaches of northern Vorlan.

It was the fate of this village that truly cast sparks upon the kindle of her fury, though. She dug her claws deep into the earth, lowering her neck and baring her teeth at the ghost of Parthea’s butchers. A long and deep rumble traveled through her body, each fiber of muscle and membrane simmering to an explosion.

How dare they call us beasts! Her voiceless voice roared. Humans butcher the young and the old, no matter who they are. The arrogance, the blood lust, the insatiable thirst for dominance. How dare they! HOW DARE THEY!

Curving her neck up to the sky, Mahlka opened her jaws and roared to the heavens. Her voice ripped from her teeth and resounded across every mile of land. She spread her wings as she roared even louder, the reverberations reaching so far that they parted the clouds to reveal the moonlight for a brief moment. Far beyond the forests and mountains her baleful bellowing spread, over peaks and sandy shores and vast waters, and she did not care if the whole of Diatonea heard her.

Mahlka then snapped her jaws shut and threw her head downwards, the force of her movement blowing a strong gust of wind across the village. Two crumpled roofs were completely blown free, and one of the stone buildings collapsed to dust. She snarled as her wings curled back to her body, her fury not yet satiated.

It was in this briefest of silences that Mahlka suddenly heard a heartbeat.

Her attuned senses were as sharpened as they could be, her anger momentarily forgotten. A heartbeat; not just one, but two. Where were they coming from? And how had she not heard them when she landed? Looking from one side of the ruins to another, she heard the faint beating of two human hearts in close proximity to her. She closed her eyes, temporarily obscured the distractions of conventional sight, and listened.

They’re close, she thought, barely twenty feet away from me.

Opening her eyes, Mahlka turned her head to the left and gingerly put one clawed paw in front of the second, passing another row of demolished homes. The heartbeats were becoming clearer now, their rhythm pulling her along like threads of unbreakable flame. She crawled two more steps and looked down between two of the smallest houses in this hope-forsaken valley.

There, half exposed beneath a mound of crushed stone, lay a woman and her child.

Mahlka hissed through her long teeth. The woman was crushed at the waist, a ribbon of blood encircling the clothing below her stomach. What exactly had happened to her face, she could not tell, but it had been done efficiently enough to where her eyes and forehead were a gnarled red mess of flesh. Hair that was once perhaps long and beautiful was frayed and covered in ash, loose strands sticking to her face and soaked in the blood from her eyes. Cradled against her chest was a small child, a male by the scent of it. He was covered in blood also, though it did not appear to be his own. In the greatest juxtaposition of this entire night, this boy looked at peace in the deepest of slumbers. His breathing was weak, to be sure, but nowhere near as rasped and ragged as his mother.

By what chance of fortune, Mahlka thought. What manner of fate could keep these two alive?

Her eyes narrowed as a deep inhalation came from the woman’s mouth. Her lips attempted to form words, each breath she took sounding extremely painful in her fragile human lungs. Mahlka stretched her head closer to the two humans, and she at last heard the woman speak.

“Please…help me.”

+

Captain Sashen could not understand why his detachment loved to make so much noise.

Choosing the company of none but himself, the tall Parthean soldier leaned against the railings of the port side of the Blessed Barion and drummed his fingers. The ocean he stared across rippled in slight waves away from the keel and hull, its natural turquoise robbed of its color in the overcast night. Not a sliver of land was in sight, nor was any western ship following them in pursuit. For the first time in many nights, they were allowed a momentary peace.

His fingers clenched on the banister as he focused intently on the sounds of the waves, away from the commotion his subordinates made and again to the victory they had achieved. To consider what they engaged in this night a battle was perhaps giving too much credence to the unnamed village in the Haarak Mountains. Not even the patrolling party of Taedrinor’s finest could save the simple folk from that which Sashen and his forty warriors had laid upon them. All but the young children had fought back against the invasion, and they were indeed brave. They bled and died all the same.

Victory, his thoughts were bitter. The ends I reach to for the True Purpose.

Sashen turned back to the deck of the Barion and soaked in the sight of his men making merry. Frantic shadows were cast from a metal fire pit near the mast, illuminating the features of the men as they sang and stomped their feet. Some sat on the steps that led to the helm, others were cross legged and swayed merrily on the deck. Unlike Sashen, they had removed their burgundy and black armor, splashing liquor on their plainclothes as they laughed their cares away.

As he brushed a strand of red hair from his eyes, a smile managed to crack on Sashen’s stoic face. “My merry band of fools,” he whispered. “I suppose I can’t begrudge them a celebration.”

“Captain!”

Raising his brow, Sashen saw one of his finest warriors stumble towards him. Davin Novacos bore a cloak of dark purple across his shoulders, his beverage sloshing onto the deck as he staggered toward his captain. The beard on his face was trimmed but not completely washed of the blood that had stained it. His lime green eyes were clouded over by alcohol, but his smile was as bright as he had known it to be.

“Captain, Captain,” Davin said as he smacked his back against the banister, “why don’t you have a drink with us?”

Sashen chuckled at the way Davin’s words slurred. “I will have to pass on this occasion, Novacos. You know my thoughts on consuming liquor at sea.”

“But Captain!” Davin rarely sounded so whiny as he did when he was inebriated. “You never drink with us. What’s the point in claiming v—” He hiccuped and pursed his lips. He visibly shivered and attempted to focus. “Winning victory if you don’t celebrate?”

“There are other ways to celebrate, soldier,” he answered in his most assuring voice. He was beginning to worry about the vanguard warrior’s equilibrium. “Mine just happens to be looking onto these waters and pondering.”

“You know what you should be pondering?” Davin said, almost as if he had not heard all of what Sashen explained. “This.”

Sashen’s grin broadened as he raised the mug before him, attempting as persuasive a look as he had seen on an intoxicated individual.

He then thought, And in three, two…

The mug then slipped from Davin’s fingers as he twisted his body around and lurched over the banister. The complete contents of his stomach were hurled into the ocean, most likely including the day’s lunch and dinner. In the deck’s middle, the rest of the soldiers laughed even harder at his misfortune and began chanting,

“Over the side, side to side, throw it up and into the tide! Over the side, side to side, throw it up and into the tide!”

Flipping his head back, Davin shot them a threatening look and cried, “Damn you for an Axacael whore, you mongrels. Take your side to side and…”

His sentence was finished by another round of vomit. It was at this point that Sashen finally broke into the same spirited laughter as the rest of his shipmates. They took immediate notice and cheered for him, that their brother’s misfortune had briefly robbed him of his stoicism.

“To Captain Sashen!” One of them called.

“To our leader!” Another added. “Slayer of the unrighteous!”

Deciding to humor them, Sashen called, “To Parthea’s finest, the heroes of the east!”

Their cheers echoed through the air, the clouds and the ocean their only audience in the dead of the night. Sashen let the smile remain on his face as he heard Davin finish emptying his stomach. The elation prompted them back into another round of song, once again leaving the immediate past far from any quarter in the present.

Sashen crossed his arms, wishing so fervently that he could not only share in their complete bliss, but their ignorance as well. The mission they embarked on this night was a farce, this only he knew. What’s more, the orders to carry out the slaughter had not even come from the High Admiral herself, nor even the Emperor. Only Sashen knew that it was the leaders of the brotherhood he belonged to that they obeyed without knowing, they who had ordered the slaughter of hundreds for the sake of one.

He sighed long as he felt Davin at last obtain relief and leaned back against the banister. The truth was that even he did not know the full extent of why they had been sent to the west. All his superiors had revealed to him was that somewhere in that village was an individual that needed to die. Supposedly it was connected to an old prophecy that bore some spiritual significance to the fate of the world’s soul, or something of that nature.

It made Sashen roll his eyes as much now as it had then. He had not a clue as to why one person was so important, or why Parthea’s own soldiers needed to carry out an operation that was blatantly in violation of the current peace treaty. In his experience, when those in power placed great faith in prophecies made well before their grandparents were conceived, destruction was inevitable. Taedrinor and Parthea had remained in an arduous stalemate for years now, and did not need an added dose of religious ideology to make things worse. Especially when it involved Sashen and his own men.

Watching Davin’s back as he staggered towards the arms of his personal friends, the Parthean captain bit his lip. He had always intended to serve for the greater good of his kingdom, and work towards the True Purpose at the center of his order. These ideals were the core of his own principles, too. Perhaps it was better to see the objective necessity of what had been done tonight, instead of the screams and wailing and heartbreak and bloodletting caused by their hands.

It was at this moment of inner turmoil that the quiet of the night was broken.

From the shadows of the Haarak in the west, an unnatural roar ripped through the sky and reached across the sails of the Barion. Sashen and the rest of his crew snapped their heads back in the direction of Taedrinor and were petrified by its visceral clarion sound. Hundreds of miles separated them from the nearest shoreline, yet they heard it as though the lungs which howled it were right next to their ears. It was a combination of the predatory roars of beasts, and yet bore a sorrow and rage as raw as only a human voice could muster. It echoed across the prow of their ship and the miles of empty ocean for what seemed like an eternity.

The echoes became quieter, traveling across the water for miles more until it was once again as silent as the grave. Turning his head slowly back to his men, Sashen saw the light of the fire pit casting lines over their shocked faces, and created black sockets where some of their eyes should have been. Every gaze was directed at him, fearful and expectant.

“Captain?” Davin’s voice called from behind one of his comrades. “Was that…?”

Sashen knew what he was going to say next, and he could not help but think the same thing. The words that his own superiors had spoken to him rang as loudly in his ears as that scream just did. Logic and superstition swirled into one mental mess of terrified confusion that he refused to show. Had he been wrong to be skeptical?

“Yes, Novacos,” he finally said, looking back to the distant western shoreline. “I believe that…was the roaring of a dragon.”

+

Mahlka remained still, looking down at the mangled woman with curiosity and pity. How she managed to stay alive long enough to speak to her was nothing short of a miracle. Perhaps it was a blessing that she had been blinded, unable to see the creature that dwarfed her size a dozen times over. She listened to her strained breathing, wondering if the human would discern the truth behind her singular audience.

“Help me,” the woman rasped again. “I’m begging…you.”

Mahlka could not believe she was considering the prospect, actually communicating with this human female who inched ever closer to death’s embrace. Yet it would not have been the first time that dragons and humans had spoken to each other, nor was this the strangest circumstance that such sorcerous communication had occurred in. Pushing her own thoughts towards the woman and giving them a voice, she answered her plea.

“I am here, and I listen,” she said calmly. “What help can I give you?”

A choked sob broke from the woman, and her mouth formed a weak smile. With what appeared to be the greatest of strength, she moved her scarred arms to her son and put her hands around him. Every second that she moved brought painful noises from her, and Mahlka’s pity then became sympathy.

“My son,” the woman said, blindly stroking the hair on his head. “Take my son…keep him safe. Please.”

At this, Mahlka’s thoughts froze. Take her son? What would that achieve for either her or the boy? Both of them were more than likely to die in the next few minutes all the same; letting the boy perish with his mother would be a greater mercy in the end. Besides, she was a dragon. What could she possibly expect to do with a human child?

“Madame,” she responded, “this is not possible. The two of you will be dead soon, I can do nothing for him.”

“Please take him.” Her voice was harsher now, likely closer to how it sounded before the Partheans came here. “I can’t see anything, I can’t feel anything. I’m going to die.” Most unexpectedly, the woman gripped her son’s body and slowly lifted him from her chest. “Take care of him. Let him live.”

Never had Mahlka seen such an incredible feat of strength in a human before. If it was possible for a creature like her to experience a form of reverence, then she felt it now, watching this dying mother trust a face she could not see with the life of her son. She still could not comprehend what moved her three hearts to act, not even as she reached her claws out to the boy. Mindful to not give rise to fearful suspicion, she tucked one claw underneath the boy’s body and scooped him up with another. She gently set him down in the middle of her paw, all but holding her breath as his soft skin met her leathery own.

Before her, the woman’s arms collapsed so fast that they appeared to be pulled down by boulders. “Thank you,” she whispered with an even softer smile on her face. “Thank you.” She coughed once and blood sputtered from her mouth. It made Mahlka’s hearts twist.

“I promise I will protect him,” she said with the most solemn voice. “He will live for many years to come. You have my oath.”

Had she eyes still, tears would have fallen down the woman’s face as she began weeping. “Thank you…bless you, to the heavens and back.” Another strangled noise accompanied a sputter of blood. “His name…my son’s name. After his father…I…his father. After…”

The woman’s voice trailed away, and with it the last beat of her heart.

The quiet of the night became all consuming, greater than Mahlka had ever known in her millennia of living. A crackle of wood emitted from one of the nearby ember piles as the mother’s limbs went stiff and her soul vanished into the unknown. Though her body was broken, she looked as peaceful as a fresh snowfall in her passing. Mahlka would have shed a tear if her body had allowed it.

Looking back down at the child, she saw he was curled in a fetal position on her paw. His dark hair had been smoothed away from his face, and his cheeks were full and round. His eyelids twitched as he remained in the deepest of slumbers, and Mahlka still remained aghast at him being alive. As she moved her claw out from under his body, his brow twisted and he made a noise. He made it again as his mouth frowned and Mahlka then realized he might wake at any moment.

Pushing her thoughts now to him, she said, “Peace, child. Do not yet wake. Sleep until the light of morning comes.” She did her best to mimic what she hoped his mother would have sounded like in life. “Sleep, son. Dream the brightest of dreams.”

This was the first time she had ever attempted such a thing in her life, and much to her surprise it worked. His expression unwound and again he looked as halcyon as an ocean without wind. What she felt then must have been what humans experienced when a great fortress ceased to collapse from under their feet.

Mahlka huffed through her nostrils, looking first at the ruin of her surroundings, the peaks of the Haarak standing miles off, and then back at the boy’s mother. There was nothing more she could do for these unfortunate souls. They had gone to whatever afterlife Taedrinor now believed in, and there was a single living soul that demanded immediate care. Looking down at the boy, Mahlka took one of her claws and, as gently as she had done in her life, brushed its polished tip across the top of his head.

Fate or not, she thought, this is a course that has been chosen for me. Now I shall fly upon it.

And fly upon it, she did. Pulling the paw with the boy close to her chest and covering it with the opposite one, she bent her back legs and spread her wings far out from her body. Once they beat, and the nearest houses were blown into the thick of the woods. Twice they beat, and scattered stones fell to smother the remaining embers. Thrice they beat, and the pile of rubble scattered away from the mother’s body, leaving her broken corpse bare to the wind. On the fourth flap, she pushed her legs from the ground and soared straight up to the stars.

The membrane beneath her lids moved over her eyes as she soared upwards, the gray clouds swirling over her wings as she left the surface of the world. At once the gray dissipated, and Mahlka was in the open sky. The stars were blanketed across the black of the night, and at its zenith a half-moon gleamed silver and white. Mahlka’s wings beat in rhythm as she banked her body northwards, challenging the adjacent wind as she began the journey to her home.

Her many teeth clenched as she flew across the sea of clouds. What she had done this night was perhaps the most asinine act she had ever committed. She had not even considered what her brethren would think, bringing a human child to the bleak wastes of the far north, with the intent of raising him as her own no less. And just how was she supposed to raise a human child? To her considerable knowledge, there was never such a feat of parenting that had been enacted before. Nor did the prospect appear possible even to the simplest of minds.

As these thoughts raced through her brain like the wind on her ears and wings, she felt the gentle beating of the boy’s heart and the warmth of his soft vulnerable skin.

Take my son…keep him safe.

Mahlka beat her wings again, putting further miles between her and the land of Taedrinor. Such considerations would come as time brought them. It did not matter how or when she would achieve them, for she had made a promise to a dying mother. She was a dragon, a creature of ancient power and wisdom, and any promise she made was one that would be fulfilled to the bitter end. No matter what end that was, she would raise this nameless boy as her own.

A child of beasts, raised by a beast. She found the irony amusing, yet consoling. Not even the strongest Foreseers could have predicted this.

Mahlka banished any further intrusive thoughts and let the wind on her wings carry her northward, her scales glimmering green in the light of the moon. The night was as cold as her newfound son was warm, and she flew towards a future of which the outcome was a mystery.