The Last of the Dragons

There weren’t always Dragons in the valley. After all, there was very little reason for us to visit this particular valley. It was small, set deep in a great mountain range, and rendered inaccessible to any creatures incapable of flight by the sheer surrounding cliffs. There was a cold river fed by underground springs that thickened to a torrent from the snowmelt in the fall. There was a scattering of trees and smaller plants, but no prey for us to hunt and few places for us to land. Some quirk of nature meant that gray clouds frequently hung heavy and low in the valley, shrouding it from view in a depressing, overcast fog. Once upon a time, we soared proudly amongst the peaks where we nested and we hunted the great herds of buffalo who roamed over the rolling plains to the southeast. Why would we descend to this small, remote valley when we roamed free across the entirety of the world?

But that was before the humans began to hunt us, back when humans were largely limited to small, nomadic tribes who chased the same buffalo herds and had learned to coexist peacefully with Dragons. The new, pale humans, who came in great ships from somewhere across the ocean, changed everything. They wore suits of shimmering metal that our teeth and claws struggled to pierce and used great cannons to shoot us from the sky when we fled.

But it was not enough to merely kill those of us who wandered too close or who competed for the same prey. The humans lusted over our hides, our bones, our horns, even our very organs. They would scavenge our carcasses and turn us into clothing, tools, and trophies – sick commemorations of my slaughtered kinfolk. They hunted us till we feared to venture into the plains, and still their insatiable hunger cried out for more. They followed us into the mountains where we lived, raided our nests, crushing our eggs and killing our young who could not yet fly away.

Seeing the future of our race die drove countless Dragons mad and they raged against the humans, crushing their buildings and burning their ships in fits of futile fury, only to find that no matter the strength of their tooth, claw, magic and flame, they all would eventually succumb to the humans’ endless numbers and technological weapons of war.

Now, the valley offered something that the snow-capped mountain peaks and endless rolling plains did not. The sheer cliffs meant no humans would accidentally stumble upon it. The remote location meant humans would not easily spy the dragons descending into it and be motivated to pursue. Now, the valley had Dragons in it, for a part of us had learned to think and hide like the prey we used to fly above. All of a sudden, traits like remote, inaccessible, and hidden that had once left us disinterested, now meant temporary lifesaving refuge. And yet, even these natural refuges would one day be found and hunted by the humans. As such, I had gathered our leaders here in council to save the scattered remnants of our people.

Sitting to my left was Kindar, the largest of us, a young red Dragon who stretched a hundred feet from tail to snout, a legendary warrior who had been worn down in a hundred battles. Once, Kindar had been considered a great beauty, but one of his great horns had been broken and scars from that injury pulled the corner of his mouth into a perpetual scowl, leaving him forever lopsided. A stream of smoke slowly leaked from the scarred edge of his mouth. He was only on this council because so many of the oldest reds had fallen in desperate battles to try to keep the humans from their nesting grounds, the same battles that had left him scarred. Ever since, he fought only for vengeance. Perhaps, today, I could remind him that there were still a few of us to save.

Across from me lay the golden Galgoroth, the eldest of all of us. Her lustrous scales shone like precious metal in the noonday sun. Her people had always lived in the farthest west, in the great deserts and along the golden coasts, and as such had lost the fewest of her tribe to these new eastern humans. She was cautious by nature, and like many of her people, had little taste for direct confrontation. She had long advocated fleeing from the humans, convinced that there was enough room on this great continent for all of us if we just kept to our corner of the world. She did not understand their rapacious avarice and their unending numbers; I knew that they would pursue us from coast to coast.

The gentle green Geremeth was the last to arrive and was diving in, flaring her great wings to slow herself before coming to a rest to my right. She had been the first of us to recognize the threat the new humans posed, but too many of us did not listen, convinced that these were not any different than the tribes and petty empires we had coexisted with for thousands of years. For that folly, I had seen everyone I held dear fall from the sky - my clutch mates, my parents, my children. Friends who I had flown beside for a thousand years and who should have had another thousand years of life, gone in an instant.

I was conscious that in comparison to them, the long feathers surrounding my face and my iridescent scales marked my people as distant cousins to the other Dragons. Dragons were solitary by nature, and each of the great tribes had long been isolated from each other and hesitant to work together – which was part of what had doomed us when the humans had decided to hunt us. Now, I must find a way to bridge our differences and bring us together.

We few had gathered here to find a way to save our people or face extinction. I had a desperate plan to do so, a feat of daring, brilliance, and pure magical audacity that might well be remembered as Dragonkind’s last slow step into the darkness of oblivion – or the first step into a new dawn. The feat of magic we would accomplish today would change the course of our destiny if I could but convince the others that this sacrifice was necessary. Regardless, when we were done, there would never again be Dragons in this valley.

Geremeth settled in with a sigh and said, “So tell us, Quetzalcóatl, what is this grand plan of yours”?

I gazed at each of them for a long moment before responding, knowing I had one chance. “We lack the numbers to stem the endless tide of humans from the over the sea. They will swallow up this whole continent; we cannot run from them forever and we cannot fight them any longer. Our only choice is to hide our very nature – to use our magic to bless Dragons with the ability to walk safely disguised amongst the humans.”