The Last Stand of the Dragons

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. They were such ancient creatures that they never. They had been worshipped by many people throughout history due to their ability to take flight into the heavens and talk to the stars. I understood this very thing as I watched one such dragon mill about in the river that ran through the valley. I called him Arrow, and although he’s never spoken, I know he enjoys the name. Although, it has crossed my mind that it was not the name that he enjoyed, merely my company. There were such few dragons left and Arrow, being such a young dragon, had no close bond. He may be regarded as the leader of the dragons who lived in the valley, but being the leader and having friends were two separate things. I filled a void that had been left by the war.

“Arrow certainly is majestic, Drome,” my friend Palin said. “Took a while to find you, but I can see why you like to spend time in the woods with him.” Palin was a close friend of mine. It never took him long to find me. “It’s a shame that there are so few left," he remarked as he watched Arrow.

“Indeed,” I agreed. “To think that these creatures, held in such high regard in the ancient times, would be treated as beasts of the hunt, the ultimate prize. How far we have fallen from the old ways.” The old ways, the hunt, all of it was meaningless in this world. Those who lived in the valley still remembered what the dragons were for the ancients and how they protected them from the darkness by harnessing the very power of the heavens. Now, dragons were fighting for their lives in this great dragon war for no reason whatsoever.

Palin sighed. “The war. It should have been just between humans and dragons. Two species united as one facing the other, for reasons far nobler than just the prize of the hunt. Instead, we are divided even amongst ourselves in a pointless war.”

It wasn’t hard to figure out what he was talking about. “I take it the scouts finally returned?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he answered.

“And?”

Pallen looked away, sullen. “Not one was found beyond the valley. The skies are now clear, the lands are now quiet. Those in the valley are likely the last of the dragons.”

Now that was a tragedy. There weren’t always dragons in the valley because there wasn’t always a war. For the thousands of years that the dragons have lived among humans, the valley was never a place they called home. The only reason the dragons were even living here is that our King stole a bunch of eggs from the marauders who had been hunting them. Hunting eggs was no challenge; they had planned to raise the dragons for the sole purpose of hunting them for sport. The old dragons were truly gone, only the ones that we had saved twenty years ago remained. So, it was due to thieves the phrase ‘there wasn’t always dragons in the valley’ meant something important. Unfortunately, while the valley was currently safe from the marauders that had hunted the dragons and slaughtered their human allies, that wasn’t going to remain the case. The fact that every other refuge has fallen meant the valley was the marauders' next and last target.

“Dromer, you do know the implications of that, right?” Palin asked, bringing me back to the crisis at hand.

“They are no longer implications. The valley is their next target. The full force of the marauders will crash down upon our walls for Arrow and our brethren. What is our King prepared to do about it?” I questioned. Palin was a soldier, I was a blacksmith, and he would be more often than not on the walls at the edge of the valley rather than back in the city with me. Not that he would be, he sucked at what I did and was forced to become a soldier because of that.

“The last of the soldiers have been brought up from the upper valley. He’ll be calling out the merchants, blacksmiths, and farmers next.” He sighed again, something that he had been doing a lot of lately. “Oh Dromer, what does it matter. We’re only going to be able put five thousand men on the battlefield. The enemy is going to meet us four times that. We’ll be lucky if we last an hour.”

That was a depressing way of looking at the situation. “Is there anybody that could help?” I asked.

Palin shook his head. “The kingdoms of the outer lands refuse to aid us. We are alone. We should leave. There is no hope here to be had.”

I frowned at Palin, annoyed at his slight ignorance of what he had just said. “You said so yourself that the kingdoms of the outer lands refuse to aid us. If that is the case, then there is no place to go. Besides,” I nodded towards Arrow, who had taken notice of our conversation. “They won’t leave either. They may not speak, but they fully understand what’s coming for them. Ten men or ten thousand men backing them, they will meet their killers in battle nonetheless.”

“The dragons will perish in what will ultimately be a pointless fight,” Palin countered.

I gave a small chuckle. “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean the dragons' will coward away from fighting regardless. While we have learned much from them, they have learned much from us. People forget that we are both. They know that this is the twilight of the dragon and they most certainly won’t go quietly into the night. If this is to be our last stand for the ways of the old, then so be it.”

It was Palin’s turn to chuckle. “I wish I had your optimism.”

“And yet, you are one who became the soldier.” I took a deep breath, calming my nerves, watching Arrow take off for the upper valley. I guess he decided it was time to prepare his kind for their last stand. “Tsk… I’m going to be damned if I let all their sacrifices go to waste. We have to win this war.”

“The enemy is six days’ march from the lower walls. Not a lot of time to change people’s minds,” Palin informed me.

“We must try. For Arrow's sake, for their allies, we must try. We cannot allow their sacrifices to go in vain. We have six days, I know we can make a difference with that,” I decided.

“And if we can’t?” He questioned. It was a valid question. If the King couldn’t get the Outer Lands to aid us, then what hope did I have? Still, I was very fond of Arrow and I wished to do everything I possibly could to help him live.

I gave Palin a simple shrug and a smile. “If we can’t, then we will help them on the battlefield. It is not numbers that win a battle, but rather convictions.”

Convictions… that was a strange word. Were we truly prepared for what coming? This was mostly a valley of farmers around a city that didn’t have much in the way of wealth. And yet, this was the final hope for the dragons to have some sort of life. Most importantly, did the people that would be fighting for them share the same convictions that I do? I guess only time will tell.