The Migrant Dragon

There weren't always dragons in the valley. Then again, there wasn't always a valley either. Old Cob blamed the gods. One could never tell with the old archiver if he was spinning one of his stories or actually reciting some half-buried myth. He wasn't quite all there anymore, that Old Cob. He blamed that bit on the actual dragons. But, according to him, the gods had made a bet in their infancy as to which of them could most quickly gather a thousand believers. The only stipulation was that they were not allowed to inflict physical harm or physical pleasure on anyone. Everything else was fair game. Caprice had fiddled with the technicalities. Although she had not actually harmed anyone, she had split the earth in two, and those who had managed to survive claimed to have seen the figure of a woman--the gargantuan form of an unclothed woman whose head split the clouds as they blew past her--strike her palm against the ground outside a heavily populated town. And as the earth swallowed the lives and livelihoods of a thousand people, the vision was cemented in the memories of the survivors and the story soon spread. The name Caprice could soon be heard on the lips of thousands more.

The passage of tempests and time rounded the edges of the chasm and the story alike. Water ran through it and solace from the winds provided a strong enough impetus for people to start settling on the bones of the buried dead. Eventually, as in all things, dust settled over the truth and myth took over. Old Cob was at the end of the line of myths. The archiver had spend his life among musty scrolls and tomes, supposedly looking for the truth of all things, but no one seemed to care all that much. He was a wealth of erratic information, almost as capricious in his sharing of knowledge as the goddess whose actions had supposedly formed their corner of the world.

One did not need look very far for testimony of the dragons. Taph was as close to an objective moderator as one could get concerning their recent presence in the valley. He knew one of the Reds, or was at least one speaking terms with a Red, as no human could really claim to know a dragon. Taph was also tolerated by Karot, a seasoned human soldier whose temperament could contend with the Red's on a bad day. So Taph had heard both sides of the conflict and had somehow managed--after months of going back and forth--to not get killed in the process of presenting arguments to either side.

Until last week that is. No one had heard from Taph in six days now. His wife was frantic at this point. He'd gone to meet with the Red. He had not returned. Those were the only facts Lea had to work with. She'd gotten into a huge argument with Whit and he had gone off to look for his dad and Lea was now alone, with no word from either of them. It'd been four days since Whit had gone.

Lea's terrified stupor was shaken in the penurious light of what promised to be another wretched day by a knock on the door. She stumbled over an empty bottle towards the door and cursed under her breath as her dirt-encrusted hands caught the well-worn door frame.

"Who is it?" She rasped, vainly attempting to rake her matted hair out of her face before she opened the door.

"It's Karot." Came a wood-muted voice from the other side. Lea sighed heavily and rested her forehead against the door. She wasn't in the mood to deal with the man's temper. His last liquor-fueled argument with Taph had gone more poorly than most. Taph had been explaining at the town meeting that the Red (whose name no one could pronounce without first consuming copious amounts of gravel and black tar) was losing clout with its brethren. The Red's threats to eat Taph and his family had sounded atypically hollow and Taph's attempts at trying to connect with Red's brethren had been met with an atypical amount of anger. Tinged with fear. Taph had said to the townspeople.

I haven't heard Red this angry since I stumbled across it months ago. It's afraid of something--of the Elders perhaps. But every time Red has talked about The Migration, it's spoken of it in distant terms. As if The Migration was an eventuality that we needn't worry about in our lifetimes. But Red was nervous this time. Something's changed.

All the more reason to strike! Karot had responded. Our defenses gather dust and our guardsmen grow fat. Several of the townspeople had voiced their agreement.

If we try to go on the offensive, replied Toph, using placating gestures on the townsfolk, which is entirely unnecessary to begin with, we will be destroyed, and all that will remain of us as a warning to others will be a mountain of ash.

The conversation had only gone downhill from there and Karot had eventually stormed off, threatening death and destruction on anything that looked even remotely scaly or had bad breath. Lea had heard nothing of Karot since then. And now he was at her door. She curled her hand into a tired fist and pulled the door open.

"What do you need Karot?" She asked as soon as their eyes met. She was exhausted and hungover but not so much so that she missed seeing the change in Karot's eyes upon seeing her. It was the closest thing to sympathy that she'd ever seen on his face.

"I...uh," He stuttered, looking down at his feet and then up at her forehead. "I wanted to see how you were doing. Do you need anything?"

"I need my family back." She replied too sharply. He was apparently trying to help, but Karot had never been the sympathetic type and his concern now just bit more deeply into her fear.

"I was thinking about that actually." He said gruffly, seeming to gain some confidence in the sortie. "I am heading over to Gowns for supplies and to see if I can muster up some militia. That's the route Taph always takes, right? To meet with the Red?"

"That's correct." Lea replied, not entirely sure where Karot was going with the conversation."

"Well, I'm heading out in an hour or so and perhaps, if you want to travel with me, someone in Gowns might have news of Taph or Whit." Karot returned to shuffling his feet but it felt less like he was defending his infantile concern and more like he was hoping to evade any sort of questioning. Lea chalked it up to the calcification of decades of bachelorhood. His suggestion made sense though, so she took an awkwardly long minute to silently consider before she nodded her head and closed the door in his face.

While Karot waited for Lea to tend to her affects and appearance, he mulled over the plan in his head. He knew that the Red would never allow Karot in its presence long enough to have a conversation, but he guessed that Taph had discussed his family with the great dragon--being as Taph often made light of the Red's apparently empty threats to devour Taph's family--maybe Lea could talk to it and get Karot an appearance before the dragon. At which point, Karot could espouse with all his practiced diplomatic eloquence an argument for the defense of his people against the Migration that was supposedly coming.

But in a small corner of his mind, a terror slept fitfully--a shattered memory he couldn't fully grasp. The black-tar terror of a voice that spoke of death as an inevitability, but not necessarily Karot's death.

We only need one thing from you. The voice had growled.

What?! Karot had screamed through the pain. And then the pain stopped. And everything stopped. Gone was the ripping gravel sound of a voice unnaturally bent toward human language. In its place was a void. A single-mote sound heard in the vacuum of space. As if everything--from neurons to nebulae--had frozen in fear of an inescapable truth. The dragon who'd claimed Karot's body and mind--the dragon who'd imprisoned and tortured him for uncountable months, bowed and fell silent as a different presence had entered the chamber. But the dragon's actions were not fueled by honor, rather it seemed bound by an inescapable will. A black hole in which all matter was drawn and destroyed. As the presence drew closer, Karot understood. The smallest and darkest parts of Karot's being cowered and fell. There was no choice but to collapse into the gravity well of the being's presence. What muscle and bone still remained of his broken body could imagine no other reality but to surrender. At the edges of his vision, Karot had seen two feet, clothed in shadow and void, step forward towards Karot. Karot's senses overloaded. The air vibrated around him, his internal sense of balance was upended. He tasted ash and metal in his mouth and the edges of his body felt like they were being dragged through embers.

A sacrifice. The voice had whispered. The form had leaned down, pressed its hand against Karot's forehead, and Karot remembered nothing else.