Unchosen

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. They had come down from the North on broad wings, beating the air and filling the sky with their voices. They had crawled on four legs, in from the East, lounging amidst the crags and stones they found along the way. They had slithered on their bellies, burrowing with the one pair of arms they had and digging deep dells and caverns. No, there hadn’t always been dragons in the Valley, but their coming had changed everything. Brown and golden backed lizards of immense size and strength, lounging in the sun and the grass, great green wyverns perched on cliffs and rocks, black-bellied wyrms watching with bright eyes from the shadows and dark of the caverns they carved. The old residents of the valley, living in woods and rivers, watched and waited, wondering how the tension would finally break. The valley was big, but not big enough for everyone, and the natural balance teetered on the point of a knife. Maybe now the strong would finally be held accountable for oppressing the weak, or else there was a new breed of strong.

The giants were the first to rise. They struck first against the Eastern Dragons, the gold and brown creatures with hooded eyes and thorned skin; these dragons had encroached on the giant’s territory. The dragons had grown to love the rocks for their easy access to the sun, and the feel of the wind without any sand, but the giant’s had long held and disputed these great stones amongst themselves, and they would suffer no outsiders to claim them. This is where the battles began. The dragons attempted peace, even after the first conflict, but it became apparent to them peace was not an option when a dragon went missing and finally turned up as the giant chieftain’s new cape. The giant’s were strong, but their stony skin was no match for the ferocity with which the dragons retaliated. Rocky, mountainous giants lay scattered and broken upon the hills and crags they fought to lay claim to. Those who lived fled into the night, their cries fading into myth and nightmares and frightening stories told to misbehaving children. The wyrms watched from the darkness of the earth and some came to console the victorious dragons. The land was theirs, but the giants had made them bleed for it. The winged dragons, the great green wyverns, kept their distance, for now. As I said, this was only the first battle.

The minds of the dwellers in the valley were made up quickly. The dragons were dangerous, and threatened their way of life. There had always been an uneasy peace amidst the dwellers, because no dominant species or culture or clan could be determined. There was equality in their uncertainty. The dragon’s war with the giants, if it could be called a war, showed that was no longer true. The losses on each side were not at all equatable, and the dragons had driven the giants off entirely. Now, more than uncertainty and territory united the dwellers. Fear drove them together, closer than greed and pride ever could. Eight legged creatures crawled out into the forests at night, attempting to hunt as they had done every night before, but they were followed from the caves by a black-bellied wyrm who stopped them from their feast. The few survivors brought word to the gathering leaders that their way of life was in jeopardy. The dragons had to be stopped.

One group living in the valley was glad to see the dragons, though with much hesitation and caution. Mankind was still young, fighting with stone tools, if any, and scraping a living from the rocks and the dirt. There in the valley they were preyed upon by every other clan and culture. Mankind wasn’t welcome at the tables of the dwellers, and things hadn’t changed with the new alliance. Still, men were small, and some could slip by unnoticed. This was perhaps why they had managed to survive in the valley at all, when every other thing would like to chew on them. Tonight, man’s small size was his strength.

There was a certain dragon, a wyvern who was known to come down and fish in the river. Now at this time it is important to understand no man or woman had attempted to interact with the dragons. Men were amazed to see the giants flee, but most assumed it was only because now the dragons would hunt and feed on them. Still, a gambit was made. The man watched the dragon fishing in the moonlight and Chanced to approach. The dragon noticed the man, across the river from her, and simply continued fishing. Finally she looked up again and addressed him.

“There are dangerous things in these woods, man, and it would benefit you and your family if they did not catch you.”

“Then I’ll have to be very fast,” the man returned, keeping his distance even from the water the dragon swished her tail in. “Are you going to eat me?”

“If I were, the river wouldn’t protect you,” she said with a hint of mirth in her yellow eyes, flexing her wings softly to remind the man of them. The man swallowed into the back of his throat and came closer. He told her of the gathering of the dwellers, how he had watched from hiding and they had all come together to discuss ridding their valley of the dragons.

“Have you really not come to hunt us?” The man asked her, daring to hope.

“No. We were driven from our own homes in our corners of the world and we have come here, where we found sanctuary.”

“Then,” the man began to ask. “Will you help us?”

“The dragons are not one people,” she answered softly, though her voice was still strong and deep, like the water of the river she toyed with and studied with deep yellow eyes. “We are solitary creatures at our core, and not great warriors either.”

“Even the worst warrior among the dragons is fiercer than the strongest man.” The man said. The dragon chuckled, a low, throaty laugh. The man tensed, fearing the flame that may come. Dragons were said to be fire spitters, though none of the men had seen it.

“Your words are true, human. Do you have a name? Or is it just ‘listener?’” She arced an eyebrow, curling her lips in a smirk.

“Balther,” he said, finally relaxing and lifting his eyes to meet her gaze.

“Balther, I will spread the news to the others.” She stretched out her great wings, blotting out stars and catching the glow of the moon. “We will see if we will help.” The great dragon leapt from the ground and with a beating of her wings, enough force to knock poor Balther onto his butt, the dragon was gone. Balther carried his tidings back to his people, long preyed upon by the dwellers, and they waited. They prayed, to whatever god they then served.

The dragons did unite, and thus began the real war. The dwellers were many, and strong, but not as strong as the dragons. The war was fierce, and long, and man cowered in his hovels and holes to the sounds of thunder and turmoil, wondering if this was the right course of action. One by one, the dwellers were driven out. The eight legged creatures, the centaurs, the poekty, one by one were rooted out, and driven out. All the while, man watched. Their fate was uncertain, once all the others were driven out and all that remained were mankind and dragons. Would the dragons find a taste for man after all?

But the thunder never broke, the other shoe never dropped. The last dwellers left, through the canyons at the end of the valley, and mankind slowly emerged from their holes. All around they could see the signs of the conflict, the scattered remains of the ones who had preyed on them, and far off gathered around a solitary stone, man saw the dragons. They were fewer in number than when they had first arrived, but still more dragons in one place than any man or woman had yet seen. A green wyvern crept down from the rock and called out to the gathering men.

“Balther, come forward. We would have words with you.” With trembling legs Balther approached, setting his jaw firmly. He trusted these dragons, but that did not remove his fear.

“It was you who came to us, and warned us,” she began, her voice deep and powerful. The men and women watched from a distance, amazed that she was conversing with him as though an equal. “This valley is yours now, for you and your kin. We are few in number now, but it is ours as well. We have our homes where we want them, and all the rest of the valley is for your people, to tend to how you see fit.” Balther nodded and thanked her. The wyvern nodded, stretched out her wings, and lifted off the ground, heading for the peaks and heights higher up the valley. The wyverns took to flight after her, and one by one the other dragons crept away, back to their preferred homes. They passed through the gathering of men, regarding them with ease even as the men trembled. The war was over, the valley was theirs.

Every child knew the story, and every adult could tell it. For thousands of years the dragons governed amongst mankind and guided them. With the new peace given them by the dragons they learned to farm and developed bronze and later iron. All the while the dragons protected mankind from itself and from anything that attempted to enter the valley and make mankind a slave again. Rumors and legends grew over the centuries of what lay beyond the valley, monsters, warlords, or simply death, but few ever ventured to see, and none ever came back. Balther, the man who had first dared speak to a dragon was made advisor from the dragons to the other men, and soon he was made leader amongst his peers. He had the ear and voice of the dragons, and readily and humbly brought word back and forth. Balther didn't know what kind of impact he would leave behind, but truly it was his life that shaped the valley as it is today.

Balther grew old, and as he did so it became harder and harder on him to go between man and the dragons. He began to instruct his oldest son in how to best be an ambassador, and when Balther was gone, the son began to teach his own son. It passed from son to son for many generations, and then when a man had no sons, he taught his daughter. She was baren, and though she married she had no children. This woman decided to take an apprentice, and the lineage of the ambassador to the dragons passed out of bloodline for the first time in a thousand years. If any men had disagreed, the dragons had supported her, and so all held their tongue. From then on, the ambassador taught an apprentice of their choice. In time one apprentice became two, and so on as the number of humans increased and one couldn't advise them all. All the while the dragons lived and ruled, and peace lived alongside them, but all things pass away.

No one knows why or how it started, but the dragons never regained their original numbers, and over the centuries you could see the thinning. While they never lived among men, less and less dragons were seen all together, until eventually most people knew the name and age of every dragon. It was known that dragons lived an incredibly long time, but surely all of them had an end. The black-bellied wyrms were the first to pass away. The current chief of the ambassadors brought word to his people that the last female of the wyrms had died, and everyone held their breath knowing the others of her kind would follow soon. It was another thirty years before the last wyrm died, but his death brought a new era. The dragons gathered in the valley and mankind gathered among them. The end was near.

The dragons told how they wouldn't be able to protect and govern man forever, and soon mankind would be alone again. But the dragons had a plan. With help from the ambassadors, they began to raise and train heroes, men or women of valor and strength who would be in charge of protecting the valley when the dragons had gone. As the dragons aged governing and the choosing of heroes passed more and more to the ambassadors, and eventually, whether it was before the passing of the last dragon or after, the chief ambassadors were sole masters of the valley and the fate of its inhabitants. In time they too came to be called 'dragon.'

Ruth was very young when she was made an acolyte. She knelt on both knees on a cold stone floor, keeping her back as straight as she could as an old man shaved her head chanting slowly the myth of the first dragons. She held her breath to keep from crying as she stared ahead, unblinking. There were other initiates in the room with her, waiting for their turn to be shaved, though none of them had a story like hers. All of them had left home and family behind, and all of them were within the proper age. Eight, nine, ten, and eleven years old children, mouthing along with the somber chanting that Ruth only knew the meaning of, and not the words. All of them had had some element of choice in their induction, however ignorant or overly zealous it had been. Ruth was a little girl of five, who should've been too young to receive induction, but she was far too young to live alone anywhere in the valley. The death of her grandmother in the night had tipped the council's hand. It was unanimous among the dragons: Ruth, who was alone in the world, would be an acolyte.

She had grown up with an unusual grasp on the mythos and teachings of the dragons for one so young. Whether it was her loneliness, her youth, or something she was born with, Ruth excelled amongst her older peers. Most bested her in sparring, but she could outclass any of them with her mind, her wit, and her memory. She had the first seven bars of the Dragon's Song memorized to a T by the time she was eleven. Her mentors and teachers had to find excuses for her to be with the others of her age, because Ruth was better suited to speak and learn with the older acolytes. Most of them accepted her, finding her a novelty but a good source of humor. Ruth was straight as an arrow, and twice as serious. For many years she focused on studying, and training, but she was such a small girl. She had her eyes on the Initiate's Rite, the final test of a hero, but time and again she was held back from it. Her mentors were attempting to help her, to keep her from growing up too quickly, and to protect her from being harmed as too young a hero, but Ruth didn't understand all of that. She was insistent; her time would come.

A new dragon was appointed when Ruth was fifteen, one who Ruth had seen many times. She had been a hero and had been an acolyte after Ruth had been initiated. She was young, maybe the youngest dragon in a hundred years, but she had been an old initiate when Ruth met her. Aside from her age she was the most obvious choice. Ruth was unconcerned with her, frankly. The years were beginning to pass quicker, and soon even age couldn't be a reason for Ruth to remain an acolyte, listening again and again to the same teachings, learning the same techniques and sparring with an entirely new group of acolytes and initiates. Her time would come.

"Ruth?" She held her eyes to the floor, trying to process the news she'd received. "Ruth, I want to be sure you understand what I'm saying," the woman continued. "You have spent more time as an acolyte than anyone else- in our entire history. No one is better suited to take over running these grounds, shaping new acolytes into heroes, than you." Ruth's chest rose and fell on its own, breathing deeply and with a large sigh. "Ruth, your dedication and patience are something we all should strive for, but the council has seen a different path for you." There was little sympathy, or pity, in her voice. "Can you accept it?" Ruth nodded, and slowly raised her head to meet the dragon's eyes.

"I have abided by the council's customs and standards all my life," she said, her speech cold and articulated. "Why should I stop now?" The dragon raised her eyebrows, aware of Ruth's disrespect but choosing to ignore it. Ruth knew this woman was not even ten years older than her, and she didn't care if she felt disrespected. Ruth stood up, bowed mechanically, and left the room. Her feet wandered on their own, out of the building, up the hill, and to a place she could overlook the valley and the acolyte grounds, the only home she'd ever known. Now, the only home she'd ever know. Ruth stood on the edge of the hill watching acolytes spar, or walk and laugh, all of them obviously home, comfortable. Ruth's jaw clenched; all she could wonder was why. Why? Was it simply not in her life to be a hero? Was she simply destined to be a trainer of heroes and nothing more? Thunder rumbled somewhere above.

Ruth knew the current keeper was aging. She understood someone had to inherit it. She scuffed a pebble off the cliff edge and followed the paths she knew far too well back to the edge of the walled gardens where acolytes and monks of all ages were finishing their gardening for the day, preparing for the coming storm. Ruth entered the central building and ascended through the steps. She had to find the keeper.

"Ruth," the man said softly, his old eyes beneath their bushy eyebrows squinting in the growing darkness of a lengthening day. "Have you come to keep an old man company? At the end of his time?"

"I doubt you're going to be passing soon, sir." Ruth chided him, lighting a few candles with a struck match. She waved it out as the candles grew to life.

"You overestimate me." He chuckled, leaning back on his couch, his hands folded across his stomach. Rain pattered on the windows, and Ruth wondered if he would fall asleep here. She liked the old man, immensely, and though she joked about it with him she was afraid of the day he left her behind. The majority of her time was spent learning from him now, how to be a keeper. He had been one of her mentors when she was young, but for at least the last ten years he was the keeper of the grounds, head of the acolytes, and the one in charge of training all the heroes. Ruth knew it was an awesome responsibility, but no matter how hard she tried she couldn't be grateful it was hers. She looked over at the aged keeper, now quite sure he had fallen asleep, and she sighed. Ruth looked over the scrolls and books scattered around his room and on the shelves. Her eyes roamed over the books behind his desk, and she sorted through the papers scattered on it. Most of them things she'd seen before, or things she'd memorized. Soon it would be hers.

Ruth was the youngest keeper ever appointed. Her eyes watered the ground freely, and though the skies threatened to break all day, not a drop fell. The wind rushed through the grass and tugged on capes and cloaks, but the assembly stood resolutely still. Funeral dirges and laments filled the valley all day, but now Ruth stood alone amongst the heather and the stones. The keeper, her oldest and closest friend, was passed. He was one with the first dragons now, and old Balther their forefather. Ruth sighed to herself. The sun was getting low, and soon she'd be blind in the dark. Reluctantly she trudged home. Home. How had that drafty, archaic building ever been home to her? Much less to a child? Ruth crossed the threshold and mumbled goodnight to the watchmen as she admitted to herself it had never been home.

Ruth grudgingly admitted she took well to the position. She enjoyed her time with the acolytes and initiates, and she didn’t hate the recitations like she thought she would. The part she enjoyed was when an acolyte or an initiate would come to her office, knocking with a timid hand on the door standing ajar, and creep in. Ruth was keeper of the grounds, and everyone who lived within answered to her. Ruth welcomed them in for a cup of tea and to listen and ease their concerns or questions. It was these times when Ruth began to know she had found purpose in a once drab routine, and whether or not she loved it, she would invest herself into it. One memory returned again and again through her mind, of the man who had been keeper before her. One of the dragons had come to the grounds, and Ruth didn’t know what exactly it was, but they had tried to do something harmful to some of the acolytes. Incidents like it were rare, and all of the current dragons were absolutely respected throughout the valley. Well, almost all the dragons, and almost all the valley. Whatever thing they’d attempted the keeper had stopped it; he stood up to the corrupt dragon and cast them out of the grounds, going so far as to expose them. It was the first time in history a dragon had been tried.

The memory played through her mind. Ruth lay in bed staring at the ceiling, thinking about the end of that corrupt dragon's life. Never before- or since- had a dragon been the subject of public execution. Ruth hadn't gone, she was young, but she knew the keeper went. Ruth tossed in her bed. She had found letters last week, halves of conversations between the keeper and the council of dragons concerning the fate of the corrupt dragon. It implied that the one found guilty wasn't the only corrupt one among the council, and Ruth's skin had begun to crawl and hadn't stopped yet. Was this her role in this world? Lessons from her youth- lessons taught to her by the keeper- swam through her head, of the virtues required to be a hero and maybe someday a dragon. Lessons about the history, the first dragons who had selflessly come to the valley and freed mankind. Lessons about the things they'd taught man, about living well with each other, about defending the weak. Ruth remembered them all, maybe better than anyone else now living. She had been living and reliving those lessons and histories since she was five years old, in the vivid color and imagination of a child's mind. They were an immutable truth to her, the inherent virtue it requires to be a dragon.

The keeper taught her these things. He taught her these things even after the fall of the corrupt dragon, even after that dragon was put to death for all to see. How had he been so blind? Ruth sat up straight in bed, feeling the cold sweat clinging to her skin. Had he been blind? What if that was why she was here? Ruth got up, put a robe around herself and went out. Bare feet carried her with a mind of their own to an open walkway, exposed to the night and the clouded sky. Ruth leaned her arms on the battlement and tried for deep breaths. She shivered. Ruth had a role to play in all this, more important than being a hero or a dragon. A dragon was supposed to be a paragon of virtue, inherent, unblemished, and every dragon she'd ever met had shown a different color. Ruth grimaced, feeling the crawling skin grow worse at the looming thought in her mind as she turned and almost ran back to her room. She threw the door shut behind her with a slam. She stood alone in her room, breathing raggedly. The thunder and rain finally broke with a low roll, growing steadily to berate upon the window, nagging for her attention. Ruth stared at her own reflection, cast dim in the clouded mirror and the darkness. The dragon from the story, from the valley's past, from the keeper's past, wasn't 'the corrupt dragon.' They were the one who'd been caught.