Winged Book One

“There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.”

Silus nodded, he’d heard this story when he was only a hatchling and many times over since.

“Yes Gram, I know. We used to live high-“

“I was born up on the highest peak all the way over there under a blood moon.” She pointed off into the darkness and waited until he turned his head to look.

Once gram started a story there was no point in stopping her. He’d tried that before and Ma had given him an earful. He’d rather get singed than get an earful from Ma.

“You’ll be happy you listened to her stories, Silus. One day she’ll be gone and you’ll wish you could have heard her stories one more time.”

That’s what Ma’d always tell him, but they were all here for Gram’s two hundredth shedding and this was one of her favorite stories to tell, right behind how the rumor came to be that dragons have scales and lizard heads. Still, with his departure only a week away, the story served as a welcome distraction from the daily training at the academy and the nightly quizzing from Ma and Pa.

He adjusted the cushion and did his best to keep the glaze from his eyes.

“If you’re great grandfather hadn’t challenged Carrlemane, we very well may not be here today.”

As Silus listened he knew what came next. She would tell of how dragons had been near invincible, walking the lands as demi-gods among man and animal alike. Then she would pause until his reaction sufficed, and she would tell of how Carrlemane and his kin had betrayed their own, breaking the thousands of years of peace they had called Pax Dragone.

“The cowards enchanted the weapons of wretched men and beasts with our hellfire and set them in every direction upon the land. They burnt and killed all in their path, making molten rock of the grand walls of castles and cities alike, choking the world in flames that would burn until only Carrlemane, with his great power, willed the hateful fires to stop. Only we Wingeds who lived high in the mountains had shelter from Carlemanne’s wicked intent. But such shelter did little to mitigate our suffering, our guilt over stoking the fires of Carrlemane’s rise. It was we who whispered of breaking that orphaned egg upon the rocks, and bred a sickness within him before he hatched. We failed to see his boyhood burning of a fawn as a cry for help, as a manifestation of the violent eyes and whispers he had felt since before he was a hatchling. We nurtured the unborn with hate and yet were too ignorant to see that in doing so, we grew a menace far worse than his own father. Met with no love, he offered none in return.”

Silus nodded, doing his best to look grave. In Gram’s older years her memory became selective, and she never missed a chance to talk about the role her lineage played in the turning of the war.

“It was your great grandfather, Greymane, who brought the remaining cities of men in the Northern and Eastern realms together to fight back the sickness that had spread across the land. He banded the remaining Wingeds together. A united front, we Winged alongside men cast Carrlemane and his kin from our realm, pushing them beyond the Ashen mountains of the West. It is because of Greymane that we came down from the safety of our mountain keeps to live in the Valley, bonded with man in our struggle against a common foe. They are his flames that still burn on the Ashen range that hold back the scourge of our land. ”

Of course, Silus knew this already, but there had been rumors the hellfire Greymane had set upon the Ashen Mountains from sea to sea were beginning to fade, that Greymane’s will no longer could keep them alite.

Even worse were the imaginings of what lay beyond the long Ashen Range. Silus departed a week from that day, he may soon find out.