From Patala

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. The reputation of the dragon amongst the nomadic peoples of this land seems to have endured since anyone had memory of the foothills, the plains, and the winds that howl through the mountains. But the emergence of dragons in the Valley has always been treated as a fairly recent thing among the myths of the region. Though, there supposedly never even was a Valley before they came. You must let me shed a little light on this tale before I continue with my own. Being as how this tale has been told around the last smoldering embers of a night’s fire all across the steppes since ancient times, I feel I’m obliged to take advantage of this dimming bed of coals between us now. It would do you well to listen.

In a time so distant in our past that the years since have been lost like the grains of sand spilling from your grasp, it was said that the very Earth itself suddenly parted with a thunderous boom that shook the world, and the crack that formed from the mighty mountain range here to the blasted meadows in the North split open, forming the Valley. Some say the dragons carved the Valley themselves, their dominion over the world forced the land to obey their whims, and it simply made way for them. Once the slipping rock from the surrounding mountains and valley walls no longer tumbled down, the young Valley came to be, and it soon began to flood with a massive forest. The forest was so expansive and thickly green, no one could say for certain just how deep the basin went down, as the canopy which sprouted over it formed almost a false floor of treetops and twisted moss above. Centuries go by, if not millennia, as the forest’s vibrant lushness grows to be almost uncanny against the cold, desolate backdrop of this harsh place. Soon, the dragons emerged from there to inhabit the forest as well as the rest of the Valley. The answers to the mysteries about them and the rest of the forest are concealed under that canopy of impenetrable green, where their home remains practically undisturbed by man to this day. But this tale, it simply isn’t true. There is definitely a forest in the Valley that’s been peculiarly carved through the middle of the mountains, and in that forest, there are things that people call dragons. However, the very word “dragon” evokes imagery of something regal, even divine, something that can fly and is indeed powerful enough to shape the Earth to its whims, and to command all that surround them through mystic and intimidating means. Time itself can’t erode the majesty of that word.

These “dragons”, also called “brug” or “naka” by some, are not the same legendary beasts of old, or if they are, they certainly are not imbued with the same magic as the tales surrounding them are. They are instead very mundane in that regard, and are very little more than any other beast, somewhat akin to the tigers spoken of to the South. Also… they are horribly ugly. All of them are reptilian, yes, with their forms ranging from being small and very snake-like, capable of slipping unnoticed into your knapsack to ambush you with a gruesome bite followed sometimes by local necrosis, to being heavily muscled brutes not unlike those greater monitor lizards or even the crocodilians, though larger than the abandoned vehicles you see lying around, and with a proportionate ferocity. But, in addition to being completely flightless, there had always been something… off about them, all of them, unlike any healthy animal known to live in these parts or even in the nearby ones. Underneath their already abnormally bleached and smooth hides, there are some indescribable contours about their faces, snouts, or bodies that unsettles even a hardened and rational person, making most resort to some baser instinct to flee. Though none of them are literal dragons, despite all being dangerous to some degree, their presence as reptiles of great, if inscrutable, menace earned them the title of “dragons” nonetheless. The whispered warnings about them and their home still persist, and the vague apprehensions that travelers feel even in the furthest proximity to their home never go completely unheeded.

Though the prospect of running into some of the more predacious of the dragons would deter travelers from even entertaining the thought of getting close to their home, in a sick sort of cosmic irony, the strangely forested Valley is also an untouched trove of foods and fresh water. The rumors of countless plum and mulberry trees, glass-clear water trickling down through a mountain runoff stream with no doubt some fish to be caught within, even the promise of food from one of the more moderate sized dragons themselves, made the forest out as a paradise inset to the ancient, wind beaten range. To the lone man perpetually on the brink of starvation, just the thought of the smallest trembling handful out of that bounty that could fill his belly for the rest of his life could blot out his reason entirely. And now here is where my tale, and the truth so much as you want to believe it, begins. Just such a man I was, in a state of such hunger that I felt my own body began to consume itself. Never would the thought have occurred to me that once I sidled down the loose rock and thin grass of the valley slope in the search for food, that I would be forever cursed with knowing the grand nature of what lies within the forest in the Valley. I only thought of filling my empty belly at any cost, not thinking of what instead would fill my eyes, and leave my mind bloated and utterly disturbed with what is down there. But believe you me when I say this, what I have seen, I must tell you- warn you about. Those things are not the dragons, but they are abominable in a way I can’t properly explain without laying out my story out in full. If you can piece together the meaning of my tale for yourself, then all the better for you, as you will surely figure out just why you must never enter that forest.

It was a dark and turbulent evening, back when I was a younger man, the sunlight was reduced only to a pink fringe on an empty sky, as the bitterly cold wind threw about both the abrasive coarse mist and loosed sand to ravage my clothes and exposed skin. Not my hands, my face, not even my eyes stung, as my whole body had felt numb from withering starvation, while simultaneously feeling deeply feverish. Sickly aching and feebleness might have made up almost the entirety of my being. I sat atop a stretch of the ridge that marks that proverbial descent down into the Valley. Sheer desperation brought me here, and now the forest almost seemed aglow, as if it knew I needed to go down there or else I would die, and it was all the more sinister for that. But first, I needed the rest, and took it while I picked inside my goatskin bag for any loose flecks of the dried yams or various green nuts I just had in there two weeks prior. I knew I wouldn’t find anything. Deeply unsatisfied, I cheerlessly took the final, grainy swig of the water kefir I’d kept in some hollowed bamboo, letting a little life filter back into me like a drop of blood in water. I forced my wiry legs to stand me up. The growing fury of the winds began to whistle as they whipped through the mountain-encircled steppe behind me, slapping my back and neck with gritty, unseen hands as all of the gnawing, empty feelings inside me made my mind and innards writhe. I was urged by some force to take an involuntary step down, which was shaking not just from my weakness, and with that I finally passed that final threshold into that inexplicably fear enshrouded Valley that lay below.