The Day the Dragons Came

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. They came on the heels of a dead man. They came with the chaos that followed his demise. They sensed a change in the fabric of the universe and, like many animals when there is a major disruption to their world, they panicked. They fled their lairs with bellies filled with scorching fear, just waiting to pour out of their snouts. They flew down, down, down from the tall mountains that were their home. Far down where they were not at all supposed to be. All the way to the Valley with its little towns and one big sprawling city. The city of Grasben stretched beneath them, still peacefully snoozing in the honey-yellow light of the early morning. It didn’t know to expect them, it wasn’t prepared and so it would soon wake up in flames.

***

In retrospect, Ferres should have realised it was suspicious nobody seemed to be chasing him as he sprinted up the narrow path across the sea which connected Elmirgard with Whisper Island. In his defence, he’d been recently murdered. The shock of that would rob anyone of their perceptiveness. All he could focus on was reaching the Conclave and passing the Essence on to the next Vessel before his extra thirteen hours of existence were up; before the very soul of their world disappeared for good or fell into the hands of Longhorn. Ferres wasn’t sure which would be worse. Without the Essence it was said that Phengor would completely cease to exist, but with it inside the mind of that plague of a man the kingdom might be in for an even worse fate. Why Longhorn was after the ancient power to begin with was a mystery. While it was believed that the Essence moulded the world in the likeness of its Vessel, it did so without the Vessel’s conscious control and not always to their benefit. Carrying it granted no extra power. Unless…

Ferres’s train of thought halted as his feet hit the white sand of the beach. Only now did he turn to look behind. There was no one. No pursuers could be seen making their way across the thin white line of land between the city and the semi-island. The high tide was coming, preparing to submerge the land bridge for hours to come. He turned back to the beach, taking a cautious step forward, looking around. He jumped at the sudden cry of a bird a few metres away. A seagull was pulling at something sticking out from the sand. Ferres peered at it in the pale light of the slowly creeping dawn, squinted.... If all of his blood hadn’t leaked out of the dagger hole in his heart, it would have grown cold at the sight.

It was a human hand.

Some horrible compulsion made him look at his feet. The white sand was turning red under his weight as blood mixed with water bubbled to the surface. Something bubbled inside him, too - something unfamiliar and wrong in the place where he could usually feel the subtle, docile presence of the Essence. The air had been still moments ago but now suddenly there was wind. It trailed its chilly fingers over the sand and, in a moment, bodies were being slowly exhumed from their shallow graves. Ferres stumbled back in horror as he started recognising their faces - members of the Conclave and pupils of the school, some of them children no older than ten. Longhorn had gotten here before him, it was all a trap! All prospective Vessels were probably dead.

Figures started appearing from the trees surrounding the beach. One of them, seemingly the leader but not tall nor graceful enough to be Longhorn himself, was carrying a staff. An unnatural aura emanated from it. It seemed to exude darkness the same way a torch would exude light. Ferres backed farther away and nearly stepped on the face of a little girl. He stared down at her, unable to look away for a moment. Her eyes were open, reflecting the violet of the early morning sky. Something broke - inside him or out in the universe he couldn’t tell. The wind which had been gathering strength already now gave a deafening roar and transformed into a twister. It coiled around the beach like a giant snake squeezing its prey. With a powerful heave everything and everyone in its range, living or dead, was lifted into the air. As they were both thrown towards the sky, Ferres caught the body of the little girl in a senseless attempt to protect it. His screams of rage were lost in the noise as the twister headed out into the sea.

***

The sky was red above Grasben - all bad kinds of red, like a gaping wound. Parts of the city were being devoured by clouds of black smoke and the rest of it was grey with ash. Sergeant Shanna Flemming of the Royal Defenders stopped at her doorstep to survey the sea of coughing, sobbing people. Next to her, constable Vaken Coal rubbed futilely at the soot marks covering his armour with his bandaged right arm and gave her an expectant look.

“Where to now, sergeant? I think we’re done with the houses on this street.”

Shanna hesitated. “I don’t know. The whole city is in need of rescuing, I suppose it doesn’t matter where we start… The docks. I heard it’s really bad there.”

“You can’t keep bringing people to your house, you know,” Vaken said as they descended the few steps down to the street and headed east. “You’ve rather run out of space.”

“We can fit in a few more, Vaken. There aren’t enough clinics to treat all of the victims and we’re on one of the few streets unaffected by the fires. If Landen can help…”

“Landen’s a miracle worker, my arm barely even hurts. Just don’t tell people that his usual patients are of the four-legged variety or they might get a bit worried.”

Shanna smirked. “Don’t be silly, he has tons of two-legged patients.”

“Who?”

“Eight chickens and three parrots in the last two months.”

Vaken chuckled, then became serious again. “I’m not trying to discourage you from helping, you know. I’d be housing people too if the whole boarding house hadn’t burned down.”

Shanna sighed. “I know, constable. And you’re right – Landen only has two hands and one head, there’s only so much he can do, and there’s little space left even on the floor. I had to stash the babies in the pantry to give them some peace and quiet and keep them out of harm’s way.”

“Will they be okay by themselves?”

“Brennan’s babysitter is with them.” She winked.

“You mean Kiana?” Vaken laughed. “Yeah, it might be a good idea to keep her out of sight. People might get a bit nervous. Look, if you want to go back to the kids – to Brennan… You’re not even supposed to be on duty.”

“It’s all right. He’s as safe as he can be. I keep thinking – one more life, one more person desperate for help… I can’t stay home when there’s more I can do out here. With a little luck the neighbouring towns have learned what’s happening by now and are sending us backup.”

“But what is happening? Crazy winds and dragons out of nowhere? They never come so far down from the mountains and they are rarely so aggressive! And that’s not all! I heard somebody inside swearing he’d seen dead bodies raining from the sky into the sea! It’s like the end of the world is coming.”

Shanna shook her head. “I don’t know. Just some… natural disaster, I suppose. Some sudden major change in the climate that could have driven the dragons all the way down here?”

It seemed too strange and sudden to be a natural disaster but Shanna didn’t have time to dwell on that now. She’d learned in her twelve years with the Defenders that when the world went crazy you just rolled up your sleeves and did the work that was in front of you.

Once or twice a shadow passed over them, accompanied by a roar, and they looked up to see the dark shape of a dragon but none of the creatures struck near them so they kept walking. Then Vaken suddenly came to a halt.

“Look! In front of Captain Crane’s house. That’s not the captain, is it?”

“Mason? But I saw him an hour ago, he was headed for the shore...” Shanna’s gaze followed Vaken’s pointing finger to the front door of Mason Crane’s house where a ragged figure was slumped against the wood, one hand touching it as if pleading with it to give way. She sped towards it, fearing for half a moment that it really was the captain himself. But the figure was too thin and the nondescript rags it wore bore no resemblance to a Defender’s armour. It was a man, she realised when she got to him, and judging by his greying hair he was maybe in his fifties.

“Sir, are you injured?” She knelt beside him and almost gasped at his appearance when he turned.

“Holy Source…” muttered Vaken who had just caught up with her.

The stranger’s clothes and hair were drenched in water and he was impossibly pale. One of his arms was out of its socket and grotesquely bent. There were several open cuts on his face and his arms which were, bizarrely, not bleeding. She would have been convinced he was a corpse if he hadn’t turned his head to look at her at the sound of her question.

“He’s not here,” a voice gurgled, almost impossible to understand. “I don’t know what to do. There’s no more time.”

“Are you looking for Captain Crane? Are you his friend? A relative?”

“Crane, yes… He can be trusted.”

“Trusted with what?”

“Trusted… Trusted with himself, I suppose,” the voice rasped and then chuckled. The sound was almost demented but then his eyes suddenly cleared and sharpened. “Crane, do you know where he is?”

“He’s helping out in another part of town, I think. Not far from here. What is…?”

Shanna’s words cut off when the stranger grabbed her arm with surprising strength.

“You must bring him! Hurry - half an hour, maybe less.”

“Until what?” Vaken asked but the man ignored him.

“Hurry, girl!”

“I will but you must tell me who you are and what happened to you!”

“Longhorn…”

“Longhorn? Are you saying that’s your name?”

“No,” Vaken said. “No, Longhorn is a Master Weaver from the Conclave and he’s much younger.”

“I know that,” Shanna muttered, “but I’m not sure he does.”

Vaken squinted. “He does look a bit familiar but I can’t place him. Maybe we’ve seen him with the captain before?”

Shanna stared at the horrible face and searched her memory. There really was something familiar about the man but with all the wounds and unnatural colour she doubted she’d be able to really identify him. Not somebody she’d seen often, that was for sure. And the way he sounded she doubted he had enough of his wits about him to give them a name they could believe. Maybe he’d sustained a head injury, she thought. Unless he was insane to begin with. His urgency bothered her, though. What if there was really some emergency and he just couldn’t articulate it properly? Of course, the whole of Grasben was one big emergency right now. Either way, he was very battered and needed help. Shanna exchanged a look with the constable. “Well, I may as well find Mason and tell him we have a friend of his, he should still be near the docks.” She jerked her head towards the injured man. “Can you take him back to the house?”

Vaken did his best to hide a disgusted grimace and nodded. She couldn’t blame him for his reluctance – bile rose in her throat too when she looked at the clammy grey skin and the strange non-bleeding lacerations. She bent lower to address the man.

“Constable Coal will take you to a safe place now and I’ll find Captain Crane for you. I’ll be quick, I promise.”

She moved to stand up but a cold damp hand grabbed at her again. The deathly pale face had grown terribly grave. “I am so sorry,” the man said. “This is all my fault. I couldn’t help it.”

She paused but thought better of asking what he meant. He was yet to give her a helpful answer and trying to pry one out of him would only waste time. “It’s all right,” she said instead, pulling her hand away and straightening. With a parting nod at Vaken, she raced towards the docks. She was half-convinced the man was mad but there was something ominous and disconcerting about his rambling which propelled her forward.

***

Ferres stumbled his way unnoticed, unrecognised, around the moaning people sprawled on blankets on the floor of the makeshift clinic. He silently thanked the Source for small mercies. If they realised the Vessel was among them, they’d start asking him for help, perhaps asking him to explain what was happening. He had no help to offer, no time to offer it and, as to the chaos and horror currently gripping the city… it was probably not wise to tell people that he was the one causing it all. The twister that had carried him all the way here and then, soon after, the dragons, frightened and confused, flying into buildings in their panic and burning everything in their path… Something had gone terribly wrong with the Essence. It was usually dormant, sleeping, but something had awoken it and turned it violent. Maybe the horror he had witnessed on Whisper Island had driven him insane. He certainly felt insane. This should have been impossible – he wasn’t meant to be able to access all of the power he carried. And yet… If there was a way for a Vessel to use the Essence like this… Well, that explained why Longhorn was after it. But what good was so much power with no control? Even now it was clawing at the inside of Ferres’s chest and, despite his best efforts, pouring out into the world. Light tremors were beginning to shake the city. The sea was slowly rising and more twisters were forming over it. The dragons could feel it all and were getting more agitated by the moment. He suspected all of these things were a manifestation of his pain and panic, his anger and grief. But he didn’t know how to stop any of it.

There was a clock on the wall and the movement of its hands felt to Ferres like a knife cutting deeper and deeper into flesh, as if the dagger which had stabbed him was piercing him again, a hundred times slower but just as unstoppable. They would be too late. There were mere minutes left now. Crane wouldn’t make it in time. Ferres had to choose someone else - anyone. He looked around. The young Defender who had brought him here had run off immediately after. The doctor whom he’d glanced only briefly as the man ran past him to attend to somebody who was screaming in another room was nowhere to be seen. Every surface in the house was covered in injured and distressed people none of whom would be able to handle the burden he needed to put on their shoulders. How easy would it be for Longhorn to find any of them and kill them? How much devastation would they bring beforehand, not being able to control the power? But what was the alternative?

He couldn’t think anymore, his thoughts had fractured and scattered with that twister, his rational mind had been wrenched away along with the body of the little girl he had been clutching at. Maybe this was how it was meant to be. Maybe everything had to die eventually and Phengor was no exception. Maybe it had always existed on borrowed time. He wouldn’t be here to witness the end so it should hardly matter to him. Maybe it was time to relax and accept fate, be calm in his last moments instead of tortured by responsibility and helplessness.

A sound warmed its way to his ears - a muffled sound, almost lost in the cries and chatter around him and yet somehow separate. Ferres closed his eyes and listened. Little gurgles. Meaningless babbling from untrained vocal cords. A baby.

A baby…

There had been only two recorded cases in history where the Essence had been transferred to young children but in those cases it had gone completely dormant, hidden until the child was older. Longhorn would not know to look for an infant, nor would he be able to track the Vessel down if the Essence was not being used in any way. And maybe, just maybe, growing up with it would allow a child Vessel to learn how to control it, even if it did have the potential to get out of hand.

Ferres had almost unconsciously started moving towards the sound. It led him to a door half-hidden in a niche. He cast a glance over his shoulder but no one was paying attention to him. He slipped through the door and found himself in a small pantry. There, on a tattered pillow on the floor, lay a large female liger. Behind her were not one but three babies. The first was a little boy who looked about a year old. He was sitting on a blanket next to the liger and running his small hands through her fur, squealing happily every once in a while. It was him that Ferres had heard. The other two were younger. There was a girl (judging by the name ‘Heliana’ embroidered on her clothes), sleeping inside a frilly yellow pram as if completely unaffected by the tragic events unfolding around her. Ferres couldn’t tell if the third one, tucked inside a simple basket the underside of which was caked with mud, was a boy or a girl. This one was quiet but a pair of dark eyes seemed to be looking straight at Ferres.

The liger gave a great yawn and fixed him with a curious stare but remained where she was. She must have been left here to guard the children but Ferres rather doubted she was aggressive. The little boy’s tugging at her tail and ears barely provoked any reaction. Ferres looked past her again. Three children. Three choices. He had no way of knowing how any one of them would turn out. All he had was hope. Well… That was better than nothing.

Finally, with a sigh and a silent prayer he reached out, touching one of the little heads and began the chant. In that moment, reality split into three different paths.