A Ritual Sacrifice

All the villages in the kingdom thrived except for one. Small and on the outskirts, it had land for crops and livestock. Just enough to feed the people who dwelled there and little to trade with others. Wilderness lay beyond it. The kind which housed dragons and other ferocious creatures. Rumors carried sightings of basilisks and griffins.

The gossip carried when at first cows began to go missing, followed by bulls a short time later. The same cows and bulls set aside as part of the mandatory royal tax fees. And so the dues were not paid.

Under the queen’s orders to retrieve the missing tax payment, a knight set out. Rather than staying at an inn, he boarded with a local family. The two coins per day provided them a great help. Gossip traveled to him before his arrival. A dragon had been stealing the cattle. Several of the villagers had seen it. They described it as bigger than the town hall with scales the red of apples, claws longer than any man was tall, and a spiked tail thicker than the serpents known to dwell in the midst of the forest.

The day the knight arrived in town, the family asked of him a favor: to watch their son while they went to small local market to trade amongst their neighbors. The boy reminded him of the pages often sent to and from the palace. A chipper child, already familiar with the early rising and long hours of farming.

When he set out to pick the fruit of his family’s labor, the knight joined him.

There was no sign of a dragon that evening. The next day, the family took more of their harvest to trade.

The knight tended to his horse when the boy ran in and screamed in fear. Never before had the dragon stolen in daylight. Many villagers recounted seeing it flying overhead but never seeing it up close.

The dragon, massive and winged, lifted the lone bull in the pen with the ease of a hawk lifting a tiny snake into the air and flew away.

The knight followed only to lose the beast in the thickness of the forest. He cursed his lack of preparation, lamenting how palace life had made him soft.

When next the dragon returned, it made off with yet another bull. The knight followed on foot for his horse outright refused to carry him where the giant predator had gone.

He found a cave just before dark. It was empty of the dragon.

There were no signs of bones or remains. Perhaps the dragon ate its food whole. The knight pondered this as he continued exploring the dragon’s cave. The walls of it seemed expansive. The path inside endless. So much so he feared he’d never leave. His torch would only burn so long, likely to extinguish before he accomplished his task.

There was no sign of the dragon when the knight left the cave. And so he spent the darkest hours in the forest, hoping to catch sight of the beast before morning’s arrival.

The light of the sun provided footprints showing where the dragon had roamed.

What else he found stopped him in his tracks.

The scent of freshly cooked meat permeated the air, reminding the knight of his own hunger.

A fire burned, the flames hot and high, fed by the now dead carcasses of the missing cattle. A ritual sacrifice. The dragon stood watching and waiting.

Taking a step back, the knight raised his sword and shield in anticipation of the fight.

The dragon did not move. It simply stared into the depths of the blaze.

As the earth shook, the ground split open.

Smoke and flames ascended towards the heavens.

Fearing the worst, the knight turned and ran. He had to warn the villagers and the queen before the thing imprisoned within the earth finished freeing itself.

The dragon gave chase.