Blue Inferno

1.

There weren’t always dragons in the valley.

Truthfully, there hadn’t been dragons in the valley for so long that many were starting to believe they were myths and legends. Dragons used to reside in Ik’Anah alongside its residents. Many of them had mutual agreements with the citizens of the town and helped with farming and building. They even helped with keeping the valley warm during wintertime, she had heard. One day, the dragons started disappearing one by one until one last dragon was left. It was said that she had been acting odd in the last few weeks before her disappearance. Since the dragons vanished the valley had had some of its coldest winters yet, with at least 5 people dying of hyperthermia every new cycle. The seasons were off, with extreme highs and lows and Ik'Anah had lost alliances with neighboring villages once they were gone, as the dragons also aided with trade. Saoleah believed they still existed, but since they hadn’t been spotted since her grandparents’ time it was hard to really prove they were still out there somewhere.

Well… it had been hard. In that moment all of that was going to change because Saoleah was looking directly into the eyes of a very small, very scared baby dragon.

Looking closely at the baby, Saoleah noticed it had the most beautiful blue scales- the color of the bluest water in the ocean. Its eyes were big and round in its head and were the prettiest shade of sapphire. It stood about two feet tall without standing on its hind feet. The little thing scrunched its nose and shook its head when she kneeled down and tried to reach out to it, taking two steps back.

“It’s okay,” she cooed with a soft laugh, trying not to startle it. “Go on, come here, I won’t hurt you, precious.” Her hand stayed outstretched but she didn’t move, knowing that if you just waited with some animals they would simply come to you. She smiled as she watched the intelligent newborn assess the potential danger, seeing the little gears work in its head. She could tell it really wanted to let her touch it, it was just scared.

After crouching with her arm held out like that for a little bit, Saoleah started getting tired of sitting in that position, so very slowly she sat down on the dusty floor of the house, knowing she was ruining her light blue tunic and put her hand down. Instead, she focused on the ground and began drawing little circles in the dust to bide her time for the creature to gain enough courage to approach by itself.

They sat there for some time. The baby dragon gradually relaxed in Saoleah’s presence as they lounged in each other’s company. Occasionally, Saoleah would shift, slowly inching her way closer and closer to the baby until they were practically touching. It wasn’t really paying any attention to her so she was able to do this fairly easily. Cautiously, she reached out her fingers, inching along the ground in her doodles and was able to subtly brush up against the baby’s side as it sniffed the ground and it startled, finally realizing that she was well within the boundaries of its personal space. When it startled, it let out a little yelp, exactly like that of a puppy, falling onto its side as if it had been pushed. Saoleah shocked herself with a loud laugh at the way the dragon had just toppled over from the touch of her fingers. It yelped again and got up to try to sniff her fingers. Once thoroughly sniffed and deemed safe, the baby dragon- she decided to call it Royal- began to climb onto her lap stallingly.

Laughing, Saoleah helped the little creature up onto her lap and it put its little claws on her chest and started sniffing her face and hair and neck. She stroked the baby’s scales and found that they had a silky but firm quality to them. She realized they didn’t feel like you would have thought. When you think about a dragon’s scales, what do you think they would feel like? Rough, hard, bumpy maybe. This dragon had scales that felt like water running gently over rock. Saoleah knew that wasn’t a description that should be used for something like this, but that’s the only thing she could think of.

“What’s your name, little one?” She asked softly, still mesmerized by the surreal feeling of seeing and touching a dragon in real life.

It chirped at her and she laughed, startling it as it jumped and stopped sniffing her to stare at this weird human making weird sounds it had never heard of. The baby chirped at her again, getting excited and licking her. That just made Saoleah laugh even harder and fall over from the weight of the little dragon pushing back on her chest.

“How about Blue?” She said with a smile and it chirped at her happily. “It suits you very much.”

They sat for a little longer, girl and dragon just enjoying their time together as new friends. Eventually it began to get dark and Saoleah knew it was getting near her time to go. Her mother would soon be wondering where she was as she usually would return from her daily adventures by dinner.

“I have to go, little friend,” she said, stroking its silky scales. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. You need to stay here.”

The baby dragon looked at her and tilted its head quizzically, not understanding any of what Saoleah was saying. She was definitely talking to herself.

“Okay.” She picked up the little one, “time for me to go.” Depositing it gently onto the ground beside her. Blue looked up at her as she stood up, trying to follow her as she made her way to the door of the abandoned house they had been in. The walls were made of stone, an uneven surface curving all around while the ground was packed hard with dirt. There were cobwebs in the corners, dust on the shelves and the wooden furniture looked like it had been eaten through by rodents, showing that the place hadn’t been occupied in a long time. That’s why it was the perfect hideout for Saoleah and her new friend. Nobody would come looking in this place or its possible inhabitants. The house wasn’t too far outside of the village and hers was on the outskirts of it so she would be able to get back and check on it fairly easily if anything happened. This is where her new little friend would have to stay for now until she thought of a better place.

She knelt down to pet Blue and stop it from following her anymore. “You can’t come with me, little one. You have to stay here, ok? It will be safer for you.” It chirped at her anxiously, pushing up against her legs again. She laughed. “No, I’m sorry, you’re staying here.” She looked around, searching for anything to occupy the little one and found a ratted blanket on the table against the wall to her left. She got up to grab it and the baby followed her promptly. Taking it off of the table, she leaned down again to wrap it around the baby and sat it down in a chair. “I’ll be back again, I promise,” she said earnestly. Was she talking to a dragon? Yes. Could it understand what she was even saying? Not by the looks of it. But she was going to talk anyway. Sometimes it looked like the dragon could understand some of what she was saying, but who knows?

With one last look back at the sad baby watching her leave, Saoleah walked out of the house, making sure to latch the door behind her so the dragon couldn’t get back out. She turned away from the house and began to make her way back down the trodden path to her own home back in the village.

The trail was long, but it wasn’t lacking in sights. To the left, spread out as far as you could see, was a field of bluebells in full bloom, swaying in the gentle evening breeze. To the right was a mirroring sea of lilies in the beginning of their summer bloom. Saoleah smiled, enjoying the aroma of nature surrounding her. In front of her stood the Unyielding woods. If anybody asked why it was named that, locals would simply look. Who asks about an obvious name? “The woods. They’re Unyielding. They don’t. Yield.” If you didn’t get it, you’d simply be ignored after that.

She used to wonder about the name herself until she was finally allowed to explore on her own. Her mother was very strict about how close to the woods she could get as a child. At one point a few years back, many children around her age had been going missing and no one had ever found them, not the search parties or the hunters… not the parents who disappeared looking. Because of that, her mother became really protective and refused to let Saoleah out of her sight for years.

There had been a lot of devastation in the past few years, but Saoleah had tried not to let that dampen her outlook on the world. That was partially due to how sheltered she was, but of course, how could that be her fault? She was seeing the world now, albeit she wasn’t seeing past the valley’s edge. For that she had to wait until her 18th year. It was coming. One more year.

“Soaleah!” She heard her mother calling in the distance. “Dinner!”

“I’m coming!” She yelled back, hoping her mother could hear her from that distance. She had gotten close to the other side of the woods by now, her thoughts making her miss most of the sights. It made her wish she could wander some more, but she knew her mother would lose her mind if she wasn’t back soon. She had had to convince her to let her roam when she turned 16 but it had been hard. Saoleah had to agree to a curfew and she had to learn basic survivalist skills and show that she could at least last long enough to get help if anything happened. Once her mother knew she was competent enough to at least try to survive, she was allowed to go on her first ever solo excursion. So now she was free to roam to the edges of the valley by herself until sundown every day, so long as she did her chores and ran the few errands she was sent on occasionally. Those simple requests allotted her time to learn more about the world around her and finally be free to experience at least some of life.

She finally made it to the edge of the woods and stopped to take a breath, almost free of the scent of bark and bush that follows you through the trees.

Suddenly, there was the faintest sound of something snapping behind her. She didn’t know why, but there was a voice in her head telling her to look back, so she did. Her breath hitched and she froze, her heart dropping out of her chest.

An unnatural shadow had begun to blanket the ground and brush all around Saoleah from behind and as she stared in growing terror it continued to make a steady advance in her direction. Looking around, she saw that the shadow only covered about thirty feet in all directions as if it were… “Alive?” she whispered in disbelief, almost forgetting she was supposed to be scared. Then she focused again as she saw the shadows had gotten closer to her as she stood there, unable to move. With some mental pushing, she finally willed her legs to move but only made it a few feet before she stumbled and fell to the ground. She was at the edge of the woods now but couldn’t seem to move anymore, as if the shadows were holding her with invisible bonds. The hairs all along her body stood on end and her heart was yet to come back from the pit of her stomach where it had dropped.

“Get up. Go!” A voice beyond the shadows said in a hushed but steady voice. Saoleah tried to peer harder into the inky blackness she was supposed to be running away from, attempting to get a glimpse of the body behind the voice.

“GO!!!” The voice snapped at her and she jumped, scrambling backwards and pushing to her feet while watching the shadows. They stopped abruptly, as if someone were holding them. After a second of what seemed like them pushing against an invisible wall, they began to recede. She stepped as if to move toward them, her curiosity seemingly trying to override the fear. She stopped and inhaled sharply when a low rumble made the ground beneath her tremble and she realized in shock that it was a growl.

“Saoleah!” Her mother called from behind her. She turned, her focus on the shadows and entities within the trees momentarily diverted. When she turned back around, not wanting to take her eyes away from what she had perceived to be a very open threat the shadows were gone. In confusion, she looked around the trees, seeing no shadows other than those cast by the trees and the setting sun.

“Go.” A faint whisper sounded from the trees. She couldn’t tell where from though. Afraid, Saoleah turned tail and ran the rest of the way to her house. She passed quickly through the tall grasses of the field that came before the village, an array of earthy and floral scents and colors passing her by as she didn’t take her time to appreciate them as she usually would. Today was going to have to be different, she needed to get home before… whatever that was came back to do whatever it had been ready to do to her before her faceless savior came about.

“Where have you been, you almost missed curfew!” Her mother stood at the door of their homely cottage, hands on her hips as she tried to pin Saoleah with a stern stare. It wasn’t a very effective look since her mother was way too sweet to pull it off.

Saoleah stared at her mother with a contrite look. “Apologies, mama, I didn’t mean to be so late coming back, I just got sidetracked.”

“You’ve been getting sidetracked more often than late these days, Leah,” her mother said in a chastising tone, “You’d best be more mindful of that before your roaming privileges get revoked.”

“Yes, mama,” Saoleah mumbled, ducking into the house while avoiding her mother’s way too perceptive eyes. She didn’t want her to see that she had been rattled by anything out of the ordinary or she’d forbid Saoleah from leaving the village ever again.

“Are you okay, chana?”

Just as feared, her mother had noticed there was a problem.

“Of course, mama! I’m okay, don't worry.” Saoleah replied with a hesitant smile.

Her mother stared at her, not seeming to really believe her. She knew she couldn’t fool mama, but she also wasn’t going to tell her what happened.

Finally, her mother seemed to decide to let it go. “Alright. Dinner is ready, go clean up.” She turned to go into the kitchen and prepare their plates. She set the head of the table first and then two other places. There wouldn’t be a third guest, they just had a tradition. Every night, they would set the table for three: Mama, Saoleah and Papa.

Papa had died when Saoleah was three so she never really knew him. She had a vague memory of his smile, wide and infectious with a dimple in his left cheek. From what she could recall, he was always smiling. The memory always made her smile in turn. Sometimes she wondered what her mother was like before Papa died. Happier, she figured. If his smile was any indicator, they had been happier before his death. Content. The mama she knew now was more of a somber person. Her smiles were always tinged with a hint of sadness, her eyes always seeming to only crease a little before she remembered. Then they would shine as if there were unshed tears there that she wouldn’t let fall in front of her daughter. Seeing the way his loss affected her everyday just made Saoleah feel helpless. She felt like she could never find a way to take the sadness out of her mother’s eyes.

She washed up quickly, not wanting to keep her mother waiting long. She wouldn’t eat until they were both at the table.

“Leah?” Her mother called from the front of the house.

“Coming now, mama!”

Making her way back to the front of the house, Saoleah rounded the corner to see her mother patiently waiting for her. Her bronze skin had a slight glow from the lamp light and her tight brown curls framed her face, throwing a portion of it into shadows.

Shadows…She thought about the unnatural shadows she had seen in the forest earlier and wondered what might have happened had she not gotten out of the woods. What would have happened if they hadn’t stopped? Who was that in the woods with her that had told her to go? Were they okay and where were they now?

She sat down and flashed a quick smile at her mother and they began to eat. There was an amicable silence between them and they focused on their food.

“What did you do today, Leah?” Her mother asked, breaking the silence.

Saoleah thought about her response. “Well,” she stuttered, “Not too much. I went to that abandoned house on the other side of the woods and found the cutest little creature insid-”

“Creature?” Mama said, sounding slightly alarmed. “What kind of creature?”

Great, she shouldn’t have said that. “Nothing big, mama. It was just a scared animal. Nothing happened.”

“But something could have happened,” mama insisted. “Don’t go back out there. You were fortunate nothing happened, but you never kno-”

BOOM!

Something shook the ground beneath them, the sound making Saoleah’s ears hurt and she |and her mother covered their ears. Her mother fell to the floor and crawled under the table, snatching Saoleah from her chair in her descent. She yelped but let herself be dragged out of her chair and under the table.

The rumble continued to shake the house and you could hear things falling to the ground around the house. Her mother held her tightly as if trying to shield her with her own body, but Saoleah wasn’t focused on her. The smell of smoke started to tickle her nose and her head whipped toward the door. What was burning? Fear started to take over as she thought about Blue, who she had left to fend for itself and she threw her mother’s arms off of her in a panic and ran for the door.

“LEAH!” She heard her scream at her as she ran from the house as fast as she could.

What she saw outside made her stop for just a moment before adding urgency to her steps.

The forest was completely engulfed in the bluest of flames. They ate everything in their wake and were steadily spreading from the far left end of the brush. They hadn’t reached the opening in the trees yet, so she pushed her legs to go faster, racing to beat the flames through the dying forest. Something that made her pause if only for a second was the realization that the only thing burning was the trees. That was odd…

Shaking herself from her thoughts, Saoleah quickened her pace again, reaching the edge of the forest and plunging through the opening, racing the flames.

Smoke filled the air and made it hard to breathe, but she couldn’t stop. She had to save the little one. It was still dark, but she had walked this path many times and knew it without having to see it so she pushed on despite her lack of sight. As she neared the other side, a blue light began to permeate the darkness around her and she just knew the flames were about to reach her clearing. With a deep breath and resolve setting in, Saoleah gave her legs another push and, with a burst of speed, cleared the edge of the trees with the flames nipping at her heels.

She stumbled and almost lost her footing as her legs tried to fold beneath her from the exertion, but she knew she had to keep going. She had to find Blue.

Slowing down, Saoleah dropped to a light run, still trying to keep a faster pace. The abandoned house came into sight and she breathed a sigh of relief as she saw that the flames hadn’t taken the house. She didn’t stop running though, wanting to make sure the baby was okay. Something didn’t feel right and she wouldn’t feel better until she saw for herself that it was safe.

“Please,” she whispered to the gods, “Let everything be alright.”

She covered the rest of the distance quickly and made it to the house with no problems. The forest was almost fully encompassed in flames now that she looked back and the smoke had caught up to her. She gasped as she noticed that the flames had started to eat the fields of flowers, wondering why it hadn’t gotten to the other side as well. This didn’t make any sense! It was like it was following her now.

She took a pause. Were the flames following her like the shadows earlier had?

There was a high-pitched chirp from inside and Saoleah snapped out of her musings to run through the door. At first she couldn’t find Blue in the dark room, but then she saw a small, dragon shaped shadow darting to the corner and moved in its direction with a mental sigh of relief.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay Blue,” she said, crouching down to make herself less imposing to the little one. “It’s just me. Remember me?”

As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could vaguely make out Blue’s face looking up at her as its eyes gleamed at her with an inner light of sorts. Blue looked frightened and had curled up in the corner as if to make themselves smaller.

“Hey, no, it’s okay,” she tried to say soothingly, ” It’s just me, see?” She reached out slowly and lay her hand gently on Blue’s snout. Blue sniffed her and then relaxed, nuzzling her hand and crawling onto her lap. She chuckled and scratched its head, calming down now that she knew her little one was safe. “I think it’s high time we get you out of here, what do you say?” Blue chirped at her as if in agreement and she nodded as if a decision had been made. “Let’s get you out of here.”

Searching around in the dark, she found Blue’s blanket and wrapped them up in it, hoisting the big baby up in her arms and tying the blanket around her to create a carrier of sorts so her hands could be free. She needed to figure out how to get back around the fire. This was going to be a lot to explain to her mother, especially considering how she had run out in the middle of the night with a fire happening. She would be in so much trouble. No more adventures for her. She sighed at the thought of that, hoping she would be able to convince her mother to continue letting her explore.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” she muttered to herself and took a look around the dark room one more time before pushing out of the front door.

Before making it more than a step out of the door, a wave of heat rushed across her face and she flinched back instinctively. Raising her arm to shield her face from the onslaught, Saoleah squinted her eyes and felt her breath hitch in fear at the site before her.

The once beautiful fields of flowers were now fields of hot blue flame. The trail that had been clear now had an archway of flames as they licked at the sky and arched in toward each other as if trying to reach out and touch. Looking beyond, Saoleah saw that the entrance to the forest was now blocked by a fallen tree, set ablaze by the brilliant blue flame that covered everything within its reach. The flames had eaten everything. As she watched, trees fell, one by one succumbing to the strength of the fire eating away at their life. Where you would expect a fire to grow smaller with less things to kindle from, this fire only grew to an unnatural size, reaching to the sky with a roar. The ground shook yet again, making Saoleah stumble and move to catch her footing before falling. Blue whimpered on her back and she could feel it burying it’s snout between her shoulder blades.

In the corner of her eye, Saoleah caught the slight movement of a shadow, but when she turned her head to look, she saw nothing but smoke. Despite confirming there was nothing there, she now had a sinking feeling that the shadow from earlier was back. She was starting to feel cornered, with the fire blocking her way back home in one direction and an ominous presence blocking her way out of the valley in the other.

Just as she accepted that she couldn’t possibly be going crazy, a low growl came from the direction of the shadow she had seen moving in her peripheral vision. Her heart froze and she slowly turned in the direction of the sound. Behind her there was the shadow she had seen earlier in the woods, as she had assumed there would be. But there was something else there as well. As she stared in growing horror, two big, red eyes opened within the shadows and stared straight into her, paralyzing her with their fury. The shadow wasn’t spread out now, as it had been before in the forest, but was clumped together in what seemed to be the misshapen form of a man on the edge of the land fenced in around the house.

The shadow started to move in her direction jerkingly and Saoleah tried to move away only to be met by the unmoving surface of the house at her back. She looked around frantically as the shadow continued to make a steady advance in her direction and saw a corner of the fields that had yet to be consumed by monstrous blue flames. Glancing back at the entity trying to reach her, she saw that she had some time to run and bolted in the direction of the untouched corner.

Blue chirped in fright as she hurdled over the fence in one leap, not stopping to look behind her at the shadow’s progress. She could feel blue shifting to keep from sliding out of her makeshift baby holder.

There was a rumble behind her but Saoleah refused to look back, opting to run until she was caught. She didn’t want to stumble, so she focused ahead, looking for a portion of the forest that was yet to be touched by the flames. Smoke billowed around her, choking her in her attempts to get away, but that didn’t stop her from picking up her pace and racing for the small patch of forest that had yet to be touched by fire.

“You’ve got this, Leah,” she thought, trying to encourage herself. “You can make it, just a little bit longer and you can clear the other side.”

She was panting, struggling to push through the smoke that was choking her. Another roar and she realized that the fire had begun to follow her path to catch her, just as she’d suspected, like it was alive! She almost stumbled as she saw it completely change its course of destruction and turned in her direction. She didn’t know if the shadow was still following her, but she heard a little voice in the back of her mind telling her that it was and to keep going, so she did. She ran, ignoring the fact that her lungs were burning and she was hardly breathing. Ignoring the whimpers coming from the baby dragon on her back, relying on her for its survival. She ran and soon she was at the edge of the forest.

The smoke had gotten there before she had and she had to fix a location in her mind and access the map of the forest she had made as a child. It was easy since she had taken many routes within the forest during her explorations. With a deep inhale of the pocket of fresh air she had found, Saoleah dove into the smoke at full speed, blinded by the smoke.

She could hear the flames licking at the newly lit kindle around her and she pushed harder, aiming in the direction of the other side of the forest. Her legs pumped and she could feel them trying not to give out from exertion. They carried her past the burning brush all around her and to the other side as she burst into the clearing, barely missing a tree that was falling and would have blocked her in if she were a second later. The tree made impact with the ground and she was knocked off of her feet by the force of it. There was a yelp from her back, but nothing else as she scrambled to her feet and finally looked back. The sight before her was horrifying.

Where there was just a vibrant and healthy patch of forest there now lay charged and decaying foliage, crumbling and broken. The beautiful giants that she used to explore every day were no more, having been reduced to gray hills of ash and soot. Saoleah choked on a sob and her throat felt raw from the smoke. She coughed, feeling a rattle in her chest. The flames that were still there reached out to her like hands trying to embrace her and she backed away some more, scared by what she was seeing. They didn’t seem to be capable of coming past the edge of the forest on this side for some reason, though, and she wondered why. Beyond the flames she saw the man-shaped shadow rise from the ground and stay where it was, as if it too couldn’t come past the edge of the wood. It stared at her with its hate-filled eyes and she shivered, afraid of what might have happened had she been caught.

The flames swirled around the shadow man and it seemed like they didn’t want to touch him as they curved around him and created a bubble of sorts. That unnerved Saoleah and she backed away, unable to take her eyes off of the entity before her, lest it find a way to cross the threshold and continue its pursuit of her.

Blue whimpered again and she finally let her eyes leave the figure of the Shadow-man to look back and check on the baby. She sighed in relief to see that the little one was just scared, but unscathed.

With one last weary look at the forest and the forces that lie within it, she turned and hurried back in the direction of the village, knowing what was about to happen. She needed to find a way to explain this to her mother. Well, explain the dragon, that is. She wouldn’t be telling her about the fire that lived or the Shadow-man and how they had almost taken her. She would be in enough mess trying to explain a dragon to her mother, let alone almost dying.

She sighed, feeling calmer now that it seemed those things couldn't follow her. Time to face a new foe. Her mother’s wrath.