Dragon Born

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. When they arrived, it was in chains.

Sought after by the rich and powerful to protect their property, a fully trained adult dragon cost enough to feed a village for a year. Therefore, it was no surprise that plenty of people were willing to risk their lives to capture the creatures, even if success rates were extremely slim. The reward was high enough that droves of humans of all stature marched into the mountains where the dragons lived. So many that the dragons became overrun. Their young were captured and those too dangerous to be trained were murdered, until the once noble hoards were now scattered and in hiding. Still the humans chased them and would do so until there was not a single free dragon in the world.

Kir stood on a bluff a few dozen feet above the poorly maintained dirt road and watched a caravan of horses, humans, and enslaved young dragons pass. Sedatives were fed to the dragons to keep them from attempting to break from their cages, though the magic strengthening the bars made such a task impossible for the young whelps regardless. Even a full-grown dragon might have difficulty with the bars if they didn’t have a strong understanding of human magic, not something the few dragons that remained possessed. Such knowledge had died out with the elders, though Kir knew those who survived had strength the others did not. They could find a way if they were willing to try. The problem was convincing them to do anything more than run and hide.

The ears on the horses pulling the carts lay flat as their teeth gnawed nervously on their bits. It took the drivers all their concentration to keep the horses from spooking at every breeze and rustle of leaves, an arduous task for such a night where sound had a life of its own. A pulse of groans and whispers from unfelt winds swept through the air bringing a shiver to the spines of all who dared to linger too long in the moonless night. It was best to move quickly, urge the nervous horses forward at a quickened pace to reach the safety of the town whose lights were barely visible from this section of the road.

Kir’s body remained perfectly still, nothing more than a statue or a silhouette for anyone who might have looked her way. She refused to let the discomfort of the night cause her unrest. Besides, one shift of her weight at the wrong moment might bring eyes to her position and there was no time for a fight tonight. She remained perfectly frozen and easily mistaken as one of the nearby trees. The branching horns protruding from the sides of her otherwise humanoid head only helping the illusion.

Kir’s sharp vision narrowed on the similar if much stunted horns on the captive dragons, though their heads and bodies remained those of proper dragons, with long snouts, twisting bodies and tails the length again of their torsos. Their skin, normally bespeckled with colorful scales, was now pale from lack of proper nutrition. The metal of the chains was tight against the captives’ throats, stripping away the scales and rubbing the sensitive skin beneath into oozing sores. The stench of feces and blood and a touch of infection where old wounds from lashings and other unthinkable attacks on the beast, meant as ‘training,’ were left to fester. The smell was so strong that even with the several dozen paces between them Kir found herself fighting back bile building in her throat.

She counted a dozen carts. Although half of them had canopy tops, making it impossible to know their exact contents, it was safe to say there were at least eight young dragons trapped in similar or worse condition within the caravan that night. Too many to be from only one clutch, where normally only a pair might survive to hatch let alone grow into a whelp. These were stolen from several nests. Several nests and that meant many more adult dragons’ deaths.

Kir spit on the ground toward the back of the caravan as it finished jostling past the lookout. Although they were still in visual range and it was her job to watch the road, she was done watching and not acting. She hurried toward the crumbling cottage hidden from the road by an overgrowth of trees and the bluff that flanked the old building. The logs that once might have held a sturdy thatched roof at one point had rotted and collapsed on the east side of the building leaving nothing but rubble, though the other three walls still stood tall.

It was within these walls her four companions huddled around what barely qualified as a fire. The flames were no higher than an inch and not warm enough for their needs. In the center sat an egg the size of a human’s head. The iridescent shell sucked in the minimal heat the fire provided, bringing vibrant colors of reds, greens, and blues to the areas the flame touched for only a moment before they faded to a dull tan.

“It’s not enough.” Plentha murmured the obvious, though the others didn’t chastise her for saying her thoughts aloud. “The whelp won’t have the strength to break free of the shell if we don’t give it more heat.”

No one spoke, they only watched with grim expressions. They all knew it was too dangerous. The light and smoke would be as good as a signal to the enemy. The fire had to be kept small. There was nothing more they could do.

Kir stepped into the remains of the building without attempting to avoid the dried leaves that would warn the others of her approach. They should have sensed their approach long before she got so close, regardless. Even so, Plentha twitched at the sound, her head twisting toward Kir for an instant before her gaze flicked back to the fire.

“You should be watching the roads, Kir.” Lutki spoke in his usual low tone that left no room for argument.

Kir glared down at his back and a flash of fear tightened her chest. The sensation only lasted a moment before vanishing entirely. There was a time, not long ago, when Lutki’s mere presence would have been enough to practically bring Kir to her knees. Now, Kir found any fear he brought was nothing more than the memory of power he’d once possessed. Looking down upon him now, Kir could see the translucence spreading through his horns, a sure sign of his age and failing health. The once mighty Lutki was gone, replaced with this shell of a being that donned his humanoid form.

“None of us should be here,” Kir spat the words. “At least eight whelps passed not a hundred yards from this place, and instead of freeing them from their bonds, we hide here. For what? A single egg without enough strength to birth?”

The others didn’t look at Kir, though Plentha at least had the decency to rock back on her heels as a small sign of her shame. Kir didn’t blame her for wanting to protect the egg. It was one of hers, likely her last, as her mate had died in the attack on their home in the Ritnowa mountain several months back, and her own health had not been strong even before then. It was the others’ lack of motivation that bothered her. They were too content to run and hide and allow sickness and fatigue to weaken them further. At this rate, they might as well let the humans kill them as they were only delaying the inevitable.

Ever since their escape, they’d remained hidden in their humanoid forms for fear they’d be spotted if they attempted to fly or move around in their enormous natural bodies. It made hunting impossible and travel slow and dangerous. Three had already fallen to magic-laced hunters’ traps left in the forests they’d attempted to escape through. The rest had fallen to sickness caused by staying in the unnatural humanoid form for too long. Even so, Lutki ordered them to continue to hide and no one had the guts to disobey him, even now, though Kir wondered if it wasn’t time that changed.

“We should go after the whelps now.” Kir attempted to slap the words down on the others with the same force Lutki used on them. “Before the humans reach the village and the larger number of their kind become difficult to overcome.”

No one spoke, though Kir was pleased to see their eyes shift to Lutki as though they too wondered why he didn’t make the call to attack.

Silence followed for a long moment as Kir waited for the old man’s reply. Just as they were about to push the point again, there was a quiet crack that was barely audible over the sound of the low crinkle of the burning twigs.

“Ah,” Lutki sighed as though letting out a breath he held for days. “There. The hatchling is coming.”

Despite everything, Kir found herself leaning toward the egg to get a better look at the tiny fracture now forming in the center of the shell. No one moved as they waited for the break to widen and for the first signs of the snout to emerge. The color it possessed would be an indicator of the strength the whelp would one day grow into. The deeper the shade, the stronger the dragon.

After long moments, the crack had barely widened, and it was no closer to showing its colors.

“It’s too weak,” Kir scoffed. “It can’t even release itself. Even if it managed, it will be dead within an hour. We should leave it and go after the others. At least those were strong enough to survive this long.”

“She’ll live,” Plentha breathed the words as though begging them to be true. “She will be strong.”

It was Kir who first heard the humans approaching, though Lutki reacted only a heartbeat after.

“You were supposed to be watching the road,” he hissed to Kir before twisting his body into a crouched position with his back to the egg. His dark eyes scanned the trees for the source of the sound.

Kir took a similar pose, her fingers stretching out into deadly talons as she did. With smug satisfaction, she noticed the surprise from Lutki at the partial shift. Even he couldn’t control the shift in such a precise way. There was either their humanoid shape, an imperfect impression of the very beings that hunted them, or they were in their dragon forms. There was no in between. But Kir’s ability to shift only her hands proved that fact to be wrong. It made her wonder what else the dragons knew to be true that might not be.

The humans moved slowly in the dark as they struggled to find footing over the exposed tree roots and shrubbery, even when directing the light of their lanterns in front of them. As slowly as they moved, they still came closer.

“Are you sure?” one whispered to the other as they stumbled forward.

“I definitely saw something,” another replied. “I’m sure it was smoke. Keep your chains ready.”

Kir hissed at the mention of chains while Lutki appeared to sink in on himself. These were slavers, which meant they would have magic and knowledge of how to fight dragons, whatever form they took. Kir tried to tell Lutki with her eyes that they should move now, attack before the humans had a chance to overtake them, but the old dragon had already turned back to the fire and the egg.

“We leave,” he whispered.

Plentha choked back a cry of despair as the other two moved to follow Lutki.

“She’ll die without the fire.” Plentha held out her hand as though to pull the others back, but it was no use. Even she must know there was no saving the whelp now.

As the others moved away, her expression turned steely. She turned back to the egg and with a quickness that belied her apparent weakness, her fingers scraped against the egg, widening the crack, and pulling away flecks of shell until there was a small opening the size of a hatchling’s snout, though no nose was visible beneath a sticky substance that wrapped the hatchling. It was an unnatural substance. A thick mucus unlike any Kir saw even in the few spoiled eggs she had witnessed broken in her life. The stench of it was even worse than the appearance, something like rotten meat, though it had a sweetness to it that made her turn her head away to avoid gagging.

“Leave it,” Lutki said with the barest hint of sympathy in his tone. “It’s underdeveloped. Sickly. There’s no hope for it.”

Plentha didn’t listen. She continued to scrape away the shell carefully but swiftly, revealing a fleshy creature from within the mess. As she wiped the stringing ooze from the body, even she could not completely hide her disgust.

It was round and lumpy in all the wrong places. Its body too short. Its head too large. But more important was what was missing. Where there should be a tail, wings, and a proper snout, there were none. The skin was raw and pink, completely devoid of scales. It looked human, though much smaller than any Kir had ever seen before.

Had it shifted into human form within its egg? Kir had never heard of such a thing before and from the disgust the others showed, they had not either. No hatchling could shape shift. It took dragons at least fifty years of practice to manage it to the point the group managed currently, and even then there were often hints of their dragon form remaining, such as their feet, horns and even the occasional tail. For a hatchling to be born in such a shape…it was a monstrosity.

“Kill it,” Lutki demanded. “We leave now.”

Plentha turned pleading eyes to the old dragon, but she did not attempt to argue. There was no time. The humans were almost on them. Without waiting for her to follow the command the others hurried away from the cabin, moving silently through the brush until all that remained was Plentha with Kir standing between her and the humans.

Their eyes met and Kir sensed the older dragon’s fear. Not for the humans, but for the life of the monster in her arms. Kir shook her head fiercely. They couldn’t keep the thing. It was an abomination. It was a mercy to kill it now rather than for it to live on for whatever stunted life it might possess. The being in her arms was no dragon. Plentha had to know that.

Plentha swept the shards of egg into the fire, causing it to sputter to life a few further inches, before setting the creature carefully on the ground next to the flame. Her lips pressed against its head, eliciting a strange choking sound, before she turned her pleading eyes once more to Kir. She was begging her to stay silent. She expected Kir to let the creature live.

Kir flexed her talons, considering how easy it would be to gut the soft skinned creature, but something held her back. There were too many dragons dead. Too many whelps taken. Although this monstrosity could hardly count as a dragon, it had hatched from one of Plentha’s eggs. The sight of it sickened Kir, but she couldn’t deny its origin.

They left the cabin only seconds before the humans arrived. As they ran though the silent night, their feet barely touching the ground with each step, they heard the astonishment of the humans as they found the creature.

“A child?”

“Newborn.”

“Where’s the mother?”

The humans wouldn’t find the mother that night, nor any of the others that witnessed the birth of the babe. And so, the child was raised as though she was one of their own.