Lord Of Fire

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. The humans took care of that long ago. The carnage of their wrath had spread over the world like a blanket of death; forgotten steel blades, blood and bones; the landscape painted in a tapestry of graves, until there were no more dragons.

Or so they thought.

A man sat in the back shadows of the dusty rotten down seaport pub, half clouded by the billowing fumes of smoke that curled upward about his cheeks and hair. Heavily clad boots on the crude table, he leaned back exhaling another breath of his smoke, and then flicked the ashy ends of his cigarette out on the floor.

It was only in the pale moving glint of the candlelight, that his eyes would echo something far from human; a dangerous narrowing slitted tell of the predator he truly was.

“Lord, Killian, Sir,” the nervous sound of the slightly underfed barmaid stated next to him, her eyes not daring to glance but a look in his gaze. “Someone is here to see you. A man. Out front,” she pointed.

The dragon could already smell the wretched stank of the swaggering man pressed with too much perfume for someone who had never had to work in his life for it; wealthy aristocrats a favorite on his palate.

Before the first word left his mouth, the staunchly little arrogant man pushed his way into the darkened pub, scattering the other patrons not wanting anything to do with whatever was about to go down.

“Where is Thomas Killian?” the snide man’s voice rang. He held up some type of script in his hand. “Five known accounts of direct murder, ten accounts of arson which resulted in deaths, including the burning down of multiple homes, and most of Caderpoint’s town square.”

A low toying burn coiled within Tom’s core, and slowly, the tips of his fingers started to lengthen underneath the cover of that thickly wooded tabletop; razor-sharp talons splitting through the guise of human skin that he wore.

With a loud clunk, he dropped his boots to the floor.

He leaned over toward the woman. “Reach into my coat pocket,” his deep voice rolled, “take the two shillings and get out of here. Leave now.”

There was no room for question in his tone, and the nervous barmaid quickly did what she was told, grasping the enormously grand tip in her hand, and took off out of the pub’s backdoor.

The aristocratic-looking officer took a step toward Killian, and immediately, the entire rest of the pub patrons that were still lingering, removed themselves from their seats, backing away in terror toward the doorway.

“Devil,” the word of someone spoke, just before crossing his heart with his right hand and bolting outside with the others.

“Are you the devil that I speak of in this memo, Thomas Killian?”

Tom exhaled the smoke from his cigarette. “No,” he answered with a slow-rolling tilt to his tone; his eyes directly on that feeble man. “I’ve killed far more people than your notice dictates. Must be someone else you are talking about.”

The officer pulled out his pistol and aimed it straight at Tom’s head.

“You’re under arrest by the order of King Salomon The First. You will do as I say and leave with me now for orders and sanctions. Refusing so will be death.”

Two more officers bearing short swords and another pistol stepped in through the doorway, backup clearly being moved in.

“Okay, I choose death, then.”

Tom stood up and smushed out the end of his cigarette on the top of the table, still hiding the long lengthy talons on his other hand that had emerged.

The man seemed to tremble in his grip on that gun, that answer, not what he had expected nor was truly ready to act on.

“Shoot him!” Another yelled, and then a clap of a bullet let loose, sounding over the small shadowy pub, and then a moment later, the bouncing of its metal clattered to the floor by Tom’s feet.

The dragon in his human guise still stood there uninjured. In fact, there wasn’t even a mark on his guise or scales just beneath.

“What the hell?!”

The men’s reactions fueled Tom’s hunger and want of revenge; the scent of their fear littering the air. He could taste it, and his own heart pounded as his anger and internal temperature began to rise, his heat transferring to the room around him. The shoddy little paint job on the walls started to curl and peel. Glasses in the bar shelves popped and cracked, and the faces of the men turned a terrible mix of white and yellow, as the glint of sweat started to speckle their brows.

A door officer charged, short sword in hand, as he swung the sharp end of that steel weapon right at Tom, only for him to grab it directly on that very severing end. The man tried to move it, to pull it back, but with one single ‘hand’ of the dragon’s it would not move, and then Tom twisted his ‘fingers,’ and snapped the blade right in half. With zero hesitation and an unmoving stare, he swiped the hidden talons on his other hand right across the man’s jugular.

The man toppled to the floor.

“I choose death,” he stated. “Yours.”

Tom’s back began to rise, bones popping along his spine, higher, higher, as black scales broke through his human guise littering down his cheeks, arms, and body. Higher and higher he grew, as the front of his face pushed forward, and two enormous horns sliced through the top of his skull. With a deafening roar, daggers of his teeth dripped with the saliva of his wanton fury over what these humans have done to his kind.

Raising his gigantic head, his leathery black wings unfurled smashing right through the entire roofing of that pub, the sound of their clap as they extended, heard all across those dragon barren lands.

The remaining two men screamed as they turned to bolt for the door, when Tom swiftly snapped out his jowls, scooping up the first one in his teeth with ease. He whipped his head to the side, tossing the dead man into the wall with a clatter.

“Stop! I’m sorry!” the last man yelled, in his feeble attempt, as he tripped on the hot cobblestone steps on the way out the door. “Don’t eat me!”

Tom lunged forward, breaking through the front walls onto the street of that small fishing town; the noise and hysteria, catching the attention of everyone in that remote area. Lights flickered on, and more screaming appeared. Shots were fired, but Tom didn’t care.

With a quick deliberate inhale, he allowed his burning coils to seize his breath, and then he exhaled; a rage of fire igniting up the entire oceanfront and the line of all the buildings there.

“It’s a Dragon!” Someone hollered, through the panic and wild fleeing, just as the sparks and crackles of the buildings rippled up into the air.

A low reverberating snarled breath loomed hot over that fallen little official man who had so wanted to arrest him and dared to tell him what to do.

“Who are you?!” the man cried with a whimpered panic. “We got rid of the dragons! We exterminated you! How are you here? How did you look human?!”

I… am Asher!” he roared through his dragon tongue, stepping forward over that man in a moment of pure repressed rage, talons ripping through the ground and stone, as his chest heaved. “I am the Purifier of these lands, Last of my Kind, The Beginning and the End. I BOW TO NO ONE. I AM Revenge.”