Mingling

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. They came after the Mingling. No one knew what was happening back then. How strange that our provincial corner of Sylian would be their means of egress when the War Priests of Otherworld dreamed for the final time and pierced the veil. We call it the “Rift” or “Gate” since it was made for them to walk into our lands with their waking bodies. I was so, so young then. Impossibly happy and carefree. Insufferably unaware of all I had. Ignorant of all I was to endure.

I remember the first time I saw a dragon. I’d heard of them before of course, just like I’d heard of red caps come to snatch away naughty little gnomes who stay up too late. Naturally, I never thought to see one in real life. Much less did I expect ever to kill one.

I was working. Looking back, I can’t believe I just slipped right back into my routine. That morning I tied my curly, brown hair back and splashed water on my face while neglecting the rest of my barely five-span frame, my morning ritual. On the edge of my favorite clearing in the Mosswood, I set my traps and snares the same way I always had. The land fell towards a cold pool of water which lay in the center. It was fed by an underground spring and the earthy run-off from the forest. Game trails crossed the valley from the treeline practically every few paces. I was the only one from my clan who knew about it and I had every intention to keep it that way. Why should everyone else hunt and trap here, when I knew just how often to take a good haul without the beasts growing wise to me? Such were the thoughts in my head at the time.

All at once, it was as if night fell upon me. The uncanny sight when I looked out and saw a bright clearing a stone's throw away, but all around me was dark shade gave me a sense of vertigo. Some preternatural instinct broke through and told me to hide. We gnomes are excellent at avoiding the sight of others when we wish. With no small pride, I tell you that with nearly the whole of my life dedicated to hunting the wilds, I am perhaps the stealthiest member of my clan. All this to say, I knew that no one could possibly see me when I had concealed myself in the dense honeysuckle thickets stretching their encroaching fingers out from the forest to grasp at this secret hunting ground of mine.

At first I imagined a cloud had overtaken the sun, but then I saw how swiftly it moved on a windless day. I crawled on knees and elbows to the treeline and risked standing behind a thorny locust tree. I could see the sharp points of the shadow just as the oppressive stench of reptile hit me like a wall. That’s when I looked up and saw the shinning scales in the sky and felt my knees weaken. What a fool! To think I could just go back to hunting and trapping when a gateway between worlds was inexplicably opened. That life would somehow reset to its mundane cycle of: dress the meat and haul it back home.

My internal scolding was shaken as realization hit me as a thunderbolt. This dragon was headed straight for the Valley. Straight for the rift.

I was trading the day before when it happened. At the center of the Valley, a sudden puff of hot wind hit me from the side and then a rift between worlds stood glaring out like a hungry cat peeping into a mouse hole. I stood limply holding out a tanned deer hide, struck suddenly dumb mid-haggle with Brackenmire, the cantankerous old general store owner. His wad of tobacco fell from his mouth and struck the dusty planks followed by a line of brownish drool running down his grizzled chin as we both stared out his dirty window, transfixed.

Imagine standing in a field with the sun beaming down on you, surrounded by grass and daffodils. Now some forty paces before you lies a dark, cobbled street lit by gas lanterns. This strange vision stretches several spans high and across oddly worbling about the edges. The stink of a crowded urban street wafts out to offend your senses. Such was my experience as I approached wide-eyed. I saw the tall, thick limbed creatures peering tentatively around the edges with grim faces. They were dressed all in black with red sashes, like their middles were tied by rose petals, or dipped in blood. Strange beings, some of them taller than elves, most almost as stocky as a dwarf, some bearded, but all of them round-eared like the stone fathers as well.

Bolstering my courage I called out a loud, “halloo!” The dark-clad figures merely narrowed their eyes and retreated out of sight in response. I thought this exceedingly odd behavior but resolved to wait them out rather than charge blindly into this strange phenomenon. In the meantime, I took the time to walk all the way about the phenomenon. It seemed to have dimension rather than being some sort of flat image suspended in mid-air. It shimmered about the edges and seemed to constantly shift incomprehensively at the back in a darkly miasmic way. Unlike a door one could not see through the front to the back, it was simply the one, funneled entrance.

By day’s end, everyone came flocking to the Valley from miles around the way we crowd in for a Harvest Day Faire. Only everyone was in a panic instead of bobbing merrily along on carts laden with produce and cured meats. Tents sprang up and all of this hanging about upon the precipice of cataclysm left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Interested as I was at first, I’ve always been the sort that when the whole crowd oohs and aahs I immediately lose interest. I start looking for the simple trick behind the magician’s dazzling performance. The one that will give the whole thing away and reveal him to be what I know he is: A disheveled vagabond who hides his shabby frame behind a polished pulpit of showmanship.

I suppose it was the very nature of the fascinated crowd that put me off and sent me away. On some level, I felt that with all of these people gathered around the situation would be resolved. In my mind, I could clearly see stuffy men spouting platitudes of increasingly less meaning and increasingly more words as the days wore on. Some sort of treaty would be made after long hours of pontifications, all of which I was happy to skip. I would much prefer to be filthy and in the woods thank you.

I had lost most of the day, but I did find an elf who had dropped what he was doing and ran to town when he heard of a tear in reality. His name was Targoniel and he was in a bit of a haze, hardly able to look away from the Rift for even a moment. That suited me, he didn’t haggle at all when I charged him five times what the skin was worth just so he’d have something between him and the damp grass.

Now with the coin in my pocket, I headed back into the Mosswood with a spring in my step. I felt the palpable relief wash over me as the eternal shadow of the forest reached out to overtake me. Once I trekked roughly halfway between the Valley and my secret clearing I dropped my pack on the ground, installed my boot spikes, and tied the hide cord about my waist which I used to hoist my way high up one of the two trees I had chosen. After tying off a strong hempen rope, at the end of which dangled what would have appeared to anyone else a confused mass of deer hide, I descended the tree and repeated the process upon the second tree, using the rope neatly coiled at the other end of the amalgamous mass of animal skin. Having hung my hammock of skins far above the reach of any local predator, I secured my pack around another high branch and slid down the rope enjoying the thrill of the ground rapidly passing before my eyes a long-distance away. The heady delight of adrenaline coursed through my gnomish body as I seemingly courted death, but knew that my long-practiced skill would prevail.

As I settled into my hammock with a wide grin I reached into my vest pockets and produced my flask of whiskey and some honey-coated biscuits I had traded for in the Valley before the strange events transpired. My grin slowly faded (through no fault of the excellent whiskey and biscuits) as I began to descend into contemplation. I knew some of the stodgier fellows of the Valley, whose names I intentionally never learned, would take charge of the negotiations and I would be left alone to hunt, but an undeniable unease settled upon me and I tossed and turned long ere I found sleep that night. I rather think that my gnome-sized hammock resembled one of the swings slung between two poles in the Valley for the children to play on as it rocked back and forth propelled by my restlessness.

Upon waking the next morning, I laughed off the worries of the night before. By now, I imagined, a boring commission had been set up and a slew of regulations was in place. Perhaps no one from each side of that strange opening would be allowed to cross over for a year or more, buried under rules. Meanwhile, I would be blissfully free to continue to hunt and trade in my predictable, but comfortable solitude. I practically flew to my secret clearing after dismantling my tree camp at a breakneck pace.

I slowed my stride and settled my hunter’s wariness over my body as I approached. My heart leaped when I saw fresh tracks of aurochs. I knew that even a moderate size aurochs could provide meat to my clan for weeks conservatively, or be the centerpiece for a feast! I would receive a hero’s welcome when I returned home with so much meat. After a moment of study, I determined that the bull must have passed this way earlier this morning, perhaps before the sun. I began to set my edge traps in case it fled and the rest I have stated previously, that is, up until that vile lizard began its interference in my life.

The infuriating reptile suddenly stopped its direct flight and began a predatory circle over the pool. In retrospect, I realize that a hungry dragon suddenly descending upon the Valley would have been a bloody massacre, on a scale unimaginable to me at that point. However, at the time I could only feel the flush of rage as I knew that this usurping creature was moments away from stealing my aurochs. I broke into a run, unslinging my crossbow and fitting a barbed bolt in all while barely slowing my stride. I reached the point where I might look out over the dense vegetation of the secret clearing just in time to see the dragon fold its wings and plummet toward the oblivious aurochs. It was a fine beast. A paragon of its race, swollen with the perfect mixture of muscle and fat, I knew it would have been one of my finest hauls, even as I saw that dream die as reptile talons eviscerated the dumb creature.

In a fit of blind rage, I did perhaps the most foolish thing I had yet done in my young life. I let fly the barbed bolt which sped directly for the creature's craned neck as it rippled and pulsated with the ecstasy of warm meat sliding down into its greedy belly. The bolt flew true and then bounced harmlessly off the creature's obsidian scales. The impact was however enough to draw his attention and I became suddenly aware of my peril as the great lizard fixed its eyes upon me. I did what any sensible gnome would do. I fled. I dove into the thickest bit of ground vegetation in my nearest vicinity, tremebled horribly, and prayed the most fervent prayer I had as yet prayed to the venerated creator spirit.

The dragon stalked about in a rampage, roaring and spitting acid all about him. I can still hear the sizzle of it upon the fresh ground. Though the reptile sniffed after me, coming alarmingly close in some of its nonsensical passes about the glade, I began to relax as reassurance grew in me that I had ultimately eluded him.

Just as a smile began to creep over my face I saw the unignorable portent. North, a plume of billowing, black smoke rose as an ascendant pillar above the forest. The color drained from my face and all of my exuberance washed away as felt my gut twist. I was trapped by an enraged dragon and that smoke was coming from the direction of my Clanhold. Something was terribly wrong.