On Emerald Scales

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. In the days before the Breaking, in those times of bliss, the dragons lived peacefully upon their peaks, coming down only to engage in kind diplomacy with the Flightless creatures who made Etenia their home. Even then, it was known that the Valley was forbidden to them. The dragons, in their characteristic wisdom, felt that their presence between the peaks might unnerve the people of the world. They were right.

However backward we may consider it now, in our advanced judgement, many of our Etenian ancestors saw dragons as cursed bringers of destruction—a misunderstanding of our own scriptures, it turns out. The same misunderstandings have placed the dragons in their unfortunate servitude to Humankind today.

The scripture tells us that the dragons maintained this distance for six times six-hundred years (likely a symbolic hyperbole), and describes their development of advanced technologies while the men and giants quibbled over the best patches of land to rear their herds in. On the peaks we saw the first inklings of civilization. They built cities, temples, and places of recreation. They buried their dead in brimstone, and made burnt offerings to their gods, leaving a rich archaeological record in their wake.

Now that the Valley is thoroughly occupied by dragons, it is natural that many should grow curious as to the nature of the dragons, and what became of them and and their civilization. The Flightless are fascinated by what the dragons may once have been, seeing them fall into the beastly chaos they now exist in. Even some dragons themselves, the ones lucky enough to pull themselves out of servitude and become lettered, have been bold enough to claim that their civilized past is evidence enough that their slavery is against the will of the Forefather. The Clerics argue that a few heathen cities prove no such thing.

I am not here to pretend I am studied enough to argue with the Clerics. All men in service of the Forefather know their writ to be law. I am simply here to offer an alternative interpretation of the scriptures—one in which the lowly and heathen Dragon can be seen as a mere and unfortunate addition to the creation of the Forefather, not a reprehensible affront to it.

-Ekle su-Taravin from his writing "A Treatise Against the Captivity of the Lowly Dragon" in the year 329AB.

Rasai shut the old leatherbound volume on her lap, leaving a cloud of dust like volcano ash in the air of her dressing chamber. She stifled a sneeze, cringing against the tickle in her nose.

“You really must sit still, My Lady” Teyan mumbled, tugging forcefully at Rasai’s hair. She held a set of thick pins between her teeth, carefully pulling them out and sliding them into place between the cascades of silver hair in front of her. Her hands were cracked and worn from years of scrubbing under too-hot water, and the tips of her first fingers were bent askew at unnatural angles. She bit her lip as she folded streams of hair over one another in braids like naval ropes, seemingly forgetting the Lady of Trien was attached to the other end.

“It’d be much easier if you would stop trying to break my neck,” Rasai groaned. She was seated, tense, on a wooden chair with cushioned bolsters at the nape of her neck, leaning back and looking at the ceiling, her narrow neck and shining head craned like a sunflower. The thick volume on her lap acted as an anchor, keeping her on the seat despite the persistent twisting and prying on her head. “I don’t see why Ylian can’t do my braids.”

“I have told you,” Teyan said, her tongue mindlessly escaping her mouth in focus. “The braids you wear for the ceremony must be done of Flightless hands. Ylian’s claws would sully the hairs of your Holy little head.” She gave it a few pious pats.

At least I’d have some hairs left if Ylian were here.

Rasai sighed heavily and gave in to the persistent beat of tugging along her scalp. She was exhausted. It was the fourth week of preparations for her Gen-ta, and she had spent the past three in a state of perpetual agony, waking early to train and sleeping late to study the Ways.

“I don’t know why you spent so much time training under that Drak, anyway,” Teyan shrugged. “Nobody has failed a Gen-Ta in three hundred years.” Rasai noted the way her handmaiden’s eyebrows furrowed and relaxed. A hint of envy, perhaps.

“And I’m not trying to be the first,” Rasai responded. Teyan was right that the Gen-Ta had been nothing more than an act of ceremony for years. It was once designed as a test of a ruler’s merit. In a harsh world, it was a codifiable and practical way for the ancient Etenians to ensure competent leadership in their newly founded city-states. The law of heredity did not hold absolute authority in those days as it did in Rasai’s time—though you were heir to the throne, in those days, a single misplaced rune in Gen-Ta could easily spoil your ambitions. As the years went on, and the aristocracy of Etenia cemented their strength in the continent, the Gen-Ta became more of a formality than a true assessment. It provided the Etenian Lords with an excuse to throw a ball and get extravagantly drunk while hiding behind the guise of adhering to ancient traditions. In many ways, it was a perfect aristocratic pastime.

“You are far too harsh on Ylian, Teyan,” Rasai said. She felt a particularly firm tug.

“My Lady, forgive my saying this, but you are far too kind with her,” Teyan responded. “She forgets herself often—sees herself as far beyond her station.”

“And why shouldn’t she?” Rasai replied. “She has prepared me well these past weeks. I would be lost in The Ways if not for her.”

Teyan put the final twists on the end of Rasai’s shining braids, binding the three together at the end, and let her hands drop to her lap.

“She is a Drak, my Lady,” she said, as if the statement required no further explanation. “Your Father would not take kindly to seeing his property training runes and letters with his only heir.

Rasai frowned as she rose form her seat, turned on her heel and faced Teyan. “Ekle su-Taravin says that the dragons were the first creators of civilization. Before the Breaking.”

“Times were different before,” Teyan said, shaking her head. “Look, my Lady. My little Lady. We all wish that we did not have to treat our unfortunate cousins this way. But we know what happened during the Breaking. The dragons cannot manage themselves. All that power with not a single Holy thought in their heads- We cannot allow that to happen again. It is the will of the Forefather.”

The will of the Forefather.

“Besides, su-Taravin was Drim. That’s hardly better than a dragon. I have reason to believe he made it all up. He wasn’t there for the Breaking, after all.”

“Neither were you,” Rasai said flatly. “And, frankly, I don’t believe you know half as much as you think you do.”

Teyan sighed and shook her head. “Get ready, my Lady. Your Lord Father will be here any minute. The Gen-Ta must begin before noon.”

She always speaks to me as if I don’t know. It’s not her fault. She doesn’t know herself.

Her nurse having left, Rasai took a deep breath and moved across the luxuriously furnished room, dropping herself into her desk seat with a groan. Sun peered through the large window on the eastern wall of her room, illuminating the stack of books on her desk. Large figures sporadically eclipsed the sun, casting wide, fast-moving shadows along the carpeted floor of the chamber. The late morning supply hauls were a familiar sight—an armada of bound and chained dragons, their sword-like claws covered in thick leather sheaths, hauling cargo from the port of Trien across the Valley and into the inland cities and towns. She watched their massive forms, their scales scintillating in the sun, reflecting light in red and silver flashes across the courtyard of Trien Manor. With a smile, she opened her casement windows and learned gently on its sill.

“Oh, the dragon!” said a voice from below. Its sound rumbled through the air like riptide. “Plain is its majesty and force, even in submission.”

“You’re quoting scripture now?” Rasai asked.

“Only the parts that talk about how great we are,” responded Ylian. She was perched on the end of a parapet, her long silver wings sitting softly on her flanks. Her silver scales had been bred into her by years of careful selection, in part to match the silver hair of the Royal Family of Trien, and in part to demonstrate their incomparable control of their servile force. Knowing this, Ylian spent her first waking hours each morning rolling in grass in the fields next to the castle, defiantly leaving emerald highlights on the tips of her scales.

“You have left out the rest of the passage,” Rasai said, climbing from her chamber and sitting casually in the window. “I believe the book goes on to remind Humankind why it is so important that we keep you chained.” The dragon’s sheathed claws rested lightly on the marble bricks of the manor, and her tail floated harmlessly behind her.

“And yet, a penchant for evil and a demon’s spirit,” Ylian quoted. “We must guide them with the gloved hand of a gentle master lest their evil be unleashed again.”

“Right,” Rasai said. “Stupid.”

“It is,” Ylian responded. She spoke softly, keeping her long jaw set as tightly as possible. “Though, this was before we could read. I suppose they never expected us to learn.”

“I suppose.”

“So, some last-minute training then?” Ylian asked with newfound excitement. “I’ve heard the Gen-Ta will begin as soon as Lord Aran arrives.”

Rasai fidgeted with a quill she had taken from her desk. Dark ink covered her fingers in fractal lines. “Teyan tried to get me to stop seeing you again.”

“Of course she did,” Ylian responded. She placed her back on the sloping roof of the manor and closed her eyes, seemingly taking in the sun’s rays. A few more cargo shipments flapped by. “She only knows what she knows.”

“She said my father would be upset with me. And with you.”

“He would be,” Ylian responded, her eyes still sealed shut. “The Princess should not be associating with flying beasts of the devil’s own design!”

Rasai smiled and pushed the dragon playfully.

“You can’t take anything seriously,” she said, looking down at her ink-stained hands.

“I can’t,” Ylian responded, rolling off the roof and returning to the parapet with a single earth-shaking flap of her wings. “Our tiny brains are incapable of earnest thought. Sorry, just another one of our biological defects.”

“I see no defects in you,” Rasai said, suddenly serious.

“You haven’t learned to see them yet,” Ylian responded, turning her back towards the horizon. A massive silvery form approached from the east, its wings shacking the trees of the woods with each beat of its wings. On its back was a golden palanquin. “We’ll see how you feel after the Gen-Ta. Come here. Let me fix your hair.”