Prologue

The Fantasy Prologue

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.

Astor remembered when the Valley had been filled with the sound of crickets in the swaying long grass and the grumbling of oxen in the fields below, down by the river that bubbled calmly. The shade of the family orchard and the sweet smell of the denfruit, ripe and delicious bouncing on the soft grass.

He leapt to another boulder, his boots scraping to a halt on the baking hot stone.

The grass around him was scorched pale brown and the fields below were ashen black. The grass fields along the Valley were torn nightmarishly apart from the idyllic memories he had of them. All colours had fled and been replaced by fury and furnace heat.

So much to do. But there was never enough.

His foot scraped on stone as he landed but kept his footing, before stepping off and dropping down eight foot, below the top of the boulder and running through the scrubland that skirted the edge of the Valley toward the Peak, his small shoulder bag bouncing lightly against his leg. It was not enough.

The way had changed much but not beyond familiarity. His memory held the fragments of his time here and aligned them. He had done much and been many things. It was not easy to recall with clarity. Astor paused before pulling himself up a boulder that would take him higher towards the Peak; a cataclysmic shattered wreck in the landscape which left a long shadow like the open beak of a hungry raven. Above him, it lay broken as now all below him lay in ruin and fire. He heaved himself atop the boulder, a familiar rough surface - the handholds just where they needed to be. But it would not be enough to make the difference. He was on his way out.

After he had leapt clear of the last boulder, Astor pelted up the slope, past burning bushes of heather and braccis; their flowers gone and their scent nothing but fire and burning. It crackled and flared and roared at him. The light bright but not as blinding as the Valley had seen before, the roar a child’s parody of a grimmbear. He had done much, but would it be enough?

He did not look back at the charred skeleton of the large denfruit tree, or to the houses, or rather to where the houses had been. There was not time for that – that would come later. If there was to be a later. Astor skirted the worst patches of blazing grass and braccis – the grey bushes easily eaten by the growing inferno.

The heat made even the hottest days of his memory pale in comparison. Even the long summer afternoons, watching the herd, trying to stay cool in the shade, playing with the Spark, or what little he knew of it before he truly knew. Reading the books he stole from Harris, the denfruit so light and sweet that he had enjoyed times beyond counting with Yinn, winning the Parrna when he was only of fifteen summers and Kesias’ hand in his as she led him up the pass beyond the last grazing.

Astor blinked, forcing himself to stop. There was still much to do and he needed to focus. He could not let – a roar – but was it the fire? He slowed down, dropping his hand closer to his lightly-laden pack and kept it close to his leg. It would not do to have it all finish now, though none of this should ever have started.

The path was harder to find as Astor was dividing his attention between the sky and the fires all around him. Thousands of fireflies, glowing and dancing hungrily, spiraled in the air in all directions. The smoke was growing thicker as he climbed further and he felt it choke and suffocate him. The braccis like huge buried torches shot flames up into the still afternoon. All was red and amber around him, a world of danger and death.

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley…there weren’t always dragons anywhere. I helped change all that. Astor tensed his jaw as he prepared to leap over a patch of flames and crackling branches. His eyes were streaming now and his throat burned but he forced himself on, closer to the peak, to the path he had cut straight through it. So far I’ve come, but so far away, so-

With a boom, the earth beneath him shook. Dust and embers blew past him as if forced by a gale. Astor braced himself from the tremor before taking off again. There is no sense in looking back, I know you’re there. He desperately drove on, as fast as he dared, cloak and skin snagging on branches, flaming and not – he cared little for the cuts and scrapes. What is a little more blood after all?

Rasping, growling, words filled the air around him like tonnes of burning coal being ground against a mountainside, their mocking as clear and filled with contempt as a blade to exposed veins. Fuck you wyrm, fuck all of you.

Like a child’s toy he was thrown forward by a blast of hot air that came from behind him. The heavy-drum beating rose behind him and he crawled quickly forward until he could take to his feet again. Closer to the peak with every frantic step. It’s not enough.

Astor’s muscles were burning as he reached the scree on the edge of the peak. They burned like his throat. He did not trust himself to rub his eyes as the blood and ash on them would blind him and he would need to see. He had slowed down: it was time to let the past catch up.

Astor felt more than heard the beast as it landed before him; its body seemed impossibly far away but its long neck brought its head more than close enough to compensate for that. It looked at him with alien hostility.

Astor looked at himself in the black and gold orb that watched him. He was so small, so small and tired. His dark hair, long on the top, ran down his back. His temples and edges of his short, unkempt beard had taken to grey in recent years. My last years. His bright blue eyes, once deep as a sea, seemed empty and featureless like a cold sky. His frame bore little strength left – not helped by his exhausted and ashen appearance. A shambles. I really should take better care of myself.

The black and gold orb moved back and turned to the side as the dragon turned its head face on to him. All the better to see me. Astor was nervous, but not scared. He had been this close to dragons before, this one included. The creature pulled its head back and inhaled deeply, a sound like water rushing over shingle before the next wave surges forward. Astor reached into his bag and grasped the small carved stone he had in there. Nowhere near enough, but it would have to do.

“Is that it then?” his voice rasped out, dry but deep and strained by the smoke.

The dragon replied with a torrent of flame that engulfed the man where he stood. Fire swallowed him and scorched the stones of the scree, making the crack and pop. More and more flame followed, a stream of relentless, untiring, roaring burning which devastated all it touched.

The torrent ended after a time and as Kefrin exhaled with a snort at the end of the fire it had spent, its eyes narrowed. The ground around where the man had stood was untouched, still the mundane colour of shale and scree. A translucent grey, shifting shell stretched from the ground, seemingly into it and around the form of the weary fugitive. Astor tightened his grip on the small argronite stone; now smaller and showing fractures, and was preparing to speak again when Kefrin dragged in a quick, impatient breath and fire leapt forth once more.

Astor could feel the stone wicking out in stops and starts, the stone almost spent. He could smell hair burning, feel the worn cloth of his tattered sleeves smouldering as the fire probed and found gaps through the shell. It wasn’t going to be enough.

The beast’s short breath gave out just before the stone and the fire abated. Astor let the dust of his last hope drift from beneath his fingers. Kefrin stretched powerful, scaled legs forth as it began to circle Astor, its eyes gleaming with malice and threat.

Again, Astor was surrounded – filled, with the grinding, growling voice of his tormentor. “You will make a poor meal. But even that is better than you should hope for.” Astor continued circling matching the dragon, watching it carefully for the strike which would come. May it be quick, please Gods. Astor could feel his legs shaking. Exhaustion or fear? He no longer could tell or cared. His mind and life were consumed by the black and gold orbs which watched and circle above him unblinking.

“You killed so many of mine.” The dragon paused, biting off each word in a growling rumble. It reared up to its full height, before swinging its head down, jaws poised open to sheer down through him and then clamp shut ending it all. Astor saw himself in the eyes, filled with hatred, one last time as his foot hit a rock wall behind him, stopping his circling.

He saw the man who raised dragons, who created them, who trained them. The man who rode them and fought alongside them to defeat great evil by doing just as much to achieve that goal. His days, in glorious blue and gold; amongst friends, aided – no, served by these creatures they had created and tamed. He was a hero! They had stopped the hordes of the mundim and their foul, putrid masters. He had led charge and sortie, ambush and sally from the Landscar and had received glory on to him.

The teeth raced closer. I wish I had never done it. Astor closed his eyes and sighed. He regretted it all, the war, the fighting, all the work, the reading, and the delving. He wished the idea had never come to him and those fools who agreed with his plan. He wished that it had been a failure, that their creations had all been stillborn and dead.

He opened his eyes, in the heat and the reek of the monstrous maw above him. Shadows all around him. He snorted. If that was all he had wished, then there never would have been dragons in the Valley.