Resurrecting Dragons

There weren't always dragons in the valley. My father never saw them like you today. One hundred, no two hundred years since the last one was seen, before we brought them back. I get to see them. Before my generation, no one could ever ride a dragon. They flew so high. They were too aggressive on the ground for anyone to even try. But just imagine the feeling of soaring through the clouds. This is what I get to do.

It was a sign of prestige, a rite of passage to slay a dragon. Dragon meat was a real delicacy. Bring home a dragon horn, you would be the talk of the village for a moon. If you brought home an egg, you would be a local hero. People of high honour could order their servants to retrieve dragon meat for them whenever they so desired. Until they were gone.

He shot it, my grandfather shot the last dragon. Or so he would tell me. Pictures in his study. Him standing over the corpse with an arrow in its chest. The picture was a dreary sepia with torn edges. He would tell me that it was the only dragon that people had seen for months, nearly a year. It was the last one that we saw for years later. People got greedy.

The dragons brought a sense of joy and wonder to the valley. Huge beasts whimsically soaring over the villages. When you step out of your house, you could see the body soar over. You would have to stand and wait to see the head transition into the majestic body and then the tail. No bird or anything could compare. So what happened? Why are they here again?

The villages grew into cities, expanding into the valleys and into their territory. With every passing generation, we saw fewer and fewer dragons. The bounty for them grew and grew as their numbers shrank. People started to doubt the great stories of dragons as legends.

We crafted machines to fly high into the sky like the dragons. We scoured, the world high and low looking for them. We discovered many other places with similar stories. The dragons just left, yet where are they now?

There was a detected a heat signature coming from a cave in the northern mountains. The area was so cold, that it stood out as an anomaly. A glowing red aura just sitting there.

“Just what do you think that is?” Captain Elias asked.

His partner Jayce was looking at the map on the screen. “It’s too big to be a single human,” he replied. “What would humans be doing down there anyway?” He asked rhetorically.

The captain slowly began to descend into the mountains, following the heat signature. He kept his eyes on the window as the ship went down. The winds began to pick up. The area was covered in a thick layer of fresh snow from last night’s storm. At about 100 metres in the air he saw it. He could see something move along the ground. A large swaying neck and reptilian scales. His eyes widened. He braced himself against the cockpit to keep himself from keeling over in surprise. Suddenly, a beacon of fire shot up into the air and missed the ship by perhaps 10 metres. What was going on? He was too cautious to get any closer. Dare not risk the airship going up in flames and becoming food for whatever was down there. Did dragons normally act this way? No one really bothered to study their behaviour until now. It kept flailing its neck and spewing geysers of fire into the air. He pulled the ship back for safety.

Jayce approached him from behind and handed him an old-fashion hand-scope. He took it into his hand and gave his partner a grin, “thank you,” he said. He put the scope to his eyes and looked down at the mass on the ground. As soon as he saw it, he gasped and gave the scope back.

Just what could it be? Jayce took the scope and peered down to the ground. Not one, but two dragons. The one flailing its head and spewing fire was standing over it. The other lay there with its head outstretched on the ground. Its wings were curled up and you could see an impression on the ground as though it had a crashed landing. “Dragons!” Jayce gasped.