Sentinel

He has only known the dark for so long, when light breaks, even as a blush of faintest dawn, it is painful to him. Piercing agony driving spikes through the pitted and rusting metal of his right eye makes him groan deep within, so deep even his ears can barely catch the sound.

It is the patter of her feet approaching that stirs his heart, and the sound of her crying. When she stumbles, she falls into his forearm, crusted with soil and growing things, but he feels her touch through time’s deposits, despite age and decay and the slow dampening of the remaining coal within him.

She has come at long last. He will not deny her anything.

If only he were not so bereft of power. He has no means to rise, his strength long drained away, his fire left unstoked for an age. But he knows her, despite his weakness, the magic that gives him life undeniably hers. When she climbs, scrambling and clumsy over his outstretched arm and into the curve between his shoulder and neck, he hums softly to her, the ground beneath him vibrating with his only means of comfort.

She stops, her weeping stilled, little face turned upward, just visible in his renewed periphery. Quivering, terrified, and yet courageous to a fault, he sees her hope. He longs to stand and defend her as is her right, her due. But whatever her reason for coming to him, she’s far too late.

His time is done.

They come through the forest, loud, carrying fire and weapons, voices echoing toward him undulled by the thick brambles and morning stillness. “This way!” He knows they hunt her, feels her panic as though his own while the power that made him—that connects him to her—prods him to action.

Action of which he is no longer capable. If only she had come to him sooner, several decades ago even, when the wildfire that raged through this part of the wood warmed the remaining heat in his huge, metal heart. He would be long dead now were it not for that blaze, he is certain. And while that respite, without her or her kin to make him wake, that moment of renewal only prolonged the inevitable.

Did any of his kind survive the same way? Or is he, indeed, the last? A moot question, as the child he was created to defend, to champion, rushes forward and begins her awkward and unrelenting climb of his snout.

Does she know him? Is she here because she’s been told he will protect her? Or has fate brought this tiny, weeping and brave human girl to his last resting place? He believes in fate, despite all this time, all the years that have come and gone as he fought the last sleep that will finally douse the magic that sustains him. Whatever her reasons for coming to him, he must find a way to help her.

She is his reason for being, after all.

When they enter the small glade where his head rests, they don’t know him, he is certain of that. The small hillock that has formed over his face is rich with wild strawberries and flowers, though their crude shouts and aggressive approach chased off the butterflies that keep him company on quiet summer mornings like this one. The leader stops and looks up, brutish face breaking into a horrible smile as he gestures at the climbing girl with his blazing torch.

“There she is!”

She chokes on a sob, collapsing by his cheek. Either she is out of strength or terror has taken her and only then does he realize just how small and fragile she is, how so very young. Barely past a few human years, he can guess, the single coal in his heart chamber beating softly in time with hers when both of her little hands lift to press to the rim of his metal eye. Her skin finds the cool metal that wind and burrowing rodents exposed there.

Child, he sends to her, voice as rusty as his body, her touch allowing that connection.

She stares, mouth agape, her fear his fear, but holding still, that strong and enduring bond built by her ancestors tying them ever tighter together the longer their skin connects. She shows no signs of running from him, sinking against him, little cheek resting on the cracked metal casing of his eye as she whispers back.

“’Ragon,” she says in a tiny voice. “He’p.”

He would weep for fury and frustration and impotence if he could muster the power. She needs him—finally, he is needed—and he is too far gone to do what he was created to do. The realization is enough to break what is left of his heart.

“Then climb up there and get the brat.” She has distracted him, enough he has missed most of the conversation unfolding, though it is obvious as the leader’s loud demand ends in a hearty smack to one of his men that this savage will not rest until the girl is captured. “The king wants her head by noon.” No, not captured then. Killed.

He groans again, throwing all that he is, all that he has left, into resistance while the skulking and sullen soldier begins to climb. His metal body might be locked and frozen to the ground, but his voice, it seems, is still his own.

They freeze at the sound emerging from the earth, stirring the trees, carrying up into the open sky. A small thing, hardly a victory, and yet the soldier in question quavers with one hand raised to find purchase, terror crossing his pinched face.

“Are you afraid of the wind?” The leader’s gruffness barely covers his own discomfort, the gathering of his men now restless with nerves. Have they heard stories of this place? Does his presence linger in song and tale passed down through the generations? Do they know of his creation and that she is all that matters despite their aim to end her life?

He calls up his voice again, the only weapon left him where claws and fire and teeth and magic once allowed him to fly, to soar, to defend the family line that created him for this very purpose. It is his only hope and hers. He cannot fail her.

He will not fail her.

This time, some of them run, fleeing into the forest, abandoning their leader. The soldier sent to pursue the girl retreats despite his master’s fury, the stink of fear on all of them deeply satisfying. He feels the ground shift, the dirt and roots shaking where they cover him, the thick mat of earth wound with grasses cracking across his snout to slide away, exposing one wide, arching nostril.

Their screams gratify, though even that reveal is not enough to make them all run. And, as moments pass and he does not rise—how he longs to rise!—the leader approaches, emboldened by the lack of opposition.

“The legends are true.” He seems suitably awed, though now amused as he kicks at the lip of exposed metal. It clangs, dull and unthreatening. “You fools, come back. Here is just a relic. The last stand." He barks a laugh. "How fitting that it is nothing, as she is.”

They return, his soldiers, sneaking through the wood to stare, then oozing forward to investigate. The dragon is helpless to stop them as they poke him, prodding him, pulling back more of the ground to expose him. He has no recourse, no strength and can do nothing when they strike at him and laugh at the sound of their weapons against his constructed hide.

“So much for your champion, bratling.” The leader shouts up at her where she clings, shaking but defiant still. “Rise then, dragon, and save the line of Doricaine, because here be the last of those.” He laughs, they all do, raucous and vicious and mocking. While her jaw sets and she burrows her fingers deeper into the soil until her hands rest fully on his metal hide.

“’Ragon,” she commands. “’Ire.”

He has no fire to give her. Dread and regret chill his soul. Run, princess. I cannot protect you. He will die from the truth of it, he is certain now. As he should for failing her despite himself.

“Ragon!” She sits up, slapping at the ground beneath her hands, the soil crusting over his face. “’Ire!”

He tries. Oh, how he tries. Digs deeply within himself, wills the last of his flame and magic to rise and save her. And, for a moment, he shares her hope as the coal flares in response.

Only to shrivel a moment later, cooling as it collapses along with his will.

There is nothing he can do. He is too far gone.

Until fate whispers back.

“You want fire, your highness?” The leader barks a laugh, holding out his torch, gesturing for his men to retreat. They do, watching with hungry expressions, inhuman and resentful. Whatever has befallen her family to lead her here, the dragon fears the end like he never has in all these centuries, if only because it means her death. “Take it.”

The torch lowers to the grass over his snout, smoking a moment. That is not good enough for them, the soldiers scrambling, gathering sticks and dried weeds, piling them on top of the smoldering pitch their leader empties from a flask at his side. And as the acrid scent cuts through the fresh morning air, a blaze begins, fire warming metal skin, heating crusted rust, a coal popping free to rise in an arc, landing on the bared rim of steel at the curve of the dragon's nostril.

He inhales the coal, one deep breath that sucks in the fire, fanning it to brightness as it races down cold passages to his lungs, that tiny spark expending what remains of its life in a sudden burst of heat. He holds that breath, flooding the spark with the air he contains.

For a moment, nothing happens. And then, in a whisper that turns to a roar, that single coal does what the wildfire could not without the child to command him.

He revels in the sensation of reborn heat, in the ignition of the furnace inside him. It is insufficient for flight, just yet, or for the strength to rise and defend her. But he doesn’t need to fly to fight back now.

What they have done, what they have begun, is enough for one exhale. One fiery, blazing and consuming exhale.

Perhaps if they had not stood so close. Maybe if they chose not to linger and taunt, some of them might have survived. He is very grateful for their arrogance, their temerity. It means he gets to watch them as the flame they fed him, the very flame they chose to use against his mistress, is the same fire that is their end.

How satisfying, the return of his breath.

They are still smoking when his exhale runs out, charred lumps of unrecognizable meat, the trees beyond crackling and popping, sap exploding outward from the intensity of his fire. Another inhale draws power from the consuming blaze, stoking his furnace further and, with a moan of relief, he flexes. And rises.

She clings to him as he emerges slowly from the soil, shedding the vegetation and earth in a cascade of pattering clumps as he shrugs free of the confines that has been his prison and would have been his grave without her. She laughs, a clear, bright sound, smile reflecting in his polished eye while the magic she woke within him, now fed by the fire her enemies gifted all unknowing, scours him clean.

He shakes his head slowly, stretching out wings aching for flight, creaking sound of metal easing as movement lubricates, magic surging through him until he can breathe easily again, stretching, free again.

Amazed to be alive.

“Your highness,” he rumbles to her as he lifts one claw, the tiny girl who is his everything stepping across and hugging his knuckle with a fierce joy that his heart adores and will long to be the source of all the days of her life. “Your desire?”

“’Ragon,” she says with savage command, turning and pointing back the way she had come. “He’p home!”

He had forgotten how wonderful it feels to fly. And even more so, to have a task and the love of the girl he will follow to the ends of the world.

The city bells are already ringing their warning when his wings carry them over the trees to the sound of his tiny general laughing.