Squire Sunday

Malagaunt smelled her old foe drawing in close. His scent was hard to miss—an odor of tobacco smoke, moldy cheese, rusted armor, and countless bitter regrets. Her snout picked him out easily, even in this vast forest land with all its creatures and castles and curses.

The scent wafted in through a gap in the gates of her lair. It edged into the antechamber of brooding statues and stalactites, flitting down the wide corridor over the bones of valiant heroes and fair maidens. It found her asleep upon her golden hoard, mounded high up in her cave.

Awakening from her dragon-dreams, Malagaunt smelled more than her old foe’s signature scent. She smelled the fleeting rays of sunlight and the creeping darkness of night. She smelled the low creatures of Thingelthrew Forest prowling in and out of lengthening shadows. She smelled the magic of the tree roots dancing out into the dusk. And she smelled…hot metal burning in the sky.

She lifted her head, sniffing loudly.

She smelled burning metal, mixed with something else. The perfumes of starlight, but of no stars she could name. The glorious reek of blasting fire—but a fire a hundred thousand times greater than her own hot breath. And the chilling scent of change—unknowable yet inevitable. She huffed, her scales bristling and her mind reeling. She could smell things before they happened—one of her many talents—and in her many, many centuries upon this world, she had never smelled anything like it.

“By my breath and by my tongue,” she hissed aloud, “my quiet world will soon be undone.”

Her great bones thrummed with anticipation. She maneuvered her great weight and slithered from her treasure-mound toward the gates, stirring avalanches of golden coins and tantalizing jewels. As she moved, a swarm of bats broke free from the fanged ceiling of her lair. They shrieked and fluttered around her horned head, each one racing for the doors.

With a blast of her breath, she threw the gates open. The bats exploded out into the darkness. She raised her head out into the night air and drank in the smells of the world. A fully risen moon dominated the sky above, bathing the forest in a cool, silver fragrance.

“Ah yes,” she said, nostrils flaring. “What a great and mighty change. It draws so very near.”

Her forked tongue slipped out of her mouth and flicked at the air. She could almost taste the burning metal.

She pulled all her great length out from her cave and lay coiled on her doorstep, watching the skies. The gates of her lair were cut into the high peaks of Skald Mountain, overlooking the Thingelthrew and its dark enormity. From such a height, very little could escape her sight. Below, a beaten path zigzagged up the mountainside to her doors—a steep and perilous trek.

Malagaunt unfurled her wings. Oh, how very proud she was of her wings. Not a single rent or wrinkle in the black, leathery membranes, and each finger strong and sharp. She could still hurl down stone walls with three beats of her wondrous wings. They were almost as precious as her prophetic nose.

She drank in a gulp of night air and readied herself to launch.

But then came the sudden stench of sweaty armor, tobacco smoke and bitter memories.

“Aha!” cried out a voice in the night. “I knew I would catch thee upon the precipice of some dark deed. Thou seeketh evil, but I say nay! NAY! Thou shalt not enact thy malice, ye old sinful beast! Not this night!”

Malagaunt looked down to find her old foe riding up the mountain path to her doorstep. His ancient steed trotted along dolefully, while he bounced in his saddle and waved his sword in the air.

“Oh, is that thee, Sir Peligern?” Malagaunt said in mock surprise. “How did thee triumph over so many perils and powers to reach my sanctum?”

“I am a Knight of the Holy Order of the Most Radiant Thistle, as thou well knoweth,” he proclaimed. “There is no dread or darkness that can keep me from my oath to slay thee, thou wretched worm!”

Malagaunt laughed theatrically, her thunderous voice echoing across the mountain.

“Do thy worst, old man,” she hissed.

“I shall!” came the courageous response, which was then followed by a great deal of clanking armor, creaking bones, and loud swearing. Sir Peligern had attempted to leap from his saddle, but had again gotten his foot caught in a stirrup.

Malagaunt waited patiently for the knight to free himself. The change was close, but not so imminent. She would have time for some light entertainment.

Peligern’s old horse stood patiently, less than ten feet from Malagaunt’s fore-claws, while his master disentangled himself. The horse stood entirely unperturbed. He was well acquainted with the dragon by now, having charged at her for the better part of the last seventy years.

Once free of the stirrup, Sir Peligern wiped the sweat from his brow with his long, silver beard. His bald head shone like a palace dome in the moonlight. Realizing he had forgotten something, he quickly returned to his saddle and fetched his helm with its feathery plume, throwing it on and fastening it tight. Once ready, he rounded on the dragon and pointed the tip of his sword at her. He then smiled up valiantly with a toothy grin. Malagaunt could count all five of the knight’s remaining teeth.

“To the death!” he cried.

“So be it,” said the dragon in return.

Malagaunt stoked the fire in her colossal stomach. Her red and black scales blazed with a cruel light. She contorted her neck to level with the knight, then she let the fires loose. Her wicked laughter turned to molten light. A torrent of villainous flame poured out from her maw and blasted Sir Peligern.

With a cry of courage, Sir Peligern raised his shield, its front emblazoned with a golden thistle. The flames engulfed him, from plume to heel, but Malagaunt knew he stood unharmed. His shield was enchanted to keep him safe from her fiery wrath. Once she closed her mouth and swallowed the flames, Sir Peligern sprang forth—still surprisingly nimble for a man of his age. He slashed at Malagaunt’s snout with his blade, but the dragon reared her neck, dodging the attack.

Malagaunt bore scores of scars along her flanks from that accursed blade. None of Sir Peligern’s blows had ever been life-threatening, but even after all these years, that sword had never once lost its bite.

Unable to scratch his enemy, Sir Peligern jabbed his sword into the air—it turned a sharp, piercing blue. A lightning bolt flared from the blade’s tip, striking Malagaunt’s left shoulder. She swiped him with her tail, knocking him down as she roared.

“By my finger and by my thumb,” she chortled with her deep voice. “Thy courage shall last till trumpeting angels come.”

“To my last breath shall I…whew!…shall I…haruph!…shall I fight thee,” huffed Sir Peligern, his armor creaking as he struggled to stand up.

“Methinks thou hast been on that last breath for twenty years,” muttered the dragon.

“What did thou say?” exclaimed the knight.

“Nothing, nothing,” said Malagaunt, turning her eyes back to the night sky, still watchful.

Finally reaching his feet, Sir Peligern charged once more. He sprayed her with several more lightning bolts. She pounded at him again with her tail. He stabbed at her foreclaw. She blasted him with hot, foul-smelling steam. He swung his shield at her face. She snapped her teeth at his beard. With each counter-attack, she sent the old knight bouncing away on his rear. And he always rebounded, wild-eyed and fierce. The crash and clash of their battle resounded through the night.

Oh, how she loved these little distractions. She recalled the day Sir Peligern had first knocked on her door, calling her out to a challenge. He hadn’t smelled of rust and smoke back then. He had smelled of rich cologne, bright steel, dauntless resolve, and oaths newly sworn. The bitterness had been there, but not so potent. She and the knight had battled for hours upon Skald Mountain, his strength and courage relentless. She had almost eaten him that day, when his foot had slipped on a loose rock and he had tumbled unconscious to her feet. But her nose had kept him alive. She had a fore-smelling that day—a premonition-scent that told her he would one day be useful. In what way, she could not foresee. But the scent had been strong upon him nonetheless.

So, she had let him leave with his life. But three days later he returned. And then a month after that. Again and again and again he returned, and each time he left beaten and his oath unfulfilled. Sometimes days would pass between their encounters, sometimes years. But he always came back. For seven decades they had battled, old enemies locked in an endless war.

But that night, with the scent of coming change thick in the air, Sir Peligern did something most unexpected. After picking himself up for the twenty-seventh time that night, he threw down his sword and his shield, planted himself before her and screamed.

It was a guttural, pain-filled and hateful scream. The scream echoed louder than dragon-laughter. It carried out beyond the forest, beyond the fields of the outer edges, even unto the realms of distant kings. It was a scream seventy years in the making.

Then he stopped screaming and cried out, “Eat me already!”

Malagaunt looked down at him, startled and dumbfounded.

“Excuse me?” said the dragon.

“You heard me you big, ugly brute,” yelled Sir Peligern, angry spittle flying from his lips. “I want you to eat me! Swallow me whole. Cook me for a thousand years in that fat, swinging belly of yours. If I can’t kill you, then I might as well give you a bout of unforgettable indigestion.”

“By my horns and by my teeth,” said Malagaunt with her wicked dragon-smile. “Doth Sir Peligern at last accept defeat?”

“Yes!” he cried out. “For the best years of my life I’ve ridden up and down this hideous mountain, living like a madman in this loathsome forest with its asinine fairies. I’m tired of it all. I was meant for great deeds and famed acts of valor, not this endless cycle of failure after failure after failure!”

In a fit of rage, Sir Peligern began jumping up and down on his sword, stamping it into the dirt.

As the knight went about his tantrum and tirade, Malagaunt bent her neck down and once again drew level with her old foe. Her monstrous yellow eye, the same size as the knight, froze him still with its ugly, yellow light.

“Liar,” she hissed.

“What? What did you say?” said the knight, his voice a whisper.

“You are lying, Sir Peligern.”

She turned her face toward him, but she did not unleash her flame. Instead, she flared her nostrils and drank in his scent. She smelled past the sweaty armor, through the tobacco smoke, beneath the bitter memories, and found the scent of his deepest secrets.

“By my scale and by my bone,” she said, “thou art not weary, thou art alone.”

The knight immediately picked up his sword and swung it at the dragon’s snout. Malagaunt pulled back unharmed. She laughed once more.

“Loneliness,” she said, her head lifted high above him, speaking down to him. “You reek of it. It clings to you like a python growing out of your gut. It has been the true worm you have battled these long years. And here you stand, screaming at me. Ha, what a fool you are!”

Sir Peligern stepped back; he lowered his sword in shame.

“You came here all those decades ago to slay the Empress-Worm of the Thingelthrew,” she continued. “You came with hope that vengeance fulfilled would satiate the hunger of your loneliness. But slaying me will not bring your family back, little knight. The fire of my breath turned their bodies to ash and the wind of my wings scattered them across the world. You are truly and miserably alone. But you are also quite entertaining, which is why I shall not eat you. Not tonight.”

The old knight’s face then turned red, and he shook his blade at the great serpent before him. “Then I will kill you,” he exclaimed. “I will hack you to pieces and fling you into the wind!”

“No, you shan’t,” said the dragon. She lifted her snout, sniffing the air. Burning metal. Unseen stars. Inevitable change. It was almost here. “Something more worthy of my attention is coming,” she said, “and I shall not miss it.”

Without another word, Malagaunt launched herself into the air, scattering the knight and his horse upon her doorstep.

She took to the night sky like an eel in the sea, swimming through the darkness. She beat her wings to take her higher and higher, her nose ever pointed upwards, following the scent. All thoughts of Peligern were gone. Now, only the change was upon her mind. She hung in the upper atmospheres; there the air grew thin and battered her wings with a fury. The world curved beneath her, its monstrous size making her feel small.

With her wings beating back at the wind, she waited.

There it was.

She could now see it: a star unplucking itself from the sky. It shimmered brightly, then it grew brighter. And brighter. Its smell filled the whole night sky, overpowering even the fragrances of the moon. The strange star then became a comet, wreathed in silver fire. When it hit the atmosphere, a noise like the world cracking open filled the heavens. A high-pitched whistle followed the tumult. Then the whistle became a roar, a roar like a terrible dragon far greater than Malagaunt herself.

Malagaunt barely swung herself out of its path as it plummeted past her, flying at speeds even she could never dare attempt. She turned her head to follow its course. It was headed straight for the forest.

The comet made impact before she could wheel her body around. The collision sent shockwaves across the expanse of trees, making waves in the branches and leaves. Birds and fairies leapt in terror from the treetops. Creatures on the ground darted and ran for their lives. Malagaunt flew with all her speed toward the impact site, determined to reach it first. She knew the commotion would draw the other great denizens of the Thingelthrew toward it.

A plume of thick smoke fountained up from an enormous crater. It had cleared an area more than a hundred feet wide, leveling trees almost as old as herself. Roaring fires burned in the newly hewn pit. Before she touched down, Malagaunt batted at the smoke with her wings. The wind she conjured dispersed the smoke at once, revealing a strange, silver object at the crater’s center.

Malagaunt lowered herself to coil around the object, making the world tremble once more as her ponderous weight settled onto the scorched dirt. The crater felt warm and luxurious beneath her scales, but the air was filled with a bizarre and otherworldly scent. The change had come, but what it had brought she still could not tell. She lowered her head to investigate the silver object.

It appeared to be an egg. An egg made of metal.

The egg was about three feet in height and seven feet in length. One end of the egg was flatter than the other end and from it protruded three black trumpets, from which steam poured out. The trumpets smelled of fire, as if they had been blasting with it moments ago. The top was not metal but glass covered in soot. Malagaunt breathed upon the glass, clearing the soot. She looked within the egg.

Inside, she saw a baby staring back at her.

Malagaunt reared back in surprise. What could this be? A child fallen from the heavens in a metal egg seemingly birthed by the sky? What strange and unnatural magic was this?

Curious, Malagaunt nudged the egg with her snout.

Something happened almost at once. Several whirring noises resounded from the egg. The glass top opened with a shrill hiss. Blinking lights shimmered from inside it. The baby inside began to coo.

“Instigating omnilingual translation sequence and disembarking procedure,” said a deep voice.

Malagaunt at first thought the voice must have come from the baby, but she soon realized it was coming from the egg.

“Beginning carrier message holo-display,” said the voice.

A beam of blue light shot out from inside the hatched egg, shearing through the night. Then the beam expanded like a lady’s fan and twisted, taking a different shape—that of a woman.

Malagaunt hissed at the woman made of light, wary of this sudden enchantress. But the enchantress made no move against her.

The woman hovered above the metal egg. She wore pantaloons and a long robe with skinny sleeves. Round spectacles sat on her nose and her hair was pulled into a loose, slapdash bun. The woman didn’t seem beguiling enough to be an enchantress.

“Who art thee?” Malagaunt asked.

The blue woman answered at once. “Greetings, I am Augusta Sunday of the planet Earth,” she said, her voice deep and firm. “You have not heard of my planet, for it is several million lightyears away. But with the best of our technology, we have deployed this trans-galactic space craft to your planet.”

“Are you some elf-trick?” the dragon demanded.

The woman of light flickered for a moment. “Unable to answer question,” she responded, then proceeded on with her monologue.

“The child within this vessel is the last surviving child of the planet Earth.” Suddenly, the woman’s firm expression softened. Whereas before she was like a queen holding court, now she held the face of deep, deep grief. “This is my son, whom I dearly love. We discovered signs of humanoid life upon this world, which is why I send him to you. I ask—no, I beg—that you care for him as you would your own child. Despite the technology at my disposal, I can do nothing more than pray he finds his way into loving hands. The death of our sun is imminent. And with its death our world shall perish as well. By the time you hear this, Earth shall be no more. He has no one and is alone. Once again I implore you, please care for him. He is most spec—” Zzzt!

Before she could finish, there was a spray of sparks and the woman of light vanished. All fell quiet. Malagaunt waited for the woman to return or for the voice of the egg to speak again. But she heard nothing. A disappointment began to set in.

“By my spine and by my feet,” she said aloud, “whatever this may be, it shall be a peculiar treat.”

She bent down to eat the egg—baby and all. Then she halted, her mouth posed over the babe. Her nostrils flared and a new scent filled her snout, making her scales burn and shiver and the fire in her belly leap into her throat.

Power. Such power.

This child was covered in the mighty smell of power. By her prophetic nose she fore-smelled the great feats this child would achieve—she could smell him triumphing over giants and tyrants, leaping over kingdoms and mountains, even felling great flames and fiends with but a word.

Perhaps, he might even become her nemesis?

But the scent of power was only a foretelling. It would take years for the little thing to grow into its potential. Malagaunt looked around. She couldn’t just leave him here. The other great denizens of the forest would eat him whole without hesitation. She certainly could not take him back to her lair. What to do with this lonely, little creature?

Malagaunt laughed at herself, making the baby cry.

She lowered her head once more and took the egg, screaming babe and all, into her mouth. Then she flung herself into the air, her wings pounding against the night. She flew with speed across the treetops, their topmost branches snapping as she hurtled above them. She circled her mountain, rising higher and higher, until she came to her own doorstep. She knew he would still be there, waiting for her to eat him.

Malagaunt dropped out of the sky and landed next to Sir Peligern. He had been sitting on the cliff, his sword across his knees and his face in his hands. When she hit the mountain, he nearly tumbled over the edge. Gathering his balance and his wits, the old knight stood up and shook his sword at her once more.

“Changed your mind, have ye?” he cried out.

Malagaunt bent her neck and dropped the metal egg right in front of him. It had remained unharmed in her short journey, though the baby had screamed inside her skull the whole way. The baby screamed still, waving its little fists in indignation, covered in dragon-slime.

“By the Thistle, what is this?” said the knight, his eyes full of wonder.

“Something by which to slay your true worm,” said Malagaunt.

The knight looked up at her with pure bewilderment. The dragon rolled her eyes. “The baby is for you,” she explained.

“What trick is this?” said the knight warily. “And why’s the babe inside a metal egg?”

“The night sky dropped it into my forest, child and all,” said Malagaunt. "It appears to be the last child of some burned-away world."

“Why give it to me?”

“Because I need you to raise it to become a knight,” said the dragon.

"Huh?" The look of bewilderment only deepened on the old knight’s face.

“This baby will grow up to become what you never could be,” said the dragon, “a worthy opponent. Potentially, a worthy doom."

“So, you want me to raise this baby to fight you?” asked Sir Peligern, pointing at the infant. Then a gleam sparked in his eye. “A baby I can raise as my squire?”

“Yes, yes,” said Malagaunt impatiently. “But there is something strange about this child. Stranger even than how it appeared. And I think its strangeness will be most formidable. Raise the baby to its…” she took in a deep sniff of the toddler, “...seventeenth year, then bring it to me. We shall do our first battle here before the gates of my hall. If it is not trained to my satisfaction, then I will burn the Thingelthrew down to its roots and leave you with nothing but a dessert and your loneliness. Do you understand?”

Sir Peligern held the baby at arm's length now, looking into its crying face with fascination. He nodded dumbly.

Satisfied, the dragon turned away, eager to return to her lair. But before she disappeared into her deep darkness, Sir Peligern called out to her. “Wait! What am I supposed to call him?”

Malagaunt halted in the threshold, thinking on her answer.

“If he is to be your squire,” she said, “then call him squire.” Then she paused, thinking on it some more. “Call him...Squire Sunday.”

With that, Malagaunt slithered back into her dark hole. The gates slammed shut behind her. Sir Peligern turned away smiling, his newfound squire in his arms.

The forest below stood silent, watching. It was holding its breath, waiting to see what kind of tomorrow would hatch from this strange night.