The Path

England, 1205:

Very few could tell you how the dragon war began. Truthfully not many still remembered, so long had it been raging.

Andurin, the last standing stronghold of the Knights Templar on the southern front. The skies had turned a pulsing incarnadine from the smoke and fire. The sun light strobed weakly through the impenetrable clouds of smoke and soot and the air felt cold and thick. The walls were lined with trembling fingered archers, scanning the impossibly shrouded horizon, praying for nothing to come, and if it does for it to at least be visible.

Brother Roland crossed the grounds on wooden walkways, where the scorched ground was still too hot to touch, watching his remaining brothers.

"Roland."

Behind him was Brother Gideon, jogging to catch up.

"They're frightened, Brother," Roland murmured just loudly enough for Gideon to hear, "They're afraid of crossing to the other side."

"There is nothing to fear, we are with the Lord, Brother Roland. We carry his cross over our chests, so we never forget who's blood we carry."

"That is what worries me, Gideon," He pointed to the crimson sky, "These winged beasts slice open the heavens like scalpels, we carry the blood of Christ within us, but whatever thirst they can't sate from us they just take from up there."

"Careful Roland."

"Do not think me a blasphemer, brother. Until my last breath my sword will be raised but we do not fight men. We fight devils. We fight God's mockeries, and he is silent."

Gideon was silent but Roland noticed he had involuntarily begun to grip his sword as a comfort for his anxious thoughts. Roland stopped his walk and put a comforting hand on Gideon's shoulder.

"Will we fail, brother?" Gideon asked

"We do not fail, we serve his will, in death or in life."

Gideon nodded slowly mulling this over. Roland continued walking, alone this time.

"I will be at the altar." Roland called to Gideon, who felt in slighter higher spirits but while neither would admit it; in their hearts they could feel their faith starting to waver.

Roland slipped out of the back gate and down towards the port. The path there was within a small forest. The trees cast a wide shade and thus the walk was colder than anywhere else. Andurin was awaiting supplies from the Holy Land, which was why holding this stronghold was so imperative. The last defence the port had left, without which, they would be sheep already minced between the wolves’ teeth. The port itself was a small thing, built to hopefully avoid any attention from the winged devils, nothing more than a gangway stretching a short way over the sea. Under which, in the shallows, was a pedestal with a stone cross erected atop it. The port had fortunately not been reached by the dragons so far but if they did, the best place for a worship site would surely be the water. Roland knelt before it and affectionately brushed some salty residue from the cross, as a lover would brush a tear from their dearests’ cheek. He clasped his hands together, lowered his head, and closed his eyes to the devastated world. He reached out with his thoughts and his heart for anything. A sign, a message, a miracle. He saw images of the many battlefields he had seen. The brothers he had lost, digested by this mighty foe as if they were no better than livestock.

Livestock. A tear escaped him and soared down his dirt smeared face, leaving a clean streak.

"Please. Do not leave us now. Guide us, lord. Ask and we shall battle to the last, my every breath will be yours to command. But I beg of you, do not test our faith when we already have so little left to lose."

Silence. As there always was now. Roland’s heart was a vase. A vase where the flowers had died, and the water had long since dried up. When he looked at the red cross on his chest, he no longer saw the blood of Christ, just the fires of the beasts. He opened his eyes to what was once paradise and found he couldn't bear to look at the cross. Roland rose dejected to his feet and emerged from underneath the port. Casting his gaze behind him to the expanse of the sea, he saw no silhouettes of ships on the horizon but when he turned back to the trees...

The briefest flicker of red weaving among the tree trunks. Fluttering gently, some sort of fabric caught in the wind.

A strange compulsion in his heart propelled him after it and the trees embraced him easily as he disappeared into the thick woodland, away from the path and into the vast unknown. Wherever he looked it seemed always to be just out of sight, disappearing and reappearing between the nauseating maze of oaks. Whispers carried through the trunks, far off screams and monstrous screeches. Involuntarily grasping the sheath of the steel at his hip thrust a deathly silence over the forest. No wind shared secrets between the trees and Roland’s own staggered breathing seemed dangerously loud. A fog swept over the earth and roots, so dense his feet disappeared within it. It was disorienting to Roland, looking down to see his legs ending in stumps. He tore his sword from its sheath and held it aloft with trembling hands. The wind suddenly seemed to return yet in a hushed, barely audible voice. That sounded near and yet miles away simultaneously. It was resonant and level yet, also light enough to bring some semblance of light into his despondent heart.

"You lead with the sword and wonder why the bloodshed won't cease."

"Who are you?" Roland called into the unknown. The silence resumed.

“Lord? Forgive my transgressions,” he offered, “my faith should have been absolute.”

Something was changing, he could feel it but whatever it was, was happening imperceptibly. What little light was in the forest was dying and quickly at that. That was when he realised the forest was moving. The gaps between the trees disappearing as they drew closer around Roland, their spindly branches hungrily grasping for his flesh. He slashed away what he could, but they were unrelenting and growing back impossibly quickly. His surcoat torn away and the red cross emblazoned on his breast that kept his blade steady and his swing deadly was broken down and shredded before his eyes.

"The bloodshed won't cease." The voice again, quieter than before and fading. "Won't cease."

"Cease."

Cease.

Roland lowered his sword. The branches faltered. Almost hesitated if that wasn't too human an action for them to do. He watched them and felt millions of invisible eyes watching him back. The tattered remains of his cross were lost among the fog. All he had left was his sword and his soul.

The sword returned to Roland's sheath silently and he dropped to one knee, head lowered in prayer. With his eyes closed he could hear the rumbling and thrashing of the trees as they moved once again. At any moment a branch could come crashing on his head, splitting his skull, and fertilising the earth with his blood. But that blow never came. When he opened his eyes again the trees had formed a path leading in one direction, forward.

The fog eliminated all sounds of his footsteps as he tentatively crept toward the break in the forest, where the shocking sudden abundance of sunlight beckoned like a siren. When he looked directly down the path it seemed to stretch for infinity, but it was when he looked everywhere else that he quickly found himself at the end of the pathway. Stepping into this new stretch of land he saw the trees were once again blocking away paths elsewhere and had cordoned off a large circle ahead.

All the breath in his lungs expelled from him when he saw the dragon ahead. It was low to the ground, head tilting quizzically. It was crimson red, but its underbelly was a mottled yellow. It didn't notice him though, there was the corpse of another dragon at its feet, sliced open from head to toe, blood flowing from its innards like strawberry coloured lava. Next to the corpse was a woman, unmoving, with a red bundle cradled in the nook of one arm and a drenched short sword in the other. Roland quickly made a sign of the cross across his chest as he realised what the bundle must obviously be. A child. He crept closer his hand almost seductively dancing around the hilt of his blade, touching the hilt was a compulsion he was battling yet doing so felt like it would set in motion imminent death. For him and for the child in the woman’s arms.

The creature’s eye broke from the dead and cast itself upon him...

He froze in his tracks, a cold sweat breaking over his whole body. The blade called and its wanton call was too great. The terrible realisation quickly set in that he could see a supernova of light shining through the dragon’s throat and it was travelling higher towards the creature’s mouth. Instinct was screaming too loudly in every fibre of his being and he tore the sword free of its cage and leapt to the ground, rolling off his shoulder as the dragon roared and let forth an apocalyptic plume of blazing devastation. Rolling up on to one knee and rising, Roland broke forth into a sprint hoping to get close enough to the dragon before it had another inferno ready, he was hopelessly unprepared to face the beast, so his only hope was to grab the child and break for the stronghold. The infant was almost within reach, but the dragon swung its great tail and swept Roland from his feet, knocking him clean through the air and the air clean from his lungs. He lay for a moment gasping through his winding, scrabbling desperately for the sword that had slipped from his grasp. The booming of the dragons’ footsteps reverberated through the earth and made his bones vibrate. It was not just footsteps, he recognised it as the encroaching force of death. Its shadow eclipsed him, and he knew without having to look the creature was upon him.

He closed his eyes and said one final prayer, that he would not be abandoned on the other side.

But he was not yet destined to be abandoned in this one. The clink and rapid grind of metal plates grinding against each other. The sound of steel cutting through air as it's ripped from its scabbard and the husky cry of a raging Templar. Roland rolled onto his back and saw the dragon was indeed right atop him and to his left Gideon was leaping from the ground, sword aloft and aimed to deliver to a fatal blow. The dragon pivoted its spindly, scaly neck towards Gideon just in time to get a slash across its eye. It screamed and billowed great towers of fire blindly in every direction as it frenzied and thrashed through its agony.

"Brother!" Gideon dropped to Roland’s side, hurriedly scanning his body for wounds.

"There is a child Gideon..."

Gideon turned and saw and cursed something silently under his breath, "Very well, we kill the beast, then we get the child."

Roland grasped Gideons gauntlet, "Something is amiss. It didn't seem to be hostile to the child."

"How hard did the beast hit you, brother, it's a dragon!"

"If we get the child, it may not attack us."

"You are placing your faith on the good nature of a primal thing! A devil!"

"I am placing my faith in God, as should you be."

This gave Gideon pause, "We are the blade of God, Brother Roland," he said finally, "We strike down the devil in any form he takes." He rose to his feet, grip firm on the blade, "My faith is in my holy steel."

Gideon spun on his heel to face the beast, holding the blade across his body, and edging towards the still flailing dragon. Roland tried to call him away, but his path was his own and already firmly set.

The child. It was wrapped in a red shawl that was stained darker with what must beblood and Roland hoped more than anything it was not its own. He took the child into his arms and delicately pushed back the fold of the shawl with one finger. The child’s eyes were open and sparkling with a glossy star-like glamour he had never seen. It babbled and grinned and reached out a tiny hand to clasp around Roland’s finger, totally oblivious to the carnage. A smile formed on Roland's face, he was terrified, but he couldn't help himself. A child is not capable of hate, or blood shed or violence. What it becomes is another story but for a brief period in a person’s life they are completely and wholly at peace with the world. He had asked for a miracle, perhaps he had received one.

He began to slink away back into the cover of the trees when the dragon, with its one good eye, spotted him disappearing with the young one. It screeched in a panicked manner and flapped his colossal kite wings kicking up a growing mushroom cloud of dirt and dust. It pounced off the ground and clasped Gideon in the talons on its feet. He screamed and struggled but the dragon just tossed him away like a doll and propelled itself after Roland. It covered the distance in seconds, jettisoning to the ground with such force the tremors could be felt all the way back at the stronghold.

Roland did not reach for the sword, God knows he wanted to, for his heart was fracturing seeing the lifeless body of his brother only a short distance away and the creature responsible within arm’s reach. Yet, the path Gideon took was his own, and this was Roland's.

He dropped to his knees and the sun glaring overhead, beaming down from behind the dragon’s head and into his eyes, let him know he was not alone. Tentatively, he moved more of the shawl back, freeing the infants’ arms and without a second thought it outstretched one. The dragon shied away for a moment, but the child’s babbling was almost magnetic, nourishing the deep roots of the creature’s maternal instinct. It lowered its head and rested against the child’s palm. Breath caught in Roland's throat, impossible surely. And yet, a miracle.

The moment was just that. Fleeting although feeling like lifetimes and when the dragon drew back, Roland rose, gingerly slinking away with the child firmly in his grasp. The dragon watched until they were out of eyesight, its glassy eyes seeming soft, wet even.

The Templar and the child were bound now by something stronger than duty. They were bound by the path, two merging into one. He was carrying something irregular, incomprehensible, a child with a dragon’s heart.

Inside Roland, his once empty vase of a soul was growing roots.