The Return of the Fury

There weren’t always Dragons in the Valley.

After the war they had staggered home, many having lost their limbs, many more having lost their minds. Looking at the miserable veterans drowning in their tankards, one could almost be forgiven for thinking these were not the same proud warriors, the formidable legion of King’s Dragons who had seemed so utterly unconquerable fifteen years earlier.

Now, Arya thought, Dragons seemed altogether the wrong word with which to describe these wretches.

As a six year old, she had seen the column march out of the city, a cacophony of jostling armour and the heavy tread of feet on muddy roads. They had marched out to certain victory, and the crowds of women and children cheered them on their way.

First came the King’s Dragons, elite warriors mounted on fierce warhorses, bearing white dragons emblazoned on red shields. The regular army Lions followed on foot, iron swords swinging at their hips. The conscripted Hawks followed behind, old men and farmboys with mismatched armour and notched weapons. Arya’s father had been a Hawk. She had seen him walking tall, proud to fight under King Torgian, Ruler of the Middle Kingdom of Eldorn. Her father’s face had shone that day with a light she had not seen in all his years toiling on the farm.

That was the last time Arya saw him. And no one — not her father, the soldiers, the crowds, or even the King Torgian himself — had imagined what would come to pass.

One should never speak ill of the dead, but in the Riverwood Valley everyone knew the Torgian, may he rest with the Old Ones, was to blame for the fathers and sons who had not returned.

Cursed was the day Queen Clarina had pled for mercy for her brother, Korgen! He had been sentenced to death when he was discovered practising the Dark Arts. Korgen was not dangerous, Clarina tearfully persuaded Torgian. He could be rehabilitated. So the King stayed his hand that day and instead exiled Korgen to the Mount Erba monastery in the Far North of the Tierkan Mountains.

But they had been deceived. Korgen’s exile provided him access to what he most desired: archives and forgotten scrolls such as should never have been written. In the monastery, Korgen also found a kindred spirit in the Bishop Mordrek, who longed for the Elder Days when the Lore was feared throughout the Middle Kingdom.

Over the next decade in exile, Korgen’s power multiplied and he styled himself the Witchking in the North. Gradually rumours of unnatural beasts spread from the Tierkan Mountains.

It around a that time when Bishop Mordrek arrived with the demand that Torgian and the Middle Kingdom pay tribute to the Witchking in the North. Finally, the threat could no longer be ignored.

Arya remembered the day the first word came. When the messenger said that the King was slain and his army had been decimated, it was met with disbelief. But as more news arrived, the disbelief grew into horror.

And when the haggard survivors had stumbled home, unrecognisable crusted armour and shredded tunics, no one could believe these were the same proud men who had left only one year before. The townspeople avoided their haunted gazes. It was battleshock, the innkeeper’s wife declared. Their minds had been damaged from blows to the head in the worst of the fight.

As a rule, when the Dragons returned in Riverwood Valley they spoke little of the events, except among themselves in quiet, wine-soaked tones. Still, rumours abounded and odd details trickled out from returned Lions and Hawks, who had watched in horror from the fringes of the battle. These were absorbed into the rumours until each story contradicted the former, but all were enthusiastically whispered with equal severity and horror.

Eventually, the screams of night terrors became commonplace. Rumours multiplied from these cries, whispers of a Great Beast who would not sleep. But in time, the stories became folk tales on stormy nights among the younger generation. But still the older ones trembled because they knew what was coming. And despite having just today come of age at twenty-one, Arya knew better to join with those mocking soldiers as cowards.

Two years after the battle, when Arya had been nine, the former soldiers still seemed frightening and powerful.

“What beast could be so fearsome to frighten a Dragon?” Arya had once asked her mother as they passed the tavern.

Liath shushed her, but a Dragon raised his head and fixed a bleary, solitary eye on Arya, who froze under its intensity.

“Them such as should not walk this earth,” he growled. “The Necromancer in the North summoned them up from the depths of hell.”

Arya stared at him with wide eyes. But here was her chance. She forced her tongue to move. “I want to know what happened.”

The Dragon stood up and limped towards her. Arya resisted the urge to step behind her mother. “You don’t know what you ask,” he scoffed, towering over her.

Arya refused to look away. “My Father was a Hawk,” she said quietly, but clearly. “His name was Marwon. No one can tell me what happened to him.”

The Dragon’s eyes clouded over. “I never met a Marwon of Riverwood. I can’t tell you what became of him.”

“What happened in that battle?” Liath whispered through bloodless lips. Arya looked up at her mother in surprise. Liath had refused to say a word about the war for the past two years. Liath wrung her hands until the bone looked almost to burst through her skin.

The Dragon looked at Liath, who trembled, then at Arya who met his gaze evenly with unnaturally green eyes. Despite all he had seen, this girl almost began to unnerve him.

“You really want to know, little girl?” he laughed without humour. “Very well. We Dragons charged forward to meet the Oathbreakers who had sided with the Witchking. But as we slayed them, from their wounds demons burst forth, shadowy beasts that leap on wings from earth to sky and breathe fire and ice. Their shrieks freeze a man’s blood in his veins and cause the most courageous warrior to tremble. Their claws rip a grown man in half as they gorge on blood and entrails.” He shuddered and his voice lowered until he was barely audible. “But they are nothing compared to the Kakodaimon they served. We saw his shadow and fire in the clouds of Mount Erba.”

He paused here. Arya didn’t dare breathe lest she break the spell.

“The Kakodaimon did not descend on us that day, though perhaps it would have been a kindness if he had. They say the Witchking Korgen had summoned from the deepest bowels of Mount Erba. Awakened, the Beast demands its feed and its hunger grows once more. New blood suffices, but it is the Old Blood that it really craves. The same blood that runs through your veins, girl.”

Energy seemed to suddenly collapse out of the Dragon. “Mark my words, girl. Our time runs short. The Witchking in the North is coming with his demon, and when he does, death itself will be a mercy.”

Arya’s face was white. Her mother looked ashen. Silently, Arya picked an orange from her basket and proffered it to the Dragon. “I’m called Arya,” she said.

The Dragon took the orange and considered it. “They call me Halston,” he finally grunted.

Since that day, from time to time Arya would bring Halston potatoes or bread from their farm. She brought him soup when the terrors or drink kept him in his cot for days, and she refused to leave when the rage and temper took him. The old Dragon’s gruffness became as familiar to her as the callouses on her own hands. They became unlikely companions, perhaps in another life, a knight and his squire. But Arya was content to listen to Halston tell the old legends he had learnt.

Then, the day she came of age, Halston told her a story that she had not heard before.

“Most of the folk in Eldorn have forgotten this tale,” he said. “It was many centuries ago that the Gilded Elves faded from the Middle Kingdom. Some left by ship towards the Eastern Lands. But some stayed, and even lived in this same Riverwood Valley — though they called it Firestone Valley. Gradually they married among humans until their blood was diluted, and that great race faded. Some have said the Elves will rise again, or return from the East if a great darkness threatens the land.” Halston grew quiet at this.

“You don’t believe it,” Arya guessed. “Because they didn’t return fifteen years ago.”

Halston didn’t reply. Arya feared he was about to disappear into the nightmares of his mind again. But then he shook himself and smiled weakly. “You know, the Old Blood is strong in you,” he added.

“Why do you think that?” asked Arya, surprised.

“Your eyes,” he said gruffly. “All the tales speak of the emerald eyes of the Gilded Elves.”

Arya hid that away in her mind. “Why were they called Gilded?” she asked.

“That is a strange thing. They say the Elves had armour with a stone embedded in their breatplate. Even older tales hint that the stone may have held power, but no one remembers anymore.”

Halston stood up and fumbled around, reached up to a high shelf. In his hand there was a stained cloth bound with leather.

“This is for you,” he said, holding the package forward.

Arya unwrapped the gift. Inside was a green stone with golden flecks, a smooth flat, oval the size of her palm. On one side intricate lines of swirls were carved into the surface. She weighed it in her palm. It was cool to the touch and surprisingly heavy.

“Thank you, Halston,” she said, touched.

Halston shuffled and looked embarrassed. “It’s not a elvish gemstone, if that‘s what you’re thinking,” he said gruffly. “My mother gave it to me when I was your age for luck when I first joined the Dragons. But it always reminded me of the tale. I’ve long since given up, but perhaps hope hasn’t deserted you yet. And you will need it for the dark days that are coming.”

Arya nodded, and while she stayed a little longer, Halston sank back into his brooding and was clearly no longer in a mood to talk.

As she walked alongside the riverbed back to her mother’s farm on the outskirts of town, she tossed the stone from hand to hand, enjoying its weight and smoothness and the reflections of the golden specks in the sunlight.

Suddenly she dropped it and it tumbled into the edge of the water. Arya gave a small cry and scrambled down the bank. Panic rising, she looked for it, and she felt the breath gush out of her when she spotted it half in the mud.

Holding it tightly, Arya washed the dirt from it in the cool water of the valley river. Gradually she felt it become strangely warm in her hands. She peered closely at the stone, which, if she squinted, seemed almost to be glowing.

All at once, she felt a pull, as if by a strong magnet. She tried to resist, but her arm would not obey her. The stone propelled itself towards her chest and she arched backward, screaming as an icy burning spread from her sternum to her extremities as it sank in. There was a pressure in her mind, and a voice she could not understand spoke not in words but in the violent music of rushing waters and lightning in storm clouds. She watched herself rise as if from a distance until she floated above the water. Brilliant white light radiated out from her body and her eyes glowed a fierce and terrifying emerald.

I am Fury, the voice of a multitude roared in her mind. And we have risen.

Arya felt such excruciating pressure that she imagined her body was ripping itself apart limb from limb as she hovered there above the water. Then as darkness overcame her, she heard the splash as she fell and the water carried her away.