The Valley of Dragons and Angels

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. In the old world the skies were clear, and there were fleets of cars rolling along the gray roads, so many they got in each other's way. Even after all that has happened, I have trouble believing that those hunks of rusted metal once propelled themselves across the valley and beyond, propelled by captive explosions (as though anything but a dragon could capture an explosion). And people, there were so many people. Though not every car was controlled by a person (some controlled themselves) each building, each rubble pile that was once a building, was filled, crammed to the rafters with people. I can't imagine how many people that must have been, more than a thousand at least. I cannot count that high, and I have never seen more than 30 people in the same place at the same time, but my grandmother swore it was true.

My grandmother told me many other things about the world before the dragons arrived, much of it I cannot help but doubt (though I love her very much). One thing I do believe were the angels. Before this was a valley of dragons it was a valley of angels. They were everywhere, in the looming sky and the distant fields, watching over everyone. I asked her if angels were what allowed the cars to capture explosions. She said something about metal and pistons, but if you think logically it must have been angels. Metal cannot stop an explosion, as anyone who has seen the Grand Dragon Ferrin can attest.

I have never seen an angel, at least not one that I'm sure is an angel. Still, I am comforted by the haze I see above the gray roads on hot summer afternoons. They were trying to return. It is only the angels that can stop Ferrin and his ilk. I asked my grandmother many times what the coming of the dragons was like, and about what happened to the angels. I still do, in the hopes that in one of her lucid moments she will tell me, but every time I have she has gone quiet or evaded the question or changed the subject. She was young, then. It must have been hard.

This led me to a truth that has been lodged inside me for as long as I could remember: if dragons once overthrew the angels in furious battle, it is only logical that angels may one day overthrow the dragons and return us to the age of cars and people. It's like playing Drez with my cousin Samuel. One day he beats me, the next day I beat him. A matter of luck, and how much sleep you had the night before. If Samuel ever tells you that I once kept making noises to keep him up late before playing him the next day, just know that I don't know what he is talking about. Back to the serious topic, it is possible that some other entities may come along and defeat the Dragons, but I have always thought it must be the angels.

That thought had always seemed far away and impossible, divorced from my day-to-day experience of scavenging, trading, and hiding from the Dragons and their followers. One day that all changed. I was on the east side, napping out the high sun in the basement of what must have been a nice home one day. It had already been picked over, but the basement was cool, had multiple exits, and had a good place to hang my hammock.

I was woken up by a jostle in my hammock that meant someone or something had disturbed the string I had attached to the front door (which had been mostly intact). I quietly slipped onto the ground and hid behind a fallen workbench, crouching amidst rusty tools and plastic shards. I briefly considered sneaking away, but to do so would mean leaving my hammock to the mercy of whoever I could hear searching around upstairs. They were trying to be silent but were doing a mediocre job of it at best. The hammock was of chief durability, and had come at great expense, so instead I readied Michel and Gabriel (my crossbow and long knife). Perhaps they would get bored and find some other house to stumble around in.

As I waited for tense seconds I began to convince myself that above me was a dragonborn. Many people have come to worship, revere, or at least serve the dragons. I don't hold it against them. I have felt the power of Ferrin as he swept through the sky above me, red and green scales flashing like a million stars. A rush of air and an intense dry heat, worse than the hottest day of the year. I have seen the silhouette of the Great Dragon Simiok amidst the billowing plumes of horrid black that she always emits. I have seen that same smoke sweep over me in a towering roiling wave to choke the life out of me. I have felt the tingle in the air that signals the mere presence of the Great Dragon Balamon, seen the lightning strikes crackle outwards from his feathery wings like the porcupine. I have never seen them fight among themselves, but once I huddled in a basement like this one as the world shook around me. So yes, I understand why humans would serve the dragons and present them offerings of goods both newly made and scavenged.

The dragonborn are another step beyond. They can seem like normal people at a distance, but they have taken on the characteristics of the dragons they serve. Some have scales or feathers or fangs. Some can spit fire or exhale poison or shock you to the ground with a touch. They have the dragons' greed, malice, and pride as well. Some say that the dragonborn are humans who have been warped by the presence of the dragon they serve, but I think it is more likely that they came with the dragons from whatever realm they originated from. If you think about it logically, the human form has remained unchanged for generations under the angels, it would not change this fast just with the presence of dragons. Other animals may be warped by the presence of dragons in the valley, but it will take a lot more time to change humanity.

The footsteps approached the door to the basement. I was prepared for a rapacious monster that could turn me to ash in an instant. Instead, it was my cousin. Not Samuel, but a different one. Cole. He let out a chirp we have as a family to let us know it's someone we can trust. It was just as well, because at that point I was nervous enough to have shot him without looking to see who it was. Cole was tall and gangly, with long arms and short, black hair. He was dressed in travel gear, worse for wear, and was intensely happy to have found me. It wasn't by accident that he had been in the same house. I had left a chalk marker on the house across the street and one building down, indicating my presence to those who knew where to look.

“You have to help me, cousin,” he said after he stopped hugging me, “They're after me.” My own relief turned sour.

“Who?” I asked, already exasperated. This was not the first time I had had to help Cole out of a jam. “And why?”

“Ah, no one you can't handle, I assure you,” he said. “You're always so good at doing stuff out and about, it's just a few folk from ThirtyTwo.” ThirtyTwo was one of the villages nearby, sworn to Ferrin. “There was just a misunderstanding, nothing more, nothing important.” I gave him a hard stare. “Look,” he said, I would explain, but they weren't too far behind me. Just make sure we're safe and I'll tell you the whole story.” He returned my hard stare with a look of such pathetic desperation that I was forced to relent. I padded upstairs and checked out front. My hope had been that we could just lie low in this basement and wait for the mob chasing Cole to get bored and go back to praising the Great Dragon and herding cattle. Hopefully my cousin was far enough ahead of them that they wouldn't have seen him come in directly.

He had been, but it didn't matter. I looked out on of the shattered front windows and saw that Cole had left a trail any scavenger worth their salt could follow. The signs in the grass and rubble were as easy to spot as the rusted green signs on the highways: occupants within! And in the distance, rounding the corner, I could see a small group of figures in leathers, so there was no time to try to hide Cole's trail either. There would be time to fold up my hammock, though.

As I walked back to the basement I coiled up the string Cole had disturbed. It was good string, strong, plasticy, and almost clear. Another hard find. I found Cole fingering my hammock, feeling the material.

“Don't,” I said and he jerked his hand back. “Your friends are coming, We need to leave.”

“Leave?” Cole turned around. “I thought you were going to stand and fight? With me watching your back you should be able to scare them off easily.”

“Nope,” I said, jostling him away from my hammock so I could stow it. The figures from ThirtyTwo I had seen were well armed, swords and even a rifle. It must have been all the biggest toughs of the village, and this time the dragonborn might not just be in my imagination. “You stirred them up.” Cole was about to make some long-winded defense of himself, but I cut him off and motioned to the other door out of the basement, partially blocked off by fallen rubble so from the outside you couldn't tell it led to anything. I crawled through to the house's backyard and waited for Cole to follow me. I shifted a crumbling blank of siding to block it behind us and started off away from the street and our pursuers, telling Cole to only step where I stepped.

Before I had taken my nap I had made sure there was a gap in the fence to escape through (it is important to always have a way out). The sun assaulted us like soft dragon fire, and I wished for a moment to still be in the basement in my hammock, dreaming of dragons and angels. I checked to make sure Cole wasn't leaving too much of a trail, and had to circle back and cover up some of the more obvious signs. It was something of a wonder that Cole had survived as long as he had. We traveled in silence for 15 minutes, hopping fences and furtively crossing roads. There were no signs of our pursuers - I was sure that only an expert tracker could follow the path I had made, and I was fairly sure ThirtyTwo was too focused on cattle raising to have any of those. Finally I called a halt at a corner store that was entirely picked over.

“Tell me what's up,” I ordered Cole as we sat on the cracked tiles of the floor just outside a metal room that held onto the cool of the night.

“So a buddy of mine went through ThirtyTwo last week, and he said that one of the bulls had knocked through a wall...” Cole began a long-winded explanation, full of digressions, misunderstandings, and unnecessary details. I tuned out, enjoying the feel of the cool tile floor. Then something Cole said pierced my shield of distraction.

“What?” I sat up straight.

“I said the book had an angel on the cover,” Cole said looking quizzically at me. “Weren't you paying attention? It was called 'The Veil of Heaven' or something like that. ThirtyTwo ran me out of town when I started asking too many questions about it. They said they wanted to keep it as tribute for the Great One.”

“Why's it that important?” I asked, leaning forwards. “A lot of books have angels on the cover.” It was true. I had made a point of rooting through any I found, and every one had been full of old-world religious nonsense. That didn’t stop me from seeking them out and finding out for myself.

“It was bound in fine leather,” Cole looked off into the middle distance. “But more than that I just got a vibe, ya know? The way it had been hidden in that stone building means the people who made it must have thought it was worth something. Also the way ThirtyTwo was protecting it. If they think it’s important, it probably is.” he continued. “As for what's in it that makes it important, no idea. And I'm not going to find out now, they're not going to let me back in the village for at least another year. There are just some things that Cole is not meant to know.”

“Don't worry,” I said, surprising myself. “I'll get it.” All the other angelic books I had read had been uninspiring, but the way the dragon worshipers had valued this one lit a fire of hope in my belly. My mind churned, splitting its focus between plans and possibilities. “But we need to move fast.” I didn't give Cole a chance to ask why I was taking such a risk, I was too busy interrogating him on everything he knew about ThirtyTwo, its surroundings, and where the book was being stored. If we hurried, I thought, we could steal it before the posse that had been following Cole gave up on their search and went back home. I didn't want to have to kill anyone to get it, but the closer we got to ThirtyTwo, the more I felt like I was willing to if it became necessary.

I didn't have to, fortunately. The plan I came up with on the way worked mostly the way I had envisioned it. Cole showed me the best way to approach the town, which was situated on a gray cracked lot of road material, with several nearby fields cleared of debris where the cattle resided. I snuck up to one of the paddocks, open the gate and spooked the animals, sending them stampeding through ThirtyTwo itself. I grabbed a leather jacket to attract less attention and used the confusion to make my way into the town with Cole at my side. He may be terrible at covering his tracks, but he can still run with the best of them and he knew the town layout.

Together we made it to the mayor’s house, which was an old-world house that had survived the coming of the dragons mostly intact. The mayor was out helping round up the cattle, but she had left her assistant to watch over the book. Fortunately, her assistant was a dog, a red-eyed retriever covered in patches of green and red scales. It had not occurred to me to set a fire to provide additional cover for our escape, and possibly hide our crime in the first place. Fortunately for us, but unfortunately for the right side of my body, the dog set one for us with a wave of flame from its fanged mouth before Cole managed to trap it behind a door long enough for us to grab the book and make our escape into the confusion of the stampede.

It was only the next morning that I felt safe enough to open the book we had taken on a town to retrieve. Cole had misremembered the title, it was “Piercing the Veil of Heaven,” though he had been correct about the illuminated drawing of an angel on the cover, and about the book's general high quality. It smelled of the old word, of cars and people and angels. What grabbed my attention was a wobbly handwritten paragraph on the title page.

Dear Those Who Will Come After Us,

There are dragons in the sky, and the city is on fire.

The sky rains death. I saw each of them up close at the diocese

before they tore it apart. I may be the only survivor, the only

one who saw what they did there. There was a statue out back,

a little angel in a fountain. The massive beasts came down from

the heavens and split it in 3. Each flew off with a part of it.

I scarcely believe in god anymore, but I know in my heart

that that statue is the key to reversing this devastation.

Good luck.

It was unsigned.

This was the most contemporaneous account I had seen of the arrival of the dragons I had ever heard, and that statue was the key. I had thought my brain had been full to the brim of plans and possibilities on the way to ThirtyTwo, but I had been wrong. Now, for the first time in my adult life, I was seriously considering how to bring back the angels. And I had a plan.