Vallis Draconum

“There weren't always dragons in the valley.”

Linuhl sighed, dropping her stylus after those words and staring, unseeing, at the dull report waiting to be written into existence on the parchment before her.

She resented being cooped up in her room, transcribing her granny's words for a history paper, while the rest of the village was in a tizzy for the evening hunt.

She was finally of age and qualified to enter the deep forest for the annual dragon hunt; but her mother had concocted this abomination of a punishment to torment her for skimming a few driknel off the local merchant after he tried to underprice her for the mushrooms she'd gathered the week before. Any other day, they would've been worth twice as much! The grumblings of a plague in the north had tightened his purse strings in the last month, but Linuhl had needed that money to complete her hunting gear assemble. Now, she had to miss the hunt, write this report and hand it to the magistrate, and apologize to the miser of a merchant.

With a huff, Linuhl redirected her attention to the script in front of her. There was no point beating herself up any further about missing the hunt. She redirected her thoughts to the ancient beginnings of the valley. It was inconceivable to think of a place called "the valley of dragons" empty of the source of its name, but her granny had been firm in the tale of the first village. Nestled between glacier mountains, their village was built between the river and deep wood, little more than a clearing in the wild. It was isolated from the rest of the realm, save the merchant boats and roaming guards that migrated up to the border along the river to patrol the borders for the king.

There was a town across the mountain called Ferncombe, but villagers rarely traveled through the wood except for the festival of the sun when it was deemed safe to travel with an armed party, and the dragon hunt.

Linuhl dutifully resumed scribbling with her stylus, pausing to dip it in ink. The reasons no one ventured into the woods and the dragon hunt were the same: for the last 10,000 years, dragons had nested in the valley. No one knows why they were attracted to the area; but before they came, the ancient village had been a hub of travel and was growing along the river. However, when the dragons entered the valley, they forbade the village elders from allowing outsiders in, and so the village was locked down. For some reason, open trade along the river was still allowed, so paired with messenger birds from the nearest towns and the gossip from the Sun festival in Ferncombe, their little village survived. As the centuries passed, the dragons of the valley grew smaller and less intelligent or dangerous, becoming little more than bestial nuisances to the local farmers and hunters. They couldn't even breathe fire like the dragons of old. So, eventually, the annual hunt was initiated by the village council to help control the dragon population around the village. There had been fewer and fewer captured in the last few hunts, so the villagers had been spreading deeper into the wood each year. Linhul bit back a laugh. If things kept up this way, the Valley of the Dragons might lose its namesake again.

She paused in her scribing; her brow furrowed as a thought surfaced. It was odd, that only the festival of the sun was deemed a safe time to travel. From her knowledge of dragons, passed from the hunters during her training, the festival was shortly after their hibernation and first feeding, so they should be more active in the wood, not less. Linuhl considered asking her grandmother more about that when a loud bang from the front of the house startled her. She scooped up a shawl and hurried to the front door as the banging grew urgent.

She swung it open to reveal one of the town hunters, Levi, he was a bit older than her mother, looking like he'd tumbled down a hill and gasping for breath.

"To the river!"

"What?" Linuhl blinked confused.

Around the village, people were pulling together their belongings.

"What's happening?" Linuhl demanded.

"To the river!" He repeated, eyes wild, "they're coming!"

He tore from her door frame, running to the next house.

"Who--" Linuhl turned her gaze toward the forest, seeing inky smoke rising above the trees a few leagues away, green fire leaping from the treetops, raging quickly toward the village like a beast.

"Mother of mercy," she gasped in horror.

Dragonfire.