Wayward Sons

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.

The ghosts of the past never pulled at the King’s cloak so much, as when he climbed up the royal catacomb staircase cold and damp. He propped up the hatch above his head as the two of three Rivett sons emerged with him. Before this Nineteenth of Spectral Dowager, it never occurred to sandy-blond Hen how his makeshift fort was being singed; or that dark-haired Quade, who cleaned the castle kitchen so carefully that morning, would not see it intact again.

“They’re here already?” Hen said, bleary-eyed.

“Follow,” King Raymon said, voice of obsidian. “Do not surpass my stride.”

A dark-skinned man with a silver wool beard, he survived almost sixty winters for a reason. His kingdom of stone and heather now populated only three. King Raymon and the Rivett boys’ father were just short of brothers, when he was alive.

His Majesty needed Ellis Rivett more than ever, but he was no longer. The King took the two boys under his wing without a second’s hesitation after their father died. Hen being a mirror image made looking him in the eye difficult.

Three days prior to the dragons’ arrival, he had commanded his aides and staff to flee, following the common folk. Who were they to break a royal oath?

The trio ran out the castle gates, through the abandoned city, and over the drawbridge in their greatest haste. They looked out into the land.

Dragons flew their sky in the plain, circling, descending to feast on creatures of the wood. An arrangement was made by human Kings millennia ago, that every hundred years the serpents could roam free in this kingdom for a year, in exchange for employing specific protection in humans’ greatest time of need.

Sun, Iron, Smoke and River clans were all accounted for, save for Eclipse; the clan chiefs have garnered too much credibility to involve them now. All factions agreed there was no room for hypocrites.

The three looked up to see the Sun Chief’s wings unfurl as he blocked the rising sun. His iridescent feathers rippled in the wind as he slowly descended. He had golden down on the rest of his body and a dark bronze beak. His sets of talons were each about as long as King Raymon’s forearm. The Chief let out a deep rippling screech. Every clans-dragon descended immediately, facing the Chief, King Raymon Tas and his two wayward sons. Standing at attention with tails occasionally flickering was as close to bowing as a King could receive from the clans.

King Raymond coughed blood into his handkerchief.

“The skies greet you, boy-King,” Chief Undrii said in a deep rumble. It was no insult, nothing personal. Being around 1,500 years old, any human was a child to him.

“And the earth sustain you. That was my late wife’s garden your men set to smoke,” the King said.

Chief Undrii craned his neck to the side in an indifferent sigh. Dragons did not know what “sorry” was. “I can smell the death on your neck. Humans are not made for setting foot on our homeland.”

“I would do it again.”

The oldest Rivett son seeking his mother in that realm, alone, was a fool’s errand in the King’s eyes.

Attempting, with his men, to pull the eldest son from that maelstrom land, however, was not. Contracting a disease dragons were immune to was the price King Raymon paid, if in vain.

“With your two hatchlings abreast, searching for the eldest shall be a lesser errand, if their claim to lineage is true ,” Undrii said while looking at each boy.

King Raymon whispered low to Hen, “Those dreams you’ve had, do you have them recorded in writing.” He said it as if it were a statement, not a question.

Hen rolled up his sleeve, to show the scenes on his arm, etched in ink. These visions were the key to navigating the foreign realm.

The King had not seen this before. He looked at him as if to say, “When were these begotten? We will discuss this later.”

“It will be done. The threshold will be opened,” Chief Undrii said. “In the event of your demise we will set your husks ablaze as they float our sea, a ceremony fit for a Chief. The clans will remain."

The fabric of this kingdom’s reality momentarily tore open as an amorphous threshold formed into the other world. The humans could see it now. This other sky was blood-red and the mountains were black as pitch. The monarch and his wards marched into the breach, armed with only their belongings, and hope.