When Dragons War

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. As a matter of fact, the valley had been full of cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and horses. There were farms and fields of hay, barley, wheat and so many other crops. The valley was alive with people and animals and only an occasional flyover by a dragon with no real harm done except the occasional disappearance of a sheep.

That was all before he showed up. Before he started the dragon war and reduced this valley to a devastated land of dragons. He didn’t even know the people, nor had he ever been to this part of the world, but there he was, instigating and conniving. There he was, full of himself and full of rage.

Then came the dragons.

It started slow, without much issue. He didn’t seem so bad at first, he actually seemed nice. We all thought that maybe he was sent by God, a prophet as of old, to help us stay in tune with our God. We had hoped that he brought our salvation, our deliverance from the king of Ertosh, who we so unlovingly referred to as The Tyrant of Ertosh. We dared hope in something so preposterous. We dared hope in freedom for our little village in the Lentos Valley.

Looking back, we should have seen the signs, should have seen the truth. In actuality, we wanted to be deceived, to believe in something better than what we had. We wanted him to be who we wanted to believe he was, not who he actually was. He was going to be our knight in shining armor, not the dark knight. He was going to be the savior of the Village of Lasentos.

He promised freedom, prosperity and health. He promised that the dragon he rode would aid us in our time of trouble. We chose to believe that a large red dragon could be good, could be loving, because that is what we wanted to believe. He assured us that the stories of old, of how red dragons were full of rage and destruction were just that, stories. He appealed to our faith and desire for change.

Then came the dragons. Then came hoards of dragons, with their unstoppable power, their unquenchable hunger. Then came hell itself and mass destruction.

Oh, it didn’t come all at once, mind you.

No, it came slowly. A small amount of dragons at a time, more than we had previously seen, but not so many that we worried. A few sheep went missing, then a couple of cows and a horse. One dragon accidently crash landed on a barn and killed a couple of horses, but apologized and even helped rebuild it. One field caught on fire due to a dragon sneezing.

Nothing, in our haze of understanding, showed us any real threat or danger, just occasional accidents that we could overlook or forgive.

Before we knew it, the mountains around our valley were full of dragon silhouettes. Sitting there, watching over us, he said. Protecting us from outside dangers. Every day, a few more. We stopped noticing them after a little while, not realizing that they were surrounding us, glaring at us with those hateful eyes.

Trade with nearby towns and villages began to decrease, slowly at first, then became non-existent. We didn’t notice it right away, as the fall started and temperatures began to drop. Travel was expected to slow a bit, coming into the winter season. Anyone traveling over the mountains would stop for the season and those going through the valleys would make fewer trips due to the cold. As the snow began to fall, the wagons would get more scarce until they stopped altogether and waited for the spring thaw. This was just the way of things, so, less travelers seemed normal, until the spring thaw came and no travelers came with it.

That was when the people of our village and surrounding lands began to wake up and notice what was going on. We began to see what was happening and realized that we had allowed the dragons to surround us. We realized this too late and we were in trouble. We became scared. Hopelessness began to settle into our little valley.

One man dared to have hope, dared to take action. That man was only twelve years old and had more courage than any ten full grown men in the valley or village. That young man had foresight and understanding that the rest of us would forever wish we would have had at the beginning. That young man snuck out of the valley to find the good dragons of Asthenta and bring us help. That young man was Hanston, the son of a blacksmith.

This is the story of that young man and the dragon war that devastated an entire valley, but brought about freedom and change.