Dragon Guarded

Chapter One

My eyes fell shut soundless as I waited gravely to embrace my doom. This was it. The end of my life. I could sense the angels of death were upon me, swirling overhead in great flapping black cloaks, prepared to take me. It was time for my soul to be judged, my body to be shed of my spirit and laid to rest on the great, cold stone floor.

I knew what was to come would be the pinnacle of all that had happened to me since three nights ago. It would be worse than being taken secretly in the night and worse than being drug for miles and cruelly chained to a stone wall in not much more than a night gown. It was worse even than most deaths. I was to stay here alone, far below my audience of captors and be eaten alive, by a dragon.

A shiver ran the length of my spine from the cold seeping through the stony floor of the castle. The dirt and grime coated the once clean, white linen I wore. I tried to stop my teeth from chattering by clenching my jaw until the muscle ached and fought against the blackness that followed resisting my captors for the long days it had taken us to reach this bleak structure. I could hear them now, high up on the wall where there was a small balcony overlooking the huge room that could’ve once been a ballroom.

But there were no balls now. No lights and gowns and laughter and people. There was nothing, but blackened stains upon the stone, whether from blood or fire I couldn’t make out in the darkness. There was no one here, except for me, and the men that chose my fate.

As much as the metal cuffs restraining my wrists over my head would allow, I peered into the gloom that surrounded me. I swallowed and tried once more to slip my hands free. It was truly impossible and the more I struggled against them the more they seemed to tear at my pale skin, drawing blood. A small whimper escaped me. I knew the smell of it would only further entice him.

Then I heard it. The men too all fell silent at once to listen. We waited breathlessly, the air itself ripe with an unspoken kind of raw tension. Every muscle in my body coiled tightly in fear, until it came again. Then a painful shutter ran the length of my spine. My heartbeat rose loudly in my ears, pounding like a war drum, and my blood charged through my body veins in a final cry to run, or fight.  If did neither my death was sure. But alas, I was still firmly chained in place, vulnerable to point I could not even lower my arms to shield my racing heart.

Through the enormous doors on the opposite end of the room, beyond the winding halls and behind the thick slabs of stone, somewhere a gate had been broken open. Its shrill shriek of metal against stone rattled as if falling down long steps until I heard the faint crunch of it finally clanging to a stop. Then silence.

Disregarding my bleeding wrists, I began to frantically pull at my chains once more. It was coming. Somehow, somewhere deep in the pit of my stomach, I knew it was coming; Arach, the old Gaelic name given to it centuries and centuries ago. It was the Dragon of the great pit.

The pit was an ancient idea, derived from the time before when warriors would return home from battle and want to see just who the best among them was. They would turn huge stone ballrooms, like the one I found myself in now, into pits where they would release a dragon on a man. If he killed it he was a hero, and, more likely, when it killed him, another and another would enter the pit until it was finally slain. Though as men failed to kill the beasts that could live for hundreds of years; they began to become uncontrollable. Less and less warriors dared to venture into the pits and before long the dragons grew hungry, and enraged.

Most were killed off as best they could be, being huge, flying beasts with wing spans longer than the room and stone scales with long, curved claws and hundreds of teeth and fire on their breath. Only seven remained now, Arach the oldest by far. Since hardly any man would face them now, they had to be fed another way.

For some reason the towns had reasoned, young unmarried females were the best for the vicious, blood lusting creatures to feed on. They were yet untouched, and thus considered innocent and pure. Why a hungry dragon would care whether it fed itself on a young girl or an old haggard criminal that would be put to death anyway I didn’t know, but, as my capture was proof of, my thoughts and opinions meant nothing, except that apparently, I was next to be chosen.

I threw the remainder of my energy into attempting to free myself a last time, to no avail. I threw my weight from side to side and pulled at the chains to the cruel mocking laughter of the men high above me. I didn’t hear heavy thudding footsteps. I didn’t hear anything. An aching silence where I knew there should be noise, prompted me to move.

Then suddenly, the doors were flung open. I fell back against the wall to escape the flood of heat that poured off of the dragon’s scales. Even in my sheer terror, part of my mind had to admit, he was every inch the beast of legend. He was magnificent and impressive in the glimpse I got of him before he swung, quick as lightening, overhead to circle, attempting to flap in the restricted air space.

Arach’s scales were ice white from sharp snout to whip-like serpent tail. Eyes black as the night itself flickered to me an instant before Arach dropped down. Huge clawed, four toed feet, with a shorter fifth claw farther up, gripped at the floor, leaving rough gouge marks in the stone. His scorching hot breath rolled off his snaking tongue, nearly burning my face even from a distance. His enormous, long wings were a thing to behold. The membranes were so thin I could see the dim light from the torches on the balcony through them, yet they were stretched taut between strong muscles and coiled against his back so flat they hardly hindered him at all when he wished it.

Looking into his rage filled, black eyes I knew he was no stupid beast, as some might assume. There was carelessness brought on by hunger and fury, but no stupidity. His moves were rough but not without a certain finesse that kept him from hurting himself, or his slight wings, badly on the uneven walls. Long, serrated, white teeth shown in the gloom, flashing before his head snaked down towards me; his lean, muscled neck, bringing them so close I felt the edge of my gown tear as they passed over my shoulder.

I knew not to move in any spastic flailing motion, which would only further prompt him to finish his hunt. There was nothing I could do now to change my fate. I stared back evenly into the twin black abysses of his eyes, and knew as clearly as if he’d spoken to me, the time had come, for me to die.