A Battle of Beasts

The quilt of fog slid off the surface of the lake and began to diffuse into the air. A border of tall maple trees screened the view with their orange coated leaves coming to visibility and the lingering beam of sunlight defrosting the bite of the wind. It had been a 4-day journey to meet with the dragon king. Absolutely not worth it though. The waves of ever-changing forecasts made preparing for the journey impossible and your leaf hat had betrayed you only an hour in. The soggy blanket stuffed into your backpack and crumpled map in your hand were the only things you had left that were still intact.

Your village was a bustling one. Life and laughter jumped from walls and the crime rate was low. It was positioned in the middle of The Dark Willow Forest and The Trolls Swamp where a lot of plain land and a constant water supply were available. Farms were of a beautiful magnitude and the people got along with one another well. There was no hunger to cause conflict. Being brought up in such a peaceful environment meant you had no real concept of danger or survival. It was a comfortable upbringing, until the Northern Haspervault tribe took over. They resided on the edge of the land, where the average day would peak at -37 degrees, until word got out about our comfortable and carefree life here. They were powerful. Built and trained. Adapted to extreme conditions and unwithered to hunger and fatigue. To make things worse, they had tamed the snow wolves that nested in the north and brought them along.

A snow wolf would guard every street corner and every individual farm. The tribe wanted us alive to keep the farms going but also wanted complete control and benefit of the land itself. He would bathe in the new riches they stole and under feed everyone who was not them. You had halved in weight in the short time of their arrival with most of your rations going to the children that had been abandoned when they first arrived. The first sighting of threat and everyone seemed to have lost their senses. A few managed to get away before they locked down the village but their children stayed. Dazed and confused. It was disgusting. On both ends.

Word of dragon tamers had reached your ear when you were younger, talking with the elders at your father's shop. They were supposedly occupying the other half of the world. You couldn't grasp the concept of such a thing. Half of the world? You had never even been outside of your own village but the elders would often describe to you the majesty of the beasts they had tamed. Gliding against the skyline with deep red scales and a snake like movement that hoisted them upwards. The myths your father told you would say how some could even take you to the heavens itself with the sheer power of their wings. It's said their wingspan mirrors a sunset on an open valley, where you can see the crispest line between land and sky and it would reach as far as your eyes could look up.

It boggled your mind that a human person, someone just like you, could control one of these things. The mere idea of a creature of the sort couldn't even form in your mind so imaging what sort of a person had the power to tame on was a thought not for comprehension anymore. But that brings us to the present. Where you thought it would be a wonderful idea to go and ask one of these dragon tamers to bring their pet birds over to your land. The tribe's growth was showing no signs of stopping or remorse so you took action and sneaked out. It was going well...you weren't dead yet.

You climbed up the rocky mountain that separated the East and the West lands and left a puddle of vomit on your way up. Your build wasn't particularly muscular, though you did have quite a bit of arm strength from farming all day, and so bearing the weight of a 5-day trip to the other side of the world began to collapse your insides. Your food had run out yesterday after falling into the underground lake in the witch's burrows where they discard their corpses so you had no choice but to abandon the food. The last of your berries you picked on your way here had just been rejected by your body and so you were now running an empty engine. regardless, you stretched out your arm to grab a dent in the rock wall and pushed yourself upwards.

The climb itself took 4 hours. It could probably have been completed much quicker had you not taken a break every 20 minutes so you didn't lose consciousness. Sitting yourself on the peak of the giant, you choked on the built-up phlegm in your throat while trying to take in some air. The crusted edges of your eyes felt tender and heavy and you were absurdly aware of the weight of your limbs. There was a great fall below you. Further than you could be sure to measure with just your eyes. Looking down, you notice there was indeed no bottom to the fall and wondered if you jumped, would you find hell? It seemed like a more enjoyable option at the moment.

Lifting your head lifelessly, you stared at the second wall of mountains after the crack in the earth. This was probably as far as you were going to get, realistically. With your physical condition deterioration so quickly, and the sight of no end melting any specks of hope you had left, you simply sighed. Moisture started to sting your raw eyelids as you let go of the chance you thought you could have had. There was none. There never really was. You would go back in time and laugh at yourself too along with the others you told. No one had joined you. It must have been obvious that it was pure suicide. Must have been even more obvious that the stories themselves were simply made up. you lowered your head and took off your backpack.

The wind beneath your feet wanted to pull you into the fall. It felt like a different atmosphere there. only it started to get stronger, and more violent. The air being sucked into the drop got thicker and faster. you dug your nails into the ledge and pulled your knees close. Reverberations shook the two rock walls and small stones started to fall in. a deep echoing noise blasted its way upwards from the pit and dropped your bodily temperature as it got closer. In a matter of seconds, before you could even think to get back, the floor of the pit seemed to get closer when it suddenly shot upwards. A red monster went past your sight, so close that it was probably in reach if you had the strength to extend your arm. You caught the row upon row of deep red scales that patterned its entire body, each measuring the side of both your hands put together and filled the entirety of your peripheral. The wind pressure forced you to follow its body with your whole head, regardless of whether you could or couldn't do that right now.

It pulled away from the space and waved its body in snake-like motions into the sky extending its wings to push higher. There was nothing else to see but the beast itself. The crimson dragon soaked in your entire attention and let itself known to the heavens of its arrival as the clouds started to separate above it. just before it disappeared above the sky, you saw a man. A person. Sat as the back of its head, straddled behind one of the spikes in its spine. Would you look at that?