Stronghold City Draft

Chapter 1

Hiding behind a house, Anarchy stared at the beautiful palace sitting atop a hill a few hundred yards from his current location. He sat down with his sharpened stick in front of his forepaws, forked pink tongue rolling in and out of his mouth as he panted. He glanced around for the glimmer of light bouncing off colorful scales and listened for the beating of wings or the padding of enormous paws to make sure the coast was clear. A fat black rat scampered by, pausing for a second to take a look at Anarchy, confused as to what this creature it had never seen before was. Anarchy lunged forwards to snap up the rat, but it squeaked in alarm and scurried away. Anarchy took his spear- sharpened to perfection for this exact mission- and stood up. Hours of scraping a long, hard leg bone Anarchy had found in the desert had resulted in a deadly sharp point. He had come to this city soon after dusk, when most dragons had bid each other good night and went to sleep. It was the perfect time for a chupacabra to sneak around the city undetected. The chupacabra carefully began his trek to the palace of the queen with his bone spear, avoiding being spotted by any dragons.

Standing on a windowsill with his spear clenched in his jaws, Anarchy stared into the palace of Queen Sunstone. The room was grand, with beautiful carpets, tapestries of wild animals such as lizards, vultures, and jerboas hanging on the walls, and a few skillfully taxidermied chupacabra heads mounted to wooden trophy mounts, their jaws frozen in a beastly snarl, glass eyes blankly staring ahead. In the center of the room, an enormous tan, vaguely serpentine shape that was at least twenty-five feet long from the tip of her snout to the tip of her tail sat by the window. The dragon gazed thoughtfully at the sunset out a window, huge wings curled to the sides of her body. She lifted her boxy-shaped head on her long elegant neck and yawned, displaying a long, forked pink tongue and teeth as sharp and white as Anarchy's spear. Sunstone. She was longer from head to tail than the wyvern Anarchy had tried to kill last time, but where the wyvern was muscular and strong, with powerful muscles in her neck, legs, and wings, Sunstone looked more delicate, which still wasn't saying much, since she was still covered in sand-colored scales, with massive diamond-shaped scutes overlapping on layers on her neck and tail. Still, unlike the wyvern, Sunstone's bony wings looked flimsy compared to the wyvern's, and from here Anarchy could see that while the hands the wyvern had on her wings bore massive, curving claws like a vulture, Sunstone had padded paws with well-manicured nails on both her front and back legs. Who knew, maybe the delicate-looking, four-legged firedrakes were easier to kill than the powerful, almost avian wyverns. Anarchy lifted the window carefully with his forepaws, and jumped down, landing on all three of his paws, the soft click of his nails hitting the wooden floor resonating across the room. Sunstone's snakelike head whipped in his direction, her orange catlike eyes surveying him. At first, her eyes widened in surprise, but then her pupils tightened to slits and she bared her teeth in a snarl. Soft curls of smoke drifting from her nostrils. She got to all four of her feet, wings held above her back, and took a step forward, her long tail lashing the air. "I don't know how you got in, but I demand you leave this instant," she snarled. Anarchy dropped the spear out of his jaws and sat down. "I'm afraid that's not an option," he sneered. "You see, I'm going to kill you." Sunstone hissed and spread her wings, making her look all the more bigger than she already was. "I'm utterly sick of chupacabras causing problems. Listen, I've tried to solve these problems the nice way. I spend millions of dollars on building a wall so you stop killing our children and go back out into the desert, and you sit outside the wall even when there's no food and eat each other. I'm so tired of this." Anarchy lifted his head and laughed, a terrible, barking sound. "I'm afraid the tables have turned, 'Your Majesty'. We're sick of YOU keeping us from this massive stash of food, and I'm gonna do something about it." Queen Sunstone lifted her head and hissed smoke at the chupacabra, But Anarchy just sneezed and continued to sit in front of the dragon. "Listen, I'm just going to call animal control. I'm not dealing with you right now," Sunstone snapped. The dragon turned over to a box on the wall and began to press a few buttons. Anarchy hissed and rushed forwards to lock her teeth around the tip of her tail. "God dammit! What's wrong with you?" snapped the queen, whipping around to face the chupacabra. Sunstone picked up the tip of her tail in one of her forepaws and began to caress it, orange eyes boring into Anarchy as she crouched down, balancing on her hind legs. Anarchy saw the dragon's eyes glance over to the mounted chupacabra heads on the wall, frozen in hateful facial expressions, artificial forked tongues peeking out between sharp yellow teeth, lifeless glass eyes glittering. "You know, when Ezekiel gave me those heads as a gift, I couldn't help but feel kind of bad for them. Now, I'm starting to see why he retired from being a chupacabra hunter. You've confirmed my suspicions that chupacabras are just nasty little monsters." Anarchy growled at Sunstone, spikes on his back raised. The dragon craned her long neck over to Anarchy's face and hissed in reply. Before Sunstone had the chance to move her head away from the chupacabra, Anarchy lunged forwards and knocked her head to the ground. The queen roared in surprise and tried to pull away, claws scrabbling against the ground like a dog, but Anarchy wrapped his quasi-opposable dew claws around her horns and held her head down. Sunstone snarled and huffed small flames and smoke from her nostrils, and Anarchy yipped as the fire singed his skin underneath the thick tan fur. He looked at Sunstone directly in her amber eyes and saw they were gleaming with anger and worry. It was true that his spear could not pierce her hide- dragons were encrusted from head to toe to tail in almost impenetrable natural armor- but a dragon's eyes were vulnerable. Anarchy took his spear and plunged it into her eye socket with as much force as he could before he let go of the dragon's horns. Blood bubbled and spurted from the dragon's fatal wound. Queen Sunstone let out a loud howl and spread her bony wings as wide as she could, enveloping Anarchy in shadow. Her remaining orange eye rolled back into her head until Anarchy could see the crimson capillaries snaking through the surface of the eye, and a shiver ran through the great dragon's body one last time before her legs buckled and her body dropped to the floor, delicate wings billowing down like sheets. Anarchy retrieved his spear from the queen's eye socket and smiled. He turned to the wall where the chupacabra heads were mounted. If only they could have witnessed this moment.

Taking a sharp knife from the palace kitchen, Anarchy got to work. First, he sliced off some of the dragon's sharp black talons from the tips of her toes. They were very pointy; perfect tips for a spear. Next, he felt like if Sunstone's scales had protected her in life, they could protect Anarchy in her death. With quite a bit of force, he managed to slice a large sheet of the deceased queen's scaly hide off. The underside was still dripping with blood, but Anarchy felt like it would make a nice armored cape once it was treated. He still felt like something was missing. An idea hit him. He ran off in search of string, and upon finding some, he pried open Sunstone's jaws, dug out a few of her teeth from her gums with his knife, and crudely tied the roots of the sharp white teeth to the string, making a primitive necklace. Anarchy tied the two ends of the string together with some difficulty and slipped it around his neck. Perfect. Now he looked like someone to be feared. He snuck out of the city at midnight with his new treasures.

Outside the walls of Solis, Anarchy had attracted a small crowd of fellow chupacabras who wanted to hear the tale of how he slew the dragon queen. They sat around him in a circle, luminous eyes widened, heads leaned forth, ears cocked, hanging onto every word of his tale. And he even had proof! They sniffed at the freshly cut sheet of dragon hide, observed Anarchy's necklace, and felt the talons adorning his spear. "I'll propose a deal," said Anarchy, after he finished his story. "If you swear loyalty to me, together we'll kill all the dragons in the entirety of the desert. This land will belong to us, and us only." He extended a forepaw and tilted his head. The chupacabras who had been listening to his story raised forepaws of their own and shook Anarchy's paw. He glanced in the direction of Solis and quietly chuckled. The dragons made a dire mistake underestimating the chupacabras.