A dragon devouring faeries (TOME 15 of the TIAMAT'S WARS SERIE)

Welcome to the new earth!

The little man was running, blowing his lungs out.

In front of him, the cliff and a steep path that descended from the rock face that must have been 500 meters high.

His back hurt horribly. His fairy wings were burned, as well as his jacket, showing a patch of reddened skin dotted with blisters.

The wind was blowing sinisterly and the sky was leaden, overcast.

Yet nature was beautiful, covered with flowers and even some of them were smiling, as if endowed with consciousness.

Yes, this world was a fairy tale. Populated with all kinds of beings, each one as fantastic as the other.

Everything was beautiful and all beings lived in harmony.

Along the streams, little men as high as three apples were playing and others were collecting pollen or nectar. They collected it and poured it into gourds made of leaves sewn together and sealed with resin.

The weather was always nice but from time to time it rained... like today.

Many were fooling around but that was also their way of eating.

Many little gnomes, elves, mini trolls, dwarves and little goblins in the forest were feeding on acorns, seeds, leaves and pollen and all had wings. Some were insectoid and some were butterfly-like. Some were sparrows and were the policemen of the forest.

They spread their wings in the sun and like the flowers and plants, they photographed.

A world of paradise and harmony, almost asexual, most beings came from flowers, mushrooms or moon dew.

The little burned gnome ran and conked himself against the stones and shouted for help. But no one, no being moved. Everyone in his ecstasy, as if to animate a screen, to just animate nature.

He knew that his people would react and help him, or maybe the fairies who needed their pollen to synthesize their magic powder.

He stumbled and rolled against a rock that broke his arm.

I could see him from above, and he ran and ran until he was breathless. And, like a broken toy, he crawled along the path. It would take forever, so I decided to act, to approach the creature.

It screamed in terror!

Small elves looking more like strands of wood with a vaguely humanoid shape were gathering acorns on the stone path. They looked up when they saw me, but being unfamiliar to them, they went about their business and thought that the gnome had gone mad.

They did not react except when I tackled the gnome to the ground with a big claw and tore off its head which ended up in my mouth like an apple I had just bitten. His juicy and fruity blood flowed down my throat like a kind of nectar.

For me it was a game and they were only "fruits of the forest"!

My golden, slitted eyes fell on the witnesses who had remained frozen. They had never seen violence or death.

I then took the opportunity to eliminate anything with eyes.

A wall of fire engulfed everything in several tens of meters and the next moment, I had only to pick up the meat and the cooked acorns.

Then... My eyes went to the bottom of the valley where I could see a gnome village.

They lived in a round village in a kind of red and spotted mushrooms. Some were yellow and others blue. The biggest one in the center must have been the chief's.

It looked like a village of smurfs but they looked like garden gnomes. Even more so for me with my 20 meters long. My wings folded, my long tail, my long neck, and my long body covered with green scales streaked with brown stripes to better blend in with the scenery.

I was a dragon. THE DRAGON! But also... the last human... well, what was left of one.

My eyes were filled with rage, fury and vengeance but also with a devouring, exterminating hunger.

Then, my work done, I had located my next target... The Gnome village...

The clouds were dispersing and the sky was beginning to clear.

I had made sure that there were no traces of my passage. No footsteps, no scales,

The lightning must have struck the unfortunate... I said to myself smiling...

I flew away with already on my tongue the sweet taste of my next meal.

And then I headed towards the high mountain, towards a hollow summit. A still active volcano.

The heat was unbearable and it was intended. I also had to get used to it but it was also a natural fortress for me.

Everything that was alive would be baked by the continuous blast of hot air. If it was comfortable for me, it was untenable for any creature that dared to come.

But, at the entrance, there were several buildings that I had taken down brick by brick and put back together.

There was a church, a mosque, a Hindu temple and a synagogue and an altar of Shinto ancestors.

Every day, whether I was coming in or going out, I would salute the old gods and feel all the pressure, rage and despair of the now vanished humanity inside me. I was their one and only faithful and believer. They too are gone... I knew they could not help it. They were light and love. I also felt all their power in me.

These creatures who took pride in replacing humans with an eternal medieval world made me want to vomit. The only thing was that they were like luscious fruit on legs just waiting to be picked.

They didn't know me. Not yet, and since they didn't know predation. Everything was pink and happy for them, they were not suspicious.

I was a kind of flying bramble for them.

The strongest and biggest ones were wooden soldiers, beings made of living trees.

Apart from giving me a few blows, I had nothing to fear from them. Just sneeze and they would fall into ashes.

It wasn't long ago that I woke up from my egg and then from my cocoon.

The celestial fire and radiation made me stronger and even more resistant. So if even the gods were to intervene again, it would be here, in front of me and then... beware!

As I watched, I was the only carnivore in this world... it was amazing.

Several thousand years separated me from humans but I was able to keep in my bunker the essential knowledge acquired by humanity.

Recreating it would be impossible but I had plans... very dark and I looked back at what I had saved at the end, when I was a dragonet and the last surviving but radiation burned humans were perishing. I was human size at the time and had built up a veritable arsenal of vehicles, construction equipment and other odds and ends in preparation for my great hibernation, which lasted thousands of years.

"One day I'll wipe that smug grin off everyone's face" I sneered.