Faded Lights: A Collection of Short Pieces

God of Flame

TW: Includes fantasy violence and grief 

As I fell, I shook the ground and leveled dozens of trees. Fire ignited in my stomach, burning a will to fight. When I roared, five of them screamed and fell to the forest floor. Fleshy ash wafted through the air.

The hunters were nothing but sparrows: incredibly plain, small, and easy to squash. And yet, they were relentless. With angled faces and lights beneath their translucent skin, they rushed toward me one after the next. Chains dug into my scales as they splayed me out like an insect, shoving spikes into my paws to pin me to the ground.

They mounted me as if the deaths of their comrades fueled their own fight. My voice tore through the sky, fire among the deep blue. The hunters excavated chunk after chunk of my neck's flesh. My scales were nothing but a slight inconvenience. I tried to roll but pain rippled through my legs. The spikes wouldn't budge.

I tried to fight, but the sparrows were stronger. I was old, and tired, and sore. My bones ached under the pressure of their bodies, six centuries of flying taking its toll. Blood seeped from my neck and the pain, the pain groaned deeply through my tissues and muscles. Embers within went cold, and I closed my eyes.

Oh, what I'd give to be young once more. To fly without worry. To fly free.

~ ~ ~

My ancestors always said to never go South. There were ferocious hunters and even my people couldn't withstand them. After all, even dragons could fall from the sky. It was blasphemous. Stories told to hatchlings to keep them from straying too far.

When I crossed South, barely in my fourth century, it was to tear the world in two. I would be the earthquakes and storms. One so feared, humanoids would offer their lives to me. They'd suffer as I had.

And yet, I was starved and barely stayed aloft over the Sea of Heart. The moment I saw land below, rainbow fire rose in the sky. At first, I thought it was the hunters, and prepared for an attack only to pass with no issues, no spears, no pain. I circled back, my wings faltering, head aching, and stomach growling. As I landed, humanoids danced around a massive pyre of fire changing colors. It was red, orange, yellow, even purple. How did they call color to the flame?

The humanoids were smaller than normal, barely reaching 4-feet to the tops of my toes. Their hair, shades of orange and red, grew wildly from their heads. Their canine-shaped teeth and claws were dull compared to mine.

One by one, they stopped, turning to face me. I prepared for dinner, to feast upon them, until they bowed. With their foreheads against the ground, it would have been easy pickings. I could have gobbled them all up and slept in their rainbow fire. But I didn't eat them. Instead, I let them bring me food and talk about their ways. They taught me of their rainbow fire, pyres, and customs while I showed them what true flame could do to their enemies.

I became their god.

~ ~ ~

I was in love with a hydra once. Her long necks sang to me. My wings became hers, and her heads swam where mine could not reach. When we lay together, her immortal head would show itself, vulnerable and free.

We met in my third century when I was constantly hunted, exhausted, and had nowhere safe to land. I exterminated hundreds of humanoids, fought fellow dragons, and found myself falling from the sky into the Sea of Heart. I sunk deep into the saltwater which seeped into my cuts with an alluring burn. My wings finally rested, and the water took me down, and down, and down. The moon was high in the sky, its reflection blurring with the waves.

When I awoke the next day, I wasn't dead. She was beside me. I was dry and warm from a fire she'd started. She saved me, and I loved her.

We lived in a cave that I melted to smooth, glistening rock. Our children, not yet born, went everywhere she went. We readied our life for them, with me hunting more food than ever and her singing them the hymns of dragons. They would have been beautiful. With her lavender scales and my strong wings. Her deep blue eyes and my thick frills.

When I found her sliced open and heads chopped off, I searched the remains. Her necks were flayed and her stomach wide open. I saw a glimpse of one of our children. With my red scales and a paw drawn up to its many heads, it was the perfect combination of her and me. The embryo sack was poked hundreds of times as if the hunters knew what was within. As if they looked upon the mass in her stomach and thought let the beasts die.

Note: This story is about one of my gods in the world of Echeron. The flash piece was first published in "Abominable" - the monster fiction anthology from Wicked Shadow Press in Fall of 2022. For more about this world, check out my website rosemarryauthor.com