The Fall of Dragon Haven - A Dragonkeeper Fanfiction

Warring States

It would be three years before Anh and Yara would meet again.

In The Winter Haven, the cluster waited patiently for the stones to hatch. Six months passed. Then a year. Minh Huyn took it upon himself to coax the dragonlings to hatch. Despite his efforts of red cloud herb and heated water, among other remedies, the eggs remained largely unchanged.

Anh was woken suddenly one evening to the sound of furious gonging. His mind was pierced with shrieks.

Dead! Sha was saying. He's dead!

The party found Sha with her tail wrapped around a lifeless stone. One of her stones had turned gray; the colour of death.

The second tragedy came a week after when another stone went gray. Sha was inconsolable. For weeks she slept with the third egg, never letting another near her. The final blow came on the morning of the Dragon Boat festival.

The piercing screeches broke the hearts of even the most fierce. When they found Sha, she was in helpless agony. Her third egg, the one she had guarded so carefully, had cracked and crumbled and at last turned grey. Anh felt a sharp pain in his chest as the life force within him slipped away with Sha's cries. There was little anyone could do to help the tears that flowed down Sha's scaly cheeks as she mourned the loss of her third precious offspring.

Sha laid there for weeks, curled around her three lifeless eggs. Anh came by daily to console her, as did the other keepers and dragons, but all they could do was bear the weight of her sorrow pressing down. And so, she lay there, her great heart heavy with sorrow, as the days turned to weeks, and the weeks turned to months. Her grief was overwhelming on the Haven, a deep and primal ache that seemed to echo through the very mountains surrounding the Haven themselves.

Anh never fully recovered from watching the horror that grief played on Sha.

In the three years since coming to The Winter Haven, Anh had grown in such a way that he was nearly unrecognizable. When he had arrived at the Haven three years before, he had been a boy of fifteen on the cusp of adulthood, still growing into his body and his sense of self. But in the intervening years, Anh had gone from the small and skinny boy to a tall and lean young man.

He was no longer so awkward. He began to find his place among the Haven and his views on matters concerning the cluster were now respected like the other Keepers. Though they could never replace Yara, he at last was starting to understand the other Dragon Keepers. Minh Huyn became Anh's confidant, and Anh found himself learning a great deal from the old, blind man about life, philosophy, and lore. Minh Huyn had lost his sight 80 years ago, but he was sharper than a knife. He could recognise plants from one another by touching them, and was especially fond of discerning new plants for medicines or food.

He also found a friend at last in his cousin, Bong. Though he still thought of Bong as a twat on the daily, Bong had a knack for bringing about joy to the Haven. Anh spent many days while the dragons hibernated with Bong throwing axes. Once upon a time, Anh couldn't understand why his cousin insisted on learning weaponry skills when their qi was stronger; but Bong had a valid point that Anh couldn't argue with.

"It's fun to hit things!" And what a joy it was to land an axe in a perfect bullseye!

The most surprising friendship, however, came from Lu Yu, the purple dragon. Though they shared their love of Gao Zi years before, Anh never thought he and Lu Yu had anything in common beyond that. As it turned out, Lu Yu would be the one dragon interested in learning about Anh's friendship with Yara, and she never made him feel bad about it. She also showed an interest in training again with him and Hei Lei, though she was behind now that she didn't have a Keeper.