Tales from the Tavern

A Dragon Dies

Above Night Harbor, fire split the sky. A dragon, that primeval beast of legend, descended on the city. It dropped from the clouds, a bolt of scorching terror, and bathed the walls in flames. Scything above the rooftops, rolling thunder echoed in its wake. It circled and descended again, its eruptions kindling an entire district. Again and again it attacked, and Senden watched it all. His awestruck gaze followed every banking turn, every explosive dive. Around him people fled, screaming. He stood, rooted, unable to turn away. Again the monstrosity passed, now directly overhead, and it freed a roar that drowned screams and pounding feet beneath a growling avalanche. Answering that ancient call, the ground shivered, and Senden stumbled, almost falling. He righted himself just in time to see the dragon land.

It settled on the Tower of Sennstar. A moment it perched there, dwarfing the temple, but a moment only. Beneath its massive weight, the structure crumbled and collapsed. Now the ground did more than shiver; it pitched and rocked, and Senden fell upon his face. When he rose again, the dragon rose with him, heaving itself towards the sky. Though he stood two score paces distant, a blast of air escaped the sweeping wings, and carried by that wind, the dragon's reek ensnared him. Char he smelled, burning as if breathing ash and smoke, and spoiled meat, putrid as if it had spent weeks rotting beneath decaying flesh. The stench washed over him, filling his mouth, his nose, his eyes, and he succumbed, collapsing once again. It was long before he rose.

When at last he wakened, the air around him had warmed, almost uncomfortably hot despite the season. And it rumbled, filled with bellowing cries, the clash of metal on stone, and faintly, twanging bows. Senden blinked, and then again. He breathed, and smelled only ash and soot, and not so strong. A last slow blink, and he sat up.

The city was nearly gone. No building stood untouched, and in any direction he looked, he could see to the walls, and sometimes beyond. Piles of debris smoldered where houses and shops once stood, and in place of palaces and temples, only crumbled stone - blackened and radiating heat - remained. And in the distance of the east, where the grey of dawn brushed the horizon, the dragon sat upon the remaining wall. An occasional puff fled the beast, though from so far away, he saw little more than a flash of orange, tiny compared to the earlier storm.

Senden clambered to his feet, and still claimed by awe, he strode towards the dragon. As he drew nearer, he saw a battle and saw that the dragon was losing. One wing hung nearly limp, dangling near to the ground. Figures like the shadows of men hewed at it with swords. Other shadows launched tiny flashing sparks at the dragon's bulk, and he realized the lights were steel arrows reflecting flame. The creature's fiery eruptions had turned to sputters, easily dodged.

The light grew and Senden was near enough to make out faces. The dragon was still huge, slumping atop the wall, but no longer monstrous. Its head drooped, and if it tried to roar, it coughed instead. No arrows had pierced its stony hide, but its face sprouted shafts like quills. Yellow blood steamed and flowed from its eyes and smoking nostrils, and indeed its eyes were hardly there at all. But it was not quite dead. Not yet. It still twitched and flailed and shook its great head. One attacker approached too near, and the wing that did not dangle swept him into the air. He flew a hundred paces before crashing to the earth, a twisted mess of bones and flesh. A dozen more men fell, to wing or claw or steaming blood tossed from shaking head before they found a killing blow. It came by javelin, a perfect toss that delved through what remained of one great eye, seeking deeper until it had nearly disappeared.

The dragon thrashed, its great neck arching back and wings spasming. It lurched into the air, somehow trying to fly, but instead it fell, toppled, wings still flailing, and cratered into the ground like lightning. Dirt and stone and fire and boiling blood burst from the impact, a wall of scalding debris to engulf the dragon's killers. A spout of fire sprang up, erupting like a firemount. Again the earth shuddered, and still the dragon thrashed. As the debris began to settle, Senden could see it on its side, its broken wing folded beneath it, its great claws shredding the ground like paper. The other wing still beat the sky, and from its head the flaming fountain roared. Soon the head disappeared, consumed by the fire, but the blaze did not cease, and Senden realized it was not fire, but lava. A hill grew, black and cracking and spewing molten rock. It enveloped the still thrashing body, consuming it, and still its eruption continued to build its slopes. Build and build and build it did, until Senden had to retreat from the heat, holding his hands in front of his face, but not turning away.

The sun crested the horizon, but he could not see it. Clouds of smoke and ash filled the sky, and as he retreated westward, the mountain grew. It reached the height of the wall, and then overtopped it, swallowing the fortification as it had the dragon. Senden retreated farther, to the western edge of the city, and sat, waiting for the dragon to finish dying. Twilight fell before the firemount quieted, slowing coughing up its last smoking morsels. It stood, towering over the ruined city, stretching a mile into the sky. Dragonmount, the memorial of a dragon.

In the last fading light, awareness grew in Senden. The dragon's slayers were no more. No one had fled the eruption; no one had seen the dragon die and escaped except for him. And so in that last gray dimness, he searched, and at last found a parchment not wholly charred, and he took it with a piece of charcoal and started to write: "There is no sight like a dying dragon," he began, wondering if anyone would ever read the words.