There are many stories about dragons putting villages to misery that finally get defeated by a great hero. Very likely, you live close to a settlement whose inhabitants once were a dragon’s favorite meal. This story is one of them, but it has a peculiarity: the identity of the hero.

The village in question was called Winterville. A settlement of peaceful, honest peasants, where normally nothing strange would ever happen. But sometimes, life gives unexpected surprises, and you can’t predict whether they will be good or bad. And for Winterville, the surprise happened to be a ravenous dragon.

Its first signs were seen on a sunny summer day. From behind the hills that surrounded the village, columns of smoke appeared. It was much, much bigger than the smoke produced by a fireplace, but also too small to be a wildfire. For that first day, the villagers didn’t give much thought about it, apart from some of the hunters, worried that it could effectively be a wildfire; but the smoke didn’t increase, a detail that reassured them.

However, the column of smoke kept being there the following days. A feeling of disturbance began hitting the villagers’ hearts: their lives were so ordinary, anything unusual was enough to alert them. Someone in the village proposed the hunters to go look at what it really was: one of them accepted, a man called Horac. After praying to the divinity to give him a safe journey, they all gathered together to watch him leave the secure borders of their community and go into the woods, as he was used to, but this time with a different purpose.

Horac reappeared three days later. But it wasn’t a calm return. From the trees, he reappeared running like if a dangerous beast was chasing him; but no animal came after. Instead, he kept screaming a word, a word that in Winterville had been heard only when the elders narrated tales to the children.

“Dragon! Dragon!”

The villagers, who were working the land as usual, turned their heads all together. At first, they weren’t sure they understood well. “Did you say bacon?” said one of them.

“No! Dragon! It was huge and all red and was inside a big cave! The smoke came from its nostrils! I escaped just some moments before it woke up!”

“Come on, Horac,” another said, “it can’t be. Don’t tell me you still think your grandma’s stories are true?”

“I saw it!”

“Alright folks, let’s leave. I still have to plow my-”

But at that very moment, a terrible gust of wind arrived. The villager stopped talking, and turned his head to the wind’s direction.

There was a dreadful, deafening roar.

One moment later, the villagers realized, Horac hadn’t invented anything.

An enormous winged lizard emerged from the hills. It was red, as the hunter had proclaimed, and its jaws were wide open, revealing yellow, sharp teeth and a long, forked tongue. Worst of all, it was flying to the village’s direction.

Everyone fled and screamed. The dragon dived onto the village, and two men were trapped into its talons. It flew above, and nobody saw those three villagers anymore.

For five days, nobody got out of their homes. However, the empty streets were filled with the laments of the three men’s families. Only the need to produce food brought some of the bravest to get out again. The column of smoke was still there, like a menacing tower standing above that once peaceful settlement. Some proposed to leave, to find a new, safer place where to continue their lives; however, the rest of the village noticed, how could they abandon the land of their fathers, so rich and fertile, for a difficult and dangerous journey into nowhere? Most of them hadn’t ever seen anything outside Winterville for all their life.

The days passed, and the dragon didn’t return. The village, though still devastated and traumatized, resumed their normal life, because they had no other alternative. Though the column of smoke was always there, the people had gotten used to it, and didn’t think much about it.

But that was an illusion. Two months later, the dragon returned. And this time, three villagers didn’t make it. That night, everyone stood inside the biggest barn in the village, discussing – or rather, shouting at each other. Even the cows in the barn mooed sadly.

“We refuse to leave,” a man proclaimed, “this is the only home we know!”

“How long until the dragon eats us all?” A woman yelled. “Give it more years, and there won’t be enough of us to continue our lineage! We have no choice!”

“How many of us have ever been outside the village?”

Only some hands were raised up, and they all came from the hunters. But even they had never adventured themselves further than the woods around.

“See?” The man replied fiercely. “You cannot think we can do it.”

“But how can we defend ourselves?”

The man looked at the hunters. “You,” he said, “you are our only hope. Hunt the dragon, take it down. Hasn’t Horac seen its lair?”

Everyone saw Horac shivering visibly. When he took the word, his voice was uncertain and scared. “You...guys, we hunt prey. Deer, boar, reasonably sized things. This is no prey! How can you-”

“Do we have anything better?”

Nobody answered. They didn’t want to leave their homes, and they couldn’t let themselves be forever prey to the dragon. The man was right: the hunters were all they had.

“Alright then,” Horac sighed, “I’ll guide the others to its lair.”

The next day, all the villagers saluted the brave hunters from the safety of the barn. With bow and arrows on their backs, they gave their farewell to their villagers, and disappeared into the woods.

Three days later, only one returned. The people were out again, and as they saw the hunters, they all ran to him.

“Did...did you...?”

“He...he ate them all,” the hunter said gloomy. “I saw it. I survived only because I jumped off a cliff. My arm is broken. The last thing I saw before was Horac’s legs sticking out of its mouth.”

The villagers fell into silence. Someone gasped. They didn’t even have the force to cry.

“We need a knight,” the hunter proclaimed, “a real knight.”

And so, the hunter, whose name was Catullius, took a horse and traveled further than any other man from Winterville had ever done. He discovered new paths, new villages, suffered hunger, faced bandits in the woods, to give his fellow villagers a hope. Eventually, he arrived at the kingdom’s capital. The shock and wonder of a settlement so big almost distracted him from his purpose: only after wandering for a whole day around its streets did he remember why he had come there in first place. He entered a tavern, and loudly announced his begging for help.

“My village is being plagued by a man-eating dragon. I’ve traveled here to find a knight who can free us. Where can I find one?”

A robust, mustached man got up from the furthest table, and with a low, powerful voice, proclaimed: “I am. My name is Valorosus from the land of Bustarsithium. Come here and tell me everything.”

Catullius almost shouted out of joy. But he managed to refrain from doing it, and instead sat on the knight’s table. He told him everything, tears running from his eyes.

“I will come to your village,” the knight proclaimed, “I always come to help the innocent.”

“I... I don’t have much money though...”

“A knight doesn’t do it for money. We do it because it’s the right thing.”

Catullius almost wanted to kiss him.

And so, Catullius and the knight triumphantly entered Winterville on their horses, which in the meanwhile had lost three more villagers from the dragon. Everyone acclaimed the knight, some even asked him to bless their children. The knight raised his sword to the sky, promising to free their people as both him and Catullius went into the woods.

However, some days later, the knight returned alone, horseless and severely wounded.

“It...is...too...powerful...” he blabbed as he fell tired on the mud as he re-entered the village. “I’ve never seen...anything...like this.”

The villagers were in the most complete despair. The idea of leaving their land now was becoming a concrete idea. After the knight rested, he heard many tell him to guide the others to a new land.

“I cannot,” he said, in the same barn where the villagers had hidden the second time, “I swore I would free you from the dragon. Leaving would be like being defeated.”

“But you couldn’t win over it!” Someone shouted angrily.

“I know,” the knight replied, smiling, “but another dragon could.”

The people around looked at him like if he had reached senile dementia at a very early age. “You said bacon, right?”

“No, dragon. I’ll find another dragon who can battle for us.”

***

When the knight left, the atmosphere was the exact opposite of the first time he came. Everyone stayed distant from him and nobody wasted any farewell. They were getting used to the dragon just as they had gotten used to the now permanent column of smoke on the horizon. The survival of the community was greater than the loss of the single element: it was useless to fight and lose more. But the knight refused to listen to that kind of reasoning, and proceeded with his folly.

He traveled through forests, mountains and other kinds of landscapes to manage to trace a second dragon. For he knew that dragons, when they hunt humans, have a reason to do it. Most of them search for more meaty prey. A dragon eating men was an anomaly. An anomaly that wasn’t actually so uncommon, and that was why knights still were taught dragonology, but still an anomaly.

The dragon that plagued Winterville, though, was strong even for a dragon. It had ditched all his most trusted attacks, and in the end he had jumped on his horse and galloped out just one moment before the dragon’s fire could hit him. And that knight had defeated three other dragons before! It was such a strong dragon, a group of human wasn’t enough, and an army would be a waste of resources.

But finding another dragon wasn’t easy. Dragons knew well to stay away from knights. Centuries of battling against them had made them teach their hatchlings to avoid any metal-wearing human at all costs. This meant by the time the knight could track one, that dragon would take even more humans.

However, that only had made knights refine their tracking methods. And the knight was one of the best of his generation.

Finally, he found one not so far from where the first dragon had made its lair, at least in dragon terms. In human terms, it would have been two whole weeks by walking, if it had been flatland; however, that terrain was all hills and mountains. The dragon was green, not red, and was sleeping inside a large, comfortable sea cave; its paws were the size of the knight himself. As the knight put a foot, the dragon woke up and instantly released its fire on him. But the knight was ready, and while his shield protected him, he proclaimed:

“I’m not here to fight! I’m proposing an alliance!”

The dragon stopped breathing fire immediately.

“An alliance?” The dragon said. “Why would a dragon ally with a knight, our biggest enemy?”

“Let me explain. My name is Valorosus from the land of Bustarsithium, I have come here on behalf of the village of Winterville, which is being plagued by another dragon. It frequently pillages their land and predates on them, and I request the help of a dragon to put an end to this evil!”

The dragon didn’t reply immediately, instead giving an intense look at the human. Then it exploded into a long, cavernous laugh.

“And my name is Arghart from this cave, and I find amusing that I would stop a dragon from predating lesser species.”

That put Valorosus in difficulty. He was accurately taught how to track and kill dragons, but knew very little about their psychology. In his heart, he was still sure there were some dragons that had a conscience of what is good and what is evil, while now that hope had been brutally slain in front of his eyes. But also, he was taught never to surrender immediately.

“What could convince you then?”

“Hmm,” Arghart said, letting his forked tongue out for a moment, “who is this dragon?”

“Huh...hmmm...well, it’s a red one. Lives in a cave in the hills, south of here-”

“Aaaaaaaaah,” the dragon boomed. “Gurath! He hasn’t been able to eat anything less tender than human meat after he fought against Virakh.”

“What?”

“A battle for their territory. He used to be the strongest of us, but that time, not only was he brutally defeated, but also he lost his fangs. Now he’s retreated in a small hilly territory, and can only predate humans. But why should I fight him? His current territory is miserably small.”

“So wait. You’re saying that this dragon is pillaging a human village because he lacks two teeth?”

“Didn’t you hear me?” The dragon growled, showing his own teeth, which were perfectly intact.

“I did, I did.”

“Well, I have no reason to fight him. As I said, his territory is too small, and it would add nothing to mine. I have plenty, which has bigger, fatter prey than humans...”

“Look into your heart,” the knight tried to press him, “you know it’s the right thing.”

Arghart growled again. Valorosus made two steps back.

“I just explained you it does not give me any advantage. How can it be the right thing? Go away, you’re annoying me. For now I’ll let you go unharmed.”

The knight put a hand where his heart was. For a man who was taught to always put the greater good above anything else, talking with a creature so selfish was painful. But the greater good now suggested him to play his game. He kneed on the hard, rocky surface and bowed his head.

“I will offer my services to you, Arghart. I shall help you conquer more territories against your enemies if you accept my call for help.”

“Huh?” Arghart exclaimed. “A knight? Helping a dragon? What trick is this?”

“No trick. I have taken a vote to help the village of Winterville, and I’m ready for anything to honor it. Even ally with my enemy.”

The dragon looked at him in silence for a long time, as if he was waiting for something else to be revealed. However, the human remained motionless, with his left knee on the ground and his head below.

“You...you really want to do this?” Arghart asked, annoyed by that ridiculous silence.

“Yes.”

“Do you understand it means you’ll have to live with me permanently and that if you try to escape I will eat you?”

“I do. I am a knight. We are trained to be ready to sacrifice ourselves if necessary.”

The dragon released some smoke from his nostrils.

“Very well. I will fulfill your request. I’ll take care of Gurath and you’ll now be my property.”

***

Weeks had passed since the last departure of the knight, and in Winterville, villagers went on living their life, despite everything. Crops grew, people bred, the dragon predated. Fear had become a background noise for them. Children and women were permanently kept inside homes, and adults went out only to work their lands. Only a pair of very brave men had taken the courage to leave. Whether they had found a new home or perished in the journey, they would never know it.

And today looked like judgement day. That was how the villagers had ended up calling the day when the dragon appeared. Some claimed the dragon had been sent by the divinity to judge those who hadn’t been pious enough. Others noticed the first who were taken by the monster were good men, who worked their land and helped their fellow villagers; but the reply was the divinity knew better. Hence, the name.

The people didn’t even scream anymore. As the dragon flew above their heads, they just ran in silence and silently prayed not to be the next. Even if they now stayed as close to their home as they could, someone would always be too slow or too far.

But that day, a more dreadful thing appeared. Something that made everyone think that yes, they all had been sinners.

A second dragon with green scales was coming to their direction. Now they were screaming again. They knew it. Their village will perish all together in a sea of gastric juices...

But the green dragon didn’t dive onto the village. Instead, it opened its mouth a released its fire against the red dragon. The villagers stopped running. Instead, they remained watching the battle against the two dragons that now was unfolding above their heads. The red dragon breathed fire too, and it clashed against the rival’s fire. Their roars made the land shake to its very core. The villagers were confused. Was this new dragon come to save them or to claim them as its own rightful source of nutrition in place of the old one?

The battle seemed to last forever, even though the sun had only moved just a bit since the beginning. But in the end, the green dragon bit the red one on the neck, and only now did the villagers realized it: the green one had long fangs that were missing inside the red one’s jaws. The defeated dragon made an acute, dreadful roar of pain, before attempting to fly away a bit and finally falling on the woods, making a thunderous noise that made everyone fall down. The green dragon looked at it, and then roared its triumph to the sky.

The villagers were too petrified to decided whether to close themselves in their homes or not. They remained where they were as the dragon descended onto the village and looked at them.

Then, the dragon opened its mouth, and the people began making steps back. But it didn’t breathe fire. Instead, it spoke.

“Is this the village of Winterville?”

Many opened their mouth in unison from the shock. The red dragon had never spoken a word. Only one of them, a man called Cicer.

“Y...yes.”

“And did you send to me a knight called Valorosus from the land of Bustarsithium?”

“Y...yes. Where is he?”

“In my lair. He’s my property now. In exchange for getting this territory, he agreed to be my ally against other dragons.”

“Please don’t eat us!” Someone else screamed.

“My territory is vast enough to let me have bigger, fatter prey than you. Maybe one day I’ll be too old to defend it and I’ll have to reduce myself to eating lesser meat like you...but that shouldn’t happen before a good amount of centuries. Anyway, I’ve done what I had to here.”

With that, the dragon flew away. It took some moments to make the villagers realize what had just happened: the dragon had been defeated by another dragon. Finally, they realize the first part: the dragon had been defeated.

The dragon had been defeated.

All Winterville exploded into a roar of joy. The men entered their homes to announce the news to their women and children, and everyone cheered on the streets. That night, they celebrated until the come of dawn with music, dances and drinks. Nobody seemed to remember the green dragon had said one day he may have to eat them to survive: that was likely to happen when they were nothing but bones and dust.

The village of Winterville is still there, and hasn’t seen any dragon for a long time. The children of those who had to endure Gurath’s reign of terror now rule the village, and they do it in peace and quiet, like their parents and their grandparents before them, except for a short, terrifying period.

Meanwhile, Valorosus spent the rest of his life in the company of Argarth. Next to a knight, bane of the dragon, Argarth was invincible. He conquered more territories than any other dragon in history. Only an extraordinary alliance of all the dragons in the continent finally took him down, together with his human ally, in an epic battle on the coast. Fortunately, whatever dragon now controls the territory where Winterville is, it doesn’t seem interested in humans.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Probably, given that dragon time is much slower than humans’, the inhabitants of Winterville will start believing it was all a myth. Certainly though, they have the most original of all the stories about dragons that you can find around.

There are many stories about dragons putting villages to misery that finally get defeated by a great hero. Very likely, you live close to a settlement whose inhabitants once were a dragon’s favorite meal. This story is one of them, but it has a peculiarity: the identity of the hero.

The village in question was called Winterville. A settlement of peaceful, honest peasants, where normally nothing strange would ever happen. But sometimes, life gives unexpected surprises, and you can’t predict whether they will be good or bad. And for Winterville, the surprise happened to be a ravenous dragon.

Its first signs were seen on a sunny summer day. From behind the hills that surrounded the village, columns of smoke appeared. It was much, much bigger than the smoke produced by a fireplace, but also too small to be a wildfire. For that first day, the villagers didn’t give much thought about it, apart from some of the hunters, worried that it could effectively be a wildfire; but the smoke didn’t increase, a detail that reassured them.

However, the column of smoke kept being there the following days. A feeling of disturbance began hitting the villagers’ hearts: their lives were so ordinary, anything unusual was enough to alert them. Someone in the village proposed the hunters to go look at what it really was: one of them accepted, a man called Horac. After praying to the divinity to give him a safe journey, they all gathered together to watch him leave the secure borders of their community and go into the woods, as he was used to, but this time with a different purpose.

Horac reappeared three days later. But it wasn’t a calm return. From the trees, he reappeared running like if a dangerous beast was chasing him; but no animal came after. Instead, he kept screaming a word, a word that in Winterville had been heard only when the elders narrated tales to the children.

“Dragon! Dragon!”

The villagers, who were working the land as usual, turned their heads all together. At first, they weren’t sure they understood well. “Did you say bacon?” said one of them.

“No! Dragon! It was huge and all red and was inside a big cave! The smoke came from its nostrils! I escaped just some moments before it woke up!”

“Come on, Horac,” another said, “it can’t be. Don’t tell me you still think your grandma’s stories are true?”

“I saw it!”

“Alright folks, let’s leave. I still have to plow my-”

But at that very moment, a terrible gust of wind arrived. The villager stopped talking, and turned his head to the wind’s direction.

There was a dreadful, deafening roar.

One moment later, the villagers realized, Horac hadn’t invented anything.

An enormous winged lizard emerged from the hills. It was red, as the hunter had proclaimed, and its jaws were wide open, revealing yellow, sharp teeth and a long, forked tongue. Worst of all, it was flying to the village’s direction.

Everyone fled and screamed. The dragon dived onto the village, and two men were trapped into its talons. It flew above, and nobody saw those three villagers anymore.

For five days, nobody got out of their homes. However, the empty streets were filled with the laments of the three men’s families. Only the need to produce food brought some of the bravest to get out again. The column of smoke was still there, like a menacing tower standing above that once peaceful settlement. Some proposed to leave, to find a new, safer place where to continue their lives; however, the rest of the village noticed, how could they abandon the land of their fathers, so rich and fertile, for a difficult and dangerous journey into nowhere? Most of them hadn’t ever seen anything outside Winterville for all their life.

The days passed, and the dragon didn’t return. The village, though still devastated and traumatized, resumed their normal life, because they had no other alternative. Though the column of smoke was always there, the people had gotten used to it, and didn’t think much about it.

But that was an illusion. Two months later, the dragon returned. And this time, three villagers didn’t make it. That night, everyone stood inside the biggest barn in the village, discussing – or rather, shouting at each other. Even the cows in the barn mooed sadly.

“We refuse to leave,” a man proclaimed, “this is the only home we know!”

“How long until the dragon eats us all?” A woman yelled. “Give it more years, and there won’t be enough of us to continue our lineage! We have no choice!”

“How many of us have ever been outside the village?”

Only some hands were raised up, and they all came from the hunters. But even they had never adventured themselves further than the woods around.

“See?” The man replied fiercely. “You cannot think we can do it.”

“But how can we defend ourselves?”

The man looked at the hunters. “You,” he said, “you are our only hope. Hunt the dragon, take it down. Hasn’t Horac seen its lair?”

Everyone saw Horac shivering visibly. When he took the word, his voice was uncertain and scared. “You...guys, we hunt prey. Deer, boar, reasonably sized things. This is no prey! How can you-”

“Do we have anything better?”

Nobody answered. They didn’t want to leave their homes, and they couldn’t let themselves be forever prey to the dragon. The man was right: the hunters were all they had.

“Alright then,” Horac sighed, “I’ll guide the others to its lair.”

The next day, all the villagers saluted the brave hunters from the safety of the barn. With bow and arrows on their backs, they gave their farewell to their villagers, and disappeared into the woods.

Three days later, only one returned. The people were out again, and as they saw the hunters, they all ran to him.

“Did...did you...?”

“He...he ate them all,” the hunter said gloomy. “I saw it. I survived only because I jumped off a cliff. My arm is broken. The last thing I saw before was Horac’s legs sticking out of its mouth.”

The villagers fell into silence. Someone gasped. They didn’t even have the force to cry.

“We need a knight,” the hunter proclaimed, “a real knight.”

And so, the hunter, whose name was Catullius, took a horse and traveled further than any other man from Winterville had ever done. He discovered new paths, new villages, suffered hunger, faced bandits in the woods, to give his fellow villagers a hope. Eventually, he arrived at the kingdom’s capital. The shock and wonder of a settlement so big almost distracted him from his purpose: only after wandering for a whole day around its streets did he remember why he had come there in first place. He entered a tavern, and loudly announced his begging for help.

“My village is being plagued by a man-eating dragon. I’ve traveled here to find a knight who can free us. Where can I find one?”

A robust, mustached man got up from the furthest table, and with a low, powerful voice, proclaimed: “I am. My name is Valorosus from the land of Bustarsithium. Come here and tell me everything.”

Catullius almost shouted out of joy. But he managed to refrain from doing it, and instead sat on the knight’s table. He told him everything, tears running from his eyes.

“I will come to your village,” the knight proclaimed, “I always come to help the innocent.”

“I... I don’t have much money though...”

“A knight doesn’t do it for money. We do it because it’s the right thing.”

Catullius almost wanted to kiss him.

And so, Catullius and the knight triumphantly entered Winterville on their horses, which in the meanwhile had lost three more villagers from the dragon. Everyone acclaimed the knight, some even asked him to bless their children. The knight raised his sword to the sky, promising to free their people as both him and Catullius went into the woods.

However, some days later, the knight returned alone, horseless and severely wounded.

“It...is...too...powerful...” he blabbed as he fell tired on the mud as he re-entered the village. “I’ve never seen...anything...like this.”

The villagers were in the most complete despair. The idea of leaving their land now was becoming a concrete idea. After the knight rested, he heard many tell him to guide the others to a new land.

“I cannot,” he said, in the same barn where the villagers had hidden the second time, “I swore I would free you from the dragon. Leaving would be like being defeated.”

“But you couldn’t win over it!” Someone shouted angrily.

“I know,” the knight replied, smiling, “but another dragon could.”

The people around looked at him like if he had reached senile dementia at a very early age. “You said bacon, right?”

“No, dragon. I’ll find another dragon who can battle for us.”

***

When the knight left, the atmosphere was the exact opposite of the first time he came. Everyone stayed distant from him and nobody wasted any farewell. They were getting used to the dragon just as they had gotten used to the now permanent column of smoke on the horizon. The survival of the community was greater than the loss of the single element: it was useless to fight and lose more. But the knight refused to listen to that kind of reasoning, and proceeded with his folly.

He traveled through forests, mountains and other kinds of landscapes to manage to trace a second dragon. For he knew that dragons, when they hunt humans, have a reason to do it. Most of them search for more meaty prey. A dragon eating men was an anomaly. An anomaly that wasn’t actually so uncommon, and that was why knights still were taught dragonology, but still an anomaly.

The dragon that plagued Winterville, though, was strong even for a dragon. It had ditched all his most trusted attacks, and in the end he had jumped on his horse and galloped out just one moment before the dragon’s fire could hit him. And that knight had defeated three other dragons before! It was such a strong dragon, a group of human wasn’t enough, and an army would be a waste of resources.

But finding another dragon wasn’t easy. Dragons knew well to stay away from knights. Centuries of battling against them had made them teach their hatchlings to avoid any metal-wearing human at all costs. This meant by the time the knight could track one, that dragon would take even more humans.

However, that only had made knights refine their tracking methods. And the knight was one of the best of his generation.

Finally, he found one not so far from where the first dragon had made its lair, at least in dragon terms. In human terms, it would have been two whole weeks by walking, if it had been flatland; however, that terrain was all hills and mountains. The dragon was green, not red, and was sleeping inside a large, comfortable sea cave; its paws were the size of the knight himself. As the knight put a foot, the dragon woke up and instantly released its fire on him. But the knight was ready, and while his shield protected him, he proclaimed:

“I’m not here to fight! I’m proposing an alliance!”

The dragon stopped breathing fire immediately.

“An alliance?” The dragon said. “Why would a dragon ally with a knight, our biggest enemy?”

“Let me explain. My name is Valorosus from the land of Bustarsithium, I have come here on behalf of the village of Winterville, which is being plagued by another dragon. It frequently pillages their land and predates on them, and I request the help of a dragon to put an end to this evil!”

The dragon didn’t reply immediately, instead giving an intense look at the human. Then it exploded into a long, cavernous laugh.

“And my name is Arghart from this cave, and I find amusing that I would stop a dragon from predating lesser species.”

That put Valorosus in difficulty. He was accurately taught how to track and kill dragons, but knew very little about their psychology. In his heart, he was still sure there were some dragons that had a conscience of what is good and what is evil, while now that hope had been brutally slain in front of his eyes. But also, he was taught never to surrender immediately.

“What could convince you then?”

“Hmm,” Arghart said, letting his forked tongue out for a moment, “who is this dragon?”

“Huh...hmmm...well, it’s a red one. Lives in a cave in the hills, south of here-”

“Aaaaaaaaah,” the dragon boomed. “Gurath! He hasn’t been able to eat anything less tender than human meat after he fought against Virakh.”

“What?”

“A battle for their territory. He used to be the strongest of us, but that time, not only was he brutally defeated, but also he lost his fangs. Now he’s retreated in a small hilly territory, and can only predate humans. But why should I fight him? His current territory is miserably small.”

“So wait. You’re saying that this dragon is pillaging a human village because he lacks two teeth?”

“Didn’t you hear me?” The dragon growled, showing his own teeth, which were perfectly intact.

“I did, I did.”

“Well, I have no reason to fight him. As I said, his territory is too small, and it would add nothing to mine. I have plenty, which has bigger, fatter prey than humans...”

“Look into your heart,” the knight tried to press him, “you know it’s the right thing.”

Arghart growled again. Valorosus made two steps back.

“I just explained you it does not give me any advantage. How can it be the right thing? Go away, you’re annoying me. For now I’ll let you go unharmed.”

The knight put a hand where his heart was. For a man who was taught to always put the greater good above anything else, talking with a creature so selfish was painful. But the greater good now suggested him to play his game. He kneed on the hard, rocky surface and bowed his head.

“I will offer my services to you, Arghart. I shall help you conquer more territories against your enemies if you accept my call for help.”

“Huh?” Arghart exclaimed. “A knight? Helping a dragon? What trick is this?”

“No trick. I have taken a vote to help the village of Winterville, and I’m ready for anything to honor it. Even ally with my enemy.”

The dragon looked at him in silence for a long time, as if he was waiting for something else to be revealed. However, the human remained motionless, with his left knee on the ground and his head below.

“You...you really want to do this?” Arghart asked, annoyed by that ridiculous silence.

“Yes.”

“Do you understand it means you’ll have to live with me permanently and that if you try to escape I will eat you?”

“I do. I am a knight. We are trained to be ready to sacrifice ourselves if necessary.”

The dragon released some smoke from his nostrils.

“Very well. I will fulfill your request. I’ll take care of Gurath and you’ll now be my property.”

***

Weeks had passed since the last departure of the knight, and in Winterville, villagers went on living their life, despite everything. Crops grew, people bred, the dragon predated. Fear had become a background noise for them. Children and women were permanently kept inside homes, and adults went out only to work their lands. Only a pair of very brave men had taken the courage to leave. Whether they had found a new home or perished in the journey, they would never know it.

And today looked like judgement day. That was how the villagers had ended up calling the day when the dragon appeared. Some claimed the dragon had been sent by the divinity to judge those who hadn’t been pious enough. Others noticed the first who were taken by the monster were good men, who worked their land and helped their fellow villagers; but the reply was the divinity knew better. Hence, the name.

The people didn’t even scream anymore. As the dragon flew above their heads, they just ran in silence and silently prayed not to be the next. Even if they now stayed as close to their home as they could, someone would always be too slow or too far.

But that day, a more dreadful thing appeared. Something that made everyone think that yes, they all had been sinners.

A second dragon with green scales was coming to their direction. Now they were screaming again. They knew it. Their village will perish all together in a sea of gastric juices...

But the green dragon didn’t dive onto the village. Instead, it opened its mouth a released its fire against the red dragon. The villagers stopped running. Instead, they remained watching the battle against the two dragons that now was unfolding above their heads. The red dragon breathed fire too, and it clashed against the rival’s fire. Their roars made the land shake to its very core. The villagers were confused. Was this new dragon come to save them or to claim them as its own rightful source of nutrition in place of the old one?

The battle seemed to last forever, even though the sun had only moved just a bit since the beginning. But in the end, the green dragon bit the red one on the neck, and only now did the villagers realized it: the green one had long fangs that were missing inside the red one’s jaws. The defeated dragon made an acute, dreadful roar of pain, before attempting to fly away a bit and finally falling on the woods, making a thunderous noise that made everyone fall down. The green dragon looked at it, and then roared its triumph to the sky.

The villagers were too petrified to decided whether to close themselves in their homes or not. They remained where they were as the dragon descended onto the village and looked at them.

Then, the dragon opened its mouth, and the people began making steps back. But it didn’t breathe fire. Instead, it spoke.

“Is this the village of Winterville?”

Many opened their mouth in unison from the shock. The red dragon had never spoken a word. Only one of them, a man called Cicer.

“Y...yes.”

“And did you send to me a knight called Valorosus from the land of Bustarsithium?”

“Y...yes. Where is he?”

“In my lair. He’s my property now. In exchange for getting this territory, he agreed to be my ally against other dragons.”

“Please don’t eat us!” Someone else screamed.

“My territory is vast enough to let me have bigger, fatter prey than you. Maybe one day I’ll be too old to defend it and I’ll have to reduce myself to eating lesser meat like you...but that shouldn’t happen before a good amount of centuries. Anyway, I’ve done what I had to here.”

With that, the dragon flew away. It took some moments to make the villagers realize what had just happened: the dragon had been defeated by another dragon. Finally, they realize the first part: the dragon had been defeated.

The dragon had been defeated.

All Winterville exploded into a roar of joy. The men entered their homes to announce the news to their women and children, and everyone cheered on the streets. That night, they celebrated until the come of dawn with music, dances and drinks. Nobody seemed to remember the green dragon had said one day he may have to eat them to survive: that was likely to happen when they were nothing but bones and dust.

The village of Winterville is still there, and hasn’t seen any dragon for a long time. The children of those who had to endure Gurath’s reign of terror now rule the village, and they do it in peace and quiet, like their parents and their grandparents before them, except for a short, terrifying period.

Meanwhile, Valorosus spent the rest of his life in the company of Argarth. Next to a knight, bane of the dragon, Argarth was invincible. He conquered more territories than any other dragon in history. Only an extraordinary alliance of all the dragons in the continent finally took him down, together with his human ally, in an epic battle on the coast. Fortunately, whatever dragon now controls the territory where Winterville is, it doesn’t seem interested in humans.

Probably, given that dragon time is much slower than humans’, the inhabitants of Winterville will start believing it was all a myth. Certainly though, they have the most original of all the stories about dragons that you can find around.