The ice was little different than before. Proximity to the mountains imposed few changes upon the vastness of the glacier save at the immediate edge. We pushed ahead carefully, taking a winding and sinuous path to the northwest. Always we detoured to avoid the grand crevasses and searched far and wide for the grand system of ice caverns I was certain hid the dragon’s lair. It was not an easy pursuit. The icy wastes are trackless and the dragon’s appearances, though more frequent here than elsewhere, remained sufficiently rare as to preclude active tracking of its motions. Lady Indili contrived a solution to this problem by directing our efforts towards bones found lying upon the icy surface. These, leeched white by the sun but still recent as they had not yet been covered by winter snows, were found scattered about in many places, the fragmentary remains of kills made by the dragon and either dropped or torn apart in the air. The great creature had a distinctive dietary preference for wapiti, the massive deer normally found frequently in the great northern forest but only rarely in the mountains. These animals reach a size similar to that of the steppe ponies of the Kharal, considerably greater than familiar deer, and the bulls possess large, multi-pronged antlers with a length to match any sword. The dragon seemed to primarily fly north to hunt for these animals, which were seemingly more common in the central portion of the mountains where few Bahab lived. When it flew south, which I believe occurred less than one flight in four, it would take common deer, though preferentially large stags, and bears. Perhaps surprisingly, we found no fragments of human bone upon the ice. Though it surely could have taken hunters with ease. I suspect we were too small and insufficiently meaty. By examining the bones and seeking out new and fresher concentrations we were able to slowly inscribe a spiraling search pattern that brought us closer and closer to the target.
For four days we headed inward across the glacier, seeking to discern the proper region. Once we were certain we were close, which came when we discovered the skull of a massive ram that was still suffering active consumption of its remaining bits of flesh by flies, we made circles about this point, desperate to find a hole that could potentially hide the dragon’s cave. Much of this scanning was done through the simple expedient of climbing up onto the back of our camel, balancing with one foot on each hump, and then staring in a circle until the glare of the ice overcame the eyes. Kundun, youngest of the three of us, also possessed the best vision. He would be the one who, on the morning of the sixth day, spotted the discoloration and shadow that marked out an opening in the ice.
The area surrounding this point, which we hurried to examine, was much cracked and damaged, with the glacier surface sprouting ridges and lines I had learned indicated caverns beneath. With great care we charted a course through this maze westward until we reached the lip of the hole in the ice. We made certain of our ropes and had to pause several times to repair the makeshift plank bridge we used to cross narrow crevasses.
After perhaps three hours of labor, we reached the lip of a vast, roughly circular crater in the ice shortly past noon. Massive cracks, stretching for many kilometers, raced in opposite directions northwest and southeast across the glacier from this point. The hole itself stretched perhaps one hundred meters across, a huge opening with walls of pale blue ice and a floor of deep ocean blue frigidness. Several large passages, themselves more than ten meters in diameter, easily large enough to allow multiple elephants to walk through at once, led into deep caverns buried in shadowy darkness. The signs of the dragon we found here were unmistakable, so clear and obvious that I instantly lamented the time spent in the south exploring other caverns. Great gouges could be seen in the crater wall, the ice torn and fragmented by the act of sharpening claws, horns, and teeth. A carpet of bones littered the floor, and dried and sun-faded blood had left visible strains across much of the surface. In places where the great beast’s motion had caused their shift, the bones had been swept into piles. On the southern side of the hole there was a wide-open space scored by deep, heavy marks clearly made when the dragon crouched down to take flight. Scattered bits of scale, horn, and claw, all shining with the combination of rime and pearlescent effusion only the dragon possessed could be seen in patches even from the distance of the rim. Discovered at last, the abode of this most potent of mystic beings proved instantly recognizable.
Though my eyes could not penetrate the darkness cloaking the caves below, the Lady Indili proclaimed with absolute certainty that the dragon was not present. Its essence was absent, distant beyond the furthest range of her senses. Had the creature been close, she could not possibly have failed to detect it. Flooded with elation, I took this as truth and arranged to explore the lair while blessed by such opportunity. There would, of course, be no better chance. Kundun graciously agreed to remain at the surface with the animals and to work the ropes in order to lower us down. No doubt he desired to descend alongside us, but exterior support was critical. Aid in the climb would speed it greatly, and to extract prizes from below someone must lever up the bags. Though his eyes suggested regret, no protests were made.
We descended from the southern edge, utilizing the gouge marks the dragon had scored into the walls propelling itself into the sky as aids. This tracery of impacts provided handholds, footholds, and a general rough surface to grip in place of otherwise sheer walls of slick ice. Even with this, and the aid of ropes, it was not a simple task to reach the bottom. The ice cut into boots, gloves, and flesh as we levered our way down along the cold edge. Thankfully it was autumn only, and the sun stood high in the sky, for the depth of the crater was considerable, and it settled into startlingly deep shadows.
Close up, it was possible to trace the piled bones back to many different creatures. Though the familiar, antler-bearing remains of various deer predominated, bear, wolf, sheep, and even horse could be discerned. The fragile bones of birds, often snapped in twain, formed a soft carpet at the base of each pile. It seems that the dragon would take birds on the wing by flying through whole flocks of cranes, crows, and geese. Nor did they fear other mystic beasts of the sky, for the skull of a lightning eagle, pierced by a great fang, stared upward the icy floor. Here too we found no human bones. Lest this be considered an apologetic I would note that confirmed reports of the dragon carrying off prey always mentioned beasts, never humans. Such tales came only from liars and fabulists. Nor did the creature ever approach any settlement, not even the exceedingly modest camps of the Bahab, though it surely could have easily stolen kills from their hunters. Truthfully, I do not think this should be seen as a surprise. For the most part, both great predators and mystic beasts alike avoid humans and especially their homes. There is no reason why a dragon should deviate from such patterns.
From the central crater floor three cavernous chambers of ice extended outward and down. These seemed to be natural formations, not anything dug out by claws, so it appears that the dragon chose its abode with great care, though the precise nature of the criteria is unclear. To human eyes one pocket of ice looks much the same as any other. One of these, a simple, stubby circular bubble within the walls of the crater, held a larder. A mound of dead prey, slain primarily by terrible bites to the neck, lay stored in a pile for future use. Ice covered them, preventing decay to the point that even the eyes were preserved beneath that frosty glaze on most of the remains. The amount stockpiled was immense, hundreds of animals. I suspect that the dragon, which appears to intersperse periods of activity with prolonged sleep cycles, stockpiles food in order to gorge after waking. I dared to chop at one such carcass with my climbing axe and found it frozen completely solid. In such a state, I suspect the meat might well remain palatable for decades.
The second chamber was a longer, but still wide, passage. It led to a high-ceilinged chamber whose roof our improvised torches barely managed to illuminate. The bottom of this expansive room was almost perfectly flat and the ice within was blue-black and so hard that I broke off the tip of a good knife blade attempting to extract a chip. This level surface lay covered in a jumbled mixture of boulders, branches, and especially huge pads of moss torn from northern bogs. Though their arrangement was bizarre in structure, fitted to the unfamiliar muscle patterns of the mystical beast, their service as the dragon’s bedding was clear. Numerous scales, which the creature clearly shed irregularly, lay scattered about the chamber. We filled a modest sack with these in moments, adding bits of discarded claw and horn from the central crater space. There were easily twenty or thirty times more than this to be had, even without searching through the moss, far more than we could have possibly carried. Contrary to certain legends, dragons do not sleep on beds of gold and gems. In fact, at no point did we find even the least scrap of metal in the lair, not even a leftover arrowhead from a slain deer or bear, suggesting deliberate removal.
The third chamber was found at the end of a long and slick passage, one that humans could easily fit through, though the lack of grip made for much sliding on hands and knees over the ice, but that would have forced the dragon to squeeze in tightly to traverse. It was bitterly cold there, especially in the small chamber at the end, to the point that the air itself seemed to freeze in our lungs and we could only find a breath by pulling air through our scarves and that with great difficulty. This forced a swift retreat, and I doubt we would have survived more than a few minutes in that space before freezing solid. Even in brief observation, it was obvious that this place practically crackled with the presence of divine essence. Glittering ice mist, countless tiny crystals beyond the ability of the eye to resolve, hung in the air. These shivered and danced with such power that even I could sense it, feeling a tingling sensation across the eyes, fingers, and tongue. Contact with any surface at all carried a charged influence, power flowing in waves. For Lady Indili it went far further. She described it as being dropped into an impossibly deep pool of power, a black vortex of energy that surrounded her and filled her to bursting. She had believed, prior to this experience, that summoning the swarm of sharks upon the ovoo had permanently damaged her ability to wield divine essence, but this encounter not only healed all such wounds, but made her stronger than ever before.
Inside the chamber there was a pile of ice, but it was not frozen water. Some other substance, far colder and perfectly transparent with a soft turquoise shade, had formed that crystalline mound. I dared not touch it, for I was sure any tool that made contact would freeze at once and then shatter. The origin of this ice, formed into a smooth, many-layered mound, could only be from a single source; that of the furious frozen breath of the dragon itself, a substance whose properties are known only to the Divines. Within that impossibly cold but perfectly clear blanket of chill was single thing, simple and yet profound. Eggs. They were nine in number, set on their sides in a circle beneath the many layers of clear frost covering. Each was a large blue-white ovoid roughly the length of a forearm on the long axis. Though we were unable to take measurements, the Lady Indili estimated their length by sketching in reference against her hand. In comparison to the egg of an ostrich I have seen preserved at the imperial academy, which I am told is the largest egg belonging to any natural creature, they were larger in every dimension and perhaps as much as ten times the volume. Huge, for eggs, though at the time they seemed strangely small.
I must confess that, though it surely violated the spirit of the imperial orders behind the Dragon Expedition, I made no effort whatsoever to acquire one of these eggs. While the practical reasons for leaving them wholly untouched are many, we had no tool capable of piercing the frigid ice, no way to grasp the eggs themselves without losing fingers, and it is all but certain that removal from the primordial chill would swiftly slay any dragon chick within, the simple truth is that it absolutely never entered my mind to make such a move. Faced with the dragon’s eggs, with the sublime beauty of a living form of divine essence taking shape before the eye, we could do nothing but stare in awe. Their presence, the endless possibility attached to them, it overwhelmed all thought. If the terrible cold had not chilled our throats and sent our bodies into brutal coughing fits that dispelled this reverie, I suspect we both would have stood there until frozen solid. There are many who account the eggs of birds wondrous demonstrations of natural beauty, but compared to the eggs of a dragon they are as bland and drab as the leathery colorless eggs of common turtles. Would that I had the means to capture that image, but words do not suffice.
A similar descriptive limitation applies to the dragon itself. Even as we emerged from the brood cavern, Kundun shouted out a desperate warning that the dragon approached. We scrambled through the gallery of bones and up the ropes as fast as we could manage. At the same time the dragon screamed down from on high, impossibly swift on the wing. Kundun puled Lady Indili up first, heaving desperately. She rolled out onto the ice in the same moment as the dragon swooped down upon its defiled lair. I was caught, hanging on the ropes halfway up the wall and totally exposed. There was no warning, no time to prepare. The dragon’s speed was unfathomable. One moment the sky was empty and in the next the crater echoed with the landing of an agent of the Divines.
Not that preparation would have made any difference.
‘What was it like, the dragon?’ Throughout my life, ever since that moment, this question has been asked of me more often than any other. It is not one I can answer adequately. The words do not exist, not truly, to fully encompass the nature of dragons. Such an existence goes beyond the mere physical. It is pure divine essence crystallized. A creature born from the dreams of the Divines, not the slow progression of changing lineages. Such an existence stands beyond the scope of the revelation, primordial and unbound. The world quakes at the dragon’s passage, senses are obscured, and sensations impossible to voice skitter across the mind. All efforts to properly characterize the creature, to impose boundaries on the boundless, stand beyond my capabilities.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Though a dragon is far more than the physical, its physical traits can at least be grasped. That appearance is seared into my perception, forever visible the moment I close my eyes. This was a dragon of frost, the sacred representation of Nakiet, Lord of the Sky. If this should seem surprising, that the sky is ice, stand upon the peak of a high mountain, in the dark, and you may catch a glimpse of the cold heart of the sky. The vastness of all above holds a depth of perpetual chill. To make the air itself freeze, as I encountered in the dragon’s nest, is the least demonstration of this. Beyond the edges of the sky, in the endless black, lies a frigid realm beyond any imagining.
Unlike any other creature known to possess bones, a dragon is fashioned not with four limbs but six. Four are legs, evenly spaced and sturdy beneath the body, with the weight resting on the heels as a bear might rather than the toes as a cat would. Two additional limbs rise from the back, formed out of a great secondary set of shoulders, and stretch out long thin bones with incredible extended fingers to form the frame of the wings. A membrane of skin, one seemingly very much like that of a bat, though leatherier, stretches between these digits in order to grant the creature the power of flight. When on the ground the wings fold slightly and rest atop the back when it is necessary to move in a confined space, but they will often be splayed wide, beating against the wind and expressing the immensity of the dragon’s power. Many have claimed that dragon’s possess long and serpentine necks in the manner of a snake. This is not the case. A dragon’s neck is long, and flexible, but it is ultimately similar in motion to that of mammal with a limber neck such as a bear or cat. Proportionally it is only slightly elongated, but rather than being bound by folded skin and furs, it is sheathed in strong scales. Truly, the feature held most in common with lizards and snakes is the long tail. It nearly matches the length of the entire body and features a long row of dorsal spines. These spines flow up the back and neck as well, vanishing only where the wings emerge.
Dragon skulls are unique among all creatures, mystic or otherwise. They possess a broadly triangular form, narrow and pointed at the nose and wide at the back where rear-facing horns emerge from the corners. This vaguely recalls the skull of a crocodile, a terrible beast known in the southernmost reaches of the Sanid Empire, but rather than the flattened nature of those marsh dwellers, the dragon’s skull is tall and the jaw deep. The nostrils are large, and while the eyes with their slitted pupils seem small compared to the huge face, they are in fact quite large if the lids draw back and feature a piercing gaze. It is likely the see as well as eagles may, and their vision seems keen and likely matched to considerable intelligence. Though no account of dragons describes them as speaking, I believe it would be a mistake to consider them simple and animalistic. I do not imagine they reason as humans do, they are far too different, but the insight held within those great skulls is surely formidable. Four horns emerge from the skull. Two are large and twisting and rise from the top, while two smaller, curved and dewclaw-like cones sprout from the read base of the jaw. Within the jaws are many dozens of teeth like curved knives, forming a nearly continuous row from the front to the back. From very close up it can be seen that the teeth bear tiny serrations. I believe that the strength of a dragon’s bite is a match for any other living creature. Many of the bones found in the cavern, including those of great bears, had been shattered by singular bites of immense power. Several accounts of those who confronted dragons centuries ago speak of them biting through plates of solid steel, and I concede this may well be so.
Overall, a dragon is not an impossibly massive animal, strange as it seems to declare. The body is large, perhaps a match in size for that of the mighty elephants that can be found upon the edges of the western deserts, but the body is comparatively sleek and lean, and the dragon surely weighs much less. Though the tail and wings increase the overall size of the creature, they contribute minimally to its mass, similar to the wings of a bat at full extend. In all things a dragon is a swift and powerful predator, and its motions invoke feline comparisons despite the absence of any overt similarity. No creature, not even the deadliest of mystic terrors or mightiest of demons, could possibly match a dragon in a struggle flesh against flesh. The interlocking scales that cover the body in cerulean plate offer additional protection, for they can turn aside even powerful blows. Despite this, I can imagine how scholars and soldiers, working from drawings made at vast distance, might imagine defeating such a being through strength of arm. I no longer think a creature of such peerless majesty can be overcome. No, I am certain it cannot be done, for a dragon is more than flesh, blood, and bone, it is also essence, a power given expression through the breath.
A sorcerer may channel divine essence as a blast of power, and a wizard may shape it through the body of a being to forge a mystic existence, but a dragon is divine essence made manifest. It does not channel and shape, it merely is. Essence blasts free from it purely through innate will.
The dragon descended from high above, and the breath of frost burst from its maw as it came. The target, regrettably, was the greatest concentration of life in the vicinity, Kundun and our pack animals. A devastating cone of icy wind and hail passed over them, froze them solid, and then smashed their ice-enshrouded bodies to fragments against the glacier below in an act of perfectly instant annihilation. There was not the least possibility of defense or evasion.
In the next moment the dragon landed at the base of the crater, but sensing that enemies remained above, flexed its legs, and leapt up onto the open ice. The force of its passage served to propel me upward, allowing my body to surmount the wall and scramble out desperately onto the glacial field.
Lady Indili, frozen in terror, lay prostrate before the dragon, a black dot before a blue gale. To offer any strike, any attack, against the dragon was madness. The open ice offered no cover, suggested no tactics, laid all bare before unyielding power. Despite all this, I somehow scrambled to my feet and drew my blade, a reflex in the face of certain doom that had, by then, become familiar. Some ludicrous impulse to face the end with blade in hand propelled me forward.
This reflexive instinct, somehow, made a difference. Dragon senses are vastly superior to those of humans, undoubtedly, and they are possessed of capable intellects. Unmoving, prone upon the ice, and unable to attain the clarity of mindset needed to channel essence, a power which likely simply would be unable to touch the dragon in any case, Lady Indili represented no threat. Blades, however, can cut flesh, and though scales as strong as steel may gird the body, they do possess gaps. This sufficed to trigger an instinctual swerve towards the greater threat.
The dragon spun about, leveraged incredible agility for such a large form. The sweep of the tail flashed through the air with the force of a catapult arm. Had Lady Indili been standing it would have certainly shattered her skull. As it was, the force of the air shifted by the passage of the spined sweep compressed her hard against the ice, left her blinded and disoriented. The turn itself shifted the dragon’s forearm into my right hip, and though this was little more than a spasm-borne feint of a move, the strike easily hurled me down to the ice, hard enough that had I not been covered in thick winter clothes I’m sure I would have broken several bones. As I laid sprawled out on my back on the ice I managed, having learned from the encounter with the Obsidian Order, to keep the long knife in my hand. This achievement could be directly traced to long hours of instruction from the Imperial Guard. The dragon loomed over me then, bent its head down to examine my body. Cold breath from its exhalations froze my lips and left me voiceless, unable to gasp for air. Thoughts and reason fled. I thrashed about helplessly, flailing helplessly with the panic of a drowning man. Any coherency vanished, only instinct remained.
The dragon responded to this chaotic, discordant motion by biting my left arm.
It was not trying to harm me. I have forever been certain of this truth. Had it wished, the power of those mighty jaws could have snapped the limb away effortlessly. Instead, the bite was a probe, a way to touch and taste something unfamiliar using the sensitive tissue of lips and tongue rather than the hard and unfeeling ends of its claws. Many animals have a similar reaction. I believe, though it is completely dependent upon faith, for I cannot supply any evidence to support this conjecture, that the dragon responded to this with confusion. This situation it faced was far enough outside its experience to induce hesitation. Considering the isolation of the lair and the desolation of the Cracking Void, the presence of any animal there must have come as a shock. It had recognized the forms of horse and camel and identified these as prey, responding accordingly. Kundun, tragically, was simply caught up in the blast. The mind of a dragon may well be a match for that of a human, but they are no more proof against surprise and reflex than we.
Certainly, I lost all control. The touch of the dragon’s teeth, though almost impossibly light compared to the creature’s true potency, nevertheless pierced easily through three layers of furs, a lamellar coat, a thick linen undershirt, and my flesh and muscle all the way to scrape against bone. The incredible sharpness of the teeth left a row of punctures in perfect ovals. The scars have never faded. Such a wound subsumes the mind beneath a tidal wave of pain, and reason ceases. Lost to shock, all reactions are dominated by the most basic of animal instincts. With my left arm trapped between the dragon’s jaws and my body held down to the ice by the weight of the skull the only source of motion left to me was my right arm. The one holding the long knife.
Lashing wildly, the blade flailed and chopped. Several strikes slammed pointlessly against the hardened scales guarding the upper jaw, leaving not so much as a mark. The size of the dragon’s jaw, far larger than that of any beast known to me, was the only reason for circumstances to change. The final strike, driven by desperate agony and madness, slipped beneath the armored lip and impacted against the blue tissue of the gums. Unprotected and soft, the sharp steel cut a thin line across pale, indigo-tinted flesh.
The damage was minimal. It was an entirely superficial injury, and the healing powers of a dragon are such that it drew closed even as I watched. Yet for all that, a wound is a wound, and the injury, utterly unexpected as it must have been, froze the dragon in place for a moment. During that interval, time beyond all measurement, a single drop of blood, pale blue as the purest winter sky, slid down the serrate knife-blade teeth along hidden groves in the ivory, and dripped into my opened veins.
In this way did the blood of the dragon mingle with my own.
Dragons are the crystalized manifestation of divine essence. Nakiet, Lord of the Sky, master of the endless black above all things and lost between the stars, is represented by the blue-shaded dragons of frost. The slightest touch of their essence is a transfusion of the primeval itself, a touch of that which came before all things were formed in a time many eons before humankind, before life itself. Cold of indescribable potency raced through my flesh, more than sufficient to instantly freeze the body as the killing breath that claimed Kundun had, but the infusion of essence in the blood offered protection at the same instant. A cloak of sameness, of recognition, that supplied succor against the storm. All things stopped. Even time itself surrenders before the mastery of the Divines. Then, after an interminable interval in which there was only overwhelming cold beyond all thought and consciousness, the world returned.
The dragon looked down upon me, staring through wide eyes. In that moment, and only that moment, it shaped a sense of recognition, of knowledge passed across the bridge of blood. Jaws unclenched. It dropped me down to the ice, and with a flap of mighty wings dove deep into the center of its lair once more. I fell, insensate, to the ice. What the dragon saw, what choices it made, I will never know. Such things are not for human minds.
My consciousness lapsed, briefly, following the dragon’s departure. I returned to my senses after being shaken away by Lady Indili. She bound my wounds as best she could, an act helped by my environs, for the blood that seeped free froze at once and prevented further loss. Thereafter we scrambled to gather up food and other supplies and drag them away from the crater. Much could not be saved, having been shattered by the blast of breath. Without the pack animals there were severe limits as to what we could carry. Beyond food I saved only the notes I had complied since sending the Princess south and a handful of dragon scales and claw fragments. When we had filled our packs we dragged our exhausted bodies north, taking the easiest available path. The dragon did not reappear afterward.
I am told that sightings of the frost dragon continued for the remainder of the year and into the next, but afterward was not observed further. In the fourteenth year of Enduring Peace the Mumsassim Khagan, having learned of the general location of the lair, dispatched a war party to the center of the Cracking Void. These warriors suffered considerable suffering throughout their mission, and many lost their lives, but they found nothing. Perhaps they simply missed the crater, it would not be difficult to pass it by in the maddening glare of the ice. Or perhaps the dragon used its breath to seal the cavern over entirely. No one is likely to ever know. Perhaps, in a century or so, it will be seen again. It may even be that the eggs will hatch, and young dragons will spread across the mountains, though I have never found any scholarship regarding how long it might take for dragon eggs to incubate. It may well take many centuries.
That the Lady Indili and I met the dragon and lived suffices to meet the benchmark for success of the expedition, in a terribly limited sense, but it feels a great disappointment all the same. Some few fragmentary discards filling a small sack and a single drop of blood are not the boon the emperor sought. Had Erun Nassah led us to the lair with our company at full strength, a task my own shortcomings contributed to the failure to achieve, much more could have been accomplished. While capturing or killing the dragon are the goals of hubristic fever dreams, a proper caravan could have hauled away many camel-loads worth of scales and claws and perhaps, with the aid of apothecaries and healers, found the means to extract an egg. Regrettably, it was not the will of the Divines that this should happen. I have come to believe that it is not the right of humans to approach so closely to these living expressions of divine will. In this way, doom hung over the expedition from the very beginning. Such is the nature of competition between faith and emperors.