Chapter 1- Escape

Gone was the warm climate of the desert and the cool cave where I had hatched with the rest of my clutch. I could no longer smell the pleasant scent of ozone, which had been the first thing I remembered. It was a memory that, even now, I associated with my mother.

I and my fellow hatchlings could spit lightning almost from the moment we were born—long before our scales changed from their initial dirty gray. That was back when we were mewling little wyrms, little more than creatures of instinct. We ate what mother provided as we grew in both body and mind.

Not that it happened overnight. I had slept… a lot. It was the way of the wyrm. We were too strong for this world, so periods of growth were often defined by our extended naps—naps which lasted weeks or sometimes even up to a year. My mind never pondered if this was the way it was with other beings. It was the dragon way and that meant it was the correct one.

During those periods of hibernation, my body developed. I shed my scales, replacing the ugly gray with a brilliant blue. My color was still a dragonling’s azure blue, though I knew in later years it would deepen. How I knew that was the crux of what made dragons the kings of the world.

It wasn’t our nearly impenetrable armor, talons like swords, or breath which could obliterate our enemies that set us at the apex of the food chain. No, it was the magic which boiled throughout our blood which made dragons what we were. Lesser beings might use magic but we dragons were magic.

That heritage came from the dragon dream. It awakened within my mind as I grew longer and stronger. It would be hard to explain what that means to beings with such fleeting lives as you humans have. But, suffice it to say, that it is what all dragons of a given lineage share. The dragon dream is our birthright. It is a heritage of knowledge, innate abilities, and an absolute assurance of our place in the world.

As a dragon, I was born with all of the knowledge of my ancestors. I possessed their memories and held the potential to perform any of their magic. My body needed only to grow strong enough to hold all the necessary mana while my mind expanded to absorb more of the dragon dream.

Most of the time, it was like a vague awareness in the back of my head. I simply knew things. And one of the things that I knew was that in the future I would know more.

Now, I was the only one left from my clutch. Siblings who I’d played with, cuddled with, and fought with were gone. Some by my claw or fang—though I took no joy in it—but life is hard for a young dragon. Dragons cultivate an image of indestructibility. It is, of course, true that we are the greatest of all mortal races. but the dirty little secret remains that we can be killed.

Oh sure, the eldest of my kind are feared, not just by lonely princesses, mischievous donkeys, or small villages, but by entire nations. Yet life never starts out that way. We may become the greatest of apex predators, but we have to claw and scorch our way to the top, first. If a dragon someday sits upon a massive pile of shiny golden coins it is because they’ve earned that right.

When mother was with us, we were safe, but she still had to go and hunt for us. Then, we were subject to burrow worms, phoenixes, and other cowardly predators who like to raid a dragon’s nest. After a few years, though, we grew strong enough that most predators preferred seeking easier prey. At that point, other dragons became our greatest threat. And not just any dragons, it was our clutch mates we feared the most.

It is difficult to describe to you coddled little apes what it is like to fight your clutch mates. We fight for dominance and survival. At first it was a game, the first birthright of a dragon—the struggle for life. I was given a chance, nothing more. Beyond that, I fought for and claimed everything that I was becoming.

Mother fed us, but the older we got, the less food she brought—or perhaps it was simply that we were all growing so fast, that we outgrew what she was willing to share with us. Dragons are not known for their maternal instincts, so it was a wonder that she kept coming back for that first twenty years to feed us, even if the trips became less and less frequent.

Once we strayed from the nest, there were other predators we had to deal with. The nomadic tribes of the desert greatly valued our scales. The brilliant blue of those scales was used for potions, dyes, and armor. Far worse, though, were the adventurers. Fortunately, they were few and far between.

A mother dragon never lays her eggs inside her own lair, because she doesn’t wish to share her hoard with her offspring. Nor does she want to have us ranging out from that lair and bringing back unwelcome guests. So, my mother’s nest was nothing but a cave deep in a rocky escarpment, high in the Taleian deserts.

If adventurers found out about a dragon nest, though, it was never safe. Some of the fools would likely have attacked, even if mother had been there. I knew through the dragon dream that we were valued by wizards, to power their enchantments and as re-agents for their spells. Some had even sought to tame a dragon. I scoffed whenever I thought of that, but my ancestors’ recollections contained memories of seeing men or women riding upon the backs of dragons.

That was probably where it all began for me. I always got the sense that I was a little different, but I couldn’t help it. Something about the manlings made me curious. Thus, when I escaped the final attack upon our nest at the young, impressionable age of fifty, I hadn’t seen my mother in decades. Nor had I ever seen another dragon, other than my clutch mates… well, not including the dragon dream.

I was strong enough to be a young adult, for I had reluctantly slain two of my nest fellows and absorbed their energy. I had done the same to many other creatures in the region around the nest. It honed my instincts to hunt, and stoked the lust for power that all dragons feel. More than that, it was a necessary part of how dragons grow. The flesh of lesser beasts filled my belly, but it was their life force and magic which I needed most.

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That power had begun to form into my core. It would take time, but it was the beginning of becoming something more. It was also what made me the strongest of the remaining dragons in my clutch. Enough so that I was able to live in peace with my sister. She and I were all that remained and the world was likely grateful that only two dragons survived from our clutch of ten dragons.

The day came, though, when adventurers found our cave. I had stopped thinking of it as mother’s nest. It was now my cave—one I shared with my sister. This was a hard day to remember, because it made me feel small. The adventurers were simply too strong.

That feeling would fuel my growth in the future.

It wasn’t that I didn’t believe I could have killed any one of them—if they had been alone—but rather, the way they worked together. When I battered the one wearing the shiny armor like a turtle, his wounds disappeared as their priest healed him. Divine magic is foreign to my kind, but I could feel the touch of the gods on that one.

Then, there was the one who kept sneaking up behind me. She managed to find tender spots between my scales with her little claw—a dagger, I think humans call it. It pierced my flesh and drew my blood, which infuriated me. The wounds were far from fatal, but most certainly were painful. I had to struggle not to lose myself to a blood-rage. Who were these tiny, soft creatures to hurt me so?

The worst of them, however, was the old one in robes. It was hard for me to tell them apart with my eyes. Monkeys or humans, you primates all looked alike to me at that point. But my nose knew the difference between fresh young flowers and wilted remains. The only reason that I managed to escape was because the old human kept insisting that I be taken captive, rather than slain.

When Sheraleigh, my sister, burst into the cave, it provided me an opportunity to escape. I was ashamed that I escaped and she did not, but every creature owns the right of self-preservation. With our long lives, dragons feel this perhaps more acutely than the lesser races. I have no doubt they killed Sheraleigh, but I may never know for certain.

She and I shared the same dragon dream. But that was our past and not about our future. If an opportunity presented itself, I’d surely avenge her. Afterall, if there was one thing that all my ancestors were in agreement about, it was that part of the power of a dragon was their image of unassailability.

It wouldn’t’ do to have adventurers thinking we were easy pickings. No, any adventurer who stood face to face with a dragon should have to fight to keep from wetting himself. They should be so terrified that any interaction was accidental—a terrible accident, on their part.

When I escaped the cave, I took flight. I was strong enough to fly, but not yet strong enough to risk drawing the attention of another dragon. There might not be many of us, but it wouldn’t take much for another to believe I was encroaching on their domain. I flew as low as I could, so as not to draw the attention of another of my kind. I was far from graceful at this point, but it would come with time and practice.

Two tiny slivers of wood had impaled themselves in the membrane of my right wing. One of the humans, dressed in green and brown, had used a stick and string to hurl these slivers of wood at me. They weren’t enough to stop me from flying, but they felt uncomfortable each time I beat my wings.

I’d have to put up with it. It wouldn’t do me any good to escape the nest only to let the adventurers catch up to me. For that reason, I raced to the north once I was airborne. I wasn’t sure what drew me, but I had always been curious about the haunts of man. It was as good a destination as any.

Humans were a curious bunch, that they could do such wonderous things and yet were so pitiful that they needed to live on top of one another, was one of many incongruities I learned of through the dragon dream. My dream memories told me there were great cities in that direction, with hundreds of thousands of the tiny humans to be found in them.

I flew for more than a hundred miles. Eventually, I felt safe enough to rise up high to where the air grew thin, before slowly gliding down on the thermals from the desert. Even with the annoying slivers in my wing, it was a joy to fly. Flying was the very definition of what it meant to be a dragon. I was literally above everything and everyone, looking down on the lesser races.

At least that was what my memories taught me. I found that my curiosity was greater than my desire to control my surroundings, though. For all I knew, I was the first dragon to feel this way. I certainly couldn’t recall even the hint of a similar impulse from the memories of my ancestors.

Eventually, I decided to land where the desert gave way to rolling hills. The gentle slopes were covered in scrub grass where I found a massive herd of animals I had never before seen, but which my ancestral memories gave a name to—cows. A good meal would go a long way towards improving my mood.

I circled down and was delighted when my mere presence sent a wave of terror through these bovine snacks. I was only twenty-five feet long at this point, but that was more than enough to make short work of a pair of cows. I dove down at the herd, exulting in my power, and opened my mouth.

Sucking in air, I exhaled. The power inside of me surged forth and hit the small spot on the roof of my mouth—that place which contained my lightning, so to speak. I’d love to say that a great bolt of power lanced out and ripped up the ground before me, but that would be a bit of a stretch. Arcs of electricity threw a host of sparks as they leapt from one cow to another and back again, with an effect that may not have been as impressive, but which was just as effective.

They spasmed and jerked uncontrollably as current popped out of them into the ground. My breath left electric burns over a swath one hundred feet long and ten feet wide. In total, some two dozen cows fell over, still shaking. With a toothy grin, I landed and chomped into the first tasty morsel.

My snack wasn’t dead, but she was definitely immobilized. Maybe it was cruel to bite into her while she yet lived, but I was a dragon. And it was so worth it. Cow tasted amazing. It had a wonderful diversity of flavor, depending on which part I ate. I looked up while chewing, my mouth full of my still warm snack, and saw the bulging eyes of the nearest cows as they thrashed about.

They clearly wanted to get up and run, but their survival instinct had yet to overcome the paralysis induced by my breath weapon. Well, that and dragon fear tended to make the minds of lesser beasts so fuzzy that they were unable to act decisively. This enabled me to leisurely eat my fill.

After three cows, I didn’t think I could take another bite. Looking up, I saw a small patch of mint in the field. Normally, that would be good for removing the smell of raw flesh from my mouth. I might be a predator, but I wasn’t uncouth. It was just that today, I felt like if I took one more bite, I might explode—even if it was just a tiny mint.

I let the other cows get up and run away when they recovered. Truthfully, though, that had more to do with the fact that chasing after my food is much more fun than storing it up for the future. Instead of stocking my larder, so to speak, I stretched out and basked in the sun. My leisure was only spoiled by the small but nagging pain in my right wing.

I had tried to push my head far enough around to bite off the offending splinters, but it was too much of a stretch for even my sinuous neck. A problem that I couldn’t solve wasn’t worth thinking about. The confidence of generations through time immemorial told me that—eventually—a solution would present itself. Dragons could be patient when we needed to. Thus reassured, I drifted off to sleep, secure in my supremacy over a field of cows.