Blinking through her tears, Sheilah realized that she’d been trying to lever out the rock in the wrong direction. She lunged forward, pushing her whole weight on the sapling that she’d wedged down as far as she could in the gap, then planted her feet on it and shoved with all her strength.
The rock shifted under her feet; she sank the sapling down and heaved again, and suddenly the rock, roughly as large as she was but many times heavier, heaved over.
She fell on her face and scraped her arms, but she shoved her sapling into the new gap and heaved again, and the rock slid off the ledge with a heavy grating sound, and plummeted off edge of the cliff with hollow booms as it clattered down the side.
A furious roar of pain blasted out from the canyon floor; Sheilah scrambled down from the cliff waving smoke and dust from her face, tears streaming from her eyes, blood trickling from her arms, her legs, her hands, dragging the shattered, smoldering sapling along with her.
The dragonling was pinned. For some reason its rear legs weren’t working properly, and the rock she’d levered out from the cliff had crushed one of its forelegs, pinning it to the ground. Its wings flapped impotently, pushing clouds of dust and smoke around as it tried to free itself, its one remaining foreleg tearing gashes in the ground as it tried to find some purchase in pulling itself free.
She wasn't as strong as she should have been. She was hurt, exhausted, winded, battered, bruised, and bleeding. She didn’t even have the right weapons to fight a dragonling, let alone one of this size. How had one this size gone unnoticed?
She staggered towards the dragonling and, using her knife, quickly hacked a point into the sapling she’d dragged with her with her knife. A knife was carved from shards of dragontooth; it carried no history, it was a simple tool for anyone to use.
However, a dragontooth was something that had been forged in the furious flames of a dragon’s breath over and over. It was unbreakable, never lost its edge, and could cut through anything.
A sapling’s wood proved vulnerable to it just the same as anything else.
Sheilah lifted up the smoldering sapling in her hand. It wouldn’t be useful as a weapon unless she was really, really lucky, but when it came to things like luck, hers seemed to be all used up.
Besides, things like ‘luck’ didn’t exist in the Redstone. You lived and died by your own strength.
*****
She didn’t have a plan; there was no room for one. There was simply a dragonling and her, and one of them had to die.
She ran forward, bare feet slapping in the ashy remains of had been rich soil, lands that the Mountain Cat had claimed for themselves. She had no real right to be there except for two reasons: the first was the dragonling; only a member of the Dragon Clan could hunt them. The second was the Dragon Clan went where they liked, and bent their neck to no one.
The second was actually something that was carefully managed and dealt with through negotiation and complex exchanges of favors. Technically, the Dragon Clan could go where they liked and technically do whatever they wanted, but the cost would be high, politically speaking. Since the Dragon Clan didn’t want to be burdened under the weight of endless favors owed, territories were usually respected, with the exception of Totem hunting.
The sapling she carried blazed like an inferno as she raced towards the dragon, small branches and leaves scattering sparks and embers. She couldn’t see anything; the smoke caught in her eyes and blinded her, but she could hear the screeches of the trapped and pinned dragonling.
The air cleared for a moment, and she could see the monstrous head that could chew her head off with one bite swing towards her.
Grabbing the sapling with both hands, she dragged the burning end of the sapling in a pivot and swung it behind her.
The Dragon’s mouth opened in a horrific yawning arc; for a moment she thought she could see into that yawning maw, see the dreadful fires that seethed in the monster’s body, ready to blast her to ash.
She settled her feet and swung the sapling around like a club, planting the knife- carved butt of the sapling into the ground as she heaved with all her might to bring the burning end around with a furious scream of her own.
The burning branches and limbs of the sapling slammed into the dragonling’s head, scattering embers and flames across the dragon’s head.
A dragonling wouldn’t be damaged by something so pitiful, a sapling could no more damage a dragonling than a feather swung against a human. A dragonling was immune to fire; she hoped that the scattering embers would cause it to close its eyes by reflex.
She heard the drake close its mouth with a snap; saw it turn its head away; she let the sapling drop and drew her knife.
All of the weapons of the Clan of the Dragon were carved and ground from the teeth of dragons. Dragon teeth were stronger than steel and tempered by the flames a dragon spat.
Dragonhide was strong, able to turn aside any steel weapon, but a dragon tooth- a dragontooth could pierce dragonhide. A dragontooth knife, polished and ground to a razor’s edge, could cut dragonling hide.
Fialla had pointed out... when had she mentioned it?- that the wattles around the neck were especially weak. Sheilah had only one chance to use her knife, one chance to kill the beast.
She leapt up off the dragonling’s foreleg, drew her knife and reversed the blade in her hand and brought it down with a terrific impact that jarred her arms and numbed her hands.
The dragonling screamed and swung its head about to shake Sheilah loose, flapping its wings futilely. Her grip slipped; she firmed her grip and swung her body as the dragonling struggled to deal with an extra hundred pounds of weight dangling off its head.
It swung its head left and right, trying to dislodge Sheilah with a ferocity that she knew would kill her if she let go. She hung on for dear life as the dragonling thrashed about wildly.
Suddenly she slipped, and a spatter of liquid drenched her arms and slimed her grip. She opened her eyes and realized that her knife had cut a gash in the tender hide as the dragonling thrashed about.
She grit her teeth, but realized her jaw was already clenched tight with effort.
Now she swung her body, trying to get gravity to work in her favor as she dragged the knife down and dug it deeper, opening the gash wider. Dragonling blood splashed her face; she laughed maniacally, bathing in it, tasting it, drinking the scalding hot lifeblood of the dragon, spluttering laughter as she struggled not to choke as it washed over her.
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She lost her grip on her knife, a blade that had been passed down from father to son from her great-great-grandfather to her father, to her.
The dragon screeched again, a scream she’d heard before; a scream of mortal hurt. She hit the dirt and swallowed more of the blood, dizzy and euphoric, panting and desperately struggling to stay cogent.
She was possessed by visions of the world on fire, a massive spire of a mountain that oozed molten fire like the dragon’s own blood.
She licked the blood off her hands, tasting iron and the grit of dirt, and struggled to her feet. The Dragonling let out a weak scream as blood spurted and streamed from the wound in its neck.
She staggered towards the nearly full-grown dragon as its head hit the ground. She knelt and drank from the wound she’d cut in it, feeling her insides sear in fiery pain, feeling her mind blast apart as strange visions flooded it.
*****
She couldn’t remember when she did it, but she retrieved her great-grandfather’s knife and cut through the tender, weaker skin behind the dragon’s forelimb and into the body of the beast and cut out the drake’s nine-chambered heart and ate that, too.
Drinking the blood and eating the heart of the hatchlings and dragonlings gave the people of the Dragon Clan a fraction of their power. As a result, everyone in the Clan of the Dragon gained black hair, and razor sharp, unbreakable black nails.
When it came time to hunt a fully grown dragon, they would gain the full benefits of eating the flesh of their totem, a secret revealed only before they left to become adults as they began their hunt into the Ashlands, far to the north.
*****
Fialla had watched the entire fight from her vantage. She’d wanted to help her friend several times, especially when it was obvious that Sheilah didn’t have a weapon, but a hatchling fight, a dragonling fight, a dragon fight- all of them were done alone.
You lived and died by your own strength.
Fialla considered herself Sheilah’s very best friend. She followed the human girl everywhere she went, struggled to do everything that Sheilah could do.
Sheilah was a human, which meant that she was taller and stronger than the slim, lithe Fialla, who was half-elven. It seemed that it was decided from birth that she’d always be smaller and weaker than Sheilah, but it didn’t stop the girl’s determination to try and be Sheilah’s equal in all things.
She wasn’t sure if Sheilah had fought a fully-grown dragon or a nearly full grown dragon, but the fact that Sheilah had killed it with a knife resonated within the elven girl’s breast, reaffirming her faith in the human girl.
Sheilah could do anything.
*****
After a very long time, a time she couldn’t remember, Sheilah staggered to her feet. She was dizzy and gazed at everything around her vacantly.
“Sheilah!” Fialla called, appearing from nowhere and throwing her arms around the taller girl with exuberance.
Sheilah stared at the girl blankly.
“Fialla.” She finally managed, her throat raw and ragged.
“That was a-” the elven girl gave her a wide-eyed look. “It was like the stories!” She exclaimed, picking up her spear and dancing around the taller girl in her exuberance, shaking her spear over her head.
Sheilah gazed at Fialla blankly, and then, turning to the dead drake, went to its head and began forcing the mouth open. She needed a tooth as proof of her kill.
“That thing’s huge!”Fialla exclaimed as Sheilah grimly bent to her task. “Those teeth- You should talk to your father. They’re much too big to be dragonling teeth. You might not even need to go to the Ashlands!”
Fialla was right. The tooth that she cut from the beast’s mouth was long enough to be ground down into one of the Dragon Clan’s famous short-bladed swords.
A normal dragonling’s teeth were only finger-length.
Sheilah wordlessly cut the tooth from the dragon’s mouth, and then stepped back, her eyes fixed on the large wings of the dragonling.
“What?” Fialla asked, curiously following the taller girl’s gaze.
Sheilah climbed up on the drake’s back and out onto the wing, where she began dismantling the wing closest to Fialla.
“What? What are you doing?” Fialla asked, watching Sheilah go to work, digging her knife in between the gaps between the bones, cutting carefully.
Once she was done with whatever it was she was hoping to do with that wing, she strode over to the other wing and began cutting there, too.
Fialla watched with unabashed curiosity, comfortable with Sheilah’s silence. Sheilah didn’t need to explain anything she did to the half-elf girl, she simply needed to do whatever it was she wanted, and once it was done, Fialla would understand.
When Sheilah returned, she had a number of dragon wing bones and several sheets of the webbing that stretched and flexed between the wingbones. Sheilah wrapped up her trophies and turned to the dead beast.
She opened her mouth, closed it, shook her head, hefted her bundle to her shoulder, and walked away, Fialla following shortly after.
*****
When Sheilah returned home covered in dried, flaking blood, her mothers exclaimed and worried over her and checked her for wounds. She didn’t say anything or respond to their questions, simply draped the wing-webbing over the leather racks to be stretched, washed her hands in the bucket and threw herself into bed.
“She’s getting further and further away from us.” Ladria complained to her husband Davian after the girl had gone to sleep.
“She blames herself for Caidi’s death.” Mayrin added in her cool, crisp voice. She always sounded indifferent and disinterested, no matter what it was she talked about- or to whom.
“It was explained to her that it wasn’t her fault.” Davian replied. “She just needs to learn that herself.” He added.
“I think that you should try talking to her again.” Ladria insisted. “And this time, make sure she understands that it wasn’t her fault.”
Davian rolled his eyes. “What she needs is-” He cut himself off and then shook his head. “Something that doesn’t exist in this world.” He finished lamely. He picked over the things she dropped and eyed the dragonling tooth she’d brought back.
“What do you make of this?” He asked curiously.
“Did she-” Ladria started to ask, but cut herself off, looking up at her husband.
“You think she slew a Dragon.” Mayrin added. “It’s certainly the size of a Dragon’s tooth.”
“I’ll have to see the corpse for myself.” Davian muttered. He stepped out of the tent briefly and eyed the sky. “I’ll go have a look.” He explained to the two elven women. “Keep an eye on her.”
When Sheilah awoke, she drew buckets of water as lifelessly as she had before, hauling the full buckets to fill the stone pots they used to hold the water they used before the others awoke.
Once that was done, she settled herself down to work with her knife on the dragonbones, using the flexible strands of webbing to bind them to each other, and then from there, affix them to a bowstave for strength.
She sat outside the tent, tending a small fire while she cooked her breakfast when Davian returned.
He saw the fire and let out a short, frustrated sigh.
A family member cooking their food outside of their family home held many cultural meanings to the Clansmen of the Redstone, none of which were positive.
“Go inside, Sheilah. There’s a warm fire that you can eat at.”
“Chores are done.” She replied indifferently, fishing out the scraps of meat from the fire and stuffing them into her mouth. She kicked the fire apart, shouldered her dragonling bones and trudged away.
He grit his teeth in frustration, and debated going after her against getting a couple of hours of sleep before dawn arrived.
He turned towards the tent, and then turned back to her, but she was already gone.