Dread filled the town when the legendary dragon wing darted into view. Fear at the glint of teeth which never should have grown that large. Chaos erupted when the fires erupted from her mouth. A perfect opening paragraph I did not expect to wake up in the middle of, but somehow, I did.
I sat up, straightening my glasses, looking around as people screamed in a pure panic. I blinked, taking in the sight. The town was ablaze, the only light in the autumn night. This wasn’t supposed to be something I was a part of, it was something I was supposed to be narrating. My jaw was slack as villagers ran every which way, saving the children. Which made complete sense, I just had no idea why I was here.
I patted myself to check if this was real, looking around with a glowing dread. Pavaldri the Dragon swooped low, breathing fire far too close for comfort. I backed away before standing up and running.
There were screams as fire crackled overhead. I wracked my brain, trying to remember. I never said the words. I never gave the code. I shouldn’t be here. I couldn’t be here. I closed my eyes, trying to give up the power. Forcing myself out of my story.
The screams all around me, the fire way too close to my flesh made a point that I was here, in a place I shouldn’t. In this town I created, with the dragon overhead I created, in the opening scene I knew the ending of.
“And then I did not enter my story,” I said, hoping if I said it out loud, I would revert to my office. My nice, cushy office. With my breakfast on the…
Was my stove still on?
Pavaldri slammed to the earth, roaring. I covered my ears, falling to my knees. The townsfolk screamed as they tried to get away from her terrible claws. There were shouts and cries that, if I were in my office right now, I’d take the time to describe, but considering I was in the middle of it, I ran as fast as I could in the opposite direction.
“Narration code 0000. Code 0000! I leave my story! I leave it! I don’t want to be here!” I hollered to the sky.
Nothing happened. Something should have happened, but nothing did. I shouldn’t be here. Not only did this break every single law of narration, but this could also ban me from narrating any books in the future. If I got out of this alive. If my story survived the narrator tumbling into his own world.
Pavaldri rammed her claws into buildings, toppling them as she roared. Jets of flames covered the entire town as the screams of the villagers filled the air before they were abruptly cut off.
The autumn night was no longer cold. Sweat poured down my face as I closed my eyes, trying to will myself back to my office. This was absolutely, one hundred percent ruining my story. Case in point, medieval fantasy had no idea what one hundred percent even meant. At least, not in my story they didn’t.
I ran behind a tree, which was stupid because trees burned, but I needed somewhere to think. I never said the words or the code except for now when I was trying to get out. Once again, I tried to use the code to get out. I really, really needed to get out.
An inferno blasted through the village, my brown hair moving with the heat wave. I ducked out of instinct.
A crowd of villagers sprinted into the forests in a panic. Pavaldri turned her long, snake-like neck toward them, getting ready to blast them with heat. I knew what would happen to them. It was there in my outline, on my desk, by my coffee, where my body was most likely slumped over as my conscious was here, this terror I created for my characters, but not for me.
“Watch out!” I shouted because it was instinctual.
Pavaldri blasted them with a flame so hot they were incinerated on the spot. I gagged, smelling the burning flesh. Oh, this was bad. I was here, in the first chapter of my book, when the dragon completely obliterated the hero’s town. Where no one was supposed to survive.
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I took a few deep breaths, trying to gather my courage. I couldn’t die in my own creation, not unless I wanted to, but it still didn’t stop the adrenaline course through me as I realized I was going to witness an entire town get destroyed all around me.
I ran from behind the trees, trying to get people’s attention. “Go!” I shouted. “Get out of here! Run!”
The townsfolk certainly tried. I ran toward the flaming town as Pavaldri continued to ransack it, flattening the buildings, using her tail to completely wipe out the town square.
Those red scales really were majestic, though, gleaming in the moonlight. If Pavaldri was sleeping, I would have marveled at her beauty. Since she was awake, and I was filled with an insane amount of adrenaline that pushed my flight or fight reaction, I wanted to kill her. If this were my actual life, and a beautiful, red dragon dropped onto my town and starting wreaking havoc, I would have run the other way screaming in a pitch more suitable for a preteen girl. But I couldn’t die, so it helped the pitch of my screams remain in the twenty-nine-year-old male variety.
Mostly.
“Watch out!” I shouted at a little girl who was trying to run away from the falling debris of a house. I sprinted over and grabbed her waist, pulling her aside right as Pavaldri rammed her spiked tail against a home. I covered the girl with my body, feeling bricks hit me instead of her. Yes, the bricks hit me, but no, I didn’t feel it. They bounced off me as effortlessly as if I was the brick wall instead of them. The material of this world couldn’t hurt me unless I let it.
The bricks settled on the ground as I heard the little girl sobbing. “Run for the forest. Get out of here,” I ordered, quickly cleaning my glasses on an equally dirty shirt before placing them back on again.
She nodded before leaping out of my arms and running as fast as she possibly could. I didn’t know how much of it was out of terror, and how much of it was a command from the narrator himself, but I could only hope she was safe. I ran in the opposite direction, hoping to find more people to warn. The houses were either smashed or burning to the ground. The night was too hot.
I ran too close to the flames, looking around, realizing the destruction was complete. The villagers were all dead or burnt. I placed my hands on my knees, feeling the heat of the flames on my face, arms, and legs, seeing and smelling everything that burned. This was all supposed to happen, because it was in my outline, but it looked so much worse now that I was literally in the middle of it.
I heard a building moving. No, it was Pavaldri. She turned her body and swung her head to stare right at me. My blue eyes widened, staring at her yellow ones. Her face was twice the size of me, her red scales shimmered in the flames. Horns lined her face as she began to growl, opening her mouth to show off the teeth that were the size of my legs. Staring at her eyes I connected with her, as the narrator of the story and the person who created her. I knew exactly what she was thinking in that moment. Even then, I doubted I needed to be the narrator to know what she wanted.
I turned around and ran. “Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.”
No, I couldn’t die. No, I wouldn’t feel pain when she tried to kill me, but what other reaction was one supposed to have when face to face with a dragon.
The ground trembled under her steps. I sprinted past the burning buildings, the burning bodies, the burning everything before teeth surrounded me on every side. I looked up to see Pavaldri’s mouth instead of the sky. “Nope, nope, nope, nope, NOPE!”
She clamped down, chewing me as she lifted off into the sky. I screamed. It may or may not have been in the pitch more acceptable for a preteen girl. I couldn’t feel the razor-sharp teeth the size of my legs trying to pierce my skin, but I could see them, which was enough for my overactive imagination to guess how it would feel to be eaten by a dragon. My entire body went numb, visions of how I would look in a body bag tumbled into my mind.
Pavaldri kept trying to eat me, kept trying to mash me down into smaller bits, and I did little else but hold my glasses to my face to keep them there. I wriggled out of the spaces of her teeth before landing on her tongue, gasping. Her mouth was hot. She burned down an entire village, so of course she’d have some residual heat there, but it still surprised me. Her tongue began to move, unsure about the human man now trying to keep his balance on her tongue. She moved it around to get me to fall forward on her teeth again. I wrapped my arms around her tongue, keeping my eyes closed. As my glasses hung slightly askew from my face, I realized this was never a paragraph I ever planned to write down, let alone say. Ever.
Through the gaps of her teeth, I watched the destroyed village disappear. I weighed my options of how terrifying it would be to leap out of a dragon’s mouth to the country below when Pavaldri snapped her tongue, shooting me to the back of her throat before swallowing me whole.