“B...bard?” Ildarg had the sensation he hadn’t heard well. “What do you-”
“Yes, bard!” The dragon roared. “Those who wander from human settlement to human settlement and sing.”
Ildarg felt a big, big knot in his stomach.
He was a blacksmith! At no point in his life had he ever showed any whatsoever music talent. Once, during his younger years, he had tried to sing some of the bard songs he remembered, out of boredom; when he left home, there was a small crowd asking who was in agony. Plus, everyone knew bards were nutty slackers! Valueless youngsters who sang some useless, ancient story to beg for some spare change, instead of creating something concrete and tangible like blacksmiths. Ildarg couldn’t reduce himself to become one of them!
Unfortunately, he had a dragon in front of him, and a daughter to save. The fact the monster didn’t want to kill him immediately was a success on its own.
However, maybe he could still make questions…
“Why me? I can’t sing!”
“You’re going to learn it.”
“How? With your books?”
“NEVER!” The dragon roared furiously, waving a claw so close to Ildarg he fell from trying to dodge it. “That is not negotiable, human. None of the information I hoard will ever be available to any of you.”
“But I need to learn it-”
“You’ll do that yourself.”
The knot in his stomach enlarged, almost making him puke.
“Mr dragon,” he said, praying he wouldn’t be disrespectful by addressing it like that, “I am sure I can find you a better bard to serve you...if I just get back to my village I could bring one that may be suited to your-”
“No. It has to be you. You found out this cave. I won’t let any other human enter willingly.”
Ildarg sighed. It was time to accept the truth.
“Plus,” the dragon added, “I’ve – ahem – neglected my research for a good bard to face my rival, so I don’t have much choice.”
“Your...rival?”
“You have so much to learn, human. Sit down, for it’s going to be a loooooong explanation.” While pronouncing the word ‘long’, the dragon made a large circle with its head while pronouncing the vowel. Ildarg sat down- “NO! Not on the books!” Ildarg got up and descended down to where the naked rock was visible.
“Pay attention now, human. Here begins the story of Kirja, son of Kansi, from the Sivu mountains.”
“So you’re a male?”
“Don’t you dare interrupt me! As I was saying, here begins my story. Kirja hatched in a time when the land was not contaminated by their folly. The Sivu mountains still stood high and fierce, the dragons were prosperous and the Earth flourished. But alas, a great threat was about to loom on the land…”
Remembering Kirja’s previous words, Ildarg suspected the great threat had something to do with humans. He almost opened his mouth to anticipate him, but his common sense shut it down.
“...which was the other dragons.”
“Uh?”
“Didn’t I just tell you not to interrupt me?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose this time, I swear!”
Kirja released some clouds of smoke from his nostrils, in what looked dangerously like irritation. Ildarg bit his lips, to be sure not to pronounce anything.
“So, the Earth was threatened by other dragons, who decided to take a decision so terrible that it led us to the catastrophe. You see, Kirja was part of the Council of Dragons, which decided all the dragon debates that couldn’t be decided through battling. His Council mates, one day, thought that humans deserved to be given what we had deemed dearest. They thought to share with humans our knowledge. Why, I asked? Why should we have given such a gift to irrelevant creatures like them? Because they planned to make them our servants. Teach them, they said, and they will learn the basics to make our lives better, without needing violent fights all the time, as humans would fight for us. Why them specifically? Because their intelligence was the closest to a dragon, they said: very little work would be required.”
Ildarg had a vision of oceans of warriors going into battle and massacring each other for nothing else than some dragon’s whims. He bit his lips harder, the metallic taste of blood pricking his tongue.
“At first, Kirja agreed.” the dragon continued his narration, “it was pointless to argue, when the rest of the Council agreed so in unison. We took some thousands of humans, bred them and taught us our costumes and arts. Kirja himself, for a while, had his personal human population. But then the catastrophe happened. One day, we realized too late we should have put some limits. Our humans became too intelligent, too cultured, too independent. They began developing their tools, first to continue their work, then to take their independence from us.”
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During all that, the human got surprised realizing he was listening to the dragon in fascination. Also, he was rooting for the humans. What was happening to him?
“Soon, for dragons the end began. The humans, smaller in size but bigger in numbers, overthrew their legitimate dragon owners. Kirja survived by mere chance, by hiding in an island in the middle of an ocean after being chased by his humans with their new weapons; most of his fellows succumbed. For one thousand years did Kirja hide himself in that solitary confinement, the most boring years of his life. Finally, when he realized that boredom was about to kill him, he returned to his homeland; but gasp! There was no more homeland. The humans had destroyed it. Forests, lakes, mountains...all wiped out. Nothing but dead land.”
The dragon made a dramatic silence. Ildarg couldn’t bite his lips any longer, and let out a ‘gasp’ from Kirja’s amazing story. He expected to be scolded again, but the dragon, this time, let go.
“But Kirja didn’t lose hope: that desolation gave him a new purpose in life. Roaring to the sky, he swore he would restore the ancient dragon civilization based on mutual conflict: it was conflict that guaranteed dragons wouldn’t collaborate too much among themselves, so that their combined power wouldn’t destroy their land, something that humans, foolishly, hadn’t foreseen. For another thousand of years, Kirja flew to find dragon survivors with whom re-establish our ancient society and begin a sane, plentiful bloody rivalry!”
Ildarg wasn’t sure he heard well. A sane, plentiful rivalry? What did that mean?
“Eventually, he found one worthy of him: Boken, daughter of Slag, from the Sida lowlands. Proud and strong just like him, only with blue scales unlike Kirja’s yellow ones. As both met, instant understanding flourished between them, and both agreed to keep humans away from the knowledge that had led them to causing that catastrophe, since they were incapable of managing it correctly. Their rivalry, they conclude, would be based on gathering as many books as they could, and race to see who had the biggest hoard! Except for a short respite of one century when they mated to regenerate the dragon race.”
Now in the human’s mind was more the confusion than the fascination.
“So have the years passed, and the two dragons, best enemies forever, have fought for the control of the land around our lairs, to keep the human population at a reasonable level, prevent them from developing a mindset again and getting as much books as possible. Once every hundred of years, though, they fiercely battle for their supremacy. But no more with physical fights, for every remaining elder dragon is too precious. Instead, we let that do it to some humans! Bards, for the precision. Why them? So we don’t teach them how to fight for real.”
The dragon inhaled deeply. “And that concludes Kirja’s story. Now, human, I suppose, since you found me, that you belong to the piece of land under my control.”
Ildarg nodded. Everyone knew the dragon existed, few talked about him. Not all generations got to see him, for he appeared only to redeem the tribute in books he demanded; if they didn’t, there would be ‘terrible, terrible consequences’, as his village’s priest always repeated. Ildarg always thought with regret at all the money he had to give away to buy books for the dragon’s hoard.
“What do you know instead about my enemy?” Kirja demanded.
“Ergh, nothing. We’ve always been under your command.”
“Lucky you! My rival is not as benevolent as me. If you had penetrated into her lair, right now you’d be just a mass of carbon. I can forgive a village if they can’t give me books once, unlike her. But at our last fight, despite my offer being clearly superior, her bard defeated mine by a landslide!”
“What happened?” Ildarg asked.
The dragon snorted. “She demands a higher book tribute, but less frequently. 300 volumes every 15 years, while I ask for 100 every 5. Her bard was just better with words so they all believed her conditions were more advantageous. I lost so many historical regions that day!”
“And so, what you want me to sing about is…”
“Is about how better my conditions are.”
“Like, the kind of things merchants do?” He opened his hand and put it next to his mouth. “Gems, gems! The rarest and precious of all! Make your spouse more beautiful with a ruby on her" hair! Only three hundred gold for tod-”
Kirja roared at him so close to Ildarg, he fell down from the stream of air.
“Do not,” the dragon barked, “ever do it like that.”
“How, then?”
“Like a bard, remember? Singing.”
“But I told you already, I can’t s-oh, never mind. I will do it. If you cure my child when it’s done.”
The dragon seemed to reflect for a moment: he looked at Ildarg in silence for a long time, making a strange, low sound that seemed to come from between his jaws. Then he pronounced:
“Fine.”
“T...thank you.”
“Now,” Kirja continued, “you’ll need a little more facts to prove I am much better than Boken. First of all, as I said, my condition are way better. Second, I began hoarding books before her, and this puts me in a position of seniority, not mentioning I am a former member of the defunct Dragon Council. Third, my hoard includes exclusives impossible to find anywhere else, like Historia Draconum Occidentalum, The Salmon Poem and the book every other dragon wishes they had, Spyro x Reader Dragon V-”
“When is this final battle?” Ildarg asked.
The dragon looked at him with a very offended look.
“If you hadn’t just become my personal bard, I wouldn’t tolerate these interruptions. However, I haven’t done you that information, so at least you have reminded me. It’s going to be in the village of Lavidar, in seven days.
“Seven days?” The human shouted. “I can’t learn to sing in seven days!”
“Then find something very good to make you learn it! Because if you lose, I won’t fulfill my promise of healing your offspring.”
Ildarg swallowed all the saliva he had inside his mouth.