BoD - Chapter 2 - Nearly Final

Chapter 2

     The sun bore down on a herd of goats as they grazed in a mountain field. He took a step forward, letting his red-scaled hand down silently on the rocky ledge. They hadn’t noticed him, not yet at least, so he took another cautious step. Hot fire-heated breath curled from his nostrils. A ram lifted its head, glancing around anxiously and sniffing the air. He watched it carefully, waiting to see what it would do. It seemed to decide nothing was wrong and returned to nibbling contentedly on its patch of grass. But he was close enough now.
     A bright red dragon burst from the ledge above the clearing, a black shadow with glowing crimson wings bearing down on its prey. The goats cried a warning to one another, but the dragon was already upon them, sweeping up four in his claws and lifting them away. The remaining members of the herd escaped into the sparse, low forest – all the trees could manage at this altitude.
     “Thanks Daragon,” a second dragon, this one green, said to the red one, who had landed a few minutes’ flight away. He took his two goats, now dead, and dug his long fangs into one, drops of blood dripping onto his dark-green scaly forearms. A long vine was curled around his wrist like a bracelet, but despite the dragons’ messy habits of eating, it never got dirty.
     “No problem,” Daragon said, settling down with his own two goats, looking out over the South Ronr Plains. The two friends were enjoying the mid-fall sunshine on the edge of the Sillonar Mountains before the weather grew cold and the snow started to fall. They finished their meal while watching the sun set to the south, then the green dragon lay down, tucking his forelegs beneath him and letting his hind legs sprawl out to the side. He spread out his emerald-colored wings to soak up the sun, much like the leaves of a plant. Daragon was content to lie on his back, long neck-spikes folded against his spine, and enjoy the soft warmth of the sun’s last rays on his pale-red stomach. After a while, he rolled onto his side and looked curiously at the green dragon. “Hearing anything interesting, Rashcon?”
     Rashcon shook his head, eyes closed, absorbed in the whispers and mutterings of plants that only the green dragons could hear. They were able to feel the energy of all things green and growing, even communicate with them if they had the right training and enough practice. They could make plants grow at any speed they wished and manipulate them in various other ways, depending on the individual dragon’s talent and skill.
     Daragon shrugged, yawing wide and letting out his unusually warm breath. The red dragon’s ability was simpler; he could breathe fire and control it however he wanted. He had just begun to settle onto his back again when he heard the scraping of claws against stone. He sat up, seeing Rashcon standing with eyes open and focused to the southwest. “You hear something after all?” he asked the dragon.
     Rashcon nodded. “Look,” he said, half-unfolding a wing to point in the direction he was gazing.
     Daragon walked over to him and looked in the same direction. A dark shape moved on the horizon, slithering through the air with three great pairs of wings. “That’s not a sandflyer is it?” he asked, sounding concerned. The flying serpents lived only in the Sandflyer Desert, which was more than two thousand miles to the west and a flight of at least four days. Maybe three for a sandflyer.
     Rashcon nodded. “I don’t know what else it could be.” He paused, following its movements with his eyes. “It looks like it’s heading in this direction.”
     “There’s only one, as far as I can see,” Daragon observed, having examined all of the sky visible to them. “Do you think it would be alright to take it down? We shouldn’t let it roam free.”
     The green dragon considered this, watching the serpent and their surroundings intently. “I think the Dragon Father would approve,” he said finally, using the term the dragons used for their leader. “It should be fine, so long as we’re careful.”
     “Careful is good, I suppose,” Daragon said. “But really, it’s just one small sandflyer; barely a challenge.”
     Rashcon grinned in response, then spread his wings and leapt off the ledge, quickly followed by the red dragon. Their powerful wings carried them around the last few mountains, over the forested foothills, then onto the open fall-tanned plains. As they flew, a small dot became visible, moving quickly toward the relative safety of the thick forest where the sandflyer would be forced to slow down.
     Daragon squinted at it as they approached. “Is that a human?” he asked.
     Rashcon nodded, tilting his flight slightly to the east where the sandflyer was speeding toward the human. The dragon’s expression took on an edge of dislike; humans and dragons were long-standing enemies.
     The human looked up and saw the two dragons flying toward her. From the dragons’ distance, they couldn’t see the look of relief that flew across her face. She changed direction, disappearing under a large willow standing alone in the grass. A few moments later, she reappeared, the bundle she had been carrying in her arms now gone. Her actions went unnoticed by Rashcon, but Daragon watched her with confusion; she hadn’t tried to hide under the willow from either them or the sandflyer.
     The creature screeched, a piercing sound that made the woman throw her hands over her ears. The dragons growled away the pain, shaking their heads to clear them of the residual ringing.
     Daragon swerved up when they reached the serpent while Rashcon dived. The green dragon let the end of his vine down to the ground, telling it to take root; the rest he sent shooting up toward the serpent. The creature dodged though, folding its three pairs of wings against its dark acid-green body and landing, slithering through the grass nearly as fast as it had flown. It reared up less than a dozen feet behind the human, huge fangs poised, but Rashcon’s vine wrapped itself around the serpent, binding black wings to body and body to ground. With another screech, this one filled with rage, it plunged its head down and sunk the edge of a fang into the woman’s shoulder, before she had been able to get away.
     A ball of yellow-white flame shot from Daragon’s open jaws and collided with the sandflyer’s head; with one last screech, it went limp. The two dragons landed beside it, the smell of burnt meat filling the air. Rashcon trotted to the snake to gather his vine while Daragon walked over to the dying woman. He lifted the serpent’s head away from her, but not without effort; the head was bigger than his own.
     Her eyes opened when he lowered his head to examine her. She returned his surprised and curious gaze with a smile both thankful and unafraid, though shaded with pain.
     They looked at each other for a few moments, nothing said aloud but something unconscious passing between them, then she cried out, eyes squeezed shut against the pain that sandflyer venom inflicted as it killed its victim. Her skin was growing pale under the setting sun and beads of sweat trickled down into her long wavy brown hair. She forced open her eyes again to gaze up at the dragon. Her left arm hung useless at her side, but the right she lifted slowly, gently, up to touch Daragon’s snout. He flinched slightly out of instinct, but didn’t resist the touch. He was too surprised and too unexpectedly sorry for her.
     After a moment her arm dropped and she said, with a ragged, yet still strong voice. “Under the tree… Dragonbain. Take care of him… for me…” Then she closed her eyes and the last of her life slipped from her body. Daragon continued to gaze at her and when Rashcon called to him he didn’t hear.
     “Daragon?” the green dragon asked again, a little worried, trotting up to the red dragon with an anxious glance at the human body. “You alright?” When he still didn’t answer, Rashcon nudged him in the shoulder. “Hey, you alright?”
     Daragon jumped a bit, having been roused from his thoughts, then turned with a nod to Rashcon. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, giving his friend a smile.
     The green dragon didn’t seem convinced. “What’s wrong?”
     “I’m just, kind of surprised is all.” Daragon said, sitting back and looking at the human again. “She wasn’t at all afraid of me, and…” He repeated what she had told him, causing the green dragon to sit back as well, stunned. Neither of them spoke for a few minutes, then Daragon asked, “Should we go look?”
     “I don’t see why not,” Rashcon said with a sigh, turning to look back at the tree in the distance.
     Daragon got up and lifted into the air for the short flight. The two dragons landed a few dozen feet from the willow, dipping their heads into the grass to try and see under its many leafy arms. The low branches hung all the way to the ground, the long, pale-green leaves blending in with the tan of the grasses, making it impossible to see anything near its trunk.
     The red dragon carefully crept through the branches. His head broke through the tangles and he lay down, examining the hidden space around the trunk. A small bundle, maybe a foot and a half long, rested in a nook among the roots. With a claw, he gently pulled the fabric apart, revealing a little human face.
     “It’s a human child,” Daragon called back to his friend, lifting it gently by the fabric with his teeth.
     “Hers?” Rashcon asked as the red dragon brought it out. He set it down and they both examined it for a while; it seemed to be sound asleep.
     “I can’t tell, but I’d assume so, from what she said.” Daragon glanced up at the horizon, now only a faint glow in the distance. “We’d better get back home.”
     Rashcon nodded. “Are we taking it with us?”
     “She did ask me to take care of him,” he said, bending to lift the child again, but he stopped and glanced at the distant body of the human, just visible to him above the grass. “I’ll be right back,” he said, lifting into the air with a flurry of his dark red wings.
     Rashcon gazed after him, a little confused, then watched, surprised, as the red dragon carried the human back in his forepaws. “You’re going to bury her?” Rashcon asked as the dragon landed awkwardly on his hind legs, setting down her body before he lowered himself to all fours.
     “I feel like I should.” He said. “We can’t treat her like any other human when she didn’t act like one.”
The green dragon nodded without a word, both agreeing with his friend and instinctively feeling as if they should leave both the human and her child here to rot.
     “Are you going to help, Rashcon?” Daragon asked, sticking his head out from under the branches of the willow.
     Rashcon hadn’t really expected Daragon would want him to help, but then he felt a bit guilty for not volunteering and crawled under as well.
     The red dragon had dug a makeshift grave in the earth by the base of the tree. As he lifted the human to set her into it, Rashcon noticed a sword tied to her waist. “Wait a second,” he said, reaching over and, with a little difficulty due to the cramped space, cut the belt binding the sword to her with a claw. Daragon watched him with interest as he pulled the sword off the belt and set it upright in the soil. They could just see it was the color of gold with the sparse moonlight hitting it through the leaves. The red dragon said nothing, but silently lowered the body into the grave. Her face was peaceful and relaxed, eyes closed to the world she had so recently left.
     Daragon slowly swept the dirt over her to fill the grave, then crawled back a ways so Rashcon could work his magic. The green dragon lifted a paw over the grave, closing his eyes as he channeled his energy through the seeds in the dirt. A blue-green grass leapt from the ground, growing to its full size within half a minute to cover the overturned dirt. He then channeled his energy into a vine at the base of the tree, which happily accepted the offer to grow, wrapping itself up and around the sword, then back down again, leaving only small areas of the golden sheath visible through its bright green triangle leaves.
     Rashcon let out a long sigh and lowered his paw. “Done,” he said, with a tired smile at his friend.
     “Ready to go?” Daragon asked.
     The green dragon nodded and the two crawled back out from under the branches. The child lay waiting for them in the grass, eyes wide open now and full of curiosity as Daragon went over to lift it up. The dragon gazed back with his own share of curiosity as the child lifted a short chubby arm and giggled a little, before yawning widely and closing its eyes once again.
     Rashcon had been watching from over Daragon’s shoulder, and as the red dragon scooped the child up in his hand, he said, “He’s an interesting little thing, isn’t he?”
     Daragon grinned. “For more reasons than one,” then with a great surge of his hind legs, he lifted into the air and turned to the north, toward the Dragon Mountains, with Rashcon close behind.