Week 1 - Topic 2 - Here there be dragons
I was seventeen years of age when I went to seek my destiny and explore the world, and forty-four when I came upon the cave of dragons.
In my first seven years of wandering, I had killed three giants and vanquished five serpents, the biggest one a snake which could swallow a mule whole. I had dueled fel-orc warlords and pounded the bones of undying skeletons back to unmoving dust; I had fought in desperate skirmishes, against terrible odds, and mourned the loss of brothers and sisters bound to me by our spilled blood. I had proven myself on the field of battle, again and again.
On the eighth year, I met a beauty from the North, a raven-haired lass with a sharp sword and a sharper tongue, a woman I courted for a year and a day until she knew I was even more faithful than I was strong. I married her upon the throne of the world with the stars as our witness, and we settled in the frigid lands where the cold was as merciless as the spiders and goblins, and we battled the frozen spirits and angry beasts back until she was with child and it became time to leave the fighting to the youth.
I fathered three children - two girls and a boy - with my wife, and we raised them to work hard and fight well, to be strong of body and spirit, and I think we did well. And in a heartbeat’s passing, twenty years had gone by, and even the youngest girl had gone to seek her own destiny, as was the way.
I missed all of my children, but my youngest most of all, for she was, perhaps, the most like me. Quiet and reserved, but sharper than either her mother or myself, she had taken the easiest to the hunt; she could slice an apple in two from a hundred yards - or, more practically, send a shaft between a giant spider’s mandible while it was skittering at her. I remembered teaching her to hunt and comforting her when she was hurt, and the days were emptier when she left to prove herself.
It was then, when my only burdens were to smoke meat and drink mead and wait for news from my children, that I learned of the great wyrms.
A king's messenger - a young boy, with smooth hands and an innocent face - brought the plea to our village for those who were stouthearted and fearless to deal with the rampaging threat of the terrible wyrms that had risen in the South. There were whispers that there had already been thirty or forty champions who had gone to the dread valley and never returned, rumors that the messenger refused to confirm. He merely told us that the dread wyrms were less active now, their numbers reduced by three brave champions - all from the North, he added - and only one more brave hero was needed to finish the job.
And then, when no one stepped forward, he added that two of the champions were in fact girls, and that there was a prize from the king to be won, and that someone had to step forward or he’d be punished for not finding a single person. And then I saw little Michaela, who was not yet seventeen, open her mouth, about to volunteer, and I remembered that our Calvin was sweet on her before he left.
"I'll go," I said then, stepping forward as the crowd parted before me, watching as Michaela stopped and dipped her head to me thankfully.
I left on my forty-forth birthday and promised I would be back before a year’s passing. It was five months later before I stood at the mouth of the dragon's cave, armed with sword, shield, and courage - and the knowledge that Michaela’s parents would not need to mourn her passing, and that Calvin would see her pretty face again. And then I stepped in, a torch in one hand and a my shield raised in the other, and I walked into the tunnel until there was no light but the flickering, wavering flame in my hand.
It was a long walk in a dark tunnel, and I knew the beast was in there, and I did not worry - until she spoke, a quiet voice filled with bitterness.
“Northman,” she said, a tone that hinted at madness, at anger, at grief, “Why are you here?”
“I have come to fight the wyrms who have killed our people and rampaged across our lands.” I responded, walking on, watching as the dark walls slowly grew farther, as I entered the mouth of the true cavern. The lair.
“Northman,” she said again, drawing out the word so that I shifted uncomfortably in my armor, in a way that could almost be felt as a single finger across my shoulders. “There is only one wyrm now, for there are three that are dead. Do you know why, Northman?”
“Because of the champions that have come before, who had taken up arms against the menace.” I said, striding forward, hearing my voice echo upon the far wall. I found myself in the center of the cave, and I waited, watching, trying to catch the shadows.
“Because of a girl named Caleigh, who had come seeking to prove herself. She had been raised from childhood with a sword in her hand, and came into this tunnel, and met my eldest, Ryujin, right where you stand, Northman. She startled him and he attacked, and when her sword no longer flashed in the light of her torch, they were both greviously wounded and died here, together, but not before I asked her where she had come from.”
I started, raising my torch higher, looking down for the signs of blood, and heard her breathe in slowly.
“After her, Northman, there was a clever young man who had explored the entire mountain and come in through a side tunnel that we do not use, who waited until my daughter was sleeping before falling upon her, who tried to poison her with wyrmbane. He almost succeeded, but didn’t know that we had slowly been building up a tolerance to the old methods, and as she was falling, she cornered him and struck, and they, too, died together.”
My knees grew weak, but I could show no weakness, so I locked them and waited, and wondered.
“It was...curious, Northman, because they came with the same design upon their armor, a horned helmet on crossed swords, over an icy field.”
And I touched my shield, then, and I knew.
“And do you know the name of the last killer of my children, a girl no more than seventeen, who fought my youngest son with bow and arrow, with spear and fire, who, when my son asked before he went to his death, was the sister to the two others who had come in?”
“Cherise,” I said, sick in my heart of hearts. “Cherise,” I repeated into the darkness, as if it would change what had happened. My darling Cherise, who I had taught to use that bow and arrow, to think before she fought, to be more than just an expert at battle - the child who I would never admit that I loved first among equals.
The dragon raised her head, a movement out of the corner of my eye, and I whirled to face her, ready to drop the torch and draw my sword. And then she breathed fire, not at me but at the brazier that hung in the middle of the cave, and dispersed the darkness.
I cast my torch aside and we stood there, her and I, parents to slain children, and we observed each other warily. Her scales shimmered in the firelight, her tail whisking slowly behind her, her eyes sharp and bright, even as you could see that she was, like me, no longer in her prime. And me, in the armor that was my old friend, with the horned helmet upon two crossed swords above a snowy field, an emblem she had seen three times already.
"Your king encroached on my land, and I defended them; your people sent champions, and I defeated them; your children slew my children, and were slain by them; and now we are here, you and I, parents who must mourn their children." She said, watching, waiting. “What will happen now?”
And I hesitated for a moment, reflecting in what we had both lost, and then I did what I had to do, so that there would be no more parents that had to bury their children.