There weren’t always dragons…

Dragon illustration, copyrighted Michelle Piper

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. There were trees once, thousands of years old, with bark the color of rust and branches covering the sky in shining golden leaves. Tal'Vyrens in the ancient tongue means Valley of Forever Green. Now it's cloaked in ash as pale as the moon. After five hundred years, the fires still burn underground, slowly devouring the roots.

Eité’Reilig is the name of this place now. Hewn Grave. What remains of the Father Trees are crumbling trunks of petrified wood. Kneeling at their feet are the corpses of the roving cathedrals with broken stone legs, their gilded bells tarnished black by flames. Smoke curls up from the pits, shrouding the mountains in swirling gossamer silks and fog.

A man stood gazing at the desolation from Ag Gol. A mere child when the dragons fell from the Spreading Night, engulfed in flames with black cores and tails of silver. A breeze began to rise, picking up the tails of his tattered cloak and caressing the strip of exposed flesh across his back. Ash that gleamed like stars on his armor tumbled from his shoulders and retook to the skies.

The hand on the pommel of his sword twitched.

The mound behind him began to heave to life, shattering the Ash Hush. The scars, thick as ropes, forming an X on his back, woke at the sound of angry earth, tumbling scree, and sinew.

"Your blood is singing." The dragon uncoiled, its deep hum radiating through the man's boots.

The man stood taller. "What does it sound like?" 

The dragon's laugh was like grinding rocks and chiming metal. "Deep throated bells and ringing iron. It sounds like the songs of the planets. It burns, no?"

The sharp-pointed head snaked up beside him. Many eyes turned to look at him. Each was the color of twilight, endless space, and the gases that birth stars. Its scales were the color of the moon's shadows, and its horns glinted like ice rings.

The man rested his hand on its nose, and the pupils shaped like galaxies constricted. "The beauty is haunting."

The breeze became a steady wind, moaning through the towering trunks below.

"Do you hear them?" the dragon purred.

The man inhaled deeply. Memories burned bright, and his breath came out in a sharp gasp.

The dragon's pupils expanded and contracted like lightning in response to the continued thrumming of the man's body. "Tell me the story of the trees again."

"Why do you love our stories so much, Iksa?"

Iksa growled at the pet name, their opal fangs flashing in a grin. "You're beautiful when you tell them, Stergn."

Little star.

Stergn closed his eyes, feeling Iksa's many watching him. His looked like deep ocean pools when they opened again, as they had before the moon replaced the sun.

"Solska, the Sun Mother, took a piece of herself and planted Kalu'elama, the Golden Life that bloomed and bridged the heavens. Ruad Ro'isa, the Red Father, was born to be her husband from its branches. Together they set this world in motion with their dancing, filled the oceans with tears of joy, and their laughter gave wind to the breath of life. The children left behind by the old gods were reborn, and they rejoiced, given light once more. But soon, death and sickness returned. From the roots of Kalu'elama, the Father Trees sprouted as a gift from the Father to cure our wickedness. But it did not work. These gods' sunlight and joy did not create us, so our bodies remained tarnished, doomed to wither. The only way to join our Mother was to be buried under the Father Trees. Our bodies nourished the earth for our parents so our children could thrive. It took our souls one hundred years to be absorbed into the trees and taken into the golden leaves. One-hundred years of spiraling up, tracing the lines of life into the past, so that we could return to our Mother's warm embrace through our Father's laughter and wisdom."

"And now the sun shines no more," Iksa hissed, "and the trees no longer carry your people to the heavens." A throaty growl strummed the earth beneath them, making the essence of the rocks chime. "Ruad's song no longer plays through the leaves, and no more souls to make them shine."

Stergn's lips quirked despite himself. "The people wept when your kind fell from the Spreading Night and destroyed everything." The wind blew, and he inhaled its scent again. "I can hear them still, Iska. The haunting sound the black inferno made as it devoured the golden smoke. Like thousands of voices wailing at the stars. The wind sounds like the keening women mourning the souls condemned to eternal wandering."

Iska's many eyes blinked as they regarded him. "You speak as if you didn't weep too, Little Star."

Stergn's voice grumbled through his chest. "Can you blame us? We were good disciples, giving prayers and offerings. Instead, we watched our promised eternity go up in smoke."

"Do you resent my kind for it?"

The man grunted thoughtfully, then cast his gaze towards the sky. It was as colorless as his armor. But where he was a void, a giant moon regarded him, and the slashes of stars lit its blackness. His blood burned anew, and Iska's chiming began to whip it into a frenzy. It made Stergn's pulse quicken.

"You ask me as if I haven't given you my blood," he finally said.

"Do you regret it, then?" 

"Regret helping you burn Kalu'elama?"

"Yes," they hissed.

Stergn turned and looked into the galaxies contained in those cosmic eyes. "Do you regret helping me kill your kin?" A pain lanced through the gnarled X across his back. Iska just hummed, and Stergn smirked and looked away. "As I thought."

They sat in silence, watching the moon-ash dance in the light. It indeed was beautiful. The world was awash in night's gray, yet the heavens were a gash of infinite possibilities.

Iska was the one to shatter the stillness again. "You can never return."

Stergn removed his hand from Iska and held it open so the falling ash began to settle in his black glove. "Do you mourn for me?"

"Do you not mourn for yourself?"

The eyes Stergn cast out at the valley were no longer oceans of turquoise but amber, rich and brown and warm like the mulch of father trees. "My people call me Aonair. The lonesome one. They call me traitor, The Betrayer. I've no place here anymore."

"You can still mourn what was. You prayed to their gods once, too."

Stergn's eyes met the dragon's. "False gods."

"Gods nonetheless," Iska hissed.

In retaliation, the man ran his mind down the demi-gods' magic held within him. Iska's eyes flashed, and a snarl tore from them as the song contained within grew louder. Immediately the dragon's eyes began to dim as his blood-song stoked their fires.

Stergn's amber eyes grew redder, and he had to breathe through the searing pain throbbing across his back. He looked at the moon to cool the flames inside him. "You showed me the truth, Little Moon. You helped me devour a demi-god's soul and showed me that we are made of stardust. Everything must return to dust, and your star-fires are still devouring the old."

"Do you not mourn the sun and fear the darkness?"

"No." The man allowed himself to begin mixing with the galaxies in Iska's eyes, glowing brighter as their fire continued to build. "Whiteness reflects everything and doesn't know itself. Blackness absorbs everything, and thus has to know itself to survive. Darkness reforms destruction."

How often had he cried alone in the dark before Iska found him?

"We are chaos." Iska gnashed their teeth around the words.

"Everything falls to chaos. You are endless."

Iska stood to their full height. Their wings unfurled, lifting the moon-ash around them. "You will never see this place again as it is."

"Grief and sorrow are necessary."

The dragon's chest began to heave, their eyes reduced to glowing spirals in empty pools. "You will forsake your gods."

Stergn laughed deep in his chest. The surges of the dragon's lungs were soothing because now the embers of fire inside of him blossomed. Slowly he turned back to holy Tal, taking the valley of endless green in its gown of moon-ash. The world felt cold and barren, but he could feel the life waiting to be reborn.

Taking in the vista one last time, he brought his gloved hand up to cover his face. "Why pray to dead gods when there's one standing beside me?"

The black leather ignited in star-fire and burned away, revealing a hand covered in burn scars. Silvery feathers of flames began to burn his eyes. It felt like trendles of ice slowly eating to the back of his mind. It sent a chill of pleasure down his spine.

Iska's roar filled the valley, and Stergn felt the tongue of star-fire that tore out of them. A wicked grin spread across his face, and when his old eyes felt cauterized, he opened them slowly. He could see his old eyes, bright amber orbs glowing in his palm. Carefully he placed them in his satchel, and he looked back out at the landscape.

The valley was washed in the golden light of the stars at the center of universes. Endless potential swirled in front of him. At his feet he saw the waver of heat from Iska's flame shadowed on the ground. Inside it he saw flashes of many timelines.

The X across his back burned unbearably, and finally, he reached up to the scars on the strip of visible skin. However, when his fingers touched his flesh, twin blades flashed to life. Slowly he drew them, the ecstasy of bloodlust shuddering through him. A shadow of Iska appeared behind, claws sunk into his back and wings opening. The physical dragon beside him growled, still sustaining the flames.

Their magic was now intertwined.

"Are you ready?" the dragon's voice echoed through him.

"Let's destroy the gods who would lie to keep us from the cosmos."

Stergn stepped into the rift, and they both disappeared.