Chapter 1: The Flames of Destruction
"Soviet!", yelled the young man's father, who was just picking up his big hammer, which he actually uses to hammer in nails. The older man runs outside in his everyday clothes, which were an old shirt, a brown fabric jacket with holes in it and old pants that had been very often patched. The young man, had hazel eyes and muddy brown hair while possessing some muscles from his hard work and was also tall as a door. Soviet also carried with him, in his one trouser pocket, a small lucky charm shaped like the symbol of a five-pointed star, but it was only the outline of it.
"I'm on my way!", Soviet yelled at his father, also grabbing a hammer from their workshop. Soviet and his father worked as barrel makers, which gave them more than enough hammers. He quickly ran outside and saw the village in flames. People walked outside while dragons flew over the village. This wasn't the first time this had happened, but it was still a terrifying sight to watch this otherwise quiet little village burn. The rest of the people in the village were all friendly and peaceful.
In the middle of the night every few weeks or months these winged beasts would appear and burn down the village. Their colors were scarcely recognizable, but some were covered with feathers in some places. There were also some that were smaller and had no feathers or were only slightly covered with feathers. These beings were difficult to describe, but they were about ten feet tall, like the inside of a house. The dragons walked on all fours and were as long as five people laid on top of each other to form a chain. Their strength was close to that of dynamite. Wings as long as two, three houses next to each other. Their fire beam reached almost as long as their body. They couldn't harm themselves since they were fireproof, but they could easily destroy anything else.
The mother, children, sometimes also fathers and those too wounded ran from the village into the forest because they had nowhere else to go and didn't want to fight because their families shouldn't suffer if they didn't come back. Soviet, his father and other men and women had to defend their home. It would be very helpful if the emperor's army would help, but they would only ride into the village if they wanted to kill, torment, mistreat or abuse someone, so they were on their own.
There wasn't much they could do about the dragons that flew, but they could do much about the dragons on the ground, which swords, spears, and hammers were good for. They had already killed one of the fire-breathing beasts.
Soviet saw with his own eyes how a dragon got into one of the houses where a woman with her child couldn't escape and rushed to the house. He was ready to finish off the dragon and braced himself for it, but oddly enough, it walked away from the house.
He ran after it and hit the tip of its tail with the hammer, since dragons were very sensitive there. The dragon roared in pain. The dragon was about as small as a luxurious carriage. Soviet ran to its legs and broke two of the creature's legs with the hammer, from which he roared and tried to flee, but the dragon fell over faster than he could do anything and Soviet ran to the dragon's head, at which he raised the hammer.
The dragon looked up at him in terror as he lay on the ground. Soviet raised his hammer, but felt he couldn't. The other villagers could safely kill the dragon, but he didn't have the inner strength to do it and not feel terrible about it, so he walked away from the dragon and ran to the woman who was in the house.
She ran into the forest with her young son. The young man caught up with the mother and her son and asked: "Did the dragon hurt you?" "No, he didn't!", she answered out of breath. She leaned against a tree and hugged her trembling child. Soviet was reassured and told her: "Stay here! I'll bring you back later if no one has taken care of you before." She smiled slightly and nodded and wished him: "And good luck to you!" He smiled back slightly and ran back to his village, which is under attack.
All the men and women did their best to chase the dragons away, but the numbers didn't decrease even though some dragons were injured and now two were killed. Soviet ran into battle as they brought down a dragon from the sky. They fought the monster. The other dragons tried to get them away from him, but the villagers had enough people to take care of them.
In the crowd, the villager, Soviet, looked for his father, whom he spotted before he could kill the next dragon. Before the young dragon died, he let out a frightened cry. It was a terrible idea of his father to have killed the dragon. The other dragons heard it and one flew silently towards Soviet's father and grabbed him mid-flight. "DAD!", Soviet shouted desperately and ran after the dragon, which was faster than him. A few other villagers ran with them. The dragon flew over the forest and Soviet only kept his anxious father in his eyes until he fell down a hill in the forest into darkness and passed out. The rest didn't notice this because they took a different route.
