(1) One Sheep Too Many
“Human nature hates everything that is superior.”
— Thucydides
I’d barely devoured a laughable ten — maybe fifteen — sheep when the farmers were already after me.
That alone only made me smirk.
Pitiful rats with their toothpicks.
In my very own hubris I got careless and took a nap right there in the field. Must have been one or two sheep too many. They call that a feeding frenzy followed by a meat coma.
Eating far too much never ends well.
Arrogance neither.
Who could have guessed they were harboring a dragonslayer just then of all times.
Now I lay in damned chains. Shit.
I suppose I should count myself lucky my head wasn’t on a spike, but honestly — this was devourer’s-shit to the power of ten.
And it wasn’t just any dragonslayer — it was the Dragonslayer. The Red Terror.
From now on, lovingly nicknamed Asshole by me.
At first he’d hunted us for some petty reason — something only humans understand — bitterly, relentlessly, yet without success.
We were dragons, after all. The rulers of this world.
Until the day a dragon died by his hand. From that moment, we all took him rather seriously.
Rugor was the one Asshole got — by luck, if you ask me. Yes, Rugor was an arrogant idiot, but that’s no reason to kill someone.
Fine, I’ll admit I’d come close a few times myself.
But who’s counting.
The Red Terror caught him because Rugor must have been weakened by some ruse. I never learned exactly how.
But Corralia was there — a beautiful, pale-red dragoness, not quite my taste but far from ugly. She came upon him as Rugor faltered.
He staggered as if dazed, and the young dragonslayer murdered him. Asshole was no longer green when it came to fighting, though he still had to eat his share of punishment.
Our kind didn’t really fear anything. But this bastard had actually volunteered to be cursed after his first dragon kill, so that we became his lawful prey.
Rumors of his invincibility had already traveled thousands of miles, and many mouths had carried his misdeeds further still.
Who is that dim to get voluntarily cursed? He had to be completely insane.
I don’t know what price he paid for the bargain, but here and now, the acquaintance of his body with my claws hadn’t cost him so much as a single flake of skin.
He flew, sure — described a jaunty arc through the air — but as far as he landed from me on the hard ground, he returned all the quicker. Like a breath of wind he swept back at me, and dragonfire wouldn’t burn him either.
Honestly — I tried.
Not a hair even singed. Cursed son of a — literally cursed. I roared to cow him, and he threw something straight into my gullet. Frozen — like paralyzed — I had to watch him trace signs — maybe runes — in the air.
Doomed to inaction, I could only wait for whatever he had in store.
I felt my shape twist, forced back into my human guise.
I was done for.
I realized that now. Rather late.
Before, I’d thought it was all latrine gossip.
…
It was all true.
Hard to believe, but I could now testify to it firsthand.
I was a bloody dragon. Drastarian.
In chains.
Devourer’s shit.
Bound into my human form.
Double devourer’s shit.
The first thing he put on me was a metal collar. Silver cuffs followed a moment later. That part was truly ridiculous. The stiffness ebbed, and I was master of my own body again.
Now I wanted payback.
Time for revenge.
I reached for my dragon shape — but the magic didn’t come.
Nothing.
Not even a tingle. Absolutely nothing. Completely baffled, I stared at the Red Terror, who smiled at me with that smug little grin.
“Now you belong to me, you oversized lizard.” He spat and tugged the chain fixed to my shackles. I tried to lunge at him, at least to fight him with bare hands.
There had to be a way out of this mess.
Damn it, I was a hunter, not some pitiful prey.
But the moment I struck, I slammed into a kind of shield and got hurled backward.
Dazed, I caught his boot above me before it crashed into my face. I didn’t pass out; I spat blood and fought back to my feet.
“Forget it. You’ve got nothing left. No strength, no magic. You’re a dragon only in your blood.”
Hearing that, I wanted all the more to rip those haughty eyes out of his skull and slice his puny heart from his chest with my claws.
My powers were suppressed.
Perhaps by the chains? But silver alone wouldn’t cut it.
Yes, the noble metal affects us, makes us a touch woozy, but it can’t kill us. We have other weaknesses, sure — but the question was: did he know them?
No. Impossible.
Another curse? Or a blood-spell for the chains?
He’d need the backing of a powerful witch. But humans had hunted their witches down mercilessly and murdered them. Most of them had long since kept to the shadows, deep in forests or mountains.
What did he even want with me? Or with dragons in general? … I’d learn soon enough — and make him suffer for it.
Not only him… no, his family, his loved ones, and his entire village damned by the gods — I’d burn it to the ground. Every single soul he ever met would die.
As soon as I found a way out of here.
Shackled in silver, draped in a burlap throw, I stumbled after Asshole on his white nag. Or rather, I was dragged — sometimes scraped across the ground — depending on how clumsy I was in my human meat-costume.
He would pay dearly and exquisitely for this.
I promised myself.
How dared he seek to subjugate me, when humans should be groveling before us?
The chain jerked and I struggled to keep upright, only to pitch headfirst into the dirt of the road and sniff his dust. I shoved myself up fast and tried to hobble after him. Asshole sneered wickedly, but that smirk would fade.
But being human was no fun.
You wore your heels raw, because skin is flimsy stuff. Every little pebble skinned you open.
At least my constitution was excellent. Physically I was no weakling — unlike the lanky youth who arrived after the fight with the horses and was now riding behind me.
I ground my teeth, barely reining in my anger. Dozens of times I tried to call my magic, but I could neither change nor breathe fire, nor do anything else.
Branches across the face weren’t as funny as they sound, either. Asshole took every thicket — astride his look-at-me pony.
Otherwise he looked like a vagrant in rusty armor.
No — not rusty.
The gray cloak hid most of his harness, so you didn’t see it at first.
The metal seemed alive. When the cloak shifted and gave a glimpse, you could see a reddish gleam sliding over the surface of his cuirass.
Uncanny.
There had to be more hidden about him. I should keep my guard up. The silver chain tightened again and I hurried after him, limping. I had no wish to eat dirt once more. So — grit teeth and through.
It wasn’t as if I could go anywhere else.
I looked around as we moved through the countryside. From down here, in human guise, everything seemed so large.
Not that I’d never walked as a man before — just only for fun.
Here and there seducing a girl — those gullible things were obviously drawn to our looks and our aura. They felt the unimaginable power in us.
It was almost too easy.
Elsewhere, terrorize a little human festival; maybe gorge on some of their livestock; then leave it all in rubble and ash, chew a roast or two for dessert… fun, really.
Their anger, though — was quite like ours.
Yet ours burned far hotter, more spiteful, more destructive.
Asshole had no idea whom he’d just crossed. Even so, I was still the idiot in chains, merely hoping to get away with my scales intact.
Whack.
Down in the dust again, dragged a good stretch, my face screaming like hell and bleeding from a hundred tiny grazes.
A patch of skin was missing from my chin already, and red soup ran from my nose. The shit-face showed mercy and slowed for a heartbeat, which I used to haul myself to my feet.
No sooner was I upright than he yanked again and even urged his horse faster. So he did have something planned for me. My death would have been easier.
Don’t get distracted, I scolded myself.
My entire feeble body was nothing but pain soon. After hours of tramping, I felt sick, and my head throbbed under the sun roasting my long, light-blond hair.
In dragon form, I’d never had that problem. After five hundred and twenty-one years, very little was new to me.
This was.
I couldn’t think what I’d done to earn it.
My gaze kept drifting to the trees, swaying softly in the evening wind. A breeze stroked the leaf-work of the great green crowns of these earth-wardens.
Nature was neither cruel nor kind.
It was what it was — eternal.
As were we dragons; that was our nature. We killed. We fed. We were predators. Did he want to punish us for that? He couldn’t catch us all…?
And I was meant to be what I was. Wild, free, majestic.
One learns that above all while sailing the air.
Flight was ecstasy. There was nothing more satisfying in all the world than gliding through the sky — plunging from a high mountain with wings tucked, savoring the rapture of the fall until the last instant, then flinging your pinions wide and letting the resistance of the air bear you up.
A small, dark thought crept into the back of my skull.
Would I ever fly again?
That little gnawing voice was the first sign I was turning human.
Just great.
I had to pull myself together, but I didn’t have endless time. Too long in human shape made us dragons restless and scatter-witted — or worse… all too human, with all those messy emotions. Which is likely why skin-sacks fear everything and howl like hatchlings.
In that unruly state, some of us could lose our minds — or grow so violent they never found their way back to themselves. There was even a dragon who, after too long in human guise, could no longer change back. Trapped forever. I would not allow that.
Baubo, spare me such a fate; take me to you instead.
Our goddess Baubo — also called Selene — had blessed us with lifespans of a thousand years and more. The wolf-shifters of the far north called her only Selene; humans named her Hecate.
It was one and the same goddess, mistress of shifters, of nature’s children, and of the world’s magic.
Our future lay in her hand alone.
Future… the word had shed much of its meaning and magnitude today.
In the distance, in the dwindling daylight, I could just make out the mouth of a gorge we were heading toward.
Where in the Devourer’s name had I ended up?
