Prologue
We are not strictly speaking from the sky, but we do own it.
Legend tells of the first of our kind descending from lightning of the storm that created all life on Kardom. But scholars tell us this should be taken metaphorically, not literally. We are of the world, not apart from it, not foreign to it as other annoyingly loud lifeforms would like to believe.
The first of us were, likely, silver in color and thence, perhaps came the reference to lightning. Now we number many forms and types. Some even prefer the land to the sky, but most of us still soar the airs and currents and have seen every mountain range, island, expanse of ocean or lonely desert Kardom has to offer. We have tasted the sweet blood of the prong-horned beasts of the Golden Plains. We have hunted the evasive, deep diving Congrelle that live exclusively in the largest seas. And we have bathed in the fire embers spewed from deep in the earth at Mt. Vestius.
We thought we had seen all of what Kardom had to offer. We bowed to none and were feared by all. What tender meat had evaded our jaws?
Until the human, Bain decided to hunt us.
We had let the human scourge grow, assuming they would never amount to much. After all, they lived exclusively in the Gorland Desert which, although large, spanning nearly the entire width of the Nars continent, was a harsh living environment, particularly for soft-bodied, lowly creatures. The prey there were too sparse and few to attract us and it had been determined that the human population numbers could never get high enough to be of much concern.
Besides, their war-like ways kept them fighting each other so often, they culled themselves effectively, leaving us and the rest of life on Kardom to prosper, grow and expand into the far reaches. Our numbers were growing, even as some, the oldest among us chose to enter a great stone sleep from which none ever awakened.
Others of us, rather than turn to sleep, bent our minds into new areas to stay attuned and eager for life despite the long years. We started great academies and entrenched ourselves in long term research. We cataloged the living world. We learned the great underpinnings of our planet, Kardom, and began making discoveries in the great space in which we orbited far beyond where we could fly.
These endeavors created the need to create and invent. We took to making books for passing of information and then for pleasure. We found ways of imprinting the topography of the landscape for navigation and exploration. We built submersibles able to plunge into the depths of the deepest ocean to discover what lay there. There was no place we didn’t see, no forest left unexplored.
But, the humans had also advanced far beyond what we had thought them capable. Their wars were once fought with sharpened sticks and stone axes. Their bodies were soft and unable to run fast or far, nor fly, so these weapons seemed all they would ever need. At least, that’s what the humanologists had always told us.
They were wrong.
When Bain began hunting the largest and fiercest among us, he did not bother with sticks and stones which would have been useless against our thick scales. He employed a slew of new weapons forged we knew not how, powered simply, as it turns out, by stored energy. Fibers and wood pulled taut and able to loose sharp projectiles into the sky, into our very realm of supremacy.
The Councils met throughout our lands and decried these killings. They called for the human population to be culled into extinction. Our fires would be their undoing.
I was not one to vote for that ultimate solution. I was much too intrigued with the human’s ability to adapt, survive, and look beyond the lot we had given them to reach for more. It reminded me of our own struggles. And it suggested we knew very little about them after all.
But the majority of dragondom was not of my mind and a flight of us took off after the voting among us had been counted and concluded later that same day and reigned fire down on all human settlements from the Inoran Coast in the East to the Mozambian coastal wetlands to the West. The Councils had resignedly advocated to only attack human settlements and it was hoped the other native wildlife of the desert would survive and, eventually, return, perhaps at greater numbers than before without the humans to impact them.
When the Fire Brigades returned a few weeks later, they declared an easy victory. Only one of us had been slain and a couple injured. All human settlements had been turned to ash and blackened dirt. Thousands of humans were destroyed. It was considered regrettable, but necessary for the continued balance of life on Kardom.
As they patted themselves on their backs and returned to their usual pleasures and pastimes, I was uneasy. There had been things to be learned from these humans and my mind was of the inquiring kind that had to know. I couldn’t leave a stone unturned. If we were so creative and inventive, why had they come up with something we had never considered, something lethal to us?
So, after some months of preparation and with a generous grant of the last of the humanologist study monies, I set out with a small group of us to study the remains of the human civilization to see what could be gleaned from the ruins of their cities and towns.
It was not ideal. It would have been much better to study them while living, but we’d have to work with what was available. Little did I realize what started out as a month-long foray into the Gorland Desert would completely alter the course of my life.
