A Rose Amongst the Dragons, page 7
part #1 of A Rose Amongst the Dragons Series
“I hate hellhounds,” he thought. They were vicious and very strong as they fought in packs. They were as large as a wild boar, but extremely fierce. There was no glory in killing a hound, just relief once they were dead.” The Vegus Forest didn’t have hellhounds, but Flankton Forest did, many of them.
He looked down at Flance and Sterling, they were still asleep. Thelton quickly stretched the hole apart and jumped out of the net. Flance heard the hounds approach and awoke. He was still groggy when he looked over at the pack of animals. Their teeth were snarling and their eyes piercing, they were almost two arms lengths away. They saw their prey and charged forward. Flance panicked and grabbed several boulders and chucked them at the hounds. It didn’t hurt them, only momentarily stunned them.
Sterling awoke upon seeing their predicament. He immediately cried out. Flance threw his body on top of his son to protect him. The alpha male charged toward Flance. It jumped into the air and didn’t stop until his teeth pierced into Flance’s arm. Flance screamed out in pain. Sterling shrieked out in fear. Soon another hound leapt forward and wrapped its jaw around Flance’s leg. A new scream of pain rang out.
Thelton flew forward with his swords ready for action. Two hounds turned around and came at him. With great force, he sliced through the side of each hound. They didn’t stop. Thelton coiled his massive arm inward and then slashed again. One hound sunk his teach into Thelton’s foot. While doing so, Thelton took the point of his sword and drove it into the hound’s head. The hound shrilled out in agony. The other hound was making its way for Thelton’s thick neck. Thelton met it with the golden sword, stabbing it through the hound’s neck, striking an artery, blood gushed everywhere. Both hounds fell to the ground. Their bodies jerked as they inched their way toward death.
There were two hounds latched on Flance. His right arm had already been torn off by one, causing Flance to scream in total agony. “My arm, my arm!” He screamed.
Thelton took the emerald sword and pierced one of the hounds side. The other hound released Flance and bit Thelton’s calf. Thelton yelled out. It stung. With a sword in both hands, he swung and sliced at each hound until they both lay stiff on the ground. All the hounds were dead.
Flance and Sterling embraced each other. They were both bawling. Flance bawled for the pain of losing his arm, and Sterling bawled out of fear.
“Where’s the rest of the dragon?” Thelton asked looking down at the two. His leg throbbed.
“I’m lying here on the ground dying, and you want to…” Flance began coughing. He coughed so hard that the blood pulsated out of his wounds with each attack. He gained composure and continued. “All you can think about is stealing my prize?”
“The dragon?” Thelton demanded. “Where is it?”
“Not a chance,” Flance replied.
Thelton raised his sword to Flance’s neck, while he stared straight into his enemy’s eyes. Flance could feel the sharp tip poke into his flesh. The animosity was thick and heavy. “Tell me now,” Thelton demanded.
Flance began to cough again. Once settled, he said. “I should have killed you. The dragon is eighty paces to the east.”
Thelton sprinted off into the thick of the forest. Flance turned into Sterling and sobbed. “I am so cold, hold me, my boy; share me your warmth.”
Sterling snuggled close to his father. He cried with his dad, he was afraid. The father and son held onto each other for support.
…
The agony in Thelton’s foot, and calve hurt, yet he ignored his pain and kept running. He had to get to the dragon before the trolls did. He was hurting and wasn’t up to another battle, for he just wanted to get the dragon out of the forest without incident. To his setback, as he got closer, he smelt the pungent odor of the trolls.
Thelton’s lungs burned as he took in the stench. “No,” he yelled. “Not now.” As he continued to run, he ripped off his shirt. He tied it over his mouth and nose. Within moments, he was to the trolls.
There were four trolls atop the dragon’s body. They were noisily tearing the animal’s flesh to pieces, so enthralled in their gluttony; the trolls didn’t notice Thelton approach. With much ease, Thelton sliced the head off a troll. The other three turned and launched their bodies at him. With haste, he took them all down. Never had he killed a group of trolls so quickly, but with his adrenalin pumping, he was fast, for he knew he had little time to spare.
Thelton raced to the dragon and sliced out its bladder and then he turned it into a pouch where he shoved in all the dragon’s vital organs. He grabbed only a handful of scales and then ran back to Flance. He had an errand to attend to that took precedence over collecting the rest of the dragon parts.
At Flance’s side, Sterling was crying for his father. His dad was not dead, but because of his loss to massive amounts of blood, he was lapsing in and out of consciousness. He looked up astonished to see Thelton return. The boy’s fear intensified. His father was about to die and now his enemy had returned to kill him.
Turning his back on the two, Thelton took some twigs and placed them in the fire pit. He stirred them up until they caught flames, with that he added more twigs to make a blazing fire.
“Save my father,” Sterling begged.
Thelton ignored Sterling as he pulled out the dragon’s heart, stomach, and scales that he had collected. Taking out his dagger, he shredded the heart. This caused most of the blood to drain out. He captured half the blood in a canteen and let the other half seep into the bladder pouch. After adding the scales, he folded the bladder up and then placed his handy work in the flames.
Satisfied, he turned to Flance, whose breathing had gone sporadic and slow. Thelton crouched next to, where he opened his enemy’s mouth and dumped the dragon’s blood from the canteen down his throat. He waited for several moments then went back to the fire and removed the dragon bladder pouch. Opening it up, he began kneading the hot mixture in his hands. The heat instantly burned blisters into his skin, but he didn’t stop. He kneaded the mixture for awhile longer. Taking the concoction over to Flance’s open wounds, he used it to dress them. He started with the stump where the arm had been, there he placed his newly made dragon’s elixir on it, and then he treated the other wounds with the elixir. Once Flance had been cared for, he turned to Sterling.
“Do you have any wounds?”
Sterling looked away. He barely uttered no.
Thelton stretched out his muscular body next to the fire and covered his own wounds. He would rest. It had been a long day and night.
It took two days for Flance to be nursed back to health. He was amazed at how quickly his wounds healed over. The dragon elixir was powerful. There was still an immense amount of pain behind the new skin, but no infection.
While Flance was recovering, Thelton had pulled apart some of the chains on the net. He wove a few of them together and with them he shackled Flance’s remaining arm down to his feet. With the boy, he tied both arms behind his back and then secured the ankles together, leaving just enough room for them to walk. The roles had reversed. They were now the prisoners and he was the guard.
“What are you going to do with us?” Flance asked over and over again. He hated how terribly wrong his plan had gone. Thelton ignored him as he gathered his gear to leave. When he was ready, he stared at Flance for awhile. After about a few minutes of contemplation, he knew his plan.
The second contraption he had made was a surface he could pull his prisoners on. Thelton possessed an impressive amount of strength and was able to carry both prisoners on top of the chain surface, using additional chains to secure Flance and Sterling to the chains on his matt, this made father and son completely trapped. Thelton grabbed the dragon’s head and tossed it in the middle of the two.
“What are you going to do with us?” Flance continued to yell. “This really hurts, please release me, I promise I won’t run. How can you treat us like this? Are you heartless?”
As if on cue, Sterling held his face to hide his tears. Thelton looked at him in disgust, because he was too old for tears.
Thelton dragged the net with Flance, Sterling, and the dragon head through the forest. It wasn’t much different from pulling a dragon. When he got outside the forest, he stopped, his arm muscles burned. Bending over, he lifted the dragon head out. He turned his back to his prisoners and began to walk toward the village.
“You can’t just leave us here, you barbarian. Save us, let us go. At least let my son free.”
Thelton stopped mid tracks. He put the dragon’s head down and turned back to his prisoners.
With tartness in his words, he said. “How does your motto go? I’m not going to kill you, but I am not going to rescue you either.”
Flance thrashed around, his violent movements only cut the chains deeper into his flesh. Sterling wailed out in sorrow. Thelton wished to ignore their wailing, but he couldn’t. Against his wishes, the crying softened Thelton’s heart. Thelton returned to his prisoners, reaching down he undid the chains around Sterling.
“Save your daddy,” he said as he turned his back to them. He grabbed the dragon’s head and walked to the village. Sterling tried to unchain his father.
…
Thelton found his horse close to the walls of the castle. The horse had wandered to a small unburned alfalfa patch. Thelton mounted the horse. With his right hand he guided the beast of labor into the castle grounds, with his left; he held the dragon’s head.
As he made his way toward the castle, all who saw him cheered, he had done it, he had ended their nightmare, the dragon’s head proved it. Women dropped to their knees and sobbed. Grown men patted each other on the back. Their problems were over, the dragon was dead.
Thelton met the main guards at the castle doors. Unexpectedly, he tossed the head into their arms. The force sent a tall one back on his bottom. When the guards looked up, Thelton had already turned around and was taking off in a gallop.
“Hey, Sir Thelton of Andleburg, the king will wish to see you. Come back sir, come claim your reward.”
Thelton’s horse carried him out of the kingdom.
Chapter 7
Fourteen and a half years earlier
A bolt of fire burst across the forest, followed by a rumbling roar. The queen dragon was not in good spirits. As she surveyed her nest, she found only one baby. Three had hatched a few days earlier, or at least she thought it was three. She couldn’t quite remember because her mind constantly played tricks on her. There could have been as many as four or even as few as two? She didn’t know. Her brain hurt as she tried to figure it out.
The queen took her massive claws and scrapped at the broken egg shells. She couldn’t see very well, and it was possible that one of the babies could be hidden under the broken shells or under the bed of leaves. She found nothing, still only one baby, with disappointment, she roared again. The lone baby dragon looked up at the queen.
The newly hatched dragon had soft brown skin with spots of green and darker hues of brown. She was forty-six centimeters long, a pretty small beginning for the forest’s greatest beast. The baby dragon would spend the next five years growing big and strong. For now, it was small and soft, having no abilities for defense.
Roaring again, the queen dragged her tired body out of the nest. She was very old, over two hundred years. She didn’t want to go looking for her lost babies, but she knew if she didn’t, they would die. Although she was worn out, she must find them at all costs, she couldn’t take the chance of losing them, because one might just be the future queen.
With an acute sense of smell, she searched the ground trying to lock onto their scent, hoping it would lead to their location. Not much worked on her decrepit body anymore, except her nose. She had lost most of her sight, and now she was only able to make out shapes. Too bad her ability to smell couldn’t help her with her judgment. If dragons could get dementia, she had it, for most of her days she spent in confusion. She was ready to join her ancestors in death, yet she couldn’t until she had a progenitor, another female dragon to replace her. In the last two hundred years she hadn’t found one worthy of her spot. It couldn’t be just any dragon; it had to be strong and fierce. Also, it had to develop certain evolutionary functions to nurse and raise young, and until that time came, she would continue laying new eggs every year.
Using her sense of smell, the queen began searching for her lost babies. She smelled around the camp unable able to pick up the scent of any of her babies. Frustrated, she started smelling the air and that is when she picked up a small trace of a baby, the smell had carried in on a slight breeze. The queen followed her nose a kilometer away from the camp, the smell was so strong that she knew her baby was close by. As she searched with her nose and her hands she felt the smoothness of her baby. The small creature was stuck in between two rocks and was already dead. With her poor eye sight the queen saw the outline of her baby and picked up the small body, bringing it to her nose. She tossed it back and forth, the life was already gone. She let out a booming roar sadden by her loss, then she instinctively ate the dead baby.
She was about to turn back to camp when she caught scent of what might be another baby. It was faint but she decided to follow it. The wind was strong and carried the smell from very far away. She followed the smell for several kilometers until she came to the hollow of a tree.
Reaching her hand through the opening, she felt a dead human in the tree, but she could feel something else, something soft and squirming. Snatching the small body she pulled out the little bundle of life. Could it be another one of her babies? With her poor eye sight it was hard for her to tell. Desperate to find her baby and return to the nest, her mind was willing to accept anything as the reality that she searched for. The baby felt a bit different and yet very similar to the other babies. It was the right size to be her baby. The queen brought the small baby to her nose, it smelt of milk and blood, her poor vision could sort of see its little body squirm- must be hers. The queen wrapped the baby into her wing and with relief and satisfaction she continued home.
The Queens’ thoughts raced excitedly because maybe this would be the dragon that replaced her. In all her hundreds of years of having babies, she had never had one catch a human in its first year of life. As a matter of fact, no dragon had ever captured a prey until after they were weaned. And yet, there she found her baby munching on a human body. Somehow the little dragon had brought down a human. The queen was impressed and would keep a close watch on the baby.
Baby Indy squirmed around, she was wrapped tightly in the wing of a dragon, it was not a comfortable place to be. She protested a little, but the movement of the dragon quickly rocked her to sleep.
Back at the huge nest, the queen placed Indy on top of the long grass and leaves. The other baby dragon came over and sniffed Indy while the queen positioned her body next to them. The baby dragon went over to the queen and began nursing. Soon, five more dragons of various ages joined them in the nest, each latching on to a nipple. The queen let out a fire sigh and fell back to sleep.
Indy lay next to the queen, too helpless to do much. As the queen rolled closer to Indy, a nipple made its way into Indy’s mouth. The newborn latched on and the magical milk burst into her mouth.
Dragon’s milk held the vital ingredients to the rise of dragons. Although not an attribute to regular reptiles, or even to the rest of the dragon kingdom, it was a mutated feature that showed up every hundred years or so, and when it did, a queen was born. The ability to generate mammary glands and secrete prolactin was one of the defining characteristics of a queen. With the exceptional milk, the young dragons received the growth factors that aided in their progression, helping them mature into strong and powerful animals. Besides sustaining life, the next most important function of the milk was wing growth. The milk had factor thirteen that formed and developed wings. If a dragon didn’t nurse for five years, then it would not be able to grow out wings and fly.
With a belly full of milk, Indy fell asleep. When she awoke her eyes moved back and forth, since her eyes hadn’t developed fully, there wasn’t much for her to look at; however, she did catch the sparkle of the queen’s scale and that held her attention for a moment until sleep overcame her.
The queen stretched her long body forward. She was spectacular to look at. Her scales glimmered with a translucent shine. The sun would reflect off them and cast rainbows and prisms on the surrounding canopy. Her wing span stretched six meters across, she wasn’t the largest dragon in the forest, but she was close. At the tip of each wing was a thirty centimeter long claw, which came in very useful in killing prey. Her wings and the front of her breast was a mixture of descending color starting with sea green and ending in teal. Her coloring changed with the sun or darkened with the shadows. She had two hands with three fingers and an opposable thumb protruding from the edge of her wings, this helped the queen grasp objects and have control, and it also helped that each digit was tipped with fifteen centimeter claws. Once she grasped an object, the only way for it to escape was to be torn to shreds. On the bottom of her body were two feet each consisting of three toes apiece, her toe claws equaling the length of her wing claws.
A powerful ensemble of muscle made up the queen. Despite her age, no beast around could match her strength. Her head was her masterpiece, having a very long snout with razor sharp teeth in her mouth, all aligned in rows that descended down the back of her throat. The top of her head was adorned in horns and spikes, spikes that ran the entire length of her seven meter long tale. Like her body, the tail was mostly tight formed muscle and with it she could maneuver almost any object. She was a powerhouse, not one to be messed with.
With her two babies sleeping and a few of her other young as well, the queen left the nest.
…
With the changing of the seasons, the babies grew and the queen readied herself to lay her new eggs. When the time came, she went over to her freshly built labor nest. The year had passed so quickly, was it pushing egg time out already? She squatted and began heavily breathing.
