Here Be Dragons

His dreams were vivid, tangible as if he were their active participant, not simply a passive observer. He dreamt of wolves; brown wolves, grey wolves, white wolves, black wolves... They ran and howled, hunted and snarled, dancing throughout a snowy forest at dusk. The sun had began its descent, flooding the area with orange light; the trees cast shadows, long and deep, something clung to them, something unseen, yet felt. It moved in the shade, a shapeless mass, observing him, following after him with a distant echo of a wheezing laugh carried upon the light breeze.

Snow crunched beneath his soles, grass, frozen stiff, broke with each step; he was following the wolves' trail, they'd left a path of visible tracks in the snow, and it beckoned him, wordlessly, to follow.

The layer of snow was thin, a pleasant chill against his too hot body; puddles emerged in the places he set his feet, sizzling and bubbling like boiling water. Scent of pines and cool air filled his nostrils, so alien and yet familiar all the same. He had been steadily moving east, his shadow growing larger and longer the further he went, trudging deeper into the forest in the final rays of the dying sun. The wolves had disappeared, the final notes of their song whisked away by the wind, and he was alone.

Night fell suddenly, like a heavy curtain dropped onto a stage in the midst of a play's final act; too soon, too untimely. He couldn't see; he stumbled onward blindly in the inky void, reaching with his hands like a blind man, searching for purchase. The bark felt rough against his palms, its rough edges digging deeply into the soft scales of his hands; it should hurt, he thought briefly. It didn't.

Wind howled furiously around him, no longer sounding like a wolf's call, no longer the calming breeze from before; it was deeper, primal, ominous, loud and full of rage. Trees and branches creaked and bent underneath its assault, though their groans of protest were more akin to screams in his mind. He brought his arms up, attempting in vain to shield himself from the wind; something lashed out from the darkness and slashed at his exposed cheek.

He was aware he was bleeding, somewhere in the back of his mind, somehow it didn't feel like a particularly pressing matter; crimson liquid dripped from where he had been slashed, leaving a bloody trail down his neck and onto his chest.

No one should die alone, the wind screamed to him; the final gurgled words of a dying, lonely soul, their throat filled with their own blood, choking them. Stay, please...

You wanted to be so much more, didn't you? You wanted to be, to exist, to have your life to yourself.

It was no longer the wind speaking to him and, for the first time since his arrival in this place, he felt a cold shiver run down his spine.

He stole it from you, that which was rightfully yours, then left you to die. You are nothing now, an empty shell carried by the gale, without a purpose, without a goal.

The voice was familiar, he had heard it somewhere before; it made his skin crawl. Taking a cautious step back, his heel caught on a protruding root and knocked him off balance. He fell back, his stomach jumping to his throat, as the entire world flipped and spun around him. The forest, the snow, the wind twirled around him, gradually blending into one great, blinding vortex of sound, and whiteness, and pain. It hurled him this way and that, though undoubtedly downward; the cutting winds peeled scale and skin from his bones, tore muscle and sinew apart, cracked ribs and crushed his larynx. Like a kite in a hurricane, he crumpled. If he still had the ability to scream, he would have.

Perhaps there will be use of you yet.


---


Green, reptilian eyes opened, and immediately narrowed; the sun, having reached its zenith, was now bearing down mercilessly on the lone gecko, lying in the middle of the field. He lifted his right arm to shield himself from the oppressive rays, and sat up slowly with a small grunt.

After a quick glance around, after having grown accustomed to the light, he found himself sitting in the middle of an impossibly flat field. Stretching out in all directions, as far as an eye could see, was grass: reaching to his chest, unkempt and sickly brown, faded from the sunlight, no doubt.

The pain and wind and forest were now a distant memory, an image viewed through a thick fog. Subconsciously, he brought a hand to his cheek, where he vaguely remembered being struck, and traced the smooth scales there; not a single cut marred them. A dream, then. That knowledge should have calmed him down; it didn't.

He stood up and took a few unsteady steps forward; his legs felt sore, as if he hadn't ever used them before, each of his initial movements awkward and uncertain. His gait grew surer after a moment, his brain, thankfully, needing only a reminder of how to operate the limbs, and not a full learning session.

Without a destination in mind, he kept walking. Grass parted before him, brushing teasingly at his bare shins and thighs, swaying on a light breeze that seemed to have picked up; he didn't know he had been stressed, until the soothing rustling had made him relax. Sunrays warmed his back pleasantly, no longer scalding hot against his skin.

Something glittered on the ground ahead of him, catching his eye; it was an auburn scale, the size of his fist. He paused, brow furrowing, and stared down at it; light caught on the sharp edges, giving it a sort of ethereal glow. His mind whispered to him that this didn't belong here; why, he couldn't say. It felt warm and smooth in his hand; reptilian, much like his own, with a leathery texture to it, but where his were round and white, the one in his grip had a rounded top and a sharper tip. Even though he had never seen anything like it before, as far as he could remember, and even then what he could remember was staggeringly short term, he instinctually knew what he was holding. But what was a dragon scale doing in the middle of a field in... well, he didn't really know where he was.

A shadow fell upon him, rousing him from his musings, and he glanced up in time to see a massive, black shape soaring high above him, standing out sharply against the sun, forcing him to shield his eyes once again to follow its path. Putting two and two together, he realized quickly that he was, most likely, gazing upon the hitherto owner of the scale, and, as if awakened by the dragon's sudden appearance, it began to glow of its own accord.

The temperature of it grew; he could feel it burning against his palm, as if it was trying to meld itself with his own scales. His first instinct was to let it go before it could burn a hole in his hand, but his hand tightened around it against his will, hard enough for its sharp edges to bite hungrily into his flesh. Blood dripped from between his fingers, set ablaze from the heat of the scale mid-flight, and created pools of flames everywhere it landed.

The gusts of wind were replaced by the crackling of famished flames, which eagerly consumed the dry grass, and in a matter of seconds, he found himself surrounded from all sides by a blazing inferno. And yet when the flames obscured the sky and the sun from his vision, when they surrounded him from all sides and greedily licked at his body, when all he could breathe were ashes and smoke and flame, he didn't scream. For it didn't hurt.

Seraph, Seraph, the scale sang to him, its voice as dry and primal as the crackling of flame, and yet as melodious as the finest of songs. Father, free us. We are the Children of Flame, the Lords of Sky. We have been held captive for so long, in a prison of weak flesh, earthbound, our wings stolen from us by snarling beasts. Just like you, Father. We have waited for so very long for you to arrive, Seraph, for you to realize your true purpose. The time has come for you to ascend, at last. Please... set us free!

He understood. The flames were cleansing him, burning away the weak shell he had been locked in. Ashes fell from the sky, as the fires died down little by little, and clung to his once white scales, now black with soot and iridescent in the light of the setting sun. Red eyes glanced down at the scale that had survived the blaze unscathed; he felt a wave of immense satisfaction travelling to his mind from the tips of his fingers, a feeling of contentment it had been depraved for an eternity. He didn't stand alone now, anymore; where there had once been a sprawling field of grass, now remained nothing but a scorched wasteland, and buried in the cracked, scarred, earth, the shells of a hundred thousand eggs shone faintly in the light and a chorus of young, squeaky voices joined the song started by their brother.

"Until all have been liberated," he vowed, his voice rough and hoarse from breathing in the flames, and brushed the scale with his thumb.

Somewhere high above, the dragon roared.