The New Alveri Chronicles

The Queen of Lowtown

CHAPTER 1

The thick armored tail slammed into the side of my head and I quickly found myself in the fight of my life thus far in my relatively short career as a pit fighter. Large droplets of blood leaked from the side of my mouth where my opponent had gotten in a lucky shot. A tooth felt loosened by the impact, but I wasn't worried, another would grow to take its place. I spat out a blot clot and grinned, feeling a joyous fire and drive building inside of me. I really did enjoy a good brawl. The fact that I was getting paid for this one was just icing on the cake.

My opponent was Kreig, a no-name dragon from some migrant clan dwelling on the rolling hills outside the walls of the great metropolis of New Alveri. He was of modest height for a male, but displayed lean, sinewy muscle under his crisp coat of brown speckled scales. Despite my size advantage - Regal Bronzes were one of the larger breeds of dragonkind - the skinny drake possessed a scrappy and feral instinct, obviously honed by life outside the stone jungle of the city, which allowed him to withstand my initial casual blows.

Kreig had crowed before the fight that he could whip any spongy city dwelling dragon he set his eyes on. Well, I had something to say about that as the local fight-club champion. I had a reputation to uphold after all and I had major gems riding on maintaining my supremacy in this part of New Alveri's underbelly.

We fought outside on the flattened ruins of some old earthen warehouse or fort of long ago when the city's districts were not so vast, just outside the big city walls. Kreig was still not able to come inside the walls of New Alveri yet without a writ of official business from an actual citizen. It was part of the reason why he was waging this fight in the first place, many dragons and humanoids alike dreamed of making it big in New Alveri. Well, this didn't apply to me; despite being an orphan, I was born here and had certain rights as a citizen.

When Kreig's tail struck me across the side of my head, the makeshift arena erupted into alternated boos and cheers from the many small humanoids seated and standing around us. There were many, many fans of a good dragon brawl. Such was the business that there was hardly an unattended dragon fight anywhere in the city, even when, or rather especially when the hostilities were of a personal nature. I could hardly fault the humanoids their betting and pleasure in watching us fight. After all, there was a certain splendor in watching two creatures each the weight of six or seven stout oxen (eight and a half, in my case, but I didn't go around advertising that...), that was so much more than watching two waifs dancing around each other on a linen mat (which, from a dragon's perspective was seen more with amusement than anything else). When dragons fought, the earth itself buckled and was shaped under us.

Kreig looked at me smugly, tail high and wings half cocked as I spat on the ground. "Looks like the so-called Queen of the Lowtown is just another fat city drakka after all." he gloated, using my unofficial title in the underground dragon fighting club.

"I must say, you aren't half bad at all, for country trash. Tell me, have you learned how to use the privy yet?" I snorted back, raising my wings above my head. I turned my head for effect, looking at him with one amber, slit pupiled eye. The crowd roared my name.

"You talk big, drakka!" bristled Kreig, but hesitated, clearly having already used up his meager supply of trash talk.
In answer, I swung my tail around, the boney arrowhead it terminated in came in low and struck the ground where Kreig's foreleg had been a moment ealier. I stepped forward, extricating the tail tip where it'd buried itself a whole claw length into the soil. My opponent tilted his head sideways, puzzled, but before he could react his face caught a claw full of dirt. The dragon wheezed, shaking his head from side to side to get the dirt out, his milky water-lenses flashing under the thick, scaly outer ones.

I surged forward while he was distracted and tackled the skinnier dragon onto the side, using my weight to pin his wings awkwardly askew and keeping his claws and tail restricted to sliding uselessly against my thick shoulder and chest scales. I grabbed hold of a skinny wing appendage in one claw, pulled and applied my patented twist and hold. Kreig howled.

"Yield or I break a wing." I said softly to the dragon under me. Although for a dragon, "softly" was still clearly audible to the shrieking fans around us who were beginning to lose it.

Kreig hesitated so I twisted some more. I felt something start to give in the base of the wing. Voice pierced with pain and fear of losing the wing (even temporarily), Kreig shouted, "I yield! I yield! For the love of Gyramond, let me go!!!"

The sound of him relenting was sweet music to my ears. For a moment, I considered breaking his wing anyways; I hadn't exactly gotten to the top of the local fighting circuit by being merciful. However, I just sighed a bit before tossing Kreig aside like a spent carcass. It wasn't worth damaging a migrant dragon. I knew the dragons beyond the walls needed their wings for the long patrols they were obliged to do keeping on the lookout for bandits, gangs and worse beyond the endless stretches of farmland outside the city.

Kreig lay where I sent him, moaning slightly. When it was clear he wasn't getting back up, the surrounded crowd erupted into a frenzy. "Darzhja! Darzhja!" chanted the two hundred or so of my fans attending today's performance. The rest grumbled to themselves as they either sought out or avoided the bookers dispersed throughout the crowd. The head bookie, and my old friend Marcus emerged from the crowd as I sat and began to preen and clean some of the scratches I'd gained.
"Darzhja!" said Marcus, clapping his leathery hands together. His head was only about chest high where I sat, but this human was larger in my eyes than the rest of the masses of his kinfolk. "An excellent show as always," Now Marcus lowered his voice, "But perhaps you could have made it last a little longer, eh? The crowd might've bought more food and merch."

I blew a bit of smoke from my nostrils, playing indignant, though I really did take Marcus' words to heart. As the crowd departed rapidly, there were fewer ears to overhear us, but still, I got up and motioned with my wing for marcus to follow so we could discuss business.

Outside the grand walls of New Alveri, the buildings, such as they were, were mostly wooden shacks, stands and acres of tents were caravans often formed miniature towns and villages as they awaited proper access into the city proper. This close to the wall, five and six story buildings (humanoid sized), huddled and leaned against the towering stone edifice for support. Technically they were a fire hazard, but no one bothered to tear them down anymore. I settled into one of the few alleys wide enough for a proper sized dragon such as myself; it still felt cramped compared to the interior of the city, despite the buildings' lack of height. "You've got to find me better opponents, Marcus." I began. "That migrant dragon hardly had any muscle on him!"

"I don't know Darzhja." Marcus chuckled, "He seemed a right feral bastard if I've seen one. An' he gave you a few new bruises... an' a need for a new tooth I'd wager."

Marcus' eyes glinted. He'd caught me mouthing the loose tooth with my tongue. "Forget about it Marcus." I said with a flourish of my tail.

The middle aged human crossed his arms. "And what're you going to do with an old rotted tooth?"

"My teeth are not rotted!" I bristled, towering over the suddenly fragile looking human. After his fear scent sated me sufficiently, I added, "As for what I'd do with it, I'd sell it of course, same as you. You don't think dragons can't sell their own teeth and scales?" I said, grinding my paws a bit on the dense, stinking dirt of the alleyway.
Marcus shuffled his heavy boots shyly, "Well no... But I could get a better price for it."

I knew he could at that. Vendors who dealt in dragon parts typically shorted dragon sellers. I supposed it was simple jealousy seeing so much magical reagents walking around in one place and having to make do with lost scales and teeth and the occasional liter of blood; at least until one of us died... I looked down at the man through slanted eyes, "Eighty-twenty."

"Outrageous!" said Marcus in his now familiar banter. "I can double the price for you!"

I rolled my eyes, "Sixty- forty." Marcus fumed for a minute more, grumbling for an even share, but he and I both knew that my offer was more than fair. When he finished, I extended the tooth out of position as far as it would go with my tongue and then bit down. There was a moment of sweet agony and a mouth full of blood and then I spat the tooth out at Marcus' feet. He picked it up and handled it as if it were a fine jewel. It was the size of his palm.

"It's a bit smaller than I thought..." he muttered, "And you cracked it!"

I snorted. "If you don't like it, go sell your own teeth. It's just going to be ground into powder anyways." Marcus sighed and pocketed the bloodstained tooth while I mouthed around the fresh hole it had left in my jaw. Deciding to move on past this affair, I asked, "What was the take on the fight?"

Marcus rubbed the back of his shaggy furred head. ‘Ugh, that usually meant bad news.’ I thought. "As I said, if the fight had lasted longer, then we might have pulled in more. It's too soon to tell you your cut, but from the bets alone, I'd say at least 20 pounds."

"Twenty..." I muttered unsatisfactorily. Twenty pounds of gems may have been about a year's wages for a middle class human, but it was only about was enough money to pay for a month's supply of meat and the cost of my tiny room at the orphanage.

"Look Darzhja, that's all I can pay you for the fight," repeated Markus sympathetically. "I really wish I could get you more, because frankly I'd still be hawkin' trinkets on the street were it not for you. Doesn't seem right that a stinkin' human like me has benefited more from the Queen of the Lowtown than the Queen herself know what I'm sayin'?"
I murred in thought. That's what I appreciated about Markus; that even while he'd become a well-to-do man he always kept things in perspective and he genuinely cared about me, when all too many humanoids merely saw dragons as big walking cash-cows. His self deprecating humor was admirable as well and appealing to my dragon sensibilities.

"Don't sell yourself short Markus. You gave me a place to fight, a purpose for my life..." I answered. "You're right though, that I'm probably not going to end up doing more than just paying for rent if I just keep on beating up the Kreig's of the world. If we bring in some real fighters, then we'll really start to rake in the gems!!"

"I suppose so Darzhja... I don't suppose you'd have somebody in mind?"

"What about Kaj?" I answered.

Markus' eyes widened. "Kaj?" he snorted, both surprised but also intrigued, "You mean the South-Eastern gatekeeper? By Nodalisk!! You don't think small do you Darzhja?"

I snorted at both the rhetorical and the literal implications. There were a few dragons that were larger than a Regal Bronze, especially a half-starved orphan like me, but Kaj, the gatekeeper of one of the entrances of New Alveri, was of a truly colossal breed of dragon known as a Sky-Swallower.

"Oh...not at all. I wouldn't be mentioning it if I weren't completely serious about this Markus... In fact, I've been thinking about it for a long time."

"That'd be the first time in a long time that there'd be an opponent bigger than you, but if you can somehow arrange Kaj to a match I reckon the payoff could be huge!! Now then, I've seen you fight many times, but there's a big difference between a vagrant like your last opponent compared with a trained professional. I heard he was even with the Knights for a little while..." said Markus hesitantly. He looked skeptical maybe even a bit concerned, but looking deeper I could tell that his mind was already deducing the possibilities. Who wouldn't want to see two dragons fight it out on an arena the size of two traditional stadiums and the sky itself.

"Exactly," I grunted with determination, "And that's exactly why I should fight him. I won't get any better fighting the likes of Kreig, and I think I'm good enough to challenge him now."

"Ha!! You're never lacking for confidence are you Darzhja!! If you can get that fight then I'll find a place big enough so that everyone can see the Queen of the Lowtown brawl the Guard of the South-East Gate!! There may even be space at the old broken gravel yard..."

I could sense the human's mind already whirring at dizzying speed, a trait that I respected in Marcus and rightfully due to his unfortunately short-lived race. To think that I'd known this man for 25 years now, almost half my life so far and more than half of his. I however, had long centuries ahead waiting for me, whilst Markus was already fading. Sometimes it saddened me greatly thinking about Markus' (relatively) imminent death. Despite the depressing thought, I said, "I'll leave that planning all to you, Markus."

The man chuckled and stroked his enormous salt and pepper goatee. "Indeed you will, and I'll leave convincing Kaj to actually show up for a brawl to you." He stroked his chin again and added, "Of course, that's assuming he'll even wake long enough to fight!"

I chuckled with the man, but secretly, I worried about that exact possibility. Kaj had a reputation for long "naps," a necessity of his breed that went along with his appetite and huge stature, but the guard-dragon never seemed to take any precautions to avoid seeming lazy to those around him as others might have. "I'll wake a fire in his belly. Even if I have to bite off an ear to do so!" I cried boldly, opening my wings a bit theatrically.

Markus shook his head happily and waved my off, finally patting my broad chest with his hand. "Just be careful Darzhja. Remember, this is just business. No sense starting a feud over a basket of gems."

I purred softly. I doubted that Markus could understand the appeal of a basket of gems to a dragon, but then I'd never understood the appeal of something like a leather jerkin or a pair of boots of the sort Markus favored either. But I cocked my head, "Ah, but the fans would pay extra for bad blood between us."

Markus turned back to me. "The crowd pays for a story and we give it to them, Darzhja. No need to get sucked into it ourselves." He looked at me shrewdly, "I thought you'd be old enough to understand that by now."

I snorted a cloud of smoke above his head. "I just turned Sixty-five, I'm still an adolescent in the eyes of my betters..." I said with mock despair.

Markus chuffed in his odd way and turned to leave back towards the fighting pit we'd just left and the bookies who would tally the total haul for the day. "A fine age to learn to get over yourself, I'd say." He called back, raising his hand.
The human's insolence made the scales on the back of my neck rise, but I'd know Markus far too long to be truly angry. In fact, my reaction gave greater weight to his parting words. Strangely, they almost sounded like something Lady Ramoth would say back at the orphanage...

Sighing, I reared up and launched myself skyward with a powerful kick of my thick haunches. The deserted road where we'd had our discussion was so dilapidated that my feet cracked the stones of the street under me when I did, but that was hardly my concern. My mind was already on the small chest of gems that Markus would have delivered to my dormitory once he figured out my fair share. That and figuring out how best to approach the Guard of the South-East Gate and put him in the mood for a friendly fight.