The Last Dragon

As Rohen’s fingers bled through her tattered gloves, the words of the gypsy returned to her.

“He is in slumber,” the old woman had said, her tongue unfamiliar with the human language Rohen spoke fluently.  “If him you seek, him you find within stone and ice, a-sleeping for always.”

Stone and ice, indeed, Rohen thought to herself bitterly, climbing ever higher up the face of Mount Nuva.  She paused briefly on an outcropping to remove her gloves, which were now hindering her more than helping.  She cried out as they peeled away from her skin painfully, glad no one else could hear her sobs.  She wanted to put her freezing fingers in her mouth to warm them up, but knew that would only warm them up too quickly and make it worse when she had to start climbing again.

She sat with her back against the mountain, legs hanging over the ledge, and tore several strips of cloth from an extra shirt in her pack.  The one she was wearing had frozen to her body, anyway and there would be no changing clothes for her any time soon.  Carefully, and with some howling, she wrapped her hands in the cloth and tied the strips off as best as she could with her stiff fingers.

She took this moment to look out from her perch on the side of the mountain and imagined that she could see all the way to Doz’Gostren where Nelodeve sat on her throne and ruled in place of her murdered parents.  Tired, angry, and alone, Rohen had a sudden urge to scream with all her might at the tyrant and all of the unfairness of the world, but she suppressed her rage and instead looked up and over her shoulder at the distance left to travel.

“Fifty feet left,” she said out loud to herself, her voice sounding hollow and her numb lips rebelling against movement.  She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth on impulse and regretted it the instant it touched the cold air again, warm and wet.  She rubbed the back of one freshly-bandaged hand to remove the moisture, but her teeth were already chattering with the sting.  She let out a long sigh that staccatoed through her teeth and stood up as carefully as she could, thankful for the well-made boots she’d had the foresight to buy.

She turned then, and began climbing up again, forcing the pain from her injured hands to the back of her mind where it pulsed, a dull throb.  She gave a grunt each time she reached up for a new hold, her shoulders screaming at her and her thighs registering their own complaints.

“Him you wake is not possible.”

Rohen’s thoughts drifted back to the gypsy.  Rohen, who had thought there was no story she did not know, had been captivated as the old woman had told her the tale of Jezros, the last dragon of Dradinya.  It had been mesmerizing, even with the woman’s lilting accent and abuse of the human tongue.  Images had danced across Rohen’s mind—images so vivid they seemed as though they were memories of the events rather than products of her imagination.  She could see the kytes of the Umkelt mountains, their feathered wings a myriad of bright colors against the skies as they hunted the dragons to near extinction, poaching them for their hides, their scales, their meat.  She felt as though she had been a part of the kytes’ fireside gatherings where they celebrated their hunts and she had known what it must have been like to be the one responsible for felling a mighty dragon—to take the head position as a dozen or more of the others danced with her beneath its hide, pretending to attack the others of the tribe.

Her own heart had ached as Jezros’ must have when the kytes destroyed his home and his family and he realized there were no dragons left but him.  She had felt her own rage swell nearly beyond her control when Jezros took his revenge on those kytes, had drowned in the never-ending suffering of his remorse at his own actions as he looked out on the bodies of the kytes he had killed.  A sweeping grief had clutched at her chest when Jezros realized his own existence was too much of a burden for himself, when he had begged a favor of the Nuvian dwarves as a dying request.

When Jezros submerged himself in Lake Nuva before the elders of the dwarves, Rohen had felt completely and totally exhausted to her very soul; she had felt too tired to pray, to think, to even weep.  Her very bones had vibrated in her body as the gypsy had sung of the ground beneath the lake trembling and rising, cupping all of Lake Nuva as it did.  The greatest sorcerers the dwarves possessed had grown a mountain where before there had only been a lake.  The earth swallowed the lake as it lifted it into the air, higher than any other mountain in the Umkelt range.  Rohen had known the bitter cold, as bitter as it was now, as the lake froze around Jezros, the last of the dragons the world would ever see.  And then she had wept.

She wept now, as her hands finally reached the outer lip of the cavern that had been her goal.  The tears froze against her cheeks as she dragged herself up from the cliff face and onto flat ground.  Bedraggled, she crawled on her hands and knees toward the cave mouth, no longer noticing the pain in her numb fingers.

Jaw clenched, Rohen dragged herself across the threshold of the cave and collapsed on the other side.  She thought she might pass out as the interior of the cave swam before her eyes, but after a moment realized it was only the snow and ice caked to her eyelashes melting.  She blinked the water away from her eyes before she finally began to register the slow warmth that was creeping along her body, restoring sensation to her extremities.

Her raw vocal chords ground out a cry of pain as feeling returned to her hands and the unnatural heat of the cave began to make them swell.  Shaking off snow and ice, she sat up and tore viciously at the bandages that were cutting off circulation to her fingers.  She crawled quickly to the mouth of the cave and buried her hands into the snow for a moment before withdrawing them into the warm cave.  She rubbed the cold snow onto her hands, sobbing as she did so.  The skin on two of her fingers had split open, having been frostbitten and then warmed up too quickly.  As carefully as she could, she retrieved the rest of her torn shirt and ripped off a few strips to bind the fourth and fifth fingers of her right hand together.  When that was finished, she fell over onto one side, her pack beneath her head, and passed out.

She couldn’t be sure how long it was that she slept, but found that she was warm, if damp from the melted snow on her clothes.  Still light-headed, she pulled a small, metal cup from her pack and filled it with clean snow from the entrance of the cave.  It melted fairly quickly and she drank it, though it hurt her teeth and stung her cracked lips.  She did this twice more before she felt any stronger and then pulled two slices of bread from her bag.  She ate them in seconds, chasing them with another cupful of snow water.  She stuffed the cup back into her bag, which she tossed over one shoulder as she stood up, and removed a candle and a book of matches.  Feeling warmer and stronger than she had in days, she lit the candle and walked further into the cave.

Twenty paces in to the cave, the ceiling descended so that Rohen had to duck her head to continue walking and continued growing shorter the further she walked.  At nearly half a mile, she could stoop no further and was reduced to an awkward, arm-and-elbow crawl, still holding her candle. Soon, however, even that became troublesome.  The cave, which was now more accurately a tunnel, had narrowed so far that she had to remove her pack to get through.  She backtracked a few feet until she could easily remove the pack and glanced at the candle she still held him her hand hesitantly, not liking what she knew she’d have to do.  Using its light, she removed a small dagger from her pack and puckered her lips to blow out the flame.  She hesitated for a moment, gripping the handle of her dagger tightly, and quickly upturned the candle and pressed the wick against the ground of the cave, snuffing out the flame.  She dropped the candle next to her pack.  There was no sense in turning her breathable air into toxic candle smoke.

Once the candle was out, she was struck by the total and complete darkness within the tunnel.  She could have closed her eyes and it would have made no difference.  It was only then—when she could no longer see—that her other senses strove for dominance over each other.  The hard floor of the tunnel was warm beneath her stomach, though where the heat was coming from she could only imagine. The smell of her own unwashed body made the air thicken around her and her lips tasted strongly of copper and salt where they had bled from being chapped and frozen.

The silence captured her attention more than any of these things, though.  As she crawled on her stomach, pulling herself along slowly, it was the abysmal silence that ate at her.  Without the sound of her own heartbeat throbbing in her temples, there was nothing else; the world was empty.  At first, it occurred to her that the silence was an advantage.  It would allow her to hear any nasty creature with the gift of nocturnal sight that might be coming in her direction.  The longer she spent in the lonely stillness, however, the more she wondered whether the darkness would swallow her entirely.  Or whether it already had.

Her eyes conjured images of her family, impossible-to-forget portraits of those she had lost so long ago.  The tunnel spoke to her in her mother’s voice.

“Turn back, maiela,” her mother said, calling her the old Trearloni word for ‘loved one.’  “Soon, it will be impossible for you to leave.  Soon, you will dissolve into these walls and Nuva will claim your very soul.”

Rohen ignored the voice.  It was not—could not be—her mother.  She hesitated for a moment and wondered if that was true.  It was possible, wasn’t it?  Her mother had come to her in dreams before. Was it possible her mother could come to her in the blinding darkness?  Or perhaps Rohen had fallen asleep and was dreaming of her mother.

Rohen started forward again, searching in front of her carefully with the hand not carrying the dagger.  “If this is a dream,” she said aloud to herself, “then I will find the end of it.”

With her mother still whispering warnings in her head, though in a decidedly smaller voice, Rohen pressed onward.

All realm of time was lost to Rohen as she crawled on her stomach.  Several hours had past, she was certain, but it could not have been more than a day and a half.  She knew only that she’d been crawling long enough for her ribs to ache from the pressure and her eyes to sting with sweat and sleep deprivation.  There was also a growing lump on the back of her head from where she had touched something with coarse fur and pulled back instinctively, hitting her head on the ceiling.  Fireworks had lit up behind her eyes and she had lain on the floor of the tunnel for several minutes trying to clear her head.  Upon closer inspection of the fur, she had found what had once been a rat or something similar but was now mostly bones.  It had been dead long enough that it no longer smelled of rot and Rohen had breathed out with relief.

That must have been at least a mile ago, though.  The tunnel had constricted even further since then, to the point that she was scraping her sides against the walls and her back against the ceiling as she moved.  She could shift her shape, she considered, but she was not yet ready to let go of her dagger—her only defense now.

She didn’t have long to consider this when the hand in front of her met solid rock.

“Wha…?”

Her hand examined the tunnel before her, first slowly, then more frantically as she found nothing but a solid wall of rock.

“No,” she protested, her voice barely a whisper as tears came to her eyes.  “No, this…  this can’t…”

Rohen cried quiet tears, her sobs hoarse but large enough to be painful as her lungs attempted to expand past the capacity of the tunnel around her.

“I warned you, maiela.”

Her mother’s voice was sad, but Rohen ignored it.  She closed her eyes—for all the good it would do—and cried onto the stone floor of what would surely become her grave, just as it had for the rat.  She would die and rot away, leaving nothing behind her but bones, hair, and scraps of clothing, one skeletal hand clutching a dagger for all it was worth.

Worse than all of that, she would never return to her friends.  She would never save them from the fates Nelodeve had promised them.  They would hold a funeral service for her once she had been gone for a few more weeks.  It would be small and simple.  They would burn twigs from six maple trees, or cherry if they could find it, and gather around in a circle.  No one would speak at first, but they would eventually all pay tribute with much wringing of hands and shuffling of feet.  Jett would take command of their tiny army in her place and, with the courage of a bear, would lead them to Doz’Gostren and…

“And burn.”

The voice was her mother’s again, but it was different this time.  It was stronger and more real than the phantom voice of the cave had been.  And the image of the tall, statuesque woman did not float and flicker before her; it walked toward her with confidence.  Rohen felt as though she should stand, but knew it was impossible in the tunnel.  And, yet, her mother stood before her.

Shifting uncomfortably from the ground, Rohen found herself standing with some effort as her mother approached.

“Maiela,” her mother whispered, smiling sadly as she reached out and touched Rohen’s face gently.  The sensation was that of a cool breeze rather than a warm hand, but Rohen didn’t care.  Her mother brushed a hand across her cheek and said, “I am so sorry.”

Before Rohen could ask, her mother brushed her fingers across the girl’s forehead and images sprang up all around Rohen—familiar images of a village aflame.  But, this was not the village of her childhood and she was not a child.

Fire burned all around her, scorched her eyes with its brightness and fury.  Dark figures writhed within the flames, some still screaming while others no longer had the ability.  She could smell the scent of burnt flesh and hair and nothing else.

“No!” she screamed, falling to her knees in the middle of the circle of fire where her friends burned.

In the instant she cried out and fell forward, the images disappeared, leaving her kneeling before her mother, who made Rohen look up into her eyes.  There was sorrow in those eyes, but their lack of pity was blatant.  “Now,” he mother said, “wake up!”

Rohen’s eyes snapped open and she was once again lying in the tunnel on her stomach, sore and stiff.  All trace of her mother was gone, but Rohen knew she had only fallen asleep.  She reached forward again with her free hand and searched the solid wall in front of her, her hand going slower this time, with more thought and more purpose.  After a moment, her fingers grazed the edge of a tiny opening a little larger than her fist.  She reached forward with her dagger and stabbed into the opening with the blade.  The blade did nothing significant the first four or five times, but Rohen knew she was going to get out of this cave if she had to dig herself out with this five-inch piece of steel.

On the sixth try, some of the rock gave way and Rohen was nearly blinded as a small beam of light filtered through.  She closed her eyes quickly before letting them slowly adjust to the light, still digging at the rock with her dagger.  After several minutes had passed, Rohen had chipped away a hole into a lit cavern barely big enough for a mouse to squeeze through.  But, barely was enough.

Setting her dagger at the edge of the hole she had made, Rohen closed her eyes and pictured her own transformation taking place.  She felt the strange but familiar sensation of her body rearranging itself and slowly shrinking.  Her eyes grew more sensitive to the light coming from the hole, but she was now at least small enough to fit through it.  On the feet of a mouse, Rohen dodged around the dagger at the opening into the next room and found herself looking out into a space large enough to hold an entire castle.  Or, it would have been had it not already been mostly occupied by a massive, golden dragon—wings spread wide as though in flight—encased in a block of ice.