For centuries we have simply accepted that dragons are one of the few constants in an ever-changing world. We have learned to live with them always being close. Always being a threat. Our houses have been fortified to withstand the strong jaws and claws of the humongous creatures. Our livestock are under constant guard. Our children can only play inside the village walls. We all know that the dragons could easily break through the village perimeters if they decided to do so, but we have defended ourselves so well that they have stopped trying. We have managed to be too much work compared to our nutritional value. To keep this relative peaceful state, we send out a few sheep or cattle every so often, to wander away from the village. We assume the dragons take them eventually, but we have no way of knowing for sure. A few brave souls have tried their luck hunting the beasts, but all who have tried, have been unsuccessful. Only a few have even returned from dragon hunts, and those who do have either seen no dragons at all or have spotted one too big to hunt. When I was just a boy, I dreamed of being a great dragon hunter one day. As did most of my friends. We would spend hours on end telling the tall tales of how we would slay or trap the dragons when we grew up. Some said they would train so hard they could kill a dragon with their bare hands. Others would come up with elaborate trap designs or awesome weaponry. It goes for every last one of us that we grew up to be men, smart enough not to try our luck hunting those, seemingly unkillable monsters.
For the last few months, I and a team of craftsmen have been working on a new defence weapon. It is a larger version of a ballista, that can fire a six-foot-long bolt at a much steeper angle than what we have ever had before. Our hope is that any dragon flying too close to, or even over, our village will be persuaded to find other hunting grounds, after we hit it with one of the bolts. We have set up three of these contraptions at strategic locations in the village. Between the three, we should be able to hit a dragon anywhere over the village, as well as a far way outside it. We haven’t seen dragons near the village in over a year, which is odd since we traditionally get one or two dragons visiting each year. Some say the dragons have finally moved away, so we are safe. Others think they died out. But most of us believe we have just managed to keep them fed enough with our sheep offerings that they didn’t need to go looking for food near the village. And if we, the sceptics, are right, what happens when the dragons realize we have even more food inside the village? Or when they grow so much in numbers that the livestock, we send out is no longer enough?
We can’t afford sending more resources into the dragons’ den and getting nothing in return. Our only option is to fortify and defend when the dragons come. And sure enough, only a few days after the new ballista’s are installed, the horn from the southern outpost echoes over the village. Most people know exactly what to do, and the rest figures it out in a matter of seconds. Everyone scrambles to get inside their houses. People gather up their children, husbands and wives, pets and smaller livestock and barricades themselves. Only a few of us stay outside. We are the ones tasked with manning the defences, trying to keep the dragons at bay. I man one of the large ballista’s just as the shadow glides over the village. It seems to be a young dragon. A male about thirty or so feet long. It has dark grey-green scales covering its entire body and a set of black horns on its head. The neck is as long as the tail and its wingspan is as wide as it is long. It has short thick legs, that seem mostly useless as the creature flies over the village, but it is said that the grip strength of the feet will easily squeeze the life out of any man.
The dragon does a great big turn over the village and before I have a chance to aim my ballista properly, a bolt from one of the other ballista’s emerge from behind a row of houses. The large wooden pole soars through the air with incredible speed and hits the creature on the belly. The tip of the bolt splinters against the large, armoured scales of the monster and the remains of the bolt fall to the ground. The dragon turns its head to see what attacked it and lets out an ear-ripping screech. It sounds almost like a sword getting dragged sideways over a large steel plate. Only much louder. The sound is terrifying, and I find myself covering behind the ballista, even though the dragon is nowhere near me.
As the dragon turns to the right to investigate the origin of the attack, I notice something strange on its side, not far behind the left wing. It looks like a large open wound where the scales have been peeled off to reveal the flesh underneath. The dragon has spotted the ballista that fired the first bolt, and it is now circling the area, preparing for its own attack. I take aim and when it turns the left side to me again, I fire my ballista with great precision. The bolt soars through the air for only a second, before boring into the flesh of the creature. The bolt sinks in deep and the dragon screams more bone chilling than before. It flaps its wings frantically and seemingly uncontrolled, as it tumbles towards the ground. It crashlands near the town square with a loud thump and lays still on the ground. I stand frozen for several seconds, half expecting the dragon to jump up and start ripping the houses apart around it. But it doesn’t. When I finally run to the dragon, the rest of the defence squad shows up almost at the same time. They have brought swords and spears, in case the monster turns out to be alive still, but we quickly determine, it is dead. Its eyes are still open, but they are fixed and seem almost unreal or glass-like. For a few minutes we keep our distance to the creature and poke at it with long spears, still expecting it to jump up and eat us. After thoroughly determining that the dragon is actually, properly dead, we decide to go closer and inspect it. None of us have ever seen a dragon this close before. No one in the village has ever seen a dragon dead before. Now we have one lying on the ground, right in front of us.
I examine the place I hit the creature with the bolt. I was correct in my assumptions. There is a big open gash where the scales seem to have been ripped off. I managed to hit it right in the only spot where it was not protected by the armour it usually caries. What is more interesting though is the marks on the scales around the wound. Long deep scratch marks made by a claw significantly larger than the dragons own and obviously stronger than the dragon scales. The same dragon scales that we have always believed to be impenetrable.
We discus for a while what could have made these marks on a dragon and a few theories are presented. The most common aspect of most of the theories is that the dragon has been in a fight, but that doesn’t add up to me. First of all, if a dragon fights another dragon, it doesn’t get away alive unless it wins and that seems unlikely, given the size of the opponent. Second of all, if it had been a fight, the front of the body, the neck, the head and the front legs would have been mostly exposed. But this wound is on the back half of the body, behind the wing. To me it looks more like a wound of someone trying to escape an attacker. Which leads to the question: Who, or rather what, attacks dragons?
Unfortunately, we don’t have much time to discuss the matter. While we are talking the horn echoes again from the south. Another dragon is on the way here. Just as we are all about to set off to man our posts the horn sounds again. And again. We look at each other confused. Dragons mostly fly alone. To see more than one dragon in a day is highly unlikely, but if the guard at the outpost is correct a whole horde of them is heading towards the village. Even if they all have wounds like the one, we just downed, three ballistas are not going to save us now. We have all frozen in our place and are staring to the sky in the south, nervously awaiting what may come through the clouds.
Before long the dragons start pouring through the cloud cover. There are more of them than we had feared. Literally hundreds of dragons are filling the sky, and in a few seconds, they start blocking out the low hanging sun. We can’t do anything but watch the creatures fly closer and closer. Without even talking about it, we all agree that we must accept this to be our last day living on this brown soil. Then the first dragons cross over the village walls but they don’t slow down. In fact, they don’t seem to notice the village at all, and before long they cross the wall to the north and fly away from the village. The rest of the flock follow the same path straight over the village, without even looking down.
One of the other men mention that the dragons fly almost like a flock of birds scared away from their tree by a predator. I’m still looking towards the sky in the south. Nervously waiting to see what creature has scared the dragons from their tree.