“It spoke! It spoke! It actually spoke! What are you?!” Charles demanded, spooking the horses that were already on the verge of bolting away and causing the rest of the guard to break their defensive formation.
“Calm down! All of you! We are the King’s Guard! We do not cry out like lost babes in the night!” Jason commanded before once again addressing the armored dragon, “So you can speak?”
In a deep, almost sarcastic, laughing tone he answered, “Well either I can speak or the fear I can smell dripping off of you is driving you mad.”
Jason scoffed, “Or maybe it’s just your foul stench is just making us all ill,” refusing to back down to the beast before him with a small spark of either courage or complete stupidity burning away the icy fear that had tried to settle into his bones.
“Ho, ho! One of our snacks has the gall to talk back! Maybe this won’t be boring,” the feathered one’s high voice rang out delighted.
“Only nine of them are our meal, Manus. Sarre here has business with one,” the red one reprimanded the brightly colored feathered one called Manus, his voice thick and rich in tone and distractingly soothing.
“Don’t remind me in front of lesser beings Quil!” Manus snapped back in his high, melodic voice, his feathers along the length of his back ruffling up and down out of embarrassment.
“What business could a dragon have with a man other than to be slain?” Jason continued to take jabs at the dragons’ remarks, hoping he could distract them long enough so a plan of attack could be formed. Though Jason was fully confident in the King’s Guards’ abilities to slay these unusual dragons, he found his mind battling against an unexplained feeling of respect and even worse, trust toward the beasts.
“Dragons were to be hunted and now silenced. It is for the good of all men and the lands,” he kept reminding himself, blaming the feelings on what must have been some sort of dragon trick.
“Surprisingly a dragon can have quite the quarrel with an insect. It was one of you enslaved and tortured my brother, ripped out his soul and left his body to rot at the boundary of our lands when he had come in peace!” Sarre roared out, “For years one of you has desecrated my un-afflicted brethren’s’ bodies! Ripping out our fire, our souls, for amusement! And as if that was not enough, he further marred his flesh by branding my brother’s skin with his detestable claws. Which of you is that monster? Come forward!”
All of the guards knew that the dragon had described Jason. If these were normal circumstances, men against men, Jason would have come forward and face his accuser except that beyond describing his fighting style, it wasn’t Jason that they described. Before this night none of the King’s Guard had ever seen, let alone killed a dragon that wasn’t feral and to even try to keep one alive and torture it was suicidal. But something had to be done. Finally, Jason decided to give in to the unexplained trust he felt, thinking that maybe it meant there must be a way to reason with them.
“Maybe not all dragons are...dragons,” he told to himself, hardly believing what he was going to try to do.
He still stayed close to the group keeping a close eye on his men’s reactions as he had never seen them this immobilized by fear before and he chose carefully what he spoke, “Part of what you’ve said is accurate. Yes, one of the King’s Guard does, in fact, slay feral dragons in the manner you have described and, forgive me for me for being blunt, but destroying a dragon’s fire sack is the most effective way to ensure that the dragons we have slain have in fact been…slain.”
At once all three dragons’ began a furious growl that shook the earth below them, rousing the horses into a fit of nervous whines, rearing and scuffling, forcing the knights to break formation and attempt to regroup, but their minds were suffocating in fear as well.
“What do you think you’re doing Jason?!” Charles crowed, the tremor in his voice causing it to crack, but Jason ignored him, steadfast in his resolve.
He lunged his horse forward toward Sarre, nearly eye to eye with the rage-filled brute, “Let me finish! I would be an idiot and insult everyone here if I just outright denied that it is our job to slay dragons. It is a simple statement of the facts. Nothing more. But I can swear to you and all of your kind that we have never before come across a dragon that can match likes of you three, let alone spoken with one as we have with you. Before now we had no knowledge that dragons even had a homeland and for us to even attempt to keep one of your kind, feral or not, would be madness and would more likely than not amount to treason.”
Quil and Manus had receded their growling and instead had looks of contemplation across their scaly features, intrigued by Jason’s boldness while Sarre continued to stare Jason down with his scorching golden eyes. A small lump of nerves began to settle in the pit of Jason’s stomach but he held Sarre’s gaze and pushed onward, “Given that a great offense was committed against you by this man you have described, is likely he is a copycat and a coward who fought the way he did to mislead you so you’d come after us instead of him. Otherwise, his actions have endangered this land we are sworn to protect and therefore amount to treason, creating a common enemy between us. So unless you attack us, we have no reason to fight you and instead have a common need for justice that we may be able to serve out, together.”
After Jason had finished speaking, Sarre was a touch calmer. He glanced over at Quil, then Manus with an odd look simmering within his golden eyes that the other two dragon’s shared. He then turned back to Jason. He expected his offer to work together had caught them off guard but instead Sarre asked, “What do you mean you do not know of our lands? It is well known throughout our kind that the very armor you wear is forged there.”
Beneath his helmet, Jason frowned, “Our armor? It is forged in a village from within Avonous. Human lands,” he cautiously explained, uncertain why Sarre had focused on that particular detail.
“We already know the village name is Torvis if you are worried about secrecy. It is on dragon lands. So how can you be certain that you haven’t been misled?” Quil interjected, challenging what Jason had said.
Jason was taken off guard but was pleased that at least for the moment he was given the opportunity to discuss the topic, rather than having everything he had said dismissed or coming under attack, so he pressed forward, “Because I was born and raised there, and used to craft this very armor for the King’s Guard with my father and am one of the few people who also know why it can only be forged there,” Jason stated firmly as Quil’s bright sapphire eyes bore into him, seeking out any falsehoods in his words.
“And if we are speaking of the same town, then we can agree that the reason lies with where and how the armor is cooled and if it done anywhere else, even within Torvis, the armor becomes as cinis within the swells. Correct?” Quil asked cryptically, also not willing to say anything more than he needed as well.
Only those from Torvis, mostly the blacksmiths, said that about a failed piece of armor, meaning it turned to dust or ash if it was cooled off in the wrong part of the river that ran through there, and the other part of the saying, “Yes, to be forged again to the south and live forever five verses east.”
For a second Quil had a mild look of approval dance in his eyes as Jason finished the old Torvis blacksmith saying, before his features knotted up with concern, “Sarre, there are too many things here that are not adding up and he speaks of the same Torvis we know. We need to consult the High Matriarch before we act any further,” Quil spoke softly. But Sarre had only become more enraged, the fire in his throat burning bright enough to glow throughout the whole length of his throat.
“My brother was slain! His body defiled and left out for all our kind to see. The truce is broken! We have no reason for us to spare any of them! They should be beyond grateful that I only want my brother’s killer!” Sarre roared at Quil, smoke rising from his nostrils and through the crisp teeth he bared.
Everyone, including the other two dragons, could tell that something was off with Sarre. Jason slowly backed away and rejoined the group. Charles took no time to speak up, “Have you gone mad!”
“Well we’re not fighting or dead yet and at the moment they still only want me…” Jason trailed off, his next actions obvious to his friend.
“Wait, you’re not going to-“
Jason cut off Charles and approached the dragons again, not knowing how much time he had before Sarre’s temper burst and he decided that one life would not be enough. And Jason doubted that his men would be able to shake off the fright in their minds in time to fight, “Sarre, Quil, and Manus. It is clear that whatever has happened in your lands is much more grievous than a mere slight or misunderstanding but because it is my personal style of fighting that the coward has mimicked-”
“You admit it then! The Dragon’s Brand is responsible!” Sarre burst out, clawing the ground beneath him.
“Let me finish Sarre! As of right now I and only I claim will responsibility for the way your brother was slain, not the broken truce or his actual death. So as my honor demands, you will face me and only me for this disgrace. Otherwise, the rest of the charges you have claimed must be investigated, for both our kinds’ sake. And for us to do that, my men will be free to leave here, unharmed, so that they may do so. It is their job to protect this land, including against these false accusations.”
“You expect me to settle for just one of you?! After how many you have slain! After accusing me of lying?!”
“Sarre where is your sense of reason? As I said before and on my word as an Advisor, we must-,“ Quil began but Sarre blasted fire at him and forced him to leap away.
“Sarre what are you-“ Menus began before he ducked to avoid multiple, rampant bursts of Sarre’s fire and watched the clear, golden color of his eyes twist into a dusky, dull orange as his bone-like armor and spikes began to burn and fall to ground as ash, revealing the sickly blue-gray skin of a feral dragon forming beneath.
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