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“The Slayer Dragons should not be confused with actual dragons. The order was created in the First Age by Draco, a dragon sorcerer of considerable ability. He imbued ten human warriors with draconic magic, and empowered them to fight the evils of the day. When they grew old, as humans do, Draco made it so that their power could be passed from one generation to the next.”
-History of the Greater Continent
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Chapter 3:
Fall
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#3.1 – Saturday, the 7th day of the 9th month…
“Come on, dear child, roust yourself. You need to eat, and you need to bathe. And you need to decide if you are going to school on Monday.”
The long shadows crawling across the floor indicated that it must be about late afternoon. Scarlet could always tell the time by the shadows on her floor. Her eyes were swollen and throbbing like the physical manifestation of the emotional ache that remained.
Bleary-eyed, Scarlet stared unhappily at her father.
Just as she did, the light shining through the window dimmed briefly as a dragon flew past overhead. Moving in a relaxed glide, it made just a slight swish as it flew a few thousand feet above the sleepy suburban neighborhood.
“Hmm, a yellow one,” Roy commented. “Do you suppose they have dragon-spotting guides like your mother’s birding books?” He patted Scarlet on the shoulder and gave her blanket a tug. “Come on, at least come and sit at the table with us.”
Scarlet’s father left her to prepare on her own. She struggled out of the bed and stumbled into her bathroom, retrieving her bathrobe along the way. It was black, like much of her clothing, and cut to look like a forester’s cloak. Made from some eldritch material and recycled water bottles, it felt soft and nicely fuzzy.
Scarlet tightened it around herself and turned on the sink, splashing some cold water on her face while she waited for the tap to turn warm. Bracing her hands on the counter, she looked at her own reflection again.
There were those green eyes.
Those Jusenkyou* eyes.
Scarlet could trace the lineage clear back to before the Long Night†, not that it was hard. She thought the bloodline might go back even further. Perhaps, even, to one of those rare, stygian lines, spoken of quietly in her most ancient books. The eyes didn’t feel like anything special, now; but they must have been way back then.
After laying in bed and breathing through her mouth for so long, Scarlet felt like she had fur growing on her tongue. As she went about brushing her teeth, she finally realized she was starving.
She needed food.
And a book to take with her to dinner.
Not that she couldn’t face her parents without one, it was just a vital distraction. She saw Friday’s stack from the Library+ on her desk. She could see her blood staining the pages of History of the Greater Continent, a painful reminder of the previous day. Her heart sank into her empty stomach and she decided not to take any of those books. Instead, she went for the Honorarium her parents gave her for her thirteenth birthday a few weeks earlier.
Making her way to the kitchen, Scarlet first encountered her mother. “Mom, aren’t I part dragon SS?”
Ann snatched up her daughter’s wrist and pulled it close, squinting as if studying her. “Hmmm… yes, looks like there is exactly as much dragon in there as the last twelve times you asked. Some infinitesimal quantity on your father’s side. The rest is pure human.” She smiled as Scarlet retracted her arm. “Little bird, do you want to set the table?”
Scarlet swished her lips around, still trying to get the bad taste out of her mouth. “I guess.” She grabbed the stack of plates from the counter and balanced her enormous book on her hip while she walked through the arched kitchen doorway and turned for the dining room.
“Mind the step, honey!” Ann called.
“Yeah, mom,” Scarlet shouted back, then whispered under her breath. “One time. ONE time. They weren’t even nice plates!”
Scarlet spilled the dishware haphazardly across her family’s antique mahogany dining table, and started shoving the plates around to all the proper settings. Her father sat at the end of the table, immersed in the financial papers as usual. Scarlet, who also read at the table most every evening, took a seat and opened up her very large book. For now, just having something else to think about helped her feel better.
The first page fell open to a digital print of a painting. Although Conri JusenkyouP got all the credit for restoring the Order, re-founding the city#, and generally doing lots of Pendragony-things but still not being Pendragon, he wasn’t the Jusenkyou from whom Scarlet descended. That honor fell to his sister, who’s face immortalized in oil greeted Scarlet from the Honorarium**.
Scarlet tapped the page to get her father’s attention. “Dad, this is Rebecca Jusenkyou††, she’s our distant ancestor. She married a dragon.”
Scarlet looked up at her father as he leaned around from behind his newspaper and furrowed his brow. “That would be… Aden, if I recall? Curiously, both were of the Jusenkyou bloodline, distant cousins.”
“That’s it,” Scarlet flipped another page and began running down the list of Rebecca’s titles. “And she had a little dragon in her, too. So, if he was a full-blooded dragon and she was one sixteenth dragon… dad, how do fractions work, again?”
Ann settled down across the table. “Scarlet, you’re thirteen years old, you should understand fractions.”
“Not if I’m part dragon,” Scarlet retorted. “Dragons don’t really ‘get’ fractions. Everyone knows that.”
Ann glanced at her husband. “Roy?”
“Any children of Aden and Rebecca would be seventeen thirty-secants dragon,” Roy said without needing to pause and think. “Which, coincidently, was the name of my failed a cappella group in high school.”
“You named your band after an obscure fraction?” Ann asked.
“We were a two-person quartet,” Roy said. “Much like fractions, nobody really ‘got’ us, either.”
“See, little bird?” Ann said. “Your father is part dragon, and he’s fine with fractions.”
“How about I just convert everything over to decimals and run with that?” Scarlet replied.
“I would wager there have been enough generations between you and them that any remaining speck of dragon blood is miniscule,” Roy turned his focus to the newspaper, then lowered it again and glanced at Scarlet. “Probably the more important thing is the family name. Ancient, aristocratic, …difficult to pronounce. That being said, I am still fifty-percent more dragon than you are.”
“I’m totally part dragon,” Scarlet hissed.
“Do you like your new book, honey?” Ann asked.
“Oh, I love it,” Scarlet sensed her lips twist into a shape she did not expect. The night before felt like an eternity ago, but here, already, she felt herself smiling. “It’s only an annotated reprint, but it’s got a lot of the original text. These Honorariums are a really great resource to historians, but originals are sooooo rare!”
“What is it you’re always complaining the kids keep telling you in school?” Roy asked.
“‘If you love history so much, why don’t you marry it?’” Scarlet parroted the words in a mocking tone. “Yeah, well, ya know what, maybe I will!”
“Maybe someday, dear,” Roy said.
Scarlet continued to eat with one hand. With her other, she traced the lines of text. Words flowed like water into her mind while food shoveled very un-lady-like into her mouth, feeding both with vigor.
“What have you decided about school on Monday?” Ann asked.
Scarlet looked up. At that moment, she had no idea. “Well… we’re going to the monument park, and you already paid for the field trip. Maybe I can tough it out and skip the rest of the week?”
“If you’re well enough to go on a field trip you’re well enough to go the whole week.”
Scarlet glanced down and bit her lip.
The decision would not be an easy one.
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* #3.2 *
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#3.2 – Monday, the 9th day of the 9th month…
The decision had not been easy.
It was not a decision she ever expected to make.
But Scarlet chose school.
“Thanks for doing this for me, man,” Scarlet remarked as she made hasty scrawls across the page.
“A field trip day is a day off,” the kid next to her replied. He was a short, vaguely pudgy kid named Jeremy, whom Scarlet had known since kindergarten, and who’s math homework she’d been copying for roughly as long.
“It’s not ‘til second period,” Scarlet replied in a rush. “Stupid rotating schedule. I swear, they planned this out to make sure we’d still have math.”
“I don’t think they’re that good at planning,” Jeremy said.
Most of the characters Scarlet’s hurried hand made were not marks in any known language, and she knew it. But she figured if it looked right enough at a glance maybe it would be ok.
“What’s this thing we’re going to see, again?” Jeremy asked. “I did not pay attention at all to the permission slip.”
“The Plaza of Sleeping Dragons*,” Scarlet replied.
“Your face is moving and sounds are coming out, but that did not answer my question,” Jeremy said.
Scarlet forced a weak smile. It didn’t seem like it, but Jeremy was actually one of the nicer kids. The rest of them didn’t dare ask Scarlet questions. “You know the cemetery where the Slayer Dragons are buried? It’s closed to the public, so down here on the valley floor they built a place where the cenotaphs† go.”
“Did you always only speak in entire paragraphs?” Jeremy remarked.
“I like to think so,” Scarlet pushed the boy’s paper back into his hands.
“Hey, I bet you can answer this one,” Jeremy said. “Why do they call them ‘Slayer Dragons’? That name has NEVER made sense to me. They don’t slay dragons. In fact they’re, like, buddy-buddy with them.”
“Well, it’s obvious in historic context,” Scarlet began, but stopped when she saw Jeremy’s face split into a grimace. Pausing to force herself to swallow and chose her words more carefully, she continued. “The name dates back to the founding of the Order, at the start of the Golden Age+ of the Old Alliance. The exact meaning hasn’t fared well given changing language patterns and that one time where no one wrote anything down. It was a dragon—a super-powerful dragon-mage—who imbued the original ten with magic. In common parlance at the time, they were named ‘Slayer Dragons’ because they ‘slew’ things ‘for’—or in the name of—that dragon. I guess you really need a thorough understanding of early Golden Age sentence structure to get it.”
“I think you need a really thorough knowledge of modern sentence structure to make sense of that explanation,” Jeremy told her. “That reminds me,” he dug into his backpack and pulled out another sheet of paper. “Here’s your history homework back. Funny how I always get a better grade on your homework than you do.”
“Thanks,” Scarlet nodded. “And so, the great circle of cheating continues.”
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* #3.3 (Monday, 9/9) *
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“Of course, there hasn’t been a Pendragon since Conri Jusenkyou passed at the beginning of the First Century N.D.,” the nice lady with the clipboard announced. Today, Scarlet’s class got its tour from a youngish woman in a smart-looking suit, wearing a hat and with atop prim hair. She held her clipboard with a dainty superiority. “Most scholars agree Conri didn’t officially hold the title, having never held Echbaldam—”
“Echbalder,” Scarlet said.
“I’m sorry?”
Scarlet cleared her throat. “Echbaldam is the relic sword from the age of myth. Echbalder is the sword of the Pendragon. Conri never carried Echbalder, but he got Echbaldam from Hunter Jusenkyou while still a teenager.”
Not wanting to draw any further attention to herself, Scarlet evaporated into the crowd and got behind her classmates.
“Right,” the docent said. “Having never held the sword Echbalder. Moving on from the Dork-Age Slayer Dragons, this is Slayer Dragon Aggathorin. A master swordsman, he is sculpted with his weapon drawn, poised for battle. He was born in two hundred and fifty-two SSDC—”
“That’s so wrong,” Scarlet said.
The plaza grew awkwardly quiet, all side chatter ceased. The mouths shut, and the eyes now turned to Scarlet.
She didn’t like it, she felt her face go crimson as she realized how loud she’d spoken. She was used to mumbling under her breath throughout museum visits, but this time it just sort of escaped full-volume, coupled with a very unfortunate silence amongst her classmates.
“Excuse me?” the pert docent asked. She kept her voice calm and cordial, but her eyes had betrayed a note of annoyance.
“Aggathorin was anointed in two-five-two,” Scarlet explained. “He was BORN in two-three-O.”
The woman glanced down at her clip board and then forced a broad smile. “Oh… you’re right, sorry, I must have miss-read. Yes, he was anointed in two-hundred fifty-two and—”
“He also wasn’t a master swordsman,” Scarlet interrupted again. She winced, hard, and bit her lip in frustration, unable to control her voice. No point in turning back, Scarlet’s mouth continued to talk without the aid of the rational portions of her brain. “Aghei, Aggathorin’s contemporary, was a master with a curved, single-edged blade. Aggathorin carried a long sword, but he only trained with it while preparing for The Trials SS. It’s doubtful he ever even drew his sword during the rest of his life.”
“But—”
“This statue is widely known as a ridiculous vanity pose,” Scarlet explained, weaving in between other students and walking towards the front. “Aggathorin talked big and lived large, but he never did anything really noteworthy;” she pointed up at the exaggerated features and the pose, using her hands to trace the line that showed the unrealistic proportions. “He never fought a single battle. His commendations tell the story, every other award starts with ‘honorary’, and the rest are just for citizenship and visiting places. All Aggathorin did was die and leave an awesome-looking corpse.”
The tour guide turned indignant and glared down her nose at Scarlet.
“I’m sorry,” she said hotly. “Would you like to give this tour?”
Scarlet gulped again.
It was quite obvious to her that the prim young woman had not volunteered as a tour guide because she liked people. The museum docent shoved the clip board unceremoniously into Scarlet’s hands and folded her arms, glaring down at Scarlet with a fierce look. Scarlet, for her part, glanced around to see what became of her teacher. Not on the tour, that much was obvious. If Scarlet knew Mrs. Winkledorff, and after two years in her class, she did; the old crone would be back at the bus having a smoke. The same sort of stellar stewardship extended to head counts, of which Winkledorff did none.
That left Scarlet to face the fearsome docent on her own. What, exactly, awaited Scarlet if she didn’t back down, she could not predict. Every last fiber of her very scrawny being wanted to simply fade into the aether; except for her mind, which screamed that facts were facts and should be told.
Scarlet’s shoulders sagged and she began to slide her feet, making to duck behind a pack of taller kids and hopefully be forgotten. But as the toe of her boot hooked on a cracked cobblestone, she felt Emmerich’s words seeping back to her.
You aren’t a chosen one, none of you ever were. You were the ones who chose to act.
As the murmurs of classmates rose to a fevered pitch, Scarlet forced herself to raise her eyes and meet the docent’s gaze.
I’m one of Hygelic’s P Heirs, she reminded herself as she opened her mouth to speak. “I—I guess I could try it?”
The docent looked down at Scarlet with a smug grin.
Shuddering, Scarlet examined the clipboard. Lots of prepared notes, nothing of any specific interest; mostly just what was written on the placards beside the various statues.
Unable to suppress an eye role, Scarlet positioned the board the same way the docent had, but turned it upside down since the notes were of no use to her.
“Ok, guys, this is Aggathorin,” Scarlet began. “Born two-thirty, anointed two-five-two, died three-O-O. He was a jerk.”
The other students started hooting and laughing while the group’s former tour guide just looked indignant. She re-arranged her suit jacket on her shoulders and tugged at her collar, apparently not prepared for the late-summer heat. Seized for a moment by anger(and forgetting entirely that she was supposed to have a fear of public speaking) Scarlet banged one hand loudly against the metal clipboard and diverted attention back at the statue.
“Aggy was something of a child-prodigy,” Scarlet shouted over the din. “A smart guy, but a real wise-ass by all accounts.” Somehow, the singular utterance of the word ‘ass’ was enough to attract most of the class’s attention, and she soon found herself with a rapt audience. “He finished school at age sixteen and went on to study law. After just two years, he quit and came to Arindell to take The Trials.
“Now, The Trials were set by then, having been well established by the first—and only—Pendragon of the Second Slayer Dragon Count, Conri Jusenkyou. Who, as we already established, was not a real Pendragon.
“Aggy came along during a period of intense legalism in The Trials, really rigidly defined guidelines for everything. That was his plan all along, he used his law—ahem, ‘degree’—to bypass and cheat at every single test. He was not well liked, and his time as a Slayer Dragon saw great reforms. He lived—and served—long enough to see that no other Slayer Dragon would get to cheat the system so badly. But, Aggathorin proved that, if you tell a lie often enough, long enough, and loud enough, eventually people will believe it. This is why he’s remembered today as a great man despite literally never doing anything of note.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Scarlet caught sight of the docent. The woman had a red face and was rubbing the back of her neck, mouthing something about having an undergraduate degree. Scarlet set her eyes on the other students and kept talking.
“Ok, moving on, allow me to direct your attention to Slayer Dragon Aghei, who frequently gets confused with Aggathorin. Aggathorin was often referred to colloquially as ‘Aggy’, which sounds a ton like ‘Aghei’, which is why a bunch of the really cool and actual stuff Aghei did gets attributed to Aggy. Some of the more awesome stuff he did…”
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End:
Chapter Three
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