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In Arindell, the leading cause of preventable death for males between the ages of 12 and 24 is dragons. There have been numerous calls to expand and extend the Dragon Fence to reduce these figures, but the dragons argue the cause of death should instead be listed as ‘stupidity’. I tend to agree. If the fence was made twenty feet high, electrified, and covered in razor wire, the leading cause of death would change to ‘death by electric razor wire’. I would like to take this opportunity to remind my viewers: nearly everyone killed by a dragon is a young man doing something stupid. Or, as every girl knows them, ‘a young man existing’.”
- June Taylor, DragonTalk.
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Chapter 8:
Snacrifice
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#8.1 – Friday, the 13th day of the 9th month…
“That was really hard core,” Scarlet admitted as they left the office. School would start shortly and children were already milling about, but Roy still walked Scarlet to her locker.
“Well, you worked hard on this monster,” Roy indicated the report. “You deserve a real look at it. But don’t think they’ll go easy on you just because you’re a thirteen-year-old girl.”
Scarlet licked her lips nervously. “What about all the spelling mistakes?”
“I don’t know,” Roy said. “I asked for a methodical going-over but I didn’t ask ‘does this student deserve an undergraduate degree?’ it was ‘should she pass middle school history?’.”
The rest of the school day proceeded without much incident. Deciding on the better part of valor, Scarlet opted to ditch Mrs. Winkledorff’s class. Her working theory held that anything her parents or the school could do to her wouldn’t be as bad as what The Crone had planned. It was kind of a fun experience, if bittersweet. She’d never cut class specifically to avoid a teacher, and so long as nothing went horribly pear-shaped, it would be a good day.
As Scarlet hopped the fence on her way to anywhere other than school, she caught site of a distinctive truck unloading the even more distinctive ‘big science machine’. If Scarlet were to proceed with her little experiment in truancy, she would miss her bi-annual medical scan: and with it, a voucher for a free ice cream. It pained her to miss the treat.
Still, better than Mrs. Winkledorff.
“Scarlet!”
Scarlet turned at the sound of her name, almost loosing her footing as her backpack swung wide. As usual her schoolbooks languished in her locker while her pack and a shoulder bag held an astonishing number of personal reference guides. The fact that she needed a bare minimum of four books to make sense of any one said a lot about how much weight she walked around with.
“Scarlet!” Bethany repeated as she ran up. “We need your help.”
A snide remark jumped to Scarlet’s lips, but she bit her tongue and held it back.
The memory of the field trip still felt raw in her mind. She’d been to every one of Bethany’s birthday parties since they were three. They’d played on the neighborhood soccer team, swam on the rec center swim team. They attended all the same schools. Bethany even lived just two streets over.
But the incident had thrown everything into doubt. Was that really a friendship, or just geographic convenience? And, much worse, Scarlet wondered: did she have any friends at all?
She thought of Emmerich, and her heart sank. She was never going to have with anyone else what she had with him. But, just maybe, now that she knew better, Scarlet could try to have something real with someone else.
“Y-yeah,” Scarlet gripped the shoulder strap of her bag and ran her hands up and down it. “What is it you want?”
“Well, you know all about, like, maps and junk and things?” Bethany said. “We wanna take an Intertwention Day tribute up to the dragons.”
“Are you crazy? That’s suicide!” Scarlet blurted the words out before she really thought about how it would sound. Her own house backed up to the Dragon Fence*, and while she didn’t know anyone personally who’d been eaten, it happened several times a year.
“Duh,” Bethany said. “That’s why we need you to help us reach the Tribute Road.”
Scarlet gripped her book bag and forced herself to swallow.
The Tribute Road† was kind of a grey area.
Being largely outside the Dragon Fence did not make the Tribute Road open to the public. It saw use just once a year. Unless you were a road worker or carrying a tribute, you were dragon-fodder+.
Kind of.
Supposedly.
Dragons ruled the skies, and much of the surrounding region. A city the size of Arindell should have no business sitting on the dragon’s doorstep. But thousands of years ago, Lieber(or more probably Eieber, as Scarlet was learning) struck a deal. In exchange for a small tribute of gold, the dragons would help defend the capitol city of the Alliance.
Only the valley floor, and the two passes, were available to the humans. Set one foot outside, and any dragon that catches you may eat you.
Scarlet kept her eyes down. “I d—I just don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Are you scared?”
A vision flashed before Scarlet’s eyes. She saw herself once again in a tomb, running down the passage. Her sweat turning to ice, her heart beating slower with each step. Racing towards the light at the end that she could never seem to reach. “I don’t… I mean, it’s not safe.”
“Come on, dragons don’t eat people,” Bethany turned away and covered her mouth. “It’s just a fun little lark. We’re gonna do a good-luck ritual.”
Scarlet’s cheeks burned. The vision, the nightmare she’d had countless times, gave way to the memory of Eieber’s tomb, and Scarlet felt no longer afraid. It must have been her own fault, she surmised. She was the one who dropped off the neighborhood swim team about two years ago. That was really Bethany’s favorite activity, and Scarlet abandoned it.
“Look, if you don’t wanna hang out with us, I guess that’s ok,” Bethany leaned away and squared her shoulders. “I just thought, you know, you’re smart and we could be friends is all.”
Scarlet forced herself to swallow the lump in her throat.
There was one hard and fast exception to the ‘walk on this road and die’ rule. If you were carrying some sort of offering to give to the dragons, they would let you pass. Bethany came from the richest family in the neighborhood; they could afford something the dragons might want.
“What do you know about invoking dragon magic?” Scarlet asked.
It wasn’t a simple question. Draconic worshipSS, so far as Scarlet knew, hadn’t been practiced openly in Arindell since the Second Age. There were rumors, stories, even police reports of isolated events in living memory. Everyone knew the dragons still accepted sacrificial offerings; but whether their magic turned on those gifts remained a matter of debate.
Bethany clutched at a locket around her neck, glanced at Scarlet, then quickly looked away. “Uh-hu’, everything! There’s not a lot to it. Come on!”
Though she paused at Bethany’s flippant concern for the seriousness of her proposition, Scarlet decided to play it by ear. “O-ok! Let me just drop off my books!” Scarlet dragged her feet for a few steps then struggled to keep up with Bethany.
“No time!” Bethany shouted. “Your house is the opposite direction of where we’re going. Come on, I know a place we can stash ‘em.”
They were moving at more or less of a run by the time they reached the park. Seeing no other option, Scarlet tucked her backpack and satchel away behind a bush. She spared a brief thought to hope the books wouldn’t be too lonely without her, then followed Bethany toward the playground to meet her friends.
“I guess I see why you quit the soccer team,” Bethany quipped, not even winded from the run.
“Yeah,” Scarlet panted. “Whatever.”
On a playground in the center of the park, a trio of other teens waited. A girl from school, Nelly; and two boys from a different neighborhood. One had sandy-blond hair and a muscular physique, while the other looked a bit pudgy. Both wore uniform shirts from a private school Scarlet suspected was an all-boys affair.
“This is my boyfriend, Chet,” Bethany introduced the sandy-haired boy, and paused to give him a long, disturbingly graphic kiss. “And that’s Andy, he’s with Nelly.”
Andy draped his arm over Nelly’s hips and grinned mischievously as he nodded to Scarlet.
They were in Castle ParkP, a place Scarlet knew well. The titular ‘castle’ portion was a tel, a ruined pile of ancient stonework. In modern times, stair cases had been chiseled in to the enormous sandstone blocks, with railings and slides bolted to them to create a charming little playground.
Scarlet hated it.
Chet, showing off, bounced to the highest point of the disorderly stack of stones. “I am king of the castle!”
“It’s not a castle,” Scarlet said.
“What?” Bethany blinked, gesturing around at the stones. “They call it ‘Castle Park’, what else would it be?”
Stooping down low near where one of the blocks jutted out of the ground, Scarlet scooped away large handfuls of playground sand, then rubbed her fingers across the remnants of intricate designs. Long ago, the same pattern covered the entire face of the stone; but time and children’s feet wore it all away.
“This was once a temple to the Monster God# Mendalla: the King of the North**,” Scarlet explained. “They built it in the Second Age††, about eight millennia ago. This was the last megalithic structure erected in Old Arindell++.”
It hurt her to see kids kick and play at the stones. Scarlet looked up, and saw none of her companions were paying her the slightest bit of attention.
From the corner of her eye, Scarlet sized up Chet. A tough-looking kid, maybe a year older than Bethany. Sports jersey for a shirt, shoes made to look like soccer cleats. Weirdly, the jersey was for a foot kort teamPP, a totem not likely to win him any popularity in Arindell’s suburbs. He even had a stupid bandana to use as a ka’daim hanging from his back pocket.
“Hey, Beth, you set for camp next year?” Nelly said. “I’m thinking of doing the whole season.”
“Oh, didn’t you hear?” Bethany pouted. “It got closed down!”
“Loved that camp; they said it is DEFINITELY not reopening,” Chet leapt down off the pile of stones and urged the others to follow, continuing at a run towards the berm atop which the Tribute Road sat.
Scarlet huffed and wheezed. She felt a bit out of shape, maybe she had made a mistake quitting all those outdoor programs? “Hey, wait! W-where’s the tribute?”
“Oh, we got a tribute!” Chet called over his shoulder.
They passed above the suburbs, over the dragon fence, and onto to a place where the road rested upon the side of High Mountain. It felt obtrusively normal, with fresh asphalt, concrete sidewalks, and even street lamps. But just past the edge, sheer stone walls rose to lofty heights.
“It’s weirdly private up here,” a little grin curled the edges of Bethany’s mouth.
“Yeah, this’d be a good place to make out, huh?” Chet grabbed Bethany and stole another slobbery kiss.
“Maybe on the way down,” Bethany said, laughing as she glancing back at Scarlet and grinned. “When there’s even more privacy.”
Cold wind fell down off the mountain and channeled through the deep cut that held the road surface, chilling Scarlet to her core. She could see the others were just as cold. Bethany and Nelly huddled against their boyfriends, while Scarlet had little choice but to set her jaw and bare it.
She felt herself growing progressively more uncomfortable with this adventure. All those Saturdays and school afternoons spent together at the rec center, and Bethany ‘hardly knew’ Scarlet? Was that really what she thought of her? Wracking her mind, Scarlet realized, quite suddenly, that she didn’t really know Bethany either.
For a girl who could name all one hundred nineteen Pendragons of the Old Count, in order, and their regalia colors##, Scarlet never really connected with her peers. She knew what sports Bethany played only because she did them herself. At birthday parties, Scarlet had been just one of two-dozen kids, and she couldn’t remember for the life of her what a single one of them ever brought. Toys and games, she guessed, the kinds of things that never held her own interest.
Only today, as they hiked up the steep mountain road, did it occur to Scarlet exactly how many fewer birthdays she’d been invited to in the past few years. The rather sharp drop off, Scarlet realized with a deep pang in her stomach, started around when her mother let her pick out the presents herself.
Why am I trying to fit in? Scarlet thought to herself. Feels so stupid. So not like me… Her mother always told her she had to ‘find her people’. For Ann and Roy, that meant the suburbs, the rec center clubhouse. Who were Scarlet’s people? Surely there couldn’t be enough ancient book-obsessed nerds to form a tribe.
Scarlet and the four other teens were above the city by now, about level with the lower surrounding peeks. Over a mile past the boundary to the human areas, they were very much out of reach to any other people. Only a long, straight road, with the castle in the distance behind them, and the looming, impossibly steep slopes of High Mountain** above.
The air wasn’t any thinner up here, but Scarlet still had trouble breathing. “Guys, we should turn back. This is—humans aren’t exactly welcome here, you know?”
“I told you, we brought a tribute,” Bethany said.
“I got my tribute right here,” Andy laughed, squeezing Nelly’s bottom. She batted him in the shoulder and tried to pull away, then clung to him even closer when a shadow crossed overhead.
“Guuuuuys,” Scarlet repeated.
“GET HER!”
Scarlet turned to run, but Chet’s foot shot out and tripped her. Scarlet had enough sense about her to break her own fall, but the pavement bit into the palms of her hand. Before she could scream at him to watch his feet, his knee landed in the middle of her back.
“Get her! Get her hands!”
The two boys grabbed Scarlet’s arms and twisted them around behind her back. Chet grabbed the bandana ka’daim++ from his back pocket and used it to tie Scarlet’s wrists together.
“What are you doing?!” Scarlet cried out. She could feel her palms bleeding and the sting of dirt in the wounds. “I’m gonna kill you! Let me up!”
Chet grabbed the back of Scarlet’s head and shoved her face against the pavement. The force of the blow split open the cut on the side of Scarlet’s head again and blood began to drip out.
“Shit! Shit what did you do?!” Andy screamed at Chet.
“Snapper just had an accident,” Chet dragged Scarlet back to her feet. “MOVE!”
Another hundred feet up the road. Scarlet stumbled and fought to keep her balance the whole way, with Chet shoving her. And Andy yelling at her. Her face got scratched up from being shoved against the pavement, and the salt from her tears made the cuts sting.
“Hey, Scarlet, you know everything, what’s the deal with dragons and virgins?” Bethany asked.
Utter disbelief overtook Scarlet as the words entered her ears. “W-what are you even talking about?” No, Bethany couldn’t. That couldn’t possibly be what they had planned. This needed to be a joke, a prank. They weren’t that mean.
They reached a sort of cul-de-sac where the road finally ended. They were in the deepest cut into the mountain, a space built to experience the awesome might of the dragons. Sheer, rough stone walls rose forty feet above the pavement, complete with a sidewalk around the edge. A round bit of curb in the middle surrounded a large stone post, the traditional altar where the tribute would be placed.
“Is this—I mean, is this really all right?” Nelly hugged herself against the cold while the boys dragged Scarlet nearer the pillar.
“Just like at summer camp,” Bethany said. “We went past the fence to make offerings to the dragons all the time. They understand.”
“Yeah, but we never actually saw a dragon at camp.”
Chet tripped Scarlet again. With no way to break her fall she landed, hard, and it knocked the wind out of her. She couldn’t scream for help, she couldn’t even cry.
“Is this it?” Nelly asked.
“It’s fine, dragon’s don’t actually eat people,” Bethany waved her arm dismissively. “It’s an old wives’ tale. You make an offering, something they want. And if it pleases them, they use their magic to help you. It’s why the crops grow and the banks give good interest rates.”
Scarlet knew that was wrong, and on so very many levels. Were she able to breathe she would have explained everything. But for now, not passing out remained her top priority.
Nelly ran her fingers through her hair, then cocked her head to the side and gaped with wide-eyed amazement at Andy and Chet. “Wait—you guys did the whole summer at camp, didn’t you? So you were—when those four campers—”
“They just got lost in the woods,” Chet said.
“Heh, yeah,” Andy agreed. “But our offerings worked.”
The sky darkened again.
It was like wind, but… not. Wind didn’t really describe the sort of shockwave that rippled through the air, accompanied by a loud crash and a fall of rocks, then another, and a very, very powerful whooshing sound.
Scarlet struggled and rolled onto her back, staring up at the sky and the cliff-faces that ringed the place. A dragon, armored in turquoise and black, now sat perched atop one of the canyon wall. A second, this one all a deep shade of crimson, clung to the wall, and a third hovered right over the road.
All were red-red-fire dragonsPP, juveniles. The most dangerous type, being fast, unpredictable, with all the same impulse control problems of a typical human adolescent.
In a way, the palpable irony seemed poetic. Scarlet only went with Bethany in the first place to impress her. Now, thanks to her (sarcastic air-quotes) “friends”, Scarlet was about to die at the hands of a dragon. The dragon, in turn, being the dragon-equivalent of a teenager, would only be eating her in order to impress HIS friends.
Over the wing-beat, Scarlet could just make out the muffled, screaming, crying voices of her “friends” as they ran for their lives, fear powering their springing legs in a way no amount of exercise or training ever could. Given the smooth, straight road, Scarlet supposed they might even set a few speed records in their desperate bid for survival.
Scarlet had no such luxury.
The red-fires surrounding her could easily be distinguished by their long tails and necks, delicate, lithe bodies, and enormous wings. These three were particularly fine specimens, and in any other situation Scarlet would have been ecstatic about seeing them this close.
The hovering dragon lowered his back legs until they were scraping the surface of the road, cutting off any hope of escape. Scarlet managed to wiggle her hands free of her bonds and get her lungs working again. But about all she could possibly hope for was to maybe die on her feet.
The dragons were poised to attack.
So even the feet thing didn’t seem overly likely today.
Despite their immense size, they were capable of terrifying speeds. Like a cat, they could dart with unfathomable quickness when they so desired, such that crossing the distance and snatching Scarlet wouldn’t even require an effort.
In spite of her fear, Scarlet started backing away on all fours, and in a brief moment, she realized she’d stopped crying.
The dragon that landed on the road glistened in the late afternoon sun with the most beautiful shade of aqua-marine. Instead of large, armored scales, it looked more like snake skin. Fine, slick, perfectly stream lined. The head, displaying the same sharp, razor-like lines, leaned down right next to Scarlet, treating her to a blast of hot breath.
“What is your name?” the dragon demanded. Its voice came out smooth, just like its body, almost silky, and possessing a decidedly feminine quality.
Scarlet heard the words, but her brain froze. She could not speak.
“Your NAME, uumen!”
“Naaaaaaaaaaame,” the red dragon echoed, drawing out the letters and making its voice echo off the stone walls. This one, Scarlet decided, was definitely a boy-dragon.
“S-s-s-s-s-s-s-scarlet!” she squeaked.
“THAT’S NOT A NAME!” the aqua dragon bellowed, slapping her tail against the pavement behind her.
Scarlet’s heart pounded hard in her chest.
Harder and faster than it ever had in the tomb.
So hard she thought she could see her shirt bouncing in front of her with each beat.
So hard it had to be killing her.
Then, clarity.
She could see the dragons, at least the two in front of her. One perched high on the cliff, the other down in the street. Scarlet scampered backward until she hit one of the cliff walls. Eyes fixed on the dragons, she felt the rough hewn stone with her palms as she pulled herself up against rock until she stood.
In that moment of clarity, she saw the tomb, the missing sword, and the knowledge that she alone was the only living person to see it for ten thousand years.
She had no other choice but to survive.
Time took on the consistency of molasses. She couldn’t move, couldn’t run, just focused on the scene before her. Perched on the cliff high above, one of the dragons knocked three rocks loose, and they fell so slowly they looked like balloons drifting lazily to the ground.
Then all of a sudden, time found its way back to normal, and Scarlet walked towards the center of the platform again. Eyes fixed on the silky dragon, heart very suddenly, almost disturbingly, beating normally.
Seeing the mountain towering above her, a lifetime of dragonology## scorched like a raging torrent across Scarlet brain, and she knew exactly what she had to say.
“I am Scarlet Jusenkyou. Of the High Mountain Flight. Out of Annaria, by Royland.”
The aqua dragon moved towards Scarlet again, this time in a more relaxed posture. “Is that really your name?”
“I am Scarlet Jusenkyou!” Scarlet repeated, taking a step towards the dragon and gripping her hands into fists. “OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN FLIGHT! Out of Annaria! By Royland!”
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End:
Chapter Eight
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