The Dragon

As the portal closed behind him, warm summer’s air greeted him, a brisk wind almost sending his hat flying.

“Old friend.” The dragon’s eyes remained closed; only a widening of his nostrils indicated that he was, in fact, awake and aware of his guest.

“Sleepyhead.”

“What brings you here? Don’t you have maps to tend to?”

“Embermere,” Perrin said sternly. The dragon moved a lazy eyelid sideways at the use of his full name, “Why does it suddenly have you marked as ‘the Manslaughtering Menace of Middletown’?” Perrin held his tome just under the dragon’s snout, waving it around to make sure it got the intended attention.

“Impressive title, don’t you agree?” The dragon rolled over and opened his wings.

“Dangerous. Have you been pilfering livestock again? You know that humans tend to be overly possessive about creatures that, strictly speaking, don’t even belong to them.”

Ember huffed out an offended puff of smoke.

“Haven’t done that in years. I’m a retired menace these days. As you well know. ” He let his head sink down, resting on his massive front paws. “Besides, why would I go through the trouble when I have everything I need right here?”

“Everything? Really? Here?”

“I haven’t had to leave the mountain in decades, thank you very much.” Ember’s tail whipped like an angry feline’s, knocking a couple of boulders loose, sending them tumbling down the slope.

The mountainside wasn’t steep here; the comfortably large platform outside the cave entry had a surprising amount of green tufts, shrubs, and flowers growing on it, and there was the tinkling sound of running water nearby. Not a bad spot at all. It would appear Perrin wasn’t the only one who appreciated the comfortable life these days. But dragons couldn’t live off air, greenery, and water alone…

“So, where do you get your food? ” Perrin patted the dragon’s round, softly scaled belly meaningfully, “You sure don’t seem to be lacking in any way.”

“Goats.”

“Goats?” As far as Perrin could see, there were a total of zero goats in the vicinity. “Care to elaborate on that?”

“Tasty little buggers they are, but not too bright. If I’m hidden inside, they like to take a shortcut to the spring. Serving themselves on a silver platter, so to say.” The dragon chuckled so his belly heaved, and small puffs of smoke shot out of his nostrils. Long, slit tongue lolling out between sharp teeth, the dragon equivalent of a sly smile.

Well, what do you know? The goats were right all along – the universe, in the form of one massive dragon, really was out to get them.

“So, no eating humans?”

“Yuck, no.”

“Then why are the humans so upset?”

“Nothing important.”

“Nothing important? A fair number of imbecile young men are dressing up in armor as we speak to confront this ‘threatening menace’. You!” He waves his arms around for emphasis. A big audience requires big gestures. “You’re the menace!”

“Twas an accident.” Somehow, the dragon managed to look embarrassed.

“Yes…?”

“Oh, if you must know, I was out for a stroll, thinking to see if there were any more interesting dinner choices higher up. It turned out this mountain is way more fragile than you’d expect.”

“So, you’re now a Manslaughtering Menace because of an overly fragile giant mass of stone. Solid stone…” Perrin stomped his foot on the ground to prove the sturdiness of said mountain.

“I might have set a few boulders loose when I was climbing. Not my fault, really. I just have heavy bones.”

Ah…

“When you say ‘a few boulders’ you really mean…”

“Alright, you nosy old geezer. It was a proper rockslide, tumbled all the way to the valley, and crushed a couple of farmhouses. Probably would’ve happened anyway, that outcrop was pretty shaky even before I stepped on it.” His wings flapped once. “Those villagers suddenly remembered the stories of a dragon supposedly living up here and totally overreacted.”

Rubbing his now aching forehead, Perrin sighed. In a senseless world, this somehow made a lot of sense. Which was worrisome in itself. Things rarely came in neat packages, and even more rarely in neat explanations.

A dragon flaps its wings in one place, setting off a thunderstorm several worlds away. Or a blizzard. Or an avalanche. Anything really. Reality sure knew how to keep its subjects on their toes. Magic or not.

And, apparently, descending boulders have the power to change long-standing truths. Turning an elderly, rotund, sun-loving dragon into a Great Threat to Humanity.

It wasn’t fair, but then few things in life are. Still, reality bowed to the efforts of CART – or at least that’s what they told themselves. And, as far as bureaucracy goes, one thing always holds true: it holds more loopholes than the castle holds anomalies and portal holes. He’d be a fool not to use them. And Senior Cartographer Peregrin Penhaligon, Third Atlas Chair, was never a fool.

There were several possibilities available, each with its pros and cons. Those bumbling buffoons of imbecile knights could very well accidentally find themselves at the bottom of a cave, getting bombarded by bird droppings, long before humankind rose to its questionable glory. Opening a fair-sized temporal or spatial portal on their chosen path would be easy enough.

A magical barrier protecting the mountain? Better, but not good. The inquiries as to why he’d redirected a huge amount of magic energy to sustain it would be hard to dodge. He could just hear First Chair Archibald go on about their ‘sworn duty’.

‘Observe, preserve, never interfere. Carrying the weight of reality is a heavy burden, and we’re the strong CART to do so.’ Followed by an infuriating guffaw, and more lecturing on how nostalgia, sentimentality, and friendships are irrelevant – even counterproductive – to the big whole.

The following paperwork and scoldings were a whole different story though. Not to mention keeping track of whatever interference in reality would ripple out from his interference. He needed to keep the inevitable holes in the flowing fabrics of reality as small as possible.

Was the life of one elderly dragon worth tearing that fabric further? If only he could change the narrative of this timeline, but the collective mind of a large pack of frightened humans was a powerful thing. Not that any world would miss that group of prancing imbeciles, showing off their mismatched armor and weapons in the hopes of attracting pretty mates.

“I am Third Atlas Chair, I can bloody well do what I please and get away with it.” That was a truth with modification, and he knew it. The worlds were chaotic enough as it was, without adding intentional discrepancies into the mix.

“It’s okay,” Ember buffed him in the side with a massive snout. “Prejudice against my species runs deep in the humans. I’m surprised it took them this long.”

Was that…resignation in his voice? In his eyes? NO!

“You’re not dying on my watch!” Not to give some darned peacocks in human form a better chance of getting laid. If only he could rewrite the exact event or malfunction in this sea of anomalies that had prompted Ol’ Embermare to go from an obscure folklore to an active threat in the minds of these people. He would… he would…

There wasn’t really anything he could do.

Drop them in the cave.

But that’d only emphasize the new reality, draw in more wannabe heroes. What a bloody mess.

“We’ll think of something. Don’t worry.” For some reason, the dragon was trying to cheer him up. He wasn’t the one with a mob setting out to carve his heart out.

“Humph!” Perrin sank down on a small boulder and looked at his old friend. They’d both had good lives. Long lives. But not nearly long enough.

Had he made a mistake? Had his lack of attention doomed the most important person in his life?

“Don’t you go all mopey on me.” A hot gust of smoke hit him in the face, efficiently breaking up his brooding, and for a moment, he was about to scold the dragon. Instead, Ember winked. “It’s not as if I’m going to just roll over and let those clowns kill me.”

“Glad to hear it. Then how do you suggest we get rid of them?”

“We’ll think of something. We always do. Remember that time in the swamp?”

“Yeah.” They both laughed. When young and foolish, they had a lot of adventures, some even pretty dangerous. And, they always pulled through. Now that they were older and wiser, finding a solution should be easy. “I still don’t have any magic that can turn you invisible. Or into a pocket-sized squirrel-mouse.”

“Pity. Imagine the look on their faces when they scale the mountain all the way up here only to find no dragon.”

“A rare sight indeed.” But, hey. No dragon. No dragon on the mountain. Sometimes the easiest solutions were the best. “You could move…”

“Move? It’s not like dragon-friendly environments are easy to find.” It was actually a valid point, but…

“Nonsense, Embermere, why don’t you come to the castle and live with me?"

“In CART’s castle? You’re not serious. I’m not…”

“It’s perfect!” Perrin jumped to his feet in excitement, ignoring the creaking of his knees and back. “Plenty of room in the west wing, and you’ll love the food. The chefs are…”

“Are you sure? The others won't object?”

“Pffft, with everything that’s going on there, a dragon won’t cause any raised eyebrows. I’ll handle all the paperwork, get you settled in, and then you can finally teach me that dragon-chess you’ve been going on about for years.”

The more he thought about it, the better it sounded.

“You’ll love it there. We have a great library, lots of younglings you can jumpscare, and there’s even a giant lake you can swim in. At least most of the time, it tends to disappear on Thursdays. But, it’s perfect.” Perrin beamed at Ember, who nodded, clearly warming up to the idea. “Best thing is, we can portal there. Easy peasy.”

Digging into his pockets, he brought forth the little wooden travel set with ink and small feather quills. Then leafed through the tome to return to the page with the map of the mountain. Drew an oval and then the rune for the castle. Easy peasy.

Immediately, a shimmering portal opened, hovering in the air just in front of him. A large one, but perhaps not large enough. He eyed Embermere’s round midsection, then the portal.

Well, there was only one way to find out.