Marta sighed as she shaded her eyes to gaze over her family’s greatly expanded holdings, over the fields of green shoots and orchards of trees young and old. She had been doing that a lot recently. She wasn’t unhappy. Things were better now, and in many respects easier, but they were different than she’d expected.
When she’d been a child, her mother had told her and her aunts had told her and her older sister had told her how life was going to be. It was going to be simple. She was going to grow up; marry a nice local boy; work a small patch of land; have as many kids as the gods allowed; and they would grow up and work the land with her before they eventually either joined someone else’s family or started their own.
That had always sounded hard to her, the toiling in the fields and the baby making (she had been present for her little sister’s birth, and oh boy did that not look fun), but it had been simple, and the path had been clear. As she grew up and learned more about the work of planting and cultivating and living, she even managed to see some dreams in it. Maybe her family could have a few more acres, which would make it easier to live off of the 10% they were allowed to keep by the local lord; maybe they could even, and this was truly a flight of fancy, have enough land that they could grow a second type of crop just to have something a little different to eat every now and again. Sometimes she even dreamed about having a bed just for flowers, some of the pretty red ones that grew up wild but would look so nice in a patch. Little dreams for a little life, but dreams.
What was she supposed to dream of now? They had fields of potatoes, squash, cabbage, and tomatoes (an import from the Westlands!); orchards replete with apples and pears; and small, experimental patches of vegetables that didn’t even have a name in Common. The front of her home was decorated in vibrant hues of yellow and red, tastefully and painstakingly arranged. There was always enough for her, her four sons, and her husband to eat; and she rarely made the same dish twice in a week.
Things had been so simple before. You worked in the fields so that you could eat. If you didn’t work, you couldn’t eat. Working was living. But now? Most of the crops they grew were exported to towns whose names she’d never heard of, and the only digging in the dirt she did was in her garden, so she wouldn’t forget the feel working the earth with her own hands.
Most of her work was managerial now. She directed the small, scaled creatures—they used to be called Kobolds, but she did a good job now calling them Drag’thilden (their own name for themselves)—that did much of the work now. She worked with the larger among them (for some reason the larger ones always seemed to have greater responsibility) to plan out expansions to the fields, what crops to plant, how to extend the irrigation system, how to get a permit (!) from the city for increased water usage.
This work fell to her, because her husband had never quite gotten the knack for their tongue. Maybe it was because she had been a few years younger than him when the change happened (they say that its easier when you’re younger); maybe it was because she’d always thought they were kind of cute (in a scaly and offputting kind of way), while she suspected her husband was afraid of them; or maybe it was because her husband had never seemed to master even their own native language (the way men mumbled and just expected you to understand them!).
Her husband had given up on tilling the earth. At first, he had been out to prove that this “irrigation” and “kobold employee” business was a distraction, and that nobody could work the land like a man who’d grown up on it. But reality eventually caught up to him, and, after a period of listlessness, he changed gears. He had always supported irrigation; he had always supported the inclusion of the Lord Emperor’s vassals; and he had always intended to leave the running of his considerable fields to his wife, so he could focus on the business of selling and making deals—of bringing home the coin (he still said, though any coins he received ended up in the treasury in exchange for paper money).
It was a little funny, his turnaround—his stubborn desire not to face up to the fact that he had changed with the world. But he was happy, and their children were happy, and she was… she had to be happy too.
She had more than she could have ever dreamed about, anything she could have ever wanted. But when she looked out, she could only see. She couldn’t imagine anything better.
--
Viko sighed as he slunk further into his well cushioned chair, the fire crackling a few feet away, warming his handsomely soled boots. A half empty bottle of wine rested on the side table.
He had never been better rewarded, and he had never been so bored. As the Head of the Royal Household, he had always had more power than one might expect. He commanded, and the servants obeyed. He requested, and the soldiers acquiesced. He talked, and the king had listened.
Servants had quaked in his wake; nobles had greased his palms; businessman had sought his advice and favor. He had taken a salary a provincial noble would have envied, and he had taken so much more.
He hadn’t needed the money, but it was the carefully managed risk that enthralled him. Will this noble betray me? Will this or that would-be usurper manage to connect me to the shadowy figure who’d offered them a chance at poisoning the king, for the right price? Would this family of the royal foodtaster start to wonder how poison slipped by me so many times? Could this noble have the balls to try to blackmail me?
He stroked his white beard and wiped a bit of dribbled wine onto his pants. He had served this castle for forty years. He had survived three kings and one short lived queen. He had been responsible for two of those changes of power, and another week would have seen him responsible for a third.
But it was over now. It had been over for a long time. The Lord Emperor, Our God and Protector may he live forever (though he certainly didn’t need our prayers for that) was never under threat. No nobles vied for his position through treachery and politicking. He was unassailable, untouchable. His kobold vassals politicked amongst themselves and stabbed one another in the back (literally and figuratively) but were perfectly loyal to their king, and Viko imagined no thrill in participating in their petty squabbles.
Certainly, there were still risks. He could, for example, throw his lot in with the sputtering resistance (nominally loyal to the ostensibly surviving prince). But that wasn’t a calculated risk, it wasn’t manageable. There was no chance of success and every chance of the Emperor’s otherworldly eyes wresting that secret from him.
To play games now meant not only to court death, but to invite it in through the front door with a smile and a wave.
Viko knew that he was too old and twisted to adjust to this new life of doing his job and only his job, but he also knew he was too attached to the pleasures of this life (ash as they may now be) to give up on it all.
He poured another glass of wine, his hand trembling, and held it out in a mocking toast to the empty air. “To our most terrible king.”
Agatha sighed as her dirt-encrusted talon dug out a splintered finger bone from between her molars. She flicked it onto the refuse pile and spat, saliva mixed with black green blood sizzling on the damp stone.
The taste of goblin did not agree with her, and their wails and pleading were so much less musical than the humans she had grown accustomed to in her long centuries in that city previously called Saril, then Burthar, and now finally (and she well imagined it might truly be finally) Hsarton.
She felt the rage well up in her. It was less often now, but it takes long for the desires and habits of an age to fade.
She slammed the stone wall of her underground lair, the stone pulverizing under her mottled, wrinkled fist, the sinews of her arm taut like the roots of a tree. The crying of her chained prisoners stopped a moment, and she realized that her aim had been poor—this wasn’t the section of wall next to the goblin leader’s head, it was the section of wall behind the goblin leader’s head.
She licked her now slimy fingers and winced. This one was definitely not good enough to eat so shortly after eating another. Perhaps she could turn it into a potion or at least give its meat to her wargs. Be a shame to let even such low quality meat go to waste.
Life here in the mountains—in this mediocre and long forgotten dungeon—was challenging, and as a young hag she had never imagined she would have to rough it like this. She had been raised in a tight-knit coven in one of the most rotten cities in the world; a city where there was too much scrabbling by the rich to worry about laws for the poor, and too many assaults by orcs, goblins and foreign powers for the formerly poor (adventurers) to worry about problems at home.
It was a wonderful place where a girl could disguise her warts, her humps, her fangs and claws, and find a new, fresh meal every day. A place where, there was a child to fool as the kindly grandmother, a mother to fool as the sage herbalist, or an adventurer to fool with swaying hips and buxom illusion. Her and her sisters prided themselves on never eating the same meat twice in a week.
But that dream was dead and gone, along with her two sisters. One of them, Kalgra, had sought to bargain with the kingdom’s new lord. Surely, not being human, he would want to come to a deal with the Wicked Three who ruled the seedy, dark underbelly of the kingdom’s capital. Surely, he would see reason.
Agatha had warned her not to go, not until they knew more of this new king, and she had watched through their shared eye as the king’s maw—deep thundering laughter escaping from it—closed over her sister, and the connection was forever severed.
Her other sister, Niessa, had been caught by one of the so-called Dragoons, elite guards outfitted with magical rings that let them see through all illusions and all pretense. She had taken four of them with her, bless her black heart.
And now she was all that was left. There were no games here; tricking goblins was no fun. The meat was sparse, spare and gamy. This was not home. She was trapped in this frozen hole, forced away from the dark kingdom that was her right by birth.
“Curses be on thee! Thou thrice-wretched usurper!” She snarled, as another goblin’s head popped beneath her grip.
Oops. She hadn’t even realized she’d grabbed that one.
--
Beata sighed dreamily. She was small for her age, and her legs still kicked the air futily as she sat at her desk, pencil twirling languidly in one hand.
She was staring off into space, over the heads of the dozen or so students in the rows in front of her. Mr. Fil was standing on a stool and scratching characters onto the board, the chalk held clumsily in his talons. They were Drag’thildenese characters, and she already knew them.
Twice a week, Mr. Fil visited their school to give them a lesson (from a native! Ms. Gilt explained, her eyes wide, and her accent always so bad and awkward in Drag’thildenese). Beata didn’t need the lessons—her best friend, Thilda, was a Drag’thilden, and they had basically grown up together on her parents’ farm.
But her parents said it was important, if she wanted to work for the government (work with Mr. Hsar’gl!), not only to be able to speak Drag’thilden, but to have graduated from a prestigious school that taught it.
“The degree is half of the point,” her mother would say. “That’s an expensive piece of paper!” her father would joke. She didn’t understand, she was only eight, but she understood that she needed to listen to Ms. Gilt and Mr. Fil explain things she already knew so that she could work for Mr. Hsar’gl one day.
So, she spent those periods dreaming about him; about the blonde hair, blue eyes, wide shoulders, kind voice and gentle smile that he surely had. Thilda had explained to her that Mr. Hsar’gl (Thilda always called him Lord Hsar’gl, though) was a mighty beast, born in the form of the divine, and that he could take any form he wanted, human, noble beast, or even Drag’thilden or goblin!
Beata didn’t like to imagine him as a goblin, but she did sometimes imagine him as a dog, the noblest of beasts. And in her imagination she would give him scratches and they would play and he was her best friend.
She had never seen Mr. Hsar’gl. In fact, almost nobody had. But they said he was out there in the city, disguised as a shopkeeper, or a beggar, or a guard, so you should always be nice to everybody. And she was, mostly, except for Bobby, because he was a jerk and ugly and Mr. Hsar’gl would never disguise himself as somebody ugly.
“Ms. Beata. Ms. Beata?”
Her reverie was interrupted by Mr. Fil rapping on the board with his claws.
She shook her head and focused on the board. Apparently nobody else had managed to answer Mr. Fil’s question, so it fell to her to save the day yet again.
Roland sighed, and took a careful drink from the cup in front of him. It was called “coffee,” and it was a recent import from an island nation to the far east. He still wasn’t quite used to it (it was too hot, for starters), but many of the young men under his command swore by it.
He was awkwardly seated on a wooden chair at an outdoor table, his helm carefully placed next to the steaming cup, his sword laid carefully across the chain mail that draped his legs. He was on a break, and he liked to enjoy his break out of the garrison, where he could see the people walking by, even though that did mean he had to pay for his own food.
A small price to pay, though, to see the happy, smiling faces moving in the bustle.
Roland was old now—old for a guard, at least—but, for the first time in his life, he felt fulfilled.
He had grown up the youngest of seven brothers. Of them, he was the only one who’d made it to his fifth decade. Most of his brothers had died young, in their teens or earlier, from disease or accident. Two had become adventurers, and they had died like most adventurers had, in combat with goblins or orcs at the frontiers of the kingdom.
One had allied himself with a corrupt noble, and it hadn’t been a fun day when Roland brought him to justice.
Especially since Roland himself hadn’t then been convinced of the justness of the King’s Guard and his own work. He had always been a stickler for rules, even as a child, and very hardworking, so it was only natural (his parents had effused to any neighbor who would listen) for him to become a member of the King’s Guard—the elite group that maintained order and kept the people safe.
Unfortunately, as he had come to see, the “order” that was kept by the King’s Guard was heavily slanted to the maintenance of the position and wealth of the King and his… he hated to use the word, but… cronies. He found himself again and again being tasked with the detention of people whose only crime had been to be poor and desperate.
But the rules were the rules, and he was only a cog. What could he do?
Nothing, not until fifteen years ago. He twisted the magic rings on his fingers that marked him as a member of the Dragoons. Those had saved his life, and changed this kingdom for the better. They were his mark of office, the tools of his trade, and his lucky charm.
Fifteen years ago, he had been called to the castle (still then being rebuilt from the ruins it had so suddenly become). He had met directly with Commander Hsar’gl. He had stared into those lambent eyes, pools of unfathomable depth, a foot across each, and incomprehensibly alien. And those eyes had stared back into his, and wrested from the depths of his mind every secret thought and desire, and he had trembled—cried even—as that thundering voice pronounced him worthy.
He had been named First Dragoon, and tasked with assembling loyal soldiers who were loyal first to the Emperor, and then to the people. Early on, their work was to secure the frontiers (but that was quickly handled, as word spread of Hsar’gl’s reign); then they moved to the cities, to root out the devils, demons, and fey creatures that sowed discord with their lawlessness and disguises; then they were tasked with removing (gently) the landed gentry with evil intentions and selfish hearts; and finally, the task that would likely occupy the rest of their lives was providing for the safety and prosperity of the common folk, making sure they were not being abused by their employers, and rounding up the odd thief or other criminal.
This kingdom had been rotten, and the people had languished. But a great savior had struck out that rotten core, and now the people thrived. And Roland could again look his wife in the eye when he donned his armor each morning.
--
The Great Lord Barbaro sighed, and pushed the pages to the edge of the desk. His eyes hurt, and it was fruitless to continue looking at them.
He and his advisors had spent years spying, collecting information, and drawing up these plans to invade their neighbors. And they were reasonably confident things would go well. The Westlands would be united under Barbaro’s iron fist, and he would bequeath that great gift to his son, and finally, finally, he could retire, his legacy safe.
And that was all for nothing.
The kingdoms across the Eastern Sea were united in all but name under some lout named Hsar’gl.
There had been little trade and even less military conflict between the barbaric Eastlands and the enlightened Westlands. It was a place that once had only held sway in his mind as a dream, that his son’s sons could bring order and stability to that barbaric land, and so the Barbaro family would rule all of the known world. But over the past decade, trade had increased apace, and the types of ships and commodities that had been coming over had him and all the other Westland kings worried.
At first, they had laughed at the adamantine horseshoes, the mithril plows. Some foolish king investing untold resources in trying to fool his betters on the other side of the sea. Nobody could have such wealth!
But the goods kept on coming, and coming, and coming. An endless stream of commodities made of the most precious of metals that here were only worked by a handful of smiths, trained in the metallurgical and magical arts, and beholden to and favored by kings.
How could he think on an invasion, when there loomed now the Eastern Darkness, an apparent economic powerhouse ready to swallow the world? What if that in the Darkness should rouse? How could he—how could all the kingdoms together—fight against an economy that uses mythical ores for PLOWS?
The Great Lord Barbaro did not feel, indeed, very great. He hadn’t been sleeping well recently. His foolish dream had become a recurring nightmare. The bags under his eyes were heavy and gray.
A knock at the door.
“Milord, your carriage is ready,” his servant called to him.
Barbaro ran his fingers through his greasy hair. He shoved the chair back, sending it toppling, and scooped up the papers on his desk in a crumpled sheaf.
He leaned over the crackling fireplace, and felt his heart pounding in his chest. It’s too late. There’s nothing he can do. One dream must die, so that his people could live.
He tossed the papers—the intel, the plans, the maps, years of labor— into the fire, and watched as they blackened, burned, and rose up the flue. Now just another half-forgotten memory of a dream.
It was time to ride. To show weakness where he wanted strength. To parlay with his fellow rulers and figure out how to deal with—if indeed there was any way—this monster in the east.
Hsar’gl sighed, an impossibly long breath, tinged with sparks and embers. He lounged atop his horde, a mountain of gold greater even than the Great Wyrm hordes his father had spoken of. His tail flicked discontentedly, and Kobolds scattered out of its way, desperate not to lose the reports they carried to and fro in the castle’s main chamber.
Immortality was always going to be boring. There is only so much that is new and fresh and exciting.
After centuries of being in a rut—of spending weeks asleep atop his meager (it seemed to him now) horde, of waking occasionally to assault a caravan, raid a town, or raze a kingdom (just for the fun of it)—something interesting had finally happened.
It was a man, he thought now (he wasn’t sure, and it wasn’t important; he did remember that they were slender and gamey, however). Hsar’gl had grown bored with the idea of razing a nearby village halfway there and returned to his lair find someone crawling among his treasures.
He had given them a fair shot, about two minutes of struggling, before he nailed them to the cavern floor with his talon. It was a shame, really. He’d never seen a human move so deftly, even though it wasn’t close to enough.
Later, when he was picking a rib bone from his teeth, he had noticed a pack the human had been carrying. Unusually, it didn’t contain alcohol or gold, but books.
Hsar’gl had never been one for reading. Human letters were too small, and they never had anything interesting to say anyways.
Maybe it was because he was particularly bored that day, or maybe he’d absorbed some of the human’s spirit when he consumed them (an old superstition among dragons that Hsar’gl didn’t subscribe to, usually), or maybe it was out of some respect or curiosity for this most capable of humans—in any case, he made the decision to take a look at the books.
It didn’t hurt that the thickest among them was titled, “The True Wealth of Kingdoms.” It dealt with ideas that, at first, were—and it pained him to admit this—above Hsar’gl’s head. It dealt with this concept of the ‘economy’ and ‘prosperity’ and ‘people as capital’ and ‘monetary velocity as a vehicle for growth of the GDP’.
His horde had been growing painfully slowly these past few centuries, and he had never considered adding people to his horde, and he had certainly never considered that there were things you could add to a horde that would then grow your horde for you. These ideas were intriguing—more importantly, they weren’t boring.
He had been excited the day he flew four hundred miles to this castle, collapsed it with one swipe of his tail, and swallowed the piss-smelling man with the golden headpiece. He had been excited as he worked on optimizing the horde-generating capability of his new horde-members—as he lowered the taxes on the poor to increase the ‘velocity’ of their money; as he ordered the mass of Kobolds his presence attracted to dig out ‘irrigation systems’ and build ‘schools’; as he tore through the orc and goblin hordes that lingered outside of the city (that had, admittedly, been quite fun); as he learned to manage and delegate and trust the pieces of his horde whose goals aligned with his.
He had been excited. It was a project, a new idea. But now it was over. He had implemented it. His horde was larger than it had ever been and grew day-by-day at an impossible rate. The other kingdoms in this land were just more treasure to his horde in all but name, as they adapted to his reforms as not to court his wrath.
He had done and conquered more than any dragon before him. He had slept less and dreamed bigger. And now there was nothing.
A man stood before him, patiently waiting to speak. Hsar’gl remembered this one. The tattoo on his bald skull indicated that he was more fervent than most in his worship.
Hsar’gl swung his head around, and fixed the man with one eye.
“Speak,” he rumbled.
The man unrolled a scroll with trembling hands, tears of joy in his frantic-looking eyes. “I have here the report on the Westlands that you asked for, my great and terrible Lord of All There Is Was And Will Be.”
That was not one of his official titles. But, he had to admit that he didn’t hate it.
I like how you didn’t write it as some kind of utopia. Some people were happy, and some people were not. And the last part, where we get to see the dragon’s point of view, is the cherry on top. Masterfully executed!
(Part 2 of 5)
--
Marta sighed as she shaded her eyes to gaze over her family’s greatly expanded holdings, over the fields of green shoots and orchards of trees young and old. She had been doing that a lot recently. She wasn’t unhappy. Things were better now, and in many respects easier, but they were different than she’d expected.
When she’d been a child, her mother had told her and her aunts had told her and her older sister had told her how life was going to be. It was going to be simple. She was going to grow up; marry a nice local boy; work a small patch of land; have as many kids as the gods allowed; and they would grow up and work the land with her before they eventually either joined someone else’s family or started their own.
That had always sounded hard to her, the toiling in the fields and the baby making (she had been present for her little sister’s birth, and oh boy did that not look fun), but it had been simple, and the path had been clear. As she grew up and learned more about the work of planting and cultivating and living, she even managed to see some dreams in it. Maybe her family could have a few more acres, which would make it easier to live off of the 10% they were allowed to keep by the local lord; maybe they could even, and this was truly a flight of fancy, have enough land that they could grow a second type of crop just to have something a little different to eat every now and again. Sometimes she even dreamed about having a bed just for flowers, some of the pretty red ones that grew up wild but would look so nice in a patch. Little dreams for a little life, but dreams.
What was she supposed to dream of now? They had fields of potatoes, squash, cabbage, and tomatoes (an import from the Westlands!); orchards replete with apples and pears; and small, experimental patches of vegetables that didn’t even have a name in Common. The front of her home was decorated in vibrant hues of yellow and red, tastefully and painstakingly arranged. There was always enough for her, her four sons, and her husband to eat; and she rarely made the same dish twice in a week.
Things had been so simple before. You worked in the fields so that you could eat. If you didn’t work, you couldn’t eat. Working was living. But now? Most of the crops they grew were exported to towns whose names she’d never heard of, and the only digging in the dirt she did was in her garden, so she wouldn’t forget the feel working the earth with her own hands.
Most of her work was managerial now. She directed the small, scaled creatures—they used to be called Kobolds, but she did a good job now calling them Drag’thilden (their own name for themselves)—that did much of the work now. She worked with the larger among them (for some reason the larger ones always seemed to have greater responsibility) to plan out expansions to the fields, what crops to plant, how to extend the irrigation system, how to get a permit (!) from the city for increased water usage.
This work fell to her, because her husband had never quite gotten the knack for their tongue. Maybe it was because she had been a few years younger than him when the change happened (they say that its easier when you’re younger); maybe it was because she’d always thought they were kind of cute (in a scaly and offputting kind of way), while she suspected her husband was afraid of them; or maybe it was because her husband had never seemed to master even their own native language (the way men mumbled and just expected you to understand them!).
Her husband had given up on tilling the earth. At first, he had been out to prove that this “irrigation” and “kobold employee” business was a distraction, and that nobody could work the land like a man who’d grown up on it. But reality eventually caught up to him, and, after a period of listlessness, he changed gears. He had always supported irrigation; he had always supported the inclusion of the Lord Emperor’s vassals; and he had always intended to leave the running of his considerable fields to his wife, so he could focus on the business of selling and making deals—of bringing home the coin (he still said, though any coins he received ended up in the treasury in exchange for paper money).
It was a little funny, his turnaround—his stubborn desire not to face up to the fact that he had changed with the world. But he was happy, and their children were happy, and she was… she had to be happy too.
She had more than she could have ever dreamed about, anything she could have ever wanted. But when she looked out, she could only see. She couldn’t imagine anything better.
--
Viko sighed as he slunk further into his well cushioned chair, the fire crackling a few feet away, warming his handsomely soled boots. A half empty bottle of wine rested on the side table.
He had never been better rewarded, and he had never been so bored. As the Head of the Royal Household, he had always had more power than one might expect. He commanded, and the servants obeyed. He requested, and the soldiers acquiesced. He talked, and the king had listened.
Servants had quaked in his wake; nobles had greased his palms; businessman had sought his advice and favor. He had taken a salary a provincial noble would have envied, and he had taken so much more.
He hadn’t needed the money, but it was the carefully managed risk that enthralled him. Will this noble betray me? Will this or that would-be usurper manage to connect me to the shadowy figure who’d offered them a chance at poisoning the king, for the right price? Would this family of the royal foodtaster start to wonder how poison slipped by me so many times? Could this noble have the balls to try to blackmail me?
He stroked his white beard and wiped a bit of dribbled wine onto his pants. He had served this castle for forty years. He had survived three kings and one short lived queen. He had been responsible for two of those changes of power, and another week would have seen him responsible for a third.
But it was over now. It had been over for a long time. The Lord Emperor, Our God and Protector may he live forever (though he certainly didn’t need our prayers for that) was never under threat. No nobles vied for his position through treachery and politicking. He was unassailable, untouchable. His kobold vassals politicked amongst themselves and stabbed one another in the back (literally and figuratively) but were perfectly loyal to their king, and Viko imagined no thrill in participating in their petty squabbles.
Certainly, there were still risks. He could, for example, throw his lot in with the sputtering resistance (nominally loyal to the ostensibly surviving prince). But that wasn’t a calculated risk, it wasn’t manageable. There was no chance of success and every chance of the Emperor’s otherworldly eyes wresting that secret from him.
To play games now meant not only to court death, but to invite it in through the front door with a smile and a wave.
Viko knew that he was too old and twisted to adjust to this new life of doing his job and only his job, but he also knew he was too attached to the pleasures of this life (ash as they may now be) to give up on it all.
He poured another glass of wine, his hand trembling, and held it out in a mocking toast to the empty air. “To our most terrible king.”
Only the fireplace crackled in response.
(Part 3 of 5)
--
Agatha sighed as her dirt-encrusted talon dug out a splintered finger bone from between her molars. She flicked it onto the refuse pile and spat, saliva mixed with black green blood sizzling on the damp stone.
The taste of goblin did not agree with her, and their wails and pleading were so much less musical than the humans she had grown accustomed to in her long centuries in that city previously called Saril, then Burthar, and now finally (and she well imagined it might truly be finally) Hsarton.
She felt the rage well up in her. It was less often now, but it takes long for the desires and habits of an age to fade.
She slammed the stone wall of her underground lair, the stone pulverizing under her mottled, wrinkled fist, the sinews of her arm taut like the roots of a tree. The crying of her chained prisoners stopped a moment, and she realized that her aim had been poor—this wasn’t the section of wall next to the goblin leader’s head, it was the section of wall behind the goblin leader’s head.
She licked her now slimy fingers and winced. This one was definitely not good enough to eat so shortly after eating another. Perhaps she could turn it into a potion or at least give its meat to her wargs. Be a shame to let even such low quality meat go to waste.
Life here in the mountains—in this mediocre and long forgotten dungeon—was challenging, and as a young hag she had never imagined she would have to rough it like this. She had been raised in a tight-knit coven in one of the most rotten cities in the world; a city where there was too much scrabbling by the rich to worry about laws for the poor, and too many assaults by orcs, goblins and foreign powers for the formerly poor (adventurers) to worry about problems at home.
It was a wonderful place where a girl could disguise her warts, her humps, her fangs and claws, and find a new, fresh meal every day. A place where, there was a child to fool as the kindly grandmother, a mother to fool as the sage herbalist, or an adventurer to fool with swaying hips and buxom illusion. Her and her sisters prided themselves on never eating the same meat twice in a week.
But that dream was dead and gone, along with her two sisters. One of them, Kalgra, had sought to bargain with the kingdom’s new lord. Surely, not being human, he would want to come to a deal with the Wicked Three who ruled the seedy, dark underbelly of the kingdom’s capital. Surely, he would see reason.
Agatha had warned her not to go, not until they knew more of this new king, and she had watched through their shared eye as the king’s maw—deep thundering laughter escaping from it—closed over her sister, and the connection was forever severed.
Her other sister, Niessa, had been caught by one of the so-called Dragoons, elite guards outfitted with magical rings that let them see through all illusions and all pretense. She had taken four of them with her, bless her black heart.
And now she was all that was left. There were no games here; tricking goblins was no fun. The meat was sparse, spare and gamy. This was not home. She was trapped in this frozen hole, forced away from the dark kingdom that was her right by birth.
“Curses be on thee! Thou thrice-wretched usurper!” She snarled, as another goblin’s head popped beneath her grip.
Oops. She hadn’t even realized she’d grabbed that one.
--
Beata sighed dreamily. She was small for her age, and her legs still kicked the air futily as she sat at her desk, pencil twirling languidly in one hand.
She was staring off into space, over the heads of the dozen or so students in the rows in front of her. Mr. Fil was standing on a stool and scratching characters onto the board, the chalk held clumsily in his talons. They were Drag’thildenese characters, and she already knew them.
Twice a week, Mr. Fil visited their school to give them a lesson (from a native! Ms. Gilt explained, her eyes wide, and her accent always so bad and awkward in Drag’thildenese). Beata didn’t need the lessons—her best friend, Thilda, was a Drag’thilden, and they had basically grown up together on her parents’ farm.
But her parents said it was important, if she wanted to work for the government (work with Mr. Hsar’gl!), not only to be able to speak Drag’thilden, but to have graduated from a prestigious school that taught it.
“The degree is half of the point,” her mother would say. “That’s an expensive piece of paper!” her father would joke. She didn’t understand, she was only eight, but she understood that she needed to listen to Ms. Gilt and Mr. Fil explain things she already knew so that she could work for Mr. Hsar’gl one day.
So, she spent those periods dreaming about him; about the blonde hair, blue eyes, wide shoulders, kind voice and gentle smile that he surely had. Thilda had explained to her that Mr. Hsar’gl (Thilda always called him Lord Hsar’gl, though) was a mighty beast, born in the form of the divine, and that he could take any form he wanted, human, noble beast, or even Drag’thilden or goblin!
Beata didn’t like to imagine him as a goblin, but she did sometimes imagine him as a dog, the noblest of beasts. And in her imagination she would give him scratches and they would play and he was her best friend.
She had never seen Mr. Hsar’gl. In fact, almost nobody had. But they said he was out there in the city, disguised as a shopkeeper, or a beggar, or a guard, so you should always be nice to everybody. And she was, mostly, except for Bobby, because he was a jerk and ugly and Mr. Hsar’gl would never disguise himself as somebody ugly.
“Ms. Beata. Ms. Beata?”
Her reverie was interrupted by Mr. Fil rapping on the board with his claws.
She shook her head and focused on the board. Apparently nobody else had managed to answer Mr. Fil’s question, so it fell to her to save the day yet again.
(Part 4 of 5)
--
Roland sighed, and took a careful drink from the cup in front of him. It was called “coffee,” and it was a recent import from an island nation to the far east. He still wasn’t quite used to it (it was too hot, for starters), but many of the young men under his command swore by it.
He was awkwardly seated on a wooden chair at an outdoor table, his helm carefully placed next to the steaming cup, his sword laid carefully across the chain mail that draped his legs. He was on a break, and he liked to enjoy his break out of the garrison, where he could see the people walking by, even though that did mean he had to pay for his own food.
A small price to pay, though, to see the happy, smiling faces moving in the bustle.
Roland was old now—old for a guard, at least—but, for the first time in his life, he felt fulfilled.
He had grown up the youngest of seven brothers. Of them, he was the only one who’d made it to his fifth decade. Most of his brothers had died young, in their teens or earlier, from disease or accident. Two had become adventurers, and they had died like most adventurers had, in combat with goblins or orcs at the frontiers of the kingdom.
One had allied himself with a corrupt noble, and it hadn’t been a fun day when Roland brought him to justice.
Especially since Roland himself hadn’t then been convinced of the justness of the King’s Guard and his own work. He had always been a stickler for rules, even as a child, and very hardworking, so it was only natural (his parents had effused to any neighbor who would listen) for him to become a member of the King’s Guard—the elite group that maintained order and kept the people safe.
Unfortunately, as he had come to see, the “order” that was kept by the King’s Guard was heavily slanted to the maintenance of the position and wealth of the King and his… he hated to use the word, but… cronies. He found himself again and again being tasked with the detention of people whose only crime had been to be poor and desperate.
But the rules were the rules, and he was only a cog. What could he do?
Nothing, not until fifteen years ago. He twisted the magic rings on his fingers that marked him as a member of the Dragoons. Those had saved his life, and changed this kingdom for the better. They were his mark of office, the tools of his trade, and his lucky charm.
Fifteen years ago, he had been called to the castle (still then being rebuilt from the ruins it had so suddenly become). He had met directly with Commander Hsar’gl. He had stared into those lambent eyes, pools of unfathomable depth, a foot across each, and incomprehensibly alien. And those eyes had stared back into his, and wrested from the depths of his mind every secret thought and desire, and he had trembled—cried even—as that thundering voice pronounced him worthy.
He had been named First Dragoon, and tasked with assembling loyal soldiers who were loyal first to the Emperor, and then to the people. Early on, their work was to secure the frontiers (but that was quickly handled, as word spread of Hsar’gl’s reign); then they moved to the cities, to root out the devils, demons, and fey creatures that sowed discord with their lawlessness and disguises; then they were tasked with removing (gently) the landed gentry with evil intentions and selfish hearts; and finally, the task that would likely occupy the rest of their lives was providing for the safety and prosperity of the common folk, making sure they were not being abused by their employers, and rounding up the odd thief or other criminal.
This kingdom had been rotten, and the people had languished. But a great savior had struck out that rotten core, and now the people thrived. And Roland could again look his wife in the eye when he donned his armor each morning.
--
The Great Lord Barbaro sighed, and pushed the pages to the edge of the desk. His eyes hurt, and it was fruitless to continue looking at them.
He and his advisors had spent years spying, collecting information, and drawing up these plans to invade their neighbors. And they were reasonably confident things would go well. The Westlands would be united under Barbaro’s iron fist, and he would bequeath that great gift to his son, and finally, finally, he could retire, his legacy safe.
And that was all for nothing.
The kingdoms across the Eastern Sea were united in all but name under some lout named Hsar’gl.
There had been little trade and even less military conflict between the barbaric Eastlands and the enlightened Westlands. It was a place that once had only held sway in his mind as a dream, that his son’s sons could bring order and stability to that barbaric land, and so the Barbaro family would rule all of the known world. But over the past decade, trade had increased apace, and the types of ships and commodities that had been coming over had him and all the other Westland kings worried.
At first, they had laughed at the adamantine horseshoes, the mithril plows. Some foolish king investing untold resources in trying to fool his betters on the other side of the sea. Nobody could have such wealth!
But the goods kept on coming, and coming, and coming. An endless stream of commodities made of the most precious of metals that here were only worked by a handful of smiths, trained in the metallurgical and magical arts, and beholden to and favored by kings.
How could he think on an invasion, when there loomed now the Eastern Darkness, an apparent economic powerhouse ready to swallow the world? What if that in the Darkness should rouse? How could he—how could all the kingdoms together—fight against an economy that uses mythical ores for PLOWS?
The Great Lord Barbaro did not feel, indeed, very great. He hadn’t been sleeping well recently. His foolish dream had become a recurring nightmare. The bags under his eyes were heavy and gray.
A knock at the door.
“Milord, your carriage is ready,” his servant called to him.
Barbaro ran his fingers through his greasy hair. He shoved the chair back, sending it toppling, and scooped up the papers on his desk in a crumpled sheaf.
He leaned over the crackling fireplace, and felt his heart pounding in his chest. It’s too late. There’s nothing he can do. One dream must die, so that his people could live.
He tossed the papers—the intel, the plans, the maps, years of labor— into the fire, and watched as they blackened, burned, and rose up the flue. Now just another half-forgotten memory of a dream.
It was time to ride. To show weakness where he wanted strength. To parlay with his fellow rulers and figure out how to deal with—if indeed there was any way—this monster in the east.
(Part 5 of 5)
--
Hsar’gl sighed, an impossibly long breath, tinged with sparks and embers. He lounged atop his horde, a mountain of gold greater even than the Great Wyrm hordes his father had spoken of. His tail flicked discontentedly, and Kobolds scattered out of its way, desperate not to lose the reports they carried to and fro in the castle’s main chamber.
Immortality was always going to be boring. There is only so much that is new and fresh and exciting.
After centuries of being in a rut—of spending weeks asleep atop his meager (it seemed to him now) horde, of waking occasionally to assault a caravan, raid a town, or raze a kingdom (just for the fun of it)—something interesting had finally happened.
It was a man, he thought now (he wasn’t sure, and it wasn’t important; he did remember that they were slender and gamey, however). Hsar’gl had grown bored with the idea of razing a nearby village halfway there and returned to his lair find someone crawling among his treasures.
He had given them a fair shot, about two minutes of struggling, before he nailed them to the cavern floor with his talon. It was a shame, really. He’d never seen a human move so deftly, even though it wasn’t close to enough.
Later, when he was picking a rib bone from his teeth, he had noticed a pack the human had been carrying. Unusually, it didn’t contain alcohol or gold, but books.
Hsar’gl had never been one for reading. Human letters were too small, and they never had anything interesting to say anyways.
Maybe it was because he was particularly bored that day, or maybe he’d absorbed some of the human’s spirit when he consumed them (an old superstition among dragons that Hsar’gl didn’t subscribe to, usually), or maybe it was out of some respect or curiosity for this most capable of humans—in any case, he made the decision to take a look at the books.
It didn’t hurt that the thickest among them was titled, “The True Wealth of Kingdoms.” It dealt with ideas that, at first, were—and it pained him to admit this—above Hsar’gl’s head. It dealt with this concept of the ‘economy’ and ‘prosperity’ and ‘people as capital’ and ‘monetary velocity as a vehicle for growth of the GDP’.
His horde had been growing painfully slowly these past few centuries, and he had never considered adding people to his horde, and he had certainly never considered that there were things you could add to a horde that would then grow your horde for you. These ideas were intriguing—more importantly, they weren’t boring.
He had been excited the day he flew four hundred miles to this castle, collapsed it with one swipe of his tail, and swallowed the piss-smelling man with the golden headpiece. He had been excited as he worked on optimizing the horde-generating capability of his new horde-members—as he lowered the taxes on the poor to increase the ‘velocity’ of their money; as he ordered the mass of Kobolds his presence attracted to dig out ‘irrigation systems’ and build ‘schools’; as he tore through the orc and goblin hordes that lingered outside of the city (that had, admittedly, been quite fun); as he learned to manage and delegate and trust the pieces of his horde whose goals aligned with his.
He had been excited. It was a project, a new idea. But now it was over. He had implemented it. His horde was larger than it had ever been and grew day-by-day at an impossible rate. The other kingdoms in this land were just more treasure to his horde in all but name, as they adapted to his reforms as not to court his wrath.
He had done and conquered more than any dragon before him. He had slept less and dreamed bigger. And now there was nothing.
A man stood before him, patiently waiting to speak. Hsar’gl remembered this one. The tattoo on his bald skull indicated that he was more fervent than most in his worship.
Hsar’gl swung his head around, and fixed the man with one eye.
“Speak,” he rumbled.
The man unrolled a scroll with trembling hands, tears of joy in his frantic-looking eyes. “I have here the report on the Westlands that you asked for, my great and terrible Lord of All There Is Was And Will Be.”
That was not one of his official titles. But, he had to admit that he didn’t hate it.
I like how you didn’t write it as some kind of utopia. Some people were happy, and some people were not. And the last part, where we get to see the dragon’s point of view, is the cherry on top. Masterfully executed!