Dragon Scourge

This piece of writing started as the Prologue to my 2016 NaNoWriMo Entry, which was the first year I actually hit the 50,000 word goal. Over time, that project evolved into a TTRPG world for my home game, and is now morphing again into something I plan to publish. This was one of the first pieces written for that project, a top down description of a world where sometimes, Magic is a force of nature like a Hurricane. What follows this introduction is the story of the people who come looking for those hurricanes.

The world turns, the winds of creation blow, and in the East a Dragon is Scourging.  

The fingers of dawn reach up over the horizon, yet from the darker horizon comes a flash of crimson to rival the sun. Down from the peak of the tallest mountain flash wings of ruby and gold, toward a town still fogged by sleep and quiet.  

A bestial furnace bellow shatters the silence of the morning, sending flocks of birds and herds of beasts surging in every direction away from the town.  The raw metal screech is known and feared by all creatures in this land. The wild creatures hear the clarion call and flee as fast as their legs will carry them.  

The chapel bell rings twice, an alarm less than half as effective as the beast’s roar, before a gout of red glowing flame melts the bell in its housing.   Red scales glittering like cut rubies cast a bloody glow as the beast sweeps over the town and out across the plain, curving back on vast leather wings.  

Half dressed villagers spill out of the houses and shops, staggering in their panicked stupor, sleep-choked confusion catalyzed swiftly to screams of existential terror as the beast trumpets its feral bellow again, this time opening its jaws and setting a field of wheat ablaze with a blinding white hot plume.  They begin to run for the gates as the beast completes its wheel and levels toward the southern gate.  

Men at arms surge forth from the Watch Barracks, only to boil inside their coats of mail and plates as a gout of flame wider than the chapel and longer than the town’s main road rains down upon them.  In a hellish instant, a half mile of homes, shops, roads, and villagers are transformed into a swirling inferno.  

A sea of humanity spills out of the southern gate, fleeing their erstwhile homes as the beast razed them.  Women, children, men of trades, old, young, rich, poor all mingled in the horror of the blight fated upon them.  

Behind them, the beast pulls down the spire of the chapel and sends the stones plummeting into the conflagration.  Its claws split timbers and crush stone walls to dust as it falls heavily to earth.  The flames roar louder as the beast sweeps its tail and snaps supporting timbers. 

By the time the sun rises fully above the horizon, the town is completely razed.  Nothing lives within the walls save the dragon and its flame. As the people flee out across the plain, great claws trample the embers into fine dust.  As they reach the far hills, the beast’s great flames can be seen baking the mortar from the walls and toppling the stones to the ground.  

The refugees slump to the ground on the sides of the hill and turn to see their home rendered to rubble within hours.  The wall, which had stood there for hundreds of years, reduced to a pile of blackened stones.  Their homes burned to embers and stomped into coals.  Their places of worship and business spun out and flattened by the capricious wroth of a base beast. They stand upon the hill and bear witness witness as the great beast rises up onto glittering haunches and spreads its wings out to the full colossal wingspan, its long serpentine neck rising up into the air, ridged plates of scales glowing in the sun like some wicked child of rubies and brazier coals.  They watch from their refuge as the beast pours a blue-white gout of flame into the sky and bellows its territorial displeasure.  

They shrink back in fear as the beast hurls itself into the sky and wheels its way toward the high peak.  They look down upon the cindered bonfire and sink to the ground like boneless sacks, the weight of their despair pulling them off of their feet.