Slaying the Dragon

Written by Charlene Pepiot

Trigger Warning: The narrative does contain slight gore and death.

The path to my revenge had gone up in smoke again. Literally. Backing away from the cliff’s edge, I collapsed into a pile of ash. The smoke below floated up to tease me, carrying the whiff of cooked meat. Spit gathered in my mouth, and I swooshed the moisture back and forth before spitting black saliva on the ashen ground. It had taken me three days to drag the elk’s carcass to the mouth of Arthmentis’s den, and two prior to gather the death berries I'd shoved down its throat. Even poisonous plants dared not grow here. The scorched branches overhead trembled as Arthmentis laughed from within his cave.

“Does the mighty King Willow take me for a fool? Thinking I can’t tell when his lackey tries to poison me?” More laughter sent the pools or sooty swamp quaking around me. “Run back to your kingdom, puny soldier!”

Would if I could, slimy reptile. Skyborne flakes of ash fell onto my cracked leather armor. I couldn’t care enough to clear them. The kingdom I love is gone—Vanidee is no more. When I return to King Willow, it shall be with your head in a cart.

*

Following my latest defeat, I left the cinders of AshenCrest to clear my head. My legs dangled from the top branch of a needleless evergreen as I thumped my boots together to remove the ash. Before Arthmentis had scorched the forest with his fiery breath, the thick swaths of leaves had blocked the sun and made the Forbidden Forest an unruly trek. Now, it was a graveyard of singed trunks. A sharp wind sent the dead branches rattling like hollow bones as an ash cloud enveloped my just-cleaned armor. The black specks swam before my eyes as I held back tears. AshenCrest’s mountain loomed in the distance. What I wouldn’t do to be back in my father's little cabin passing around Mother’s homemade rye bread. What I wouldn’t do to see her, or anyone, from my family again. My thumb caressed my satchel in tiny circles. Within it held the only remanent of them that remained mine.

Excited shouts from below nearly scared me off my branch. A caravan of about sixty men were approaching on battle-clad horses. The screeching of metal on metal filled the air as I weaved my way down the tree.

“The spirits are with us today, men!” The leader on a towering stallion rose his sword in the air. The unexpectedly easy trek through the Forbidden Forest must have made them giddy. “By this time tomorrow, we shall be headed toward King Willow’s courts victorious!”

“My Lords,” I called, rushing over. My neck strained to stare up at the leader. A single eye the color of rotten vines glared back through a slit in the helmet.

“Who might you be, little shrimp?”

“A fellow warrior.” I stood on my toes and extended my hand.

The single eye blinked. And blinked again. My hand was ignored as he bid his party to halt. Confused murmuring sprang up as the leader removed his helmet. A badly healed scar stretched across the left side of his face—the injury that had likely claimed his eye.

“Listen here, little shrimp. You best return from whence you came. This land is not for young enthusiasts.”

“I am no enthusiast!” I straightened up, my armor sliding a bit on my boney shoulders.

“Of course, you alone are the exception!” The leader snorted through layers of mucus. “Let me guess, you heard King Willow’s declaration that whoever slays Arthmentis will have the fair Demour's hand in marriage, so you slipped on some hand me downs, grabbed a stick, and trotted off with hopes of being a hero?”

I surrendered a curt nod, holding his gaze and praying father’s old helmet covered my flushed cheeks. Demour, sweet Demour. Did she still stroll through the gardens on quiet evenings, even without me?

“Arthmentis is Vanidee’s greatest threat, even the mighty King Willow could not slay him!”

“Too busy taxing his people to try, I fear.”

“Watch your mouth, peasant,” the leader’s voice rose.

“Do not speak so loudly!” I begged. “When the sun is between the mountain peaks, Arthmentis takes his afternoon nap!” I pointed to the faint circle of light showing through the soot-filled sky between AshenCrest’s highest peaks. “If you put him in a foul mood, your slim chance for victory will further wane! Believe me, I have studied him for months!”

The leader scanned me over, considering. A horse a few rows down pawed the ground.

“These mercenaries were molded on the battlefield and hardened to withstand any foe.” The leader slid his helmet back over his scarred face. “My men are Vanidee's finest. Turn toward home, little shrimp. I wouldn’t want this blood bath to frighten you so.”

“No,” I gasped, but the leader spurred his horse onward. “You can’t charge in! The clearing has no cover, he’ll stop you long before you reach his den.”

“Onward, for King Willow—a friend to the weak and villain to the thief!”

My eyes were stuck open. I clasped the satchel and its precious contents to my chest. The horses and men, the water boys and caravans of food, it was the biggest party I’d seen challenge Arthmentis yet! So much life charging as one, merged by a single purpose. Their individual features blurred into a creature of steel and hooves, bellowing with the cries of so many as they charged across the barren plain.

It made the spire of blue flame that consumed them all the more unbearable. The way the screams for justice turned to prayers and cries of realized death. How flesh and metal melted into one. Life being licked up by flames until ash was all that remained. A breeze from the mountains carried the gains into the piles of previous victims. I pressed my satchel over my nose. It was easier to breathe in the ash when you couldn't give it a face. I ought to be thankful, the thick stench of charred flesh had masked my own scent for months.

“Foolish knights! Lapdogs of Willow! Spurred by my rival into thinking you had a chance?” Arthmentis cackled. I had always considered Vanidee’s language beautiful, but on the dragon’s tongue the gentle sounds took on the quality of rattling stones. There was a certain cruelty in mocking the dead with their own language.

“Return to your mighty king as spirits and implore him to give me at least a little challenge!”

Arthmentis’s laugh split the air once more, his slimy head peeking into the sun, grey teeth bared in mockery as he slid out to jeer over the scorched ground. Though I had studied him for months, no amount of time could make me accustomed to those moist purple scales or the thuddalud thuddalud of his thousands of tiny legs scrabbling across the ground like a centipede. I ducked behind the stump of a scorched tree as his laughter echoed off the mountain tops. This would go on for hours—I knew his type. Minus the fire and extra legs, he wasn’t so different from King Willow. Both believed they were the spirits gift to the universe. Uprooting the lives of the weak was a small price to pay to secure their luxury. Arthmentis scared off villagers and harvested their jewels, Willow had taxed us half to death to fund his palace of gold and silver. The ill-fated leader had charged in the name of Kind Willow! I couldn’t be more different.

I wandered this wasteland for the fair Demour, who walked the village's dusty streets giving back what she could. We had called each other “friend,” for my family had worked in the palace vineyards near the outskirts of the castle for as long as I could remember. I would accompany her on walks and point out the life radiating from the birds in their trees and the grass beneath our toes, till Willow caught on and had my family exiled. Heaven forbid his fair daughter fall for a poor farmer! Better to marry her off as a prize for whoever did his dirty work.

Mother, father, little Johnny, our life on the run had sent them to an early grave, but I would not follow suit. I would slay Arthmentis, and Willow would have no choice but to allow Demour and I’s union.

The trance broke, and I loosened my fingers around my satchel as Arthmentis continued prancing around the remains of his foes. Little puffs of smoke escaped his mouth as he chided them for underestimating his unsurmountable greatness and yada yada.

Lightning split the soot-clogged sky. A nearby tree burst into flame, producing a crackle that drowned out even the fearsome Arthmentis’s mighty roars. The dragon's bragging froze on his yellow tongue. A few raindrops fell—the first I’d seen at AshenCrest. Hissing, Arthmentis’s multiple legs spun backward as he slithered into the safety of his dark den. Silence filled the clearing.

I rushed down the hill, ignoring the wet ash sticking to my pants in muddy clumps. Where Arthmentis had stood, shiny scales speckled the ground, bubbling and sizzling with each fleck of rain until they were piles of polychrome mush.

Arthmentis was a hothead. Perhaps, the might of nature was the only force that could snuff him out?

*

There were things King Willow hadn’t taken from me. I still had the will to live, the want to rescue Demour, and the family treasure within my satchel—a diamond egg chiseled with the finest of gold designs. Father had sold the clothes on our backs before parting with the generational heirloom. He had claimed the egg was magic, though it had done little to save him from starvation.

“This treasure is our families,” he had whispered to me under a cobbled bridge, his shaking hands placing the egg into mine. “Willow can take everything else, but never this.”

It could have been horse dung, and I still would have treasured it. Because papa loved the little egg and keeping it in my satchel was like keeping him alive.

“Forgive me, Papa,” I said as I approached the dragon’s cave. My family’s legacy needed me to keep the egg, but Demour needed me just a little more. Thankfully, I had seen no other travelers since the precious caravan’s failure. Perhaps they were Vanidee's finest after all? I could only imagine Willow’s response to such cowardice, his red knuckles beating his throne like a pouting child, while kind Demour put on a brave smile beside him. Willow could not stand the thought of any creature rivaling him in strength—more would waste their lives in the quest to preserve his ego soon enough.

The ash was thickest near the cave, and every other step warranted a pause as I reclaimed a lost boot that had stuck in the charred dust. I had stayed far away from the mouth of the cave thus far, but desperation had given me confidence. Or perhaps I couldn’t bring myself to care anymore. I stopped several meters away, the occasional soot cloud swept across the clearing between me and the dark mouth.

“Mighty Arthmentis, will you not break from counting your gold coins long enough to indulge me in conversation?” I called.

A gust of heat blew from the cave and sent my leather armor slapping against me. My feet slid in the ash, but I didn’t fall. Two black slits appeared, resting in the pool of popped blood vessels Arthmentis called eyes. Was this the gates of hell?

“So, you show your face at last, puny soldier?” The dragon's black lips curled. “And why should I indulge you in conversation, when I could just as easily blast you to cinders like the fools that came before you?”

“For the same reason you have held off thus far,” I said. My thumb rubbed the satchel in furious circles. “You take no issue with returning me to the dust from whence I came, but the diamond I have on my person, that is far too great to obliterate. You know quality when it is presented to you.”

I held my breath. Had I underestimated Arthmentis’s greed? His response could usher me into my parent’s arms with a ball of blue flame.

“What do you plan to do, then?” the eyes shifted in the dark as the dragon cocked his head. “Surely you will not just hand it over?”

“I wish to duel you.”

“A duel?” Another wave of laughter shook the loose ash around me.

“Yes. Between you and I.”

“You have quite the delusions of grandeur, puny soldier.” Arthmentis slithered into the clearing to the thurump thurumping of his thousands of legs. Kicked-up clouds of dark-soot filled the air as he neared. He towered over me. “I find it insulting that one so small, so defenseless, would demand the time and effort of one so great as I!” Arthmentis’s claws flashed, and I lay on the ground, trapped between the sooty earth and his scaly paw. The leaking ooze from the scales soaked through my leather as I coughed on mucus turned black from the airborne soot. “Willow was smart to send you off with gold—though that shall do little to save you!”

“I do not serve the whims of man or beast,” I croaked. “It is the spirits of nature that hold my respect.”

The dragon’s laugher shook the ground and sent my teeth clattering. “They will be flattered to meet you, then.”

Arthmentis sliced off my satchel and held it hostage with one of his free legs. The stench of charred flesh rolled over me as his mouth gaped open into a black abyss. A blue glow and raising heat crept forward. My eyes shut. I offered a silent prayer.

Crackling echoed off the mountain peaks. The heat faded, and I felt his paw spasm. I opened a single eye to see his head whip back to the rocks atop AshenCrest.

“Yesterday’s rainfall collected on the mountain, merging with the hidden pools formed from centuries of you huffing and puffing out hot air and steam,” I breathed. “It did not take much for me to loosen the rocks. Rocks your thunderous laughing has at last displaced.”

Arthmentis slithered back in terror, but the current had already broken through and spilled down the ledge toward us. Before he could muster a cry, the onslaught of water swept both of us across the clearing to the edge of the Forbidden forest. The dragon wailed and withered as his sizzling body collapsed into itself and flesh turned to bubbles. Then the bubbles popped, and only an upside-down skull remained.

The water was barely a trickle now, and I glanced at the ground—for ground it was! Soft and earthy, the soot had washed away. But where was my egg? I scanned the ground until spotting my satchel tangled in the branches of a dead bush. Staggering over, I wrestled with the branches until the bag tore and I caught the egg moments before it hit the ground. Clutching my reclaimed treasure, I glanced to the knotted skull. My revenge would be seized next.

*

“All of Vanidee is indebted to you, brave soldier!”

King Willow raised his scepter joyfully atop his jewel-laded throne. I wondered if those he had forced into the mines to unearth such gems had seen the finished product. Demour sat on the throne several inches below—lest her beauty rival his. Her smile beamed down at me, though I saw through the stretched lips to the terrified girl being handed over to an unknown barbarian covered from head to toe in diamond armor from the mighty beast they'd slain.

“Your kindness is touching, your majesty,” I nodded.

Willow’s eye spasmed at my absent bow.

“I have fulfilled your request, mighty Willow. Now you must uphold your end of the bargain,” I smiled at Demour, hoping my eyes would waken recognition in her. Her head was turned toward her father.

“Yes, yes, the princess is yours,” Willow waved his hand dismissively. Demour withered. “Now, where is the skull? I wish to have it mounted above my fireside by nightfall.”

“It is official, then?”

“Yes,” Willow smarted at having to repeat himself.

“That is good. I will not need this, then.” My hands pried off my helmet, moving to the chest plate I slid over my breast and hips to my feet. I stepped daintily forward as Willow’s face turned the color of his adversary’s cleaned skull.

“You, you are—"

“Your daughter-in-law and future queen, yes!” I beamed, glancing at Demour, who was unable to contain her grin. She hadn’t smiled like that in years. “And I do believe I’ll join you by the fire this evening. We have much to discuss regarding the state of our kingdom…”

---

Charlene Pepiot is an undergrad at Ohio University majoring in Creative Writing. Her work has been published in Ohio Northern University’s “Polaris” literary magazine as well as the newspaper “The Post.” She enjoys biking in her nonexistent free time.