The Dragon Lord

The sparring stick whizzes past my ear, only inches away from knocking me out. I return the assault with a swinging blow from my own wooden cane, but it meets Yona’s stick with a clack. My arms and legs burn with the familiar urgency to keep up with my teacher, but I can feel the cane growing heavier in my hands.

Always too soon, I follow Yona’s fake to my left and find myself being greeted by the earth. My shoulder stings where the stick connected, and I can already feel a welt blossoming beneath my leather vest. I lay on the ground for a moment, staring up at the old man’s gray hair and braided beard. It sucks to have your butt kicked by your own grandfather.

“You must be quicker than that, Katarina.” The old man holds out the weapon and I grasp it, hauling myself to my feet. 

I spit on the ground, mixing my blood and saliva with the dirt. “We’ve been at this for hours, Yona. I’m too tired to keep practicing today.” 

Yona’s blue eyes crinkle, but they’re cold and full of steel. Unwavering. I shouldn’t have expected him to go easy on me today, but I was still holding onto the last shred of self-pity I had left. It just wasn’t fair.

“You know why we do this, my young girl. You must be ready when the dragons come for you. If you want to be a Dragon Lord, you must be strong enough to handle it.”

That was just it though, I didn’t want to be a Dragon Lord. I didn’t want to be anything but the daughter of a peasant farmer. If my mother hadn’t insisted on taking all of her children to the Oracle the day they were born, then I probably would have remained that way my whole life. 

My brothers and sisters were all given easy, normal prophecies: this one will marry a rich lord, this one will travel away from our country, that one will lose a child. Maybe I didn’t want a future of losing a child, but at least my brother’s future didn’t dictate his entire life. At least his future was probably going to happen. But mine? My so-called “future” couldn’t possibly take place.

“This one will become a great Dragon Lord.” The words echo around my mind, spoken in a million different voices because of the countless times it had been recited to me. “She will rule dragons,” they said. “She will bring our country out from the domination of our slavers.” 

My prophecy was ridiculous on so many accounts. In all of history, there had never been a female Dragon Lord. Much like humans, the dragons didn’t respect the words of a woman either. They had been known to breathe fire on women who tried to approach them, and devour the ones that dared strive to control them. If this fact alone wasn’t enough to reveal the madness of the prophecy, then the next one would put all questioning to rest: the dragons had died out three hundred years ago. No one, let alone me, would ever lord over them again.

I throw the cane down and walk away. For fifteen years I have been training. From the moment I learned how to walk, my family forced me to move my legs into a run. The year I learned how to read was the year they gave me history books on dragons, to learn their appetites, their demeanor, their loves. While other kids my age went to school and learned about the world we lived in and their roles within that world, I was forced to learn of a world that ended ages ago. Every day I gave up my body to the torture of sparring, lifting weights, and miles of running so that I could muster the strength required to ride dragons.

I hated the life that was given to me by an old, blind woman who touched my face and spouted the first words that came into her broken mind. I hated my family for believing her and forcing me to waste my years training for a beast that had long ago turned to dust. Most of all, I hated myself for trying and failing to be the girl they all thought I was meant to be.

I enter the tiny cottage my family and I call home. The front door hangs loosely on its hinges, mangled by a storm that swept through the village months ago. We couldn’t afford to fix it, just like we couldn’t afford to feed the five children remaining in the house. At fifteen, I was the oldest one left. Kaydra and Dart had both married at seventeen and were living in broken down cottages just like ours, sprinkled around the poor town. 

“Katarina!” A child’s shout pulls my attention away from the door and into the dusty kitchen. Ravine runs up to me, her little hands coated in flour and dust. I catch her and swing her around despite the fatigue in my limbs and the screaming coming from the welt on my shoulder. 

“Mother is teaching me to make bread! Would you like to try a piece?”

I look up and catch the expression on my mother’s face. Her skin is lined with years of hard work and little rest, the labor of raising seven children in an impoverished country where the only thing the rulers hand out for free is more work. Her black hair, which used to match the shade of mine exactly, is streaked with gray and reminds me of the birds that fly over our village, never bothering to land in a place as filthy as ours. As I stare into her blue eyes, I know I will eventually grow into her, when my family finally gives up the Dragon Lord dream and allows me to take my rightful place in reality. I will have failed them all, and no one will believe that the feat they asked of me was impossible from the start.

“I think that bread is meant for dinner, Ravine.” I say softly, just loud enough for my mother to hear. I see her shoulders relax slightly. There isn’t enough food for aimless snacking, of course.

I lower my sister to the floor and make my way to the other room that houses seven sleeping cots. The bundles scattered across the floor aren’t much, but they beat sleeping on straw, which is what many families do. I grab my blanket and roll it up, tying it with a length of string and slinging it over my back. In the kitchen I step around my mother and sister in the tight quarters and retrieve my water skin, already full and ready to go. I slip the paring knife into the bundle, shielding my actions with my body. That's it. That's everything I have to call my own.

“Going somewhere?” My mother eyes me suspiciously, her hands continuing to knead at the dough on the table. 

“I’m going for a hike to stretch my legs.” I say, meeting my mother’s gaze.

She nods once, an emotion flickering across her face too quickly for me to read. Perhaps she knows I don’t plan on returning. She’s watched me grow more and more fed up with the prophecy and the treatment from my family over the years, and I wonder if she always knew it would come to this. I turn to the doorway and don’t look back.

The sun is on the descending side of its arc in the sky, but I have hours before nightfall. I leave my village behind and head for the mountains in the distance, finally grateful for something all my training has given me: stamina. It won’t take me long to leave this stupid life behind.

The funny thing is, all my family has managed to do during the years of training is teach me how to live on my own. I have all of the knowledge and tools I need to survive in the wilderness. I can start fires, catch my own food, and defend myself from any creatures that make the mistake of attacking me. I have everything I need to start a new life out here. I smile to myself as I think of Yona’s stick and how lonely it will become without me to take a beating from it.

The sun is finally starting to set as I reach the mountains, my little village just a speck in the distance. The air has turned cold in the absence of the sun’s rays, and I feel the cool wind wrap around me like a blanket. As the mountains rise up on either side of me, civilization falls farther behind. I can’t believe I did it. I actually left it all behind.

A warm surge of hope rushes through me at the endless possibilities my life could have. I could live on my own for years, and if I got bored I could travel to another land and find someone to settle down with. I could do anything I wanted. I was free. 

It isn’t hope that’s making me warm now though; the air has turned hot in these cavernous mountains, and it swishes around me in a wild dance. I’m starting to sweat now, but that can’t be right. The sun has already set and stars dot the heavens overhead. Where could this heat be coming from?

The darkness is interrupted by a flash of bright, orange light. Fire, breathed down from above.