Mordred's Hoard Dread

Birds fluttered over the frosted boreal, innumerable and vast, moving as one and many through the crisp air; so cold it felt potable. Craggy and desolate, the mountain was a white desert. Nought but wingbeats breached the silence. But then, smoke began to billow from one of the caves. 

  Not being typically curious creatures, the birds flapped on, their tiny minds focussed on mates and nests and food. Had they taken heed of the smoke, perhaps they wouldn’t have been

roasted by a wall of fire bursting out of the mountain. Hot. Merciless. Feathers and ash fell to earth. Manna from heaven was barbecue.

“Ridelshka!” screamed Madame Mordred. The dragon skulked about the entrance to her cave, thrashing her tail into the stalactites and slamming her horned head into the walls. Rocks clattered against the stone floor. Charred paper crunched under her claws.

“Ridelshka! Grendibarn! Mother of Yertleford! I shall never know what happens at the end!”

  Mordred belched another inferno into the sky before turning back inside for good. Her amber eyes were lit with rage. Fire was in her blood. Boiling and viscous.

“Really, Mordred,” scolded her sister, rubbing her tired eyes. “Why must you be so unpleasant? It’s not that big of a deal.” 

  Mordred ignored her. 

  At the center of the lair, piled high and mighty, were books. Nothing else. No gold. No jewels. No screaming maidens offered up by frightened villagers. Leatherbound, paperbound, first editions, signed copies, romance, horror, fantasy – which were more realism to Mordred – you name it, Mordred had it. Or, bits of it.

  Huffing deeply, she collapsed onto her papery hoard and snorted the rest of the smoke out of her nostrils. An avalanche of tomes fell around her. Pyrante flicked them away with a sharp claw.

  “You wouldn’t have this sort of problem if you had a normal treasure hoard.”

  “It’s just not fair,” whimpered Mordred. “Why can’t I get to the end of one book? Just one!”

  Pyrante rolled her eyes. “Because we’re dragons. We aren’t meant to hoard flammable things. For obvious reasons.”

Mere minutes ago, Mordred had had her snout buried into a dazzling romance novel. Pyrante had been napping. The tension, the stakes, the pacing, all the story elements had been perfect. Mordred had been enthralled. Completely and utterly transfixed. So much so that she hadn’t noticed the rising heat in her chest.

 The lovers had reunited.

 Warmth. Embers.

 They’d embraced.

 Getting warmer. Mordred’s chest glowed orange.

 They leaned in to kiss each other.

 Red hot. White hot.

 Then-

Before Mordred knew it, ash was slipping between her claws. Two kingdoms at war, young love, eternal love, raw and pure and sweet, a love strong enough to save the land...gone. Mordred would never know how it ended.

 Dragons hate cliff-hangers as much as humans.

“Why don’t you just…oh, I don’t know, have someone read the stories to you?” asked Pyrante. 

  “I’ve already tried that."

  To counteract the problem, Mordred had kidnapped a maiden from a nearby village and demanded she read books to her. That ought to have stopped the burning problem.

 It didn’t.

 Instead of burning books, Mordred had torched the poor woman’s dress and off the girl had fled, screaming bloody murder down the side of the mountain.

 Annoying? Certainly.

As she lay on her plush, booky bed, inhaling the delicious scent of old glue and mildew, Morded had to seriously consider what to do next. It was already weird enough that she preferred to hoard books over treasure. Her sister’s hoard, back in the Dracovern Peaks, was magnificent. Meters high was her gold stashed. But Mordred had never liked to hoard metal. It wasn’t comfortable to sleep on. And it couldn’t take her to enchanted forests, or stormy seas. It existed as it was. Only as it was. But books...they were more. They were portals. Magic. A writer was as mighty as any mage, as far as Mordred was concerned.

 That was why it pained her so much to damage the books. Mordred felt like she was burning beauty. It was irritating enough to never appreciate a story in its entirety, but to ruin it so that it could never be told again...That was criminal.

What to do.

What. To. Do.

“Mordred,” said Pyrante, “you must appreciate why dragons hoard metal and jewels. It’s not because we’re greedy-”

  “Is.”

  “Is not.” 

  “Is.”

  “Is not! It’s for defense. Look-” 

Pyrante rolled over onto her side and showed Mordred her belly. 

  On a dragon, the belly was the weak spot. The rest of the body was coated in thick, hard scales, but the belly was soft and smooth. Pyrante’s was covered in metal. It was a common practice for a dragon to hoard metal - gold, preferably, for decoration - and melt it onto their bellies as armor. Dragons could heat their stomachs to the temperature of a furnace.

  “I worry for you, Mordred.” 

 Picking herself up, Pyrante drew over to her sister and lay on top of her. 

  “What if a knight attacks you? Your belly is completely bare, and a book won’t protect you. A simple arrow to the heart will kill you. You’ll die like a dog and just as easily.”

The conversation was getting to be too much for Mordred. Pyrante was right, but also missed the point. Books were precious. More so than gold. 

  Mordred slapped her tail against the floor in indignation, sending ash and soot into the air. Dainty as dust motes, they danced; twirling like sycamore seeds before settling on the sisters’ backs. 

  If only Mordred could cloak herself in stories. If only she could stick a page to her belly, a page that told of a knight in shining armor, and if she ever needed, that knight would spring from the page and defend her. She’d be like a damsel in distress. A princess. The thought made her grin. And what about another page? This one telling of a wicked witch. Out the hag would leap, cursing whoever dared attack the mighty Madame Mordred. 

  But she knew it was just wishful thinking. 

At this rate, Mordred would be out of books by the end of the decade, and a decade was nothing to a dragon. Then what? Perhaps there would come a day when stories could be told without the need for books, or people. Maybe some magic would be invented where Mordred could get told tales – the most daring and wonderful and frightening there were – and she’d set fire to nothing but the sturdy rock walls of her cave.

 Maybe.

 Someday.

But for now, Mordred would slowly start to trade her books for coin. It would please Pyrante. Some of the books were first editions. Some of them were signed. No doubt they’d fetch a pretty price from the right buyer. Soon she’d have a cold and dead golden hoard to rival her sister's, and then, one day, she’d spend it all on finding a story she loved and would last. She just had to wait.