Chapter Text
The Sun was bright outside, the rays beating down on those less covered and more vulnerable. However, by perhaps a shade, they could be protected and shielded by the harmful ultraviolet, for those without fur, chitin, or some other covering would likely get a bad case of sunburn.
The forest was silent, and deathly so. The birds had stopped their daily tunes, and predators were absent from the place.
No longer did this feel like a safe haven for all matters of wildlife, for it was shockingly vacant despite being their domain.
But why?
One may ask this great question.
Why on such a great day filled with brightness and heat to sunbath would one leave such a grand area, even with the soothing shade?
Well, a rustle through the trees, the creatures, especially the insects, would get blown away and perhaps find an untimely death from the gust. The leaves and needles of the long-standing vegetation sputtering out and about with the forceful movement they weren’t designed to handle.
And some great steps too…
Litter flew behind, crushed leaves and twigs, once discarded as dead, acted as natural confetti to the bigger picture, for each stomp led to an everlasting image.
A gigantic, three-toed paw made its mark.
It was so massive and powerful, that even with the buffer of the dead organic matter, it stood no chance against its strength.
Just…what was this being?
This was no mere wolf or mountain lion, or even a bear, but something else entirely…
But why trot in the forest, once of serenity, so haphazardly?
But to the creature, it didn’t matter, for it had more…important things to tend to.
It raw energy seemed unmatched, but it had little time to worry about making a mess or dawdling around, for it felt like it had a mission of sorts.
What kind of animal has a task of its own choosing?
However, the pounding of the earth kept on happening, divots in the shape of its paw shaping the ground with its image, a sign of its presence. Despite such an entrance, it wanted to remain as concealed as possible so as not be seen by prying eyes, or, well, some eyes.
Wow, what a great job it must have done…
But no. Their target was too far for noise to really matter, for they would slow down to a crawl, until, eventually…
It halted to a crawl, continually patting with its great paws to slow itself down, creating small divots that were pounded out with its prints.
In but a few seconds, it was no longer running, but instead walked.
It strode to the line of the healthy brown and green oaks that bordered the great and wide open clearing, the expanse completely clear of any of the strong pillars of nature.
Upon padding over the fallen forest decay and grasses, it began to crouch a bit as it held its ground, eyes attentive and seeking.
Why?
Because…
Because of…him.
You see, in the middle of the grand field was another being, a creature known as a human.
They had a metal-spaded shovel with a wooden shaft, the sharpened pointed perfect for digging into dirt, soil, and even clay with enough elbow grease.
Now as for the human themselves…
They were a young man, a he, for he had brown hair that mimicked the healthy ground underneath him. He wore a wooly white shirt that was shortened at the sleeves as to not get him to sweat up a storm from the arms, with a set of grey work pants thick with padding to both protect and keep his flesh clean. There were other articles too, with a brown belt of worn amber metal holding up his leggings. To top it all off, he had some used, but sturdy boots of a woody coloration, the bottoms and a bit on the top filthy with the earth.
Behind him and a bit to his left side was the great stand-out structure that was the barn, for this was a farm, and a big one at that. To its sides were all facets of farmland, including a grand pasture behind it, fully of greenery to satisfy the hunger of roaming cattle and give them room to trot. The right of the building was a house with a shade akin to a pale shell, meshing well with the brightness of the chlorophyll and accents of the barn, with the bones of the support of each angle of that lack of color in the form of paint while the rest was a more natural maroon. Inside held stables for the horses and cows, where the later were milked for their drinkable essence meant for sale, with a hatchery for the chickens inside.
To the left of it was where the young man was, for it was a great field of growing crops not yet ready, for it was just Spring. Still, some were getting there, for it was on the precipice of Summer. While some were the equivalent of small shrubs of perhaps inland fruits, others were rooted vegetables, such as where the boy stood.
He took his shovel and was instructed to dig out any weeds or plants that inhibited the growth of the foodstuffs.
Problem was, he was barely halfway done.
It was but early noon, and he had much more to do.
He shut his eyes of hazelnut and, while holding the end of the shovel balancing on its edge with his right arm, bent the other one and slid his forearm along his forehead, swiping a lot of his own sweat away and even sputtering some droplets to the ground.
A deep breath of exertion, for this was great work, especially since he had to handle all the little things on the whole entire farmland alone.
When he returned his hands to the rounded brunt of the stick of a handle, he let out a sigh as he bent over in a hunch.
Only to be interrupted by a voice he grew to not enjoy at all
“Quit your lollygagging boy.”
It was deep, gruff, and very much like gravel rolling on a man-made road.
The much older man was named Brom, a veteran of the farm, but one that wasn’t very nice or caring. The eyes behind his pair of black-wired specs were a blue so icy that it felt like your body was going to freeze up like a deer being discovered by a human. With denim overalls and a white short-sleeve underneath along with woody boots reminiscent of animal hide, it was a miracle that he didn’t get sunburned on his arms. As for the head? Well, he wore a beige hat of straw that shielded him from the terrible rays of the Sun, although, his long and stringy beard of grey acted as a curtain to his front neck. His frame was also quite large, which, while filled with elderly fat, also was lean with pure muscle as well.
He lived and worked on the farm for as long as he could remember, appearing everywhere on the property except in the main part of the house, as his and his father’s sleeping quarters were on the highest floors.
However, that didn’t change the fact that he was quite aggressive in his work ethic, and he had no doubt that he felt that way from both years of experience and his father. Unlike his parent, he had no sympathy for his lack of strength expected at this age despite being given quite a hefty amount of work, and constantly scolded him for having even the most minute of breaks, even on utterly putrid days of bad weather.
Safe to say, he was a sentinel of this realm of labor, even if he never considered himself as such.
The younger man, seeing him with a rake in his left hand being pushed down in the ground to the point of crunching, saw his frown and disapproval. Those eyes caused him to look straight forward and away from him in embarrassment.
Well, time to be honest as opposed to anything else.
“I-I’m just…catching my breath is all.”
Brom gave him his frosty glare for a long while with his discouraging side eye.
It felt like an eternity until the older worker snorted in annoyance before turning his attention somewhere else and no longer leaning a bit on his tool. He then started to take off to some other bit of land, no longer concerned with him.
But if he knew one thing, the old timer had a memory of an exotic elephant.
He never forgot.
The boy sighed in low self-esteem.
He likely drove off to have some food for lunch with his father, for the more mature of the farmland’s custodians had the privilege to.
Him?
No, not him.
It felt like it didn’t matter how much he did. He did as his father told him to, the ever-increasing workload and all, and he still never gave him respect. It didn’t matter that he was twenty and on the grasp of becoming twenty-one, no, no, it didn’t. Before, it was to ‘shape him into a man’ as he said, but even when he’s just about reached that age, he still didn’t see him in that light, always looking away from him and treating him as a fellow worker as opposed to his own son.
He remembered all the times they had dinner together, in which he was as silent as fox aiming to capture a rabbit to feast on, always willing to speak with the other workers instead of him, leading to the young adult to shrink himself to be as unnoticeable as possible.
It both disheartened him and made him a little bitter inside. He struck out so hard in the name of the farm he was raised on, doing more than what was asked of him to gain any semblance with his father, only for it to amount to nothing. Was his self-inflicted work something to be expected, or did he simply not care?
It caused him to slowly resent his father, but he couldn’t remain angry forever, for it only made sense given that he had to raise him alone.
No…
It was his fault, not his parent’s that it was all his…all his…
He let out a sigh of depression.
He scraped his own hands to gain his father’s favor, but for what?
It felt like this pain of rejection was never going to go away, but what could he do?
It made sense why he treated him this way, but nothing seemed to work.
Nothing.
He even heeded his father’s orders sometimes to go out into town and search for some women that caught his interest instead of land work, much to the dismay if Brom and the other farmhands. However, even that didn’t work, as despite being a good-looking man, none of the girls were interested by him, noticing and gossiping about his attempts to be cavalier, but it left him feeling even worse inside.
He saw why his father wanted this. It was to produce more heirs, but that made him feel even more terrible.
Was he not worth it? Was he useless to him?
No.
Nothing mattered…nothing mattered…
He…
Hmm?
He gazed to the side when he heard a rustle in the tree line to his left, shaking some leave away with a massive force.
Despite the disturbance, he quickly returned his face downwards towards the pole of the shovel, being reminded that it was just another day of work.
Eh.
It was likely some dumb animal falling over or something. It was just bound to prance away.
Some silence followed, for there was nothing to be concerned about.
What care was there for him?
Trying didn’t work, so what could he do?
Raw labor wasn’t enough, and even trying to find somebody to have kids with didn’t lead to anything, so…why was he here?
It didn’t make any sense.
He had so little faith in himself that it just drew him into himself.
Such a terrible fate.
And…
Wait…
Why was there a shade all of a sudden?
A cloud?
No, it would’ve covered the whole farm.
What…
He looked upwards and saw…
Wait…
That wasn’t a clou-
His eyes began to shrink.
He saw it.
A long creature of four legs, whose mighty wings blocked the sky, the Sun burning around it.
His mouth opened, for he screamed.
It landed, causing a rain of powdery dirt and greenery with its weight.
The man fell on his back, dropping the shovel as he tried to scramble backwards but to no avail.
It was a great beast.
A dragon.
It was massive, far larger than him and much bigger than any of the horses, for it felt like it was several leagues above them. Its scales shined the brightest gold of all, the sunlight creating a mesmerizing glitter upon the star beaming down on them. It looked like the little plates could fetch a great price, but none would so much as attempt such a thing against such an unstoppable creature of great power. Its breast plates were beige and pristine, going from its neck to all the way to its tail, where the appendage ended in a little thin bulb with a bunch of blunt points on it. The spines were all black, with the horns also the same shade of charcoal, contrasting greatly with the sheer brightness that was its body. The wingspan was astronomical, feeling like they covered a good chunk of the fraction of land he was working on in a natural canopy, one that could cover everyone he knew in shadow.
Its equally golden snout of Dragonkind led up to its deep eyes of soulful amber with the consistency of honey.
The dragon had cast itself over him with its impossible size, terrifying him to no end.
NOOOO!!!
His idea of escape was feeble at best. The dragon made its move immediately, creating massive stomps that could bounce even the heaviest of metals, creating divots in the land he helped cultivate, ruining the land he worked so hard on.
And it was all in the pursuit of him.
Its deep gaze was solely on him.
NOOOO!!!
It made great steps towards his miniscule figure while he was helpless, any effort to get away eclipsed by the beast.
There was nothing he could do, for how could he? He could never hope to match the dragon in any facet. Even if he got up to sprint like his life depended on it, the monster would just as easily make a stride to catch him.
There was no fleeing this place.
It engulfed him in darkness portrayed by its physique, with its head, snout, and eyes pointed squarely on him.
Was he about to die?
Was it over?
He thought so.
But something horrifying happened instead, arguably worse.
He saw the dragon’s massive right paw, off of the ground, the soft bottom covered in sandy dirt.
It was going to step on him, crushing his bones and such.
No…
It all occurred in a split second.
“GAH!!!”
The dragon pushed it down on him, his chest being compacted and his back being forced into the land, but…
Wait…what?
It placed pressure on him, but…not too much. He attempted to get it off of him, grabbing around the three toes that his head and neck slipped through to avoid being blind to his fate.
What…?
It wasn’t pounding him into a bloody pulp?
Why…
He then felt it, them.
His toes and claws, shovels on their own, dug a bit into the dirt around him.
No…
He began breathing and sweating even more than before, all semblance of fight-or-flight taking over his systems to the highest extent now.
No!
N-No!
The dragon wasn’t just going to kill him, but was also about to take him in its claws to whoever knows where, a place in which it would do unfathomable things to him.
Eat him, kill him, use him as an object to the worst things imaginable…
The dragon twisted its toes to grip him on his midsection.
His life was about to change forever.
It wasn’t until its great paw lifted and twisted his perception, now stomach down as the dragon removed him and his limb off of the land he would never see again.
No amount of beating or scratching like a mouse in a trap was going to do anything, for only light metallic clangs and screeching came out.
The dragon turned to its left side. It had no more reason to be here now that it had its prize.
It unfurled its wings. Wiggling around had no effect either.
This was the end of your life here.
No longer would you see the farm you spent your years on, so many hardworking scrapes and drops of blood, all for nothing.
No longer would he see the Sun.
The second the dragon finally faced the line of woody giants separating the wilds and the cultivated land and flapped his wings one, scattering the mess it made all around, he screamed.
“AHHHHHHHHHH!!!”
His lungs burned and his throat was rubbed raw.
No.
This must be a nightmare! He had to wake up!
But no, no, he couldn’t, for he was in reality.
The dragon took off at a speed unimaginable.
Did his father and the other workers hear him?
Did it even matter?
What could they do?
No, they wouldn’t know the truth.
He was taken by the dragon. He didn’t have any power in his life anymore.
He could at least could talk and be listened to before, but how can you do the same with an animal?
He saw nothing but green, which seemed dead to him now, seeing his childhood life being left behind, his land, home, family, all of it, gone, just like that.
So little of his previous life remained, for all that he had known was discarded forever.
How fitting for an ordinary farm boy.
(…)
Everything changed the second he saw it.
It was a grey crevice of stone, like a massive carapace of death, darkness, and the unknown. There was a bit of an open area that wasn’t covered by the canopy of strong trees, but it was basically hidden besides that.
It was clear what this was.
It was the dragon’s lair.
The young man felt his insides jostle and the bones in his skull get whipped as it landed with a thud. The stone ground didn’t budge to the dragon’s larger than life weight.
He had long since stopped his efforts of escape besides pleading and praying to not die. He even halted trying to remember the route it took from his farm, for it was too far and too much to keep in his memory banks anyways.
Darkness covered them, but it was still just bright enough to see. There was also a hole or two to illuminate the place, but he knew that light in his life would be forever extinguished.
The dragon stomped three-legged into his domain. The human tried his best to find something, someway out, but no, there wasn’t, but…
Wait…
What?
There were…things…everywhere.
Some were just simply trinkets, little pieces of decoration, and even a shelf of them, such as small, delicate figurines and sculptures of shiny, but dulled metal that resembled brass. There was also a deep blue piece of crude pottery with…metal flowers of the same sheen as the ornaments? There were also a few chests, which, while crude, was likely filled with some miscellaneous nothings…or were simply empty.
Even some…cookery? Some…beaten bowls and pans of metal?
What…
What use did this thing have for it? And why so…organized?
A scavenger?
What?
Wait.
He saw…
No…
It was a great crater of brown, covered in the nature of pelts, all from kills of local wildlife, along with many hints of white fuzz as well.
No!
It was its nest, where the dragon was bound to do unspeakable things to his body.
Once he hit the textures, it was all over.
NOO-OO!!!
He tried one last time to escape its grasp, but again, it went to no avail.
The dragon’s hide was simply too much of an indestructible armor to do anything against it.
What would his pitiful little hands be able to do anyways?
But it was too late.
The dragon lifted the paw that held him over the edge of the bowl, and, despite its bizarre sluggishness as if to be careful, it let him go, his claw no longer engulfing his whole being.
He rolled a bit, and the second the man got stability on the overly soft and warm compounded furs, he lifted his gaze up.
The dragon stared back, blackness except for its nose, horns, and eyes were visible due to the cave’s shadows.
He tried to scramble away, but what use would that have? He was boxed in, caged like a poor bird, he had no place to go behind him anyways if the dragon could just hop on his ribs and splat him to cranberry juice.
After he realized there was no fight left to be had, he transitioned to trying to get off of this nest and find some way to live another day to shaking and shivering, white as a sheet, forever staring at his destroyer.
Why him? Why not anybody else?
Hmmm…
He was likely just coincidentally sniffed in its journey for some food to eat, but even then, he would just end up as a fatty mess, for while he had some muscle on his bones, he doubted he would be a lean and filling meal for the dragon compared to a deer.
Perhaps he was dragged here just so it could play with its food.
Or perhaps toy with him, so inconsiderate of how he thought and learned, and cared, and loved, and…
H-How he was a person! A somebody!
But no. Perhaps it was a game of cat and mouse to it, with a primal thrill to have him in its clutches without hope of leaving.
Perhaps the worst idea of all was to be used as a toy, an object to which be used, not as a living being, but as a plaything for whatever the dragon was.
He would rather die that for that to happen.
But he didn’t have much of a choice in the matter, now did he?
He never had complete control over his existence. Sure, his father looked down on him, but at least his words and actions meant something, he had a goal in life, something to pursue, but here? No, there wasn’t a reason to try anything. Why would he? It wasn’t like it was going to lead to anything.
The man was foolish to believe otherwise.
He gulped, although the saliva felt like it added to molten metal that weighed him down, dropping into emptiness that took over his whole being.
He felt like it was one of the last things he could do himself before he ended up as mush anyways.
His young brain tried to reason with it, reason with this beast, but it was incredibly desperate at best and unbelievably stupid at worst.
He needed his heart to just have something to do besides beat like a stampede aiming to run his spirit over. The man had nothing else to do, and even though he doubted it would react, well, at all, his soul wanted to use the last bit of its freedom, even if it was going to leave his body in just a bit.
There was no need to fight anymore…
“P-Please don’t k-kill me…”
The best he could manage was a meek voice, for he had nothing left.
He accepted it, accepted his fate.
As a dragon’s appetizer for a bigger kill, something to paint its nest with red, or, well, a thing.
Well, it was quite dumb and hopeless, he wouldn’t lie.
But…
Wait.
Wait a minute.
The dragon…
Something weird happened.
Instead of immediately licking him for a little taste, or just engulfing him in its teeth-lined jaws right away, it stood where it was and slightly tilted its head and…
Wha…?
W-Wait…what?
While before it had a straight line of a mouth where both sections of scales met, it…went…downwards? It was almost like some sort of…frown?
It made a noise too. It was a light trill, not like that of a cat when seeing its owner, but instead of…depression?
And its eyes…
They were open wide and glued on him the whole time except when it carried him in its talons, but now, a its eyelids and golden cheeks shifted to look at him with…with…
Sadness?
It was…sad?
No, that was ridiculous! Dragons were animals! They scoured the lands for food and claimed lands, and nothing more! They can’t…feel anything! This didn’t make any sense! No, it didn’t!
Why…why did the dragon look at him with sympathy? They weren’t capable of sentience! How could they feel sad for…such a nobody!? A random farm boy!?
He wanted to cry, but his fears overpowered him.
How…
How could a dragon be…capable of these facial movements with its animalistic face and give off such a sense of melancholy?
And why? It had nothing to care about. All it needed to do was to pop him into its mouth and be done with it, spare him the anguish and just end it.
But then the most peculiar thing occurred that he couldn’t place his finger on.
It was…
Hmmmm…
It was…a…feeling?
No, no, it was something else.
It was in his head and was clearly noticeable amongst the constant pounding of pristine drums and heat from his blood coursing through it at a high pressure.
It was…
What?
It was a sense of...
Calm?
Coolness?
And, most of all, constantly kept his mind on the dragon, forcing him to glue his eyesight into those amber orbs with the black pupils inside.
It got stronger over time, but it was too much.
He didn’t want to die, and it caused his adrenaline to wear off.
It was just too much for him.
He blinked and tried to force himself to stay afloat above the raging waters, for he didn’t want to fall into darkness.
However, his efforts were all in vain, for his body just gave up and accepted it.
Well, at least being unconscious during it all was better.
His mind went blank as his body felt numb as he lost all sense of being and knocked himself out, seeing only blackness, uncaring that his head and back plopped onto the furs.
At least some quiet would give some brevity from all the fear, except for…this continuous…contin…uous…pull…a…dr…ag…