“Long ago great dragons descended from the stars above and made of this living world, a verdant garden. In this garden they invested their power and essence, and so the lifeblood of this world became that of a dragon. Life flourished, drinking in their strength. This world, this power, they gave to their grateful spawn, mankind...Those dragons are gone now, their stars are gone, and in a few short generations you have made a tomb of the garden gifted you... With Fire and Water, all this I would correct. ”

  -The Great Condemning of Man by The Dragon Emperor, -0 A.F. (3 days after Imperial Founding).

  The nearby lakeshore swayed in the wake of a faint midday breeze.

  Kairava breathed in deep and held the sweet dry air of Guhran, his land, within him as long as he could.

  He stared up into the sky passing untold morning hours dreaming of dragons. As he often did.

  They danced across the skies above in his mind, in all their splendor and glory. As vivid as the real thing.

  Every one of them was unique. Wolf-headed dragons with thick pelts of fur, serpent-headed dragons adorned with sharp spine and scale, eagles and owls with wings like beds of billowing feathers.

  Clawing and soaring and roaring with flame and thunder.

  To be a dragon was to be powerful.

  To be a dragon was to be boundless

  To be a dragon was to be free.

  In those moments at the lakeshore, he felt weightless.

  The sounds of distant shouting echoed across the water.

  Sighing, the prince rose to his feet.

  The palace staff had clearly discovered his absence at last.

  The battering of pots and pans called everyone from the serving girls to the groundskeepers to quick attention. Soon enough, even the sacred lakeshore would not be a safe refuge from their cloying eyes.

  “Kairava!” He heard them calling distantly. He groaned.

  Probably best not to worry them, he thought as he turned to go.

  Kairava was greatly disheartened to see a hulking shadow already fallen upon him as he stretched out his sleeping limbs.

  Kairava turned painfully slow to glance at the head of his personal staff.

  The young therian leaned stiffly against his long wooden walking staff, and gave Kairava a stare that could have bore through stone.

  Gadhar was three years his senior and looked it in abundance, he was nearly six feet tall already and growing, too long arms thickly corded in muscle. His frame was stretched, willowy, and gave him a false impression of fragility.

  The boy looked human in all respects, save the gray scales spread about his neck, and his eyes which were yellow-gold and slitted like a serpent’s.

  Gadhar’s eyes narrowed to thin slits and as he did his black gloved hands stretched out in anger or reflex and for a moment

  Kairava could see the talons underneath, pressing against the thin fabric. Gadhar seemed to notice him looking and tucked both arms behind his back in annoyance.

  Gadhar grunted in mock amusement.

  “You’re late, your majesty. Quite late. Your fencing instructors have been asking after you for hours now,” his tone was flat, factual, and with all the proper adherence to decorum. But his face was darkly cast, expression unyielding as stone.

  “Master Scholar Khemner also instructed me personally to tell you that he has already retired for the day and that his majesty will need to call upon ‘bright and early tomorrow morn.’”

  The prince bowed his head, “I’m sorry, friend...I didn’t intend to stay so long. I just fell asleep by the shore again,”

  Gadhar let out a mirthless snort.

  “But of course your majesty, we wouldn’t want the crown prince to be too weary from day-dreaming. You need your rest I’m sure,” Gadhar spoke between gritted teeth.

  His shoulders slouched, and his tired eyes fell to the sandy floor.

  “I shall tell your fencing instructors they will have to delay their lessons for later today.”

  Kairava winced.

  Gadhar bowed in haste, and stormed off, shaking his head ruefully.

  Kairava opened his mouth to call after him, to apologize or merely to keep the boy around a moment longer, but the words caught in his throat and before he knew it Gadhar had vanished up the trail.

  Kairava was alone again.

  He took a few begrudging steps towards the path after him before he remembered himself, turning back toward the lakeshore.

  “Sorry khaja, almost forgot. ” he muttered under his breath.

  He bowed low to the crystal clear waters, thrice in slow practiced movements.

  “Won’t happen again.”

  Satisfied, he stretched out his sleeping limbs and took the well-trodden dirt path from the lakeshore, winding up the trail through a series of steep hills, and finally in through the high walls of the palace’s Moonward Gate.

  The ancient stone steps leading from the dirt trail’s end gratefully welcomed his bare unsandelled feet.

  ...

  As soon as his lessons and training had concluded for the day Kairava quickly slipped from the lively palace center, the so-called Royal Wing, out to the outermost wall.

  The palace’s main defensive stone walls loomed like an orange tidal wave.

  The prince began to pick up his pace as he strode the winding stone walkways of the battlements, his excitement building.

  Soldiers armed and at the ready stood steadfast facing beyond the wall and out to everything that lie beyond.

  The winding brown and orange shrublands spread out before them, their blue-decorated armored mail glinted in the sunlight.

  Each turned and respectfully nodded to him as he passed, barely moving from their place on watch and saying nothing.

  The men assigned to this stretch of wall being well-acquainted with the prince and his strange ways.

  Kairava nodded back at each one, mirroring them with a certain air of acute teenage awkwardness.

  Kairava followed the path with mounting glee.

  The easternmost limits of the battlements intersected sharply with a stone cliff-face. The cliff rose an additional sixty feet or more above the wall, and was worked as smooth as glass by the shearing wind.

  The rock was naturally colored with bands of warm reds, oranges, yellows, and whites spreading through the stone, bleeding into one another.

  Kairava could just barely see the tip of a large building at the top of the distant cliff-face.

  A thing made of that same multicolored stone as the cliff, shaped like an oversized beehive, and floors delineated by a series of bulging iron rings on the outside.

  The shrieking and roars of dragons could be heard even from the wall far below, and the prince’s heart quickened.

  Where wall stopped and the cliff started there was a sturdy iron door with a looped handle.

  The prince gave the door a hesitant little knock, tapping his knuckles twice against the metal before stepping politely back.

  After a moment a metal panel was pulled aside and two dark brown eyes stared at the prince with pleasant surprise.

  “Your Royal Highness, a fine day to you.” a gruff unfamiliar voice said cheerfully from the other side.

  “Up to see the catchers, sirrah?”

  The young prince’s face flushed red, and he nodded silently.

  In an uncommon break from propriety the guard let out a bemused snort.

  “No need to be so nervous all the time, sirrah. T’would be mighty the fool who’d make themselves enemy to the prince on his rounds.”

  “My rounds?” he asked hesitantly, glancing up to meet the man’s eyes, currently sparkling with amusement.

  “Oh aye, you walk from the fencing grounds to the library, then the library to here at the Aerie. Everyday. Can’t fault a boy for wanting to see real power like that up close I suppose, but what I can’t figure is why you take the paths you do, sirrah.”

  “My paths?”

  “Mhm, you could cut about ten minutes from your walk if you took the path through the spice gardens, and yet you go through the Cupboards everytime. Why is that, sirrah?”

  The Cupboards was the nickname for the living quarters of serving staff and palace guards, a cluster of buildings tucked so far away from the palace itself that the staff had often joked they had been “tucked away in the cupboards”.

  Kairava did wind his way through there everyday, though never once stopped. That would be decidedly unprincely of him.

  He just liked to see the people living.

  The strange guard slid the iron bar behind the door aside, leaving his question unanswered, and pulled the vestibule open, bowing his head.

  “Enjoy the Aerie, sirrah.” He said with a wink.

  Kairava pushed the wood hatch at the top of the stairwell aside and stepped out onto the place they called the Dragon Aerie.

  Wind whipped his hair and lashed his face and clothes, tugging him in all directions, freezing him stiff.

  Shivering, he trudged on towards the looming structure.

  He could see people racing about the cliff-top, children of both genders and in a range of ages, though none much older than he.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  They hauled pails of water, scrubbed at soot and blood covered clothes, and beat at leather dragon-saddles of varying designs.

  The Wurm-Catcher’s apprentices, wrapped in their thick leather coats.

  Perfect for resisting a bit of dragon fire.

  The Wurm-Catcher came to meet the prince halfway on the windy road to the aerie.

  He wore the attire of his apprentices, thick fireproof leathers wrapped tightly around him, gloved hands, hood and bandana held against the biting wind.

  A heavy fur coat and a mug of steaming tea were clenched in his large hands.

  As they met he bowed deeply without spilling from the mug, and the prince mirrored him with a fluidity one only achieves with practice.

  The Catcher slid the sleeves of the gray wolf-skin coat over the prince’s arms and pressed the tea to his lips before he could protest.

  The warmth brought a blissful stinging sensation to his frozen lips and palms and Kairava nodded gratefully.

  The howling winds made it much too difficult to speak on the cliff-face and nodding in the direction of the doors Kairava followed the older man back into the relative safety of the aerie.

  Within the building held 4 floors, each but the first hanging to the walls in rings with the circular center of the building shared by all floors and open to the air.

  There were no stairs between the floors, but the ledges of each floor held ladders and ropes nailed into place, dangling like vines to allow the denizens to quickly make their way between them.

  The ceiling high above was a gaping circular opening, large enough for an elephant to fit through.

  More apprentices scampered about here and there, scrubbing floors, carrying steaming buckets of bile.

  A girl sat on a sack and slowly worked, knitting what looked like a blanket meant for a team of oxen.

  Even from the bottom floor the heat began to swell, the warmth filling the space with the intensity of a distant but roaring fire.

  They stepped through the opening, which had no door or covering to allow proper ventilation for the poisonous fumes dragons may emit, and to keep the place a modest temperature for the human occupants of the aerie.

  “Chandrakanta have mercy. A coat. I have said this many times.”

  The Wurm-Catcher began as soon as they were out of range of the screaming winds, his voice thickly accented.

  The man’s eyes were heavy with concern, but not with anger. It was a welcomed change to his interaction with Gadhar, which had left him feeling numb.

  “Sorry Bala,” his voice came out so softly Balachandra halted removing his gloves and coat to turn his head.

  He looked the prince in the eyes.

  The look was...studying for something, and the prince felt as though he were being read like a book, and not a particularly lengthy one.

  Balachandra broke eye contact quickly, smiling softly to the prince in a way that was reassuring.

  “You forget again. Too thrilled to see the dragon fire eh, your Grace?” Bala’s eyes twinkled slyly.

  Kairava smiled despite himself, and nodded.

  Balachandra laughed heartily.

  “Laurent is upstairs cleaning the kennels if you wish to see him. I myself cannot accompany you on your visit today I am afraid.” The old man bowed his head apologetically.

  “But why?” Kairava asked, more trepidation in his voice than he intended.

  “There are other duties about the aerie which demand my immediate attention...sincerest apologies my prince.”

  Kairava waved his hands, giving the man permission to go and dismissing the apology in a gesture.

  The gray-haired man nodded shallowly, finally pulling down the bandana to reveal a face thick with curling black and gray beard hairs, covering a patchwork of windworn skin the color of aged leather, and marred by small scarred-over gashes and patches of long healed scorched flesh.

  “My prince, a final thing before you go. Your lord father is due to return today, very soon. The entire Flight is returning home for a long overdue period of rest,” Bala glanced casually over to the young prince, who stood straighter, at sudden attention.

  “Why was I not told sooner?”

  Though he could guess why.

  He had been late today.

  “I only received notice myself a few hours ago, and with little explanation.” Offered diplomatically.

  “Something has... happened on the war-front I fear.”

  “...Is the war over?” the prince said in a flat tone but Balachandra understood the question within the question, shaking his head solemnly.

  “The peasant conscripts, and the career soldiers mustered by the counties will hold the regent’s advance into the mountains of Eiren while they await the Dragon Flight and the regent’s return to the field in a few months' time.” The prince let out a shallow gasp.

  A few months.

  Balachandra pursed his lips, attempting to hide his displeasure. He seemed to struggle for the words.

  Sighing, he placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder and squeezed reassuringly.

  “Remember to take some comfort where it can be found, my prince. Nothing can last forever. The tide rises, but it also inevitably falls. So says the Dragon of Compassion.” Kairava nodded gratefully.

  The prince took a few steadying breaths, attempting to dispel worry from his mind.

  He quickly sprung forward with a yell and threw himself at the canopy of ropes and steps hanging from the open chamber. He began to climb and leap and swing from one ring to another, the temperature and humidity rising steadily as he did.

  Moving from one side of the building to the other with a grace and speed most of the apprentices couldn’t match if they tried, and they often did racing from floor to floor when the choring was complete.

  Each floor of the Aerie save the first (where the apprentices and Balachandra lived) were filled with animal stalls, rows and rows of them. The largest of these stalls began on the second floor, most of them unoccupied. With the smallest stalls at the top floor where the ceiling and walls begin to curl inward out, making it the smallest ring, and therefore home to the smallest dragons.

  Kairava flung himself onto the fourth and final floor of the Aerie, hand smacking firmly on the lip and wrenching himself to his feet.

  The stalls were not unlike those meant for a horse, save about 2-3 times the size and worked of non-flammable materials like stone, brick, and wrought iron.

  The top level was scorching hot, the heat rising through the air in a haze, causing sweat to pool on the prince’s forehead.

  He reached into a nearby bucket and pulled out a damp cloth rag, and dabbed the cooling cloth across his forehead as he strolled on. The air was thick with moisture, hanging like a low mist.

  From the stalls Kairava could hear the coiling and uncoiling of scaled bodies, the hissing and snapping of fanged maws, and the grinding of long talons on stone. And the sweetest sound of all, the occasional quick popping bursts of a slumbering dragon releasing excess flame.

  The air temperature noticeably fluctuated for a moment with each brief flash of illumination.

  On the far side of the ring the prince could see a stall was open. A heavy iron gate swung wide and the securing brace, a 6 foot rod of steel, left lying on the ground.

  Inside a dragon hissed, coiling its body tightly around an apprentice's outstretched arm, the infant only large enough to cover half the distance of the outstretched limb.

  The young dragon had a body like a serpent’s, a long neck seamlessly merging into a sinuous body and tail about 2 feet long if fully stretched.

  Four stubby taloned legs, pawed like a great cat’s but no larger than a kitten’s, were tucked neatly against the body. They broke the serpentine shape of the dragon into the body plan of a sprinting quadruped predator.

  The slim reptilian muscle tensed powerfully as it coiled. It was covered in thick scales, nearly colorless, like small interlocking translucent shields across the majority of its body.

  A short mane of thin, soft hairs covered the infant's back and ran along the neck to a crown of four stubby antler-like horns. The otherwise white hairs seemed to have a strange luminescent quality to them. Light passing through them like they were thin filaments of glass. From the middle of the short mane emerged two pairs of scaly bat-like wings ended at the tips in a cruel looking thin claw.

  The creature looked to be some attempt to combine all the most attractive and deadly qualities of cats, snakes, and birds into a single divine creature.

  The apprentice gently reached out and began scratching the dragon under its chin as it snapped and hissed.

  It ultimately assented, beginning to let out a quiet but high pitched purring sound like the beginnings of a boiling kettle and flopping into the boy's arms like a wet rug.

  The prince tapped his knuckles twice on the door. Laurent turned about, grinning, clearly pleased with himself.

  “Sirric bet half his evening ration I couldn’t calm her before Bala does his walkthrough,” the boy chortled in a hushed fashion, and then screamed, “IT MUST BE HARD BEING SO DENSE!” through the stall door.

  A faintly heard “Fuck you too, swineherd shit!” echoed from below, sending Laurent into a fit of cackling.

  The boy was the eldest of the apprentices and it showed.

  Where their leathers sagged and caught in strange and awkward places on their growing gangly bodies, his held firm, straining against already significant muscle.

  For a fifteen year old boy he was tall, taller than the prince by nearly half a head. His mop of messy blond hair was long and unkempt, and he had a sharp angular face that seemed more befitting a young poet than a hardened Wurm-Catcher. His eyes were storms of hazel, and his skin was so pale sometimes it seemed to shine like moonlight to Kairava.

  Even after many years apprenticing in Guhran where the sun hangs low and heavy over the land he had never developed so much as a tan.

  Though his skin reddened and blistered often enough.

  “I’ve got you to thank for my unprecedented success, your little tricks work wonders,” he grinning broadly and Kairava felt his cheeks go warm.

  “Just something I read,” the prince uttered shyly, his gaze diverted to the floor.

  “Time well spent. You’ll have to let me borrow it sometime.”

  The prince stuttered in reply. Laurent spun fully round, planting the coiling dragonling firmly in the prince’s arms before he could manage to speak.

  “Hold this, and don’t squeeze it tight or we’re both dead,” not that the prince needed the warning, having once lost both eyebrows -and nearly his life- to mischief involving an infant dragon falling from a low chair.

  Laurent grabbed a mop from outside the stall and a bucket of water, and began swabbing the stall of ashes, discarded scales slick with puss, and the green fizzling stains of bile.

  The dragon coiled around itself, planting its head in the crook of the prince’s arm, and seemed to fall instantly into a contented sleep.

  “She likes you,” Laurent shouted back from the stinking stall, switching causally from the prince’s native Chandrak into a well accented Imperial brogue.

  “But they all seem to, don’t they? Bala says he’s never seen them so content with anyone, not even him.”

  “Mhm,” the prince replied, staring at the sleeping dragon bobbing in his arms.

  “Any ideas why?” said Laurent, poking his head back out of the stall and slinging the now slime-covered bucket over his shoulders and carrying it behind, mop still in hand.

  “No...they’ve always been like that. Relaxed around me I mean. Bala says it's a waste I was born royal, I could have made an excellent Catcher.” The prince grinned wistfully, and Laurent raised an incredulous brow.

  This was the most the prince had spoken to him to date.

  “Well, whatever it is, hopefully it’ll rub off. I could use the good luck...”

  Grunting, he attached the bucket to one of the many ropes and pulleys dangling from the rail, and lowered it slowly to the bottom floor, where a younger apprentice picked it up almost immediately, scampering off out of sight.

  “You don’t need luck,” the prince’s eyes flashed to Laurent’s, embarrassed at this slip of the tongue.

  Laurent grinned back despite the tension he carried about the eyes.

  The Wurm-Catchers, for the danger of their profession, had relatively short careers. If they were lucky they might serve ten years in an aerie, but most didn’t make it past the apprenticeship.

  After a long pause and a deep sigh Laurent said, “Thanks Rava, you’re all right,” giving the young prince a forced but friendly punch to the right arm.

  While Laurent walked to the next stall Kairava rubbed at the spreading bruise, following a few steps behind and smiling to himself.

  The little dragonling had stirred a little, open eyes lazily glancing about from his arms’ crook, hissing occasionally as it caught glances of the other dragons in their stalls, releasing a brief spout of flame no larger than a candle.

  “Does she have a name?”

  Laurent shook his head. “Nobody’s claimed her yet. No one eligible in the palace or surrounding counties is without mount, so we’ll keep her here till she gets a little larger. If nobody wants to add her to their personal stable by then we’ll have to ship her off.”

  “Ship her off? Where would she go?” The prince asked, voice rising sharply in alarm.

  Laurent seemed too busy with his labors to notice his discomfort.

  “The other regencies. Makurda most probably, lots of posh scholar princes and flashy merchant lords up there like dragons for the fashion of the thing. They’re a status symbol I hear.”

  Both boys broke into howling laughter at the ridiculousness of the thing as they walked side by side, clutching at their sides.

  Dragons weren’t symbols of status,

  They were symbols of power.

  Something chronically sand-stained scholar princes learned quickly.

  “To Raushan too sometimes, although rarely. They have their own sorts of dragons up in the bogs of the north-east I’m told.”

  “The capital?”

  “Kalin-Ak breeds its own dragons, I think.” He thought about this for a moment, uncertainly. “They certainly don’t get any from us.”

  “What about Ghent?” To the prince’s surprise Laurent laughed in his face, causing him to grind to a sudden halt, growing warm in the face.

  “I’m sorry Kairava, a personal joke, and a bad one. Ghent doesn’t really peddle in dragons. The lords and ladies are too proud of their pretty birds to deal with lowly reptiles. They would find the idea of something like that utterly ludicrous!” He chuckled to himself.

  “Birds?”

  “Griffons.” He said with mock stoicism, placing his hands on his hips dramatically. “They build great bird cages in their castles they call rookeries, not unlike an aerie really. The Rookers Guild has been trying bitterly to keep dragon riding outlawed there for centuries, worried about their trade falling to the wayside. Every king puts it to a vote, and every time they pay off just enough people to put it to bed again for another generation. Someday they’ll be too broke, then what?”

  Kairava had heard populations of dragons were not as widespread in other lands, to near non-existence in places. But the notion of the noble beasts being outlawed felt wrong. And it drew further confusions to the surface.

  “So, if there aren’t any dragons in Ghent, what made you want to come to work with them here? It’s not as though you would have seen them, or heard much about them. What made you want to travel all the way to Guhran and learn to rear dragons on the opposite end of the Empire?” Laurent seemed to choose his words carefully.

  “Life in Ghent...it isn’t as it is here. Back there...” Laurent breathed slowly. ”My mother and father lived and died starving farmers, had nothing to their name but a rickety hut that stank of chickens, and a few apple trees. I didn’t want to die like them, always hungry, having spent my entire life struggling everyday to feed some lordling and his pets. No offense to lordlings.”

  “Oh, none taken,” Kairava assented, smiling far too much for the occasion. “But that doesn’t explain how you’ve found yourself here exactly does it?”

  “Oh of course, your grace, my apologies. Next time I shall endeavor to tell your highness only the parts of my past that most interest him.” Laurent’s voice was hollow. The apprentice’s voice tightening with each word. Kairava stared on with a quiet horror, unsure what exactly he had said.

  “No apologies necessary. Thank you for entertaining me, apprentice. I should let you return to your duties. Goodbye, Laurent.” The prince slid the dragon back into Laurent’s arms and bowed his head. It snapped angrily at the disturbance of its restful slumber but allowed for a peaceful transfer before settling back into its nap.

  Laurent nodded, “Until next time, my prince” he said as he strode off, leaving the prince standing around suddenly alone for the second time that day.

  He was startled out of his melancholy by a great thundering that resounded in the very stones under his feet and in the bones of his skull. The ear-splitting roar of the world's largest living dragon.

  His father, the king, had returned.