CoD: Chapter 3 - Velomaw

 Velomaw shook his great scaled head. The horns continued to sound, right between his ears.

“Are you well, Master?” Onack asked and Velomaw almost didn’t hear him over the horns. The great black dragon had bristled, though few scales had moved.

I will return with Alannah, but I must tend to something else first. Velomaw replied and with a thrust of great legs and a pump of large leathery wings, Velomaw was airborne. He had almost forgotten about flying, how exhilarating the changes in air temperature were against his scales, how the currents moved across his wings. How the clouds that rode with him seemed to not move while the landscape sped by under him. Dragons did not often fly, dragons did not often come out of hiding. They had long been persecuted by the humans, hunted for trophies and killed for their gold hoards. Velomaw had been different, he had learned about saving one human, and that one human would protect him, or so it usually was. He’d felt betrayed by a family that he’d made sure had everything they desired and they had made a pet out of him. They’d shown him off like some prize pig. When he returned with Alannah he intended to eat her father, without her noticing of course. The horns sounding in his head interrupted his thoughts.

I’m on my way, dammit! Velomaw snapped mentally, angry at the horns. They could not have picked a worse time to sound. Velomaw had better things to do than to play dragon court to Ash’qua’ouy.

That is unlike you, came the soothing gentle voice of Ash’qua’ouy into his mind. Normally one must sound the summons for days.

I was already awake. Velomaw replied, still irritated even though Ash’qua’ouy’s voice had a calming slow honeyed drawl that was capable of even charming a black dragon. He was trying to hold onto his anger, but it was fading.

Come in disguise, the tones were not suggesting but commanding. A city has sprung up around the grove. To Velomaw it felt like that dragon gathering or raksuil took place every year, but it was closer to once a century. In Velomaw’s mind it was just a dragon roll call so that Ash’qua’ouy could record in his books the dragon births and deaths. In the past when Velomaw had been very young and attended with his mother, potential mates had been discussed, territories drawn up, and redrawn, human politics had been plotted, courses laid out, and corrected as needed via assassinations or marriage. Then the human population had exploded, they were breeding like rabbits, and suddenly they began to attack the dragons. Most had gone into hiding, either among the humans in disguise, or like Velomaw retreating to a secluded cave in the mountains. Ash’qua’ouy had been one of those who had gone into hiding as a human, pulling off the disguise of an old mage with a tower built in the middle of a forest grove.

Ash’qua’ouy had not been jesting when he said a city. Junvog was one of the largest cities that Velomaw had ever passed over. He had hoped he was high enough to not be spotted. The mage tower in the center, the tallest building, surrounding it was only a tiny circle of the ancient trees from the old grove. Just outside the circle of trees and mage tower was an impressive castle, it’s construction made to look like the tower and grove were part of the castle’s courtyard. Velomaw wondered why Ash’qua’ouy would ever let that happen. Velomaw circled and landed several miles outside of the city, as he landed his body glowed a with a dark power and morphed quickly, smoothly and painlessly into a human form. What had plummeted to the earth was a great black dragon, what landed was a black haired pale human, muscular, orange eyed, and cat like grace. Velomaw inspected himself, wiggling his fingers, tossing the black mane from his face and adjusting the cloak on his shoulders. Hanging on his hips were a pair of vicious looking hand scythes, made to look like dragon claws. He began to walk in the direction of the city.

As a human Velomaw appeared to be like every other dirty and dreary human that was also walking the cobbled streets. He toured the market, looked at the bruised fruit, the molded meat, the bug riddled flours. From the sky the city had looked prosperous, at the ground level it showed that the city was under the grip of some sort of plague. He noticed boils, and hacking coughs, tremors in limbs, confusion, and was very surprised that Ash’qua’ouy was doing nothing about it. As he neared the castle he saw people shouting at the gates that kept the villagers out of the grove and away from the mage tower. They were demanding the wizard do something, or they were blaming the wizard for the plague, for the bad crops. Suddenly someone bumped into him, Velomaw looked down at a small girl, no more than four or five, clutching a filthy rabbit doll under one arm. One eye was nearly covered with bulging boils that looked like they were about to burst, some others on her arms and hands were leaking pus.

“I’m so sorry m’lord,” came a woman from behind the girl, “My daughter is clumsy.” Velomaw looked from the girl to the woman, the woman looked in worse shape that the little girl and way too young to be the girl’s mother. Both were dressed in rags of what looked like old flour sacks. The woman was wheezing and trying to pick up her daughter from the street.

“How long has Junvog been plagued?” Velomaw asked her, Velomaw’s voice was deep, gravelly and sounded unused, as if it came from a rumble deep in his chest.

“Junvog? You’ve been away m’lord, the city is now called Giyosa,” the woman answered.

“The plague,” he reminded her.

“Nearly a year, m’lord,” she said and squinted, “Maybe a year.” She took the girl by the hand and led her away, back into the darkness of an alley, the little girl didn’t want to go. The woman picked her up and carried her kicking and screaming. The girl was wailing she didn’t want to go. Velomaw followed at a short distance, doing his best to look as if he was intending to go the same direction.

“Did you get his money?” Asked a voice from the darkness, Velomaw paused. The words were not directed to him.

“I-I tried, he didn’t have any,” replied the voice of the little girl’s mother. There was a screech of terror or pain or both from the little girl.

“Lying whore,” said the man’s voice. “No one has weapons like that and no money.”

“Let her go!” Wailed the woman, “She did her part! He had no purse on his belt.” Velomaw realized that the girl bumping into him had been a distraction for a cut purse to take his money, except he didn’t have any. It was in piles in his cave to the north. Velomaw rounded the corner into the alley and saw a man was holding the little girl, nearly off her feet by her upper arm. The woman was kept at a distance by the knife the man held.

“Let them go,” Velomaw said quietly. He tossed the cloak off one shoulder to reveal the pair hand scythes.

“This isn’t your business,” the man snarled back, “This is a family matter.” Velomaw didn’t wait, he pulled the scythes and with a twist had sliced cleanly through the arm that held the little girl. She screamed as the hand that was holding her plopped the ground. The man screamed, clutching his bleeding stump, “You cut off my fucking arm!”

“Be glad I let you live at all,” Velomaw said and was confused as the woman grabbed the man’s knife in one hand, and tried to stem the flow of the blood with the other.

“Come here sweetie,” the mother crooned to her daughter who was looking at Velomaw with her one big blue eye, one of the boils had popped looking like her covered eye was weeping pus. “You monster!” She shouted at Velomaw and he was confused. He had just saved her and her daughter and she was defending her attacker?

“Humans,” Velomaw snorted, turned and walked from the alley and back towards the gates that led to the courtyard and the mage tower. He could hear sobbing and wails from the alley. Velomaw had the power to heal them, Ash’qua’ouy had the power to heal the entire city. Velomaw understood his own reasons for not healing the girl and her ungrateful mother, but Ash’qua’ouy had always been a lover of humanity. This plague made no sense, this city made no sense, and how was her to get to that damn tower. In the past, the dragons would arrive, either in dragon form or human form, it didn’t matter. Ash’qua’ouy was almost always a human, and the mage tower was ancient, older than Velomaw. The dragons would gather around a large rock that jutted upwards from the center of the forest, and Ash’qua;ouy and the rest of the heads of the dragon breeds would discuss and talk about the events of the upcoming years, where dragon kind was headed, where humanity was headed. When Velomaw was a hatchling, hundreds of dragons, as he got older, the numbers continued to dwindle until the last calling only a few dozen dragons had appeared. Their race was facing extinction and still Ash’qua’ouy remained hopeful, that the tides could be turned, that humanity could be saved, that their races could once again live in harmony. Velomaw’s idea was to just kill them all and start over from scratch, and that usually warranted looks of dismay from Ash’qua’ouy. Velomaw hadn’t felt any other dragons in the city with him. He could have been the first to arrive, and was normally the last. He could sense Ash’qua’ouy in his tower and Velomaw wondered how he was going to reach it.