My eyes snap open as I wake, suddenly. I have no idea why, although somewhere in the back of my mind, I wonder if I had a nightmare. A quick glance around reveals I’m in my cot tucked in the corner of our one-room office and home. Privacy curtains made of bed sheets sewn together are drawn around all the cots, since they were the best extra beds we had in Inizion. The royal messenger and his bodyguards are fast asleep, recovering from the bandit attack. I look over to see Mom on her own cot, not far from mine, a couple of her gray-tinged blonde curls sticking out from underneath her blankets. She snores lightly. She only snores when she’s exhausted. Otherwise, everything is still.
All was well.
Despite the peace, I feel uneasy. I must have woken from a nightmare, and I just can’t remember the details. Oh, I’ve had many nightmares, some of which I remember. Most of them involved the small, peaceful town of Inizion burning up in flames. But the faint memories I have of tonight’s nightmare are different in a way I can’t explain.
Unsettled, I rise and dress in a clean white cloth shirt and gray pants, a fresh pair of socks, and my worn leather boots. It’s early summer, but the temperatures can drop at night, and I’m still chilled from my nightmare, so I don my tattered cloak, throwing up my hood. I tiptoe around the dividers in the room and unlock the bolt on the wooden door. Opening the door slowly to reduce the creaking groan of the hinges to a whispering squeak, I step outside and close the door behind me.
It’s cool out for an early summer night, but not as bad as the winter we had. Still, I rub my shoulders as I make my way to our privy out back. After finishing my business, I step out to the wash basin we keep beside the privy. The water is cold; nonetheless, I scrub my hands thoroughly with the soap provided. Helping Mom with medical tasks meant always keeping clean hands. Once I’m finished, I dry my hands on the towel provided and slowly walk around to the front door, staring down the dirt path to where the rest of Inizion lay.
The wooden and straw-thatched buildings are dark, visible only by the single torchlight we keep burning in the city center. Otherwise, most of the light is from the faint glow of the moon and the stars above. I look up and to the north, spotting Ariadna’s star shining brightly. Sometimes I can see Ariadna’s lights, a collection of beautiful colors that glow in the night sky.
There are no lights. Still, it’s pretty, and I continue to look north as I walk back up to the door of my home.
Then I stop. I blink at the sky: a star disappeared.
I rub my eyes and look back. More stars have stopped shining, toward the northwest. The unsettled feeling still in the back of my mind, I step away from the house and walk a couple of steps toward the hill where I like to lay and gaze up at the stars. It’s not the tallest hill around, but it’s the tallest one that’s close to my home.
Now I notice that the stars are disappearing and then reappearing a little later, like a shadow is moving across the night sky. My stomach drops, my feet feel numb, as I start to make out the shape of a beast.
I open my mouth but nothing comes out. I exhale, trying for a scream, but I simply wheeze air.
Then I hear a sound unlike anything I’ve heard before. It’s a rushing storm, like the roaring of strong gales blowing, then stopping, blowing, then stopping. The shadow gets larger and larger, until at last it separates from the night sky. There is a gust of wind all around, and then the beast lands.
I gape. I know what this is, but only because of the stories I’ve heard. Stories about legends. Legends about things that didn’t exist. Sure, the continent was called Drakonia, but I thought that was just because of stories.
Yet there it is: a real, live….
Dragon.
It’s at least every bit of a dragon as I could have imagined. The creature has massive plated scales all over its body, thicker than any other reptile I had seen. By the faint light of the stars above, I guess the creature to be over twelve meters in length from the tip of its head to its tail. Its scales gleam like bronze even in the pale moonlight, and its sword-sized claws on all four of its feet and the small horns that protrude from the tip of its nose to the top of its head, where they increase in length until they became fins that ran down along all the way to the very tip of its tail, look black in the darkness. At the small of its back, where its elongated neck attaches to its shoulders, just “above” the two massive wings that were skinned between dark cartilage seams, the fins disappear briefly before reappearing on the other side of its wings. I see clawed “thumbs” at the top corner of each wing, and the bottom edges of the wings have spikes just like the fins on its back.
It’s looking at me. The sides of the dragon’s head, like a huge crocodile’s, has distinct lighter-colored markings that sweep back along its cheeks. Its angled eyes set on either side of its head have large, bright copper colored irises with a dark pupil that seem to gleam with their own light, and they’re looking at me.
“Well!”
I start, surprised by the smooth male voice that comes from the dragon’s back. As if the dragon itself isn’t impressive enough, I hadn’t even noticed the unique saddle strapped around the base of the dragon’s neck and just under its front legs. Sitting on the saddle is a man dressed in a mix of chainmail and leather armor. He wears a cloak on his back, which has fallen to the side, and I spot a coat of arms that I don’t recognize: a rampant black dragon with a red sun and red moon in its claws on a diamond-shaped gold background. I guess that he’s in his mid to late twenties based on the smoothness of his fair-skinned face.
The man gives his head a shake, flicking sandy-brown locks of hair out of the way of his eyes. “What’s a pretty thing like you doing out here at this hour? And, in such an unassuming village?”
I can’t move. I gape up at them, still unable to find my voice.
The man gives me a smile that somehow doesn’t look friendly. “I’m Vladykar Lochan Sanford.” He pats the base of the dragon’s neck. “And this here’s Pesokvglazu.”
The dragon opens its mouth and a low, gruff sound emits from its throat. Despite the fact that I am frightened by its long, jagged teeth, I realize that it has spoken: “Hello.”
“What’s your name?” Vladykar Lochan asks.
I try to speak, but my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. I swallow.
“Let’s call her Sapphire,” Pesokvglazu says. “I like her eyes.”
“Estelle,” I finally whisper. “Estelle Brand.”
“So you can speak!” Vladykar Lochan laughs, but like his smile, it’s devoid of any actual friendliness. “And your voice is just as lovely as I thought it might be.” He leans forward on an arm, smirking at me. “Never seen a dragon before?”
I shake my head. I don’t trust myself to speak again.
Pesokvglazu lifts his head proudly, still watching me. I feel myself crouch a little, as if his gaze weighed upon my head.
“And I don’t suppose you have any idea what ‘Vladykar’ means either, do you?”
Shaking my head again, I glance at my home. My instincts are screaming at me that there’s danger. I want to run for help. But with the way they’re watching me, I have a bad feeling I couldn’t reach the house in time. Worse yet, I can’t feel my legs. And I’ve lost my voice again.
“In that case,” Vladykar Lochan says, “let Pesokvglazu call a few of our friends over, and that might help explain at least why we’re here.” He pats Pesokvglazu on the neck again. The dragon, smirking—or at least, I think he’s smirking, with the one corner of his mouth curls upward—bends his head up to the sky and roars with a rumbling growl that is so loud I have to clamp my hands over my ears as it echoes across the plains.
By the time my ears stop ringing, I can see the grassy plains have erupted with torch lights. Hundreds of them spread across the rolling hills south of Inizion. The torches are in the hands of towering men in armor that bear a crest I’ve only heard about: a golden lion on a red and black checkered background. The Heidrich coat of arms, from the Klevor country northwest of Amenyl. Which means that these are Klevorian soldiers.
The dragon’s roar doesn’t go unnoticed by the rest of Inizion—people rush out of their homes in confusion. As they exit, some of the men bearing makeshift weapons—pitchforks, shovels, and fireplace pokers—come to a stop as the Klevorian soldiers point their own sharpened weapons at the townsfolk.
“Drop your weapons!” a Klevorian soldier shouts. “Drop your weapons and put your hands on your head!”
Mom steps outside. She frowns at me, looking perplexed. I want to call out to her, to tell her to run, but I can’t move. I can’t even find my voice again. I just stare as Klevorian soldiers grab her arms and pull her out into the town square.
“Move along, move along,” Klevorian soldiers order. They swarm our tiny village, marching throughout Inizion, forcing doors open and townsfolk still in sleepwear to come outside.
A Klevorian soldier steps toward me, but Vladykar Lochan beckons him away. “Let the pretty black beauty alone. We’ll take care of her. And she’s too scared to do anything.” I hear a low growl from Pesokvglazu that I realize is a chuckle.
This can’t be happening. I stare, completely frozen in place, as one by one the people of Inizion are disarmed—if they carried anything remotely dangerous at all—and pushed to their knees in rows facing Vladykar Lochan. Everyone from young to old is brought out. Even those that had been injured in the bandit attack earlier today are made to come out, including Warin, the Verlassen soldier that had rescued me, and the royal messenger, who is trembling from head to foot in his yellow and purple silk pajamas.
“That’s everyone, Sir,” a Klevorian soldier reports to Vladykar Lochan.
Nodding once, Vladykar Lochan looks down at the people of Inizion. I find that I can’t keep my eyes from Pesokvglazu, the dragon standing with his head tall, looking down on us all from above the buildings.
Vladykar Lochan folds his hands on the saddle horn in front of him. “We are here on behalf of King Gunnar of Heidrich,” he says loudly, “ruler of Klevor.” Vladykar Lochan smiles. “And, the future ruler of Amenyl. Congratulations on being the first ‘location’ to be conquered!”
“Not that it was much of a struggle,” Pesokvglazu says, his tone disappointed. Vladykar Lochan and many of the Klevorian soldiers snicker.
I close my eyes as I hear many of the Inizion residents gasp. A couple of the women start to weep. I would too, if I could react at all.
War. War has arrived, on the back of a fabled beast of legend—a dragon.
Tamara Rivers 
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