The Great Sundering Part 3 – The Night of Fire

For your reading pleasure this week, is part three of “The Great Sundering”. Click here to read part 1 and part 2. Next week I’ll try to have something a bit more uplifting for the fiction Monday!

The Night of Fire

At the time of The Sundering, dragons still lived on the coast of the Eastern Lands. The Saerimavolk were their guardians and knew the Dragon Tongue and their kingdom was very great. At The Sundering, many of the Lewjan's servants, the forebears of the Flotaferan from the scattered trading islands, attacked first the islands not under their power, and then the coast of the Eastern Lands; as they thought that they would be spared death if they could claim the land for their own and their master. There was with the Flotaferan also a Lewjan Lord who wanted to claim and bind the Eastern Dragons to himself to gain more power.

But the dragons saw the ships approaching on the churning ocean and had time to warn their Guardians and the Saerímavolk of the impending attack. Some of the Guardians, who were not fit to fight, fled with some of the dragon eggs and younglings to the Blue Mountains; following the messengers who were to call the peoples there to arms.

The Flotaferan attacked at night, but the dragons were ready for them. They burnt most of the ships and slaughtered many of the Flotaferan, as did the warriors of the Saerímavolk. But the Flotaferan had used for the first time the deadly poison made from the Dragon’s Bane plant, with which they smeared their arrows and killed every last dragon and Guardian they could lay their hands on. The Lewjan Lord did not have the chance to bind one grown dragon to him and could find no younglings on the cliffs. The last dragon alive found the Lewjan Lord and slew him and threw his body from the cliff before he was slain by an arrow from the Flotaferan.

 This night was known as The Night of Fire, because of the many fires that lit the battlefield.

Reinforcements from the Blue Mountains also came to fight the Flotaferan. Together, they and the Saerímavolk overcame the Flotaferan and the remaining attackers fled in the boats that were still somewhat seaworthy. The slain of the Flotaferan were buried in one pit, while a mound was raised over those of the Saerímavolk who fell on that night. The blood ashes were thrown in the ocean and the Dragon Tears were used to cremate the fallen before the graves were covered and the mound constructed. As happens to the dragons when they died, the dragons’ bodies were turned to stone below the waves, or where they fell on the land, and their passing was greatly mourned.

And so, on one fateful night, the time of the dragons and the Dragon Guardians of the Eastern Lands came to an end.

(The Night of Fire is commemorated every year at the first new moon after The Day of Sundering, at the end of summer. The night is commemorated by the lighting of bonfires on the beaches and has come to include mock battles and feasting, where the first nights were held in austerity, recounting the tales of the Sundering around fires on the beaches over a simple meal.)