Fiction (sort of) Monday – Dragon’s Nest

Or, what started out as some thoughts about geography

The following piece started out as a musing about the geography and towns around the Dragon Cliffs. Although I had filled in some of the places on a map (which will only see the light of day once it’s been copied neatly), I still needed to flesh out the immediate surrounds a bit.

Dragon’s Nest (Part 1)

Mairejath, a Dragon Guardian of the Seafolk, made her way to the new nests to check on the eggs. During the night, five Guardians stood a vigil at each of the nests to make sure that no men from the north would try stealing them during the night. After the fateful day nearly twelve years ago when the first egg was stolen, the Guardians had thought that it would not happen again. They were wrong.

The men came nearly every summer. Each time they took eggs, Guardians, or both. The first time they had taken a young boy. He had just become an apprentice Guardian two weeks earlier after studying for four years. And while the other Guardians saved what and who they could, the boy was taken. Three dragons died in the subsequent fighting, along with over a hundred people when the dragons turned against them and attacked the closest town with fire and razor-sharp talons. That was the first time the dragons had ever turned against their Guardians. The Guardians bound them, explained what happened and promised to do whatever they could to keep it from happening again.

But the previous trust that existed between the dragons and Guardians were broken. And the men from the northern plain did come again. At first everyone was sure that none of the Seafolk ever helped the thieves from the north, but in time all agreed that they must have had help from someone who knew the south and who knew the ways of the dragons. It had come to the point where the Dragon Guardians and the other Seafolk started to question each other’s loyalties and the loyalties of the other people of Reiaghy. And so, watchtowers were built, soldiers multiplied in the Seafolk’s towns and parents no longer wanted to let their children study to become Dragon Guardians.  

Mairejath trudged up the steep slope, keeping her eyes on the ground so as not to trip on the rocks. There were no real paths to the dragons, though the Guardians did know the quickest way to the nests – and, more importantly, their dragon’s nest.

Glathnir, a great dragon of a pure blue colour had chosen Mairejath to be one of her Guardians. She was carrying a bag of food on her back for the five Guardians who had stood guard at her nest during the night. She had not slept well, her ears alert through the night to hear the sound of the Guardian’s bells if they should see the nests’ beacons lit. These beacons were built from slow-burning wood and brush and were lit only when the nest was in danger. Because the dragons mostly left the nests at night to feed, the eggs were at their most vulnerable during the dark hours. When the light was seen by the Guardians keeping watch at the Guardians’ house, they, in turn, rung the bells to wake both the Guardians and call the soldiers in the city below to arms.

From Glathnir’s nest on the Dragon Cliffs, various towns and towers were visible. There was the Ruins of Dhôr – a city lost in the Sundering, the lighthouse south of the breeding ground and on the edge of Duizisburg, her hometown and the home of the Dragon Guardians. Although most people have come to call the town simply Dragonburg – being easier to pronounce and making it sound less exotic. Perhaps people have started to forget that we escaped from the Sundered Lands. In the distance you could just make out Midton and beyond it still lay the harbor towns and the Gold Tower – another lighthouse, the name of which made it sound much grander than the white-washed stone tower it actually was.

(To be continued)