The Ballad Of A Semi-Benevolent Dragon

Chapter 16: The Dwarf Dreams

As a boy, Harald had dreamed of flying. The dwarves of the Sky Claw Mountains maintained a cadre of roc riders, brave dwarves who rode on the large birds that nested amidst the peaks. The rocs were ornery creatures, but they were loyal to a fault once they'd chosen a rider. More than anything, he'd wanted to be chosen.

And he had been.

He had become one of the youngest roc riders in the history of his people, and he had spent as much time as he could up amidst the clouds. His brother had been happy for him despite not being chosen, but Bjorn had never dreamed of the sky and the clouds the way Harald had. Instead, his older brother had been happiest with both feet on the ground.

Harald's roc had been his best friend. Goldwing had chosen him when he had been little more than a hatchling, but he had grown quickly, as rocs were wont to do. Harald had doted on Goldwing almost as much as the bird's own parents. Some had laughed at him, for although Harald was the youngest to ever be chosen by a roc, the roc that had chosen him was still too young to fly. Normally, only adult rocs chose riders.

But none of the insults or the derision had mattered after he and Goldwing had flown together for the first time. It had not been an easy flight nor a graceful one, but Harald would never forget the experience. They had flown just before dawn, and they had watched the sunrise together.

Harald had still been a young dwarf then, but he had thought he knew what it meant for the sun to rise. Yet seeing it from the air, seeing the horizon give way from black to orange, yellow, gold, and pink had been an experience unlike any other. The wind had been brisk that day, and the chill of the thin air high above the ground had clawed at his bones, but he had never felt better, more at peace than he had up there with only Goldwing for company.

They had shared many battles, he and Goldwing, and they had won many victories. They'd lost too, of course, but those losses had only driven them to work harder and seek out new weapons or strategies. But dwarves lived longer than rocs, and the time came when Goldwing no longer had the strength to bear Harald up into the sky or even to fly alone.

The roc had looked so ashamed of it, as though he had let Harald down somehow. Harald had done his best to reassure his old friend that he was not angry or disappointed. How could he be? Without Goldwing, he would never have soared through the skies at all. Time was a foe no one could defeat, and Goldwing was a victim of his own success. A lesser roc would have fallen in battle long before old age, but Goldwing had been too swift and skilled in the air to fall. Instead, he had lived long enough to know the weakness that came with the relentless passage of time.

Goldwing had not lived much longer after that. Rocs were not meant to wither away upon the ground. They were meant to soar through the sky and cruise through the clouds. Harald stayed with him till the end, and then he had his friend's body burnt in the dwarf way, with his ashes scattered from the tallest peak of the Sky Claw Mountains.

It was common for roc riders to seek another mount when theirs passed away, but Harald could not bring himself to do it. He would find himself comparing each new roc to Goldwing, and always he would find them wanting. Still, he was proud when his children were each chosen by a roc, for they shared his dreams of the sky.

It had been decades since Harald had flown, yet even in those long ago days, he had never flown so swiftly or so high as he did now.

The sea below him was a blur that seemed to stretch to the horizon. Dark clouds had gathered to the south, and great bolts of lightning crackled from the heavens to the waters below. Yet no thunder reached his ears, and the islands he saw on the distant horizon seemed to reach him and then vanish behind him in a matter of moments as he raced northward.

"What is this?" Harald whispered.

Doomwing appeared beside him. "This is a memory of mine." The great dragon chuckled. "You have questions, dwarf. Ask them."

"Is this how quickly you can fly?" Harald asked. "And the thunder why is there no thunder?"

Doomwing smirked. "Which is faster, lightning or the thunder that follows it?"

"Lightning, of course," Harald replied. "You see lightning first and only later does the thunder reach you."

Doomwing's smirk widened. "If you could outrace the thunder, would you ever hear it?"

"You" Harald stared in awe. "You can fly faster than thunder?"

"I am far beyond the lesser dragons of the Seventh Age. I am a primordial dragon. I was born in the First Age. This memory is from the Third Age, but even then, I was powerful beyond what you could imagine. The whelps of the Seventh Age use only their wings to fly. A true dragon uses every part of their being to fly. A dragon who has mastered their true nature cannot be caught by anything as slow as thunder."

"Do you fly like that all the time?" Harald asked. Ancestors what he wouldn't give to fly like that even once!

"No." Doomwing chuckled. "It is more tiring than flying with just my wings. It is also very noisy and somewhat rude. People will assume that you mean to attack if you approach them with such speed."

"I I see." Harald squinted. He could see something up ahead. It appeared to be a sky-whale. The beast had to be half a mile long, and it was surrounded by "Are those?" He swallowed thickly. "Are those sky ships?"

"Yes." Doomwing smiled, and the world around them shifted. They were now looking down at another Doomwing, one who was substantially smaller than the winged titan Harald had met. "That is me from the Third Age. I was only about two thirds my current size back then."

"You're still enormous," Harald said. "Are you going to attack those sky ships?"

"Why would I?" Doomwing laughed. "They belong to friends of mine. They called for me using magic since that beast they're fighting is proving to be more troublesome than they expected. Pay close attention to the sky ships, dwarf. If you ever wish to restore the one you've found, you'll need to make good use of what I show you."

Harald nodded fiercely. "I will not forget a single moment of this."

They closed in on the sky whale, and Harald finally got his first real look at the sky ships. They were each roughly five hundred feet long, and they bristled with cannons, harpoons, and other weapons. Fleet-footed dwarves ran back and forth across the decks whilst armoured dwarves prepared to leap onto the sky whale or take to the skies upon rocs.

What caught his attention were the three sets of sails. One set was similar to the sails a normal ship might have whilst the other two were set out to the side like wings. Harald burned the sight of them into his mind, along with the elaborate networks of dwarven script that covered the hulls of the ships.

"The sails are there to both absorb power from the currents of magic that flow through the sky and to use those same currents to propel the ships. They had engines that allowed them to move even outside of those currents, but it was usually best to rely on the sails when possible to conserve power."

His vision of the sky ships changed. It was as if he could see through their exteriors, right into their very hearts. He realised that Doomwing was showing him what their interiors looked like, how all of the many mechanisms were designed. It would have been gibberish to most dwarves, but Harald had spent a century studying the ruins of the sky ship as they excavated it. He could not say he understood how it flew, but now, looking at the sky ships from this point of view, it was all falling into place.

"Amazing." Harald clenched his fists. To think he'd found a sky ship! It might be a ruin now, but it had once soared through the skies like the ships before him. "And they look a lot like regular ships because they landed on the water too, right?"

"Yes. During the Third Age, the seas rose up and tried to drown the world. Being able to operate like a normal ship was a safety precaution and a concession to the fact that only a single city was able to fly. The rest of their settlements were on islands scattered across the sea."

"Can you show me that city?" Harald asked.

"I will, but not yet." Doomwing nodded at his younger self. "Watch. See how your ancestors fought."

Harald watched in awe as the dwarves of the Third Age fought the sky whale. The ships pounded away with their cannons and fired harpoons to keep the sky whale from fleeing. The roc riders danced in and out of the battle, throwing spears and lobbing magic. But the most incredible thing he saw were the armoured dwarves who leapt off the ships and onto the sky whale.

They landed on the great beast, somehow keeping their footing, as they went to work with magical weapons, hacking and slashing. The best of them was a towering dwarf with a long beard of fiery hair. He laughed as he struck, leaping off the side of the sky whale and cleaving into its side with his axe before using a burst of magic from his armour and a grappling hook to heave himself up the other side, still hacking away with his weapon.

As the younger Doomwing approached, the tall dwarf stopped and turned, his laughter growing louder as he addressed the dragon.

"You're late, Doomwing!" The dwarf shook his axe at the dragon. "I've done almost all of the killing for you already."

"You're a liar, Ragnar." The younger Doowmwing laughed back. "All you've done is leave a few scratches. You and the others should step aside. I'll show you how it's done."

"Bah! And let you claim all the glory? I don't know why the captain called you. This bastard might be big, but he's nothing a few dwarves with stout axes can't handle."

"Yes, you're doing wonderfully," Doomwing drawled as the lines holding several of the harpoons snapped. The sky whale gave a ponderous roar and charged one of the sky ships. The vessel barely managed to evade, and a follow up charge tore one of its sails off. "Oh, look at that. The marvels of dwarf engineering."

"Those are fighting words, dragon!" Ragnar brought his axe down, and there was an explosion as the weapon bit impossibly deep into the sky whale's back. "We'll see who lands the killing blow!"

Later, after the sky whale was slain and lashed between the three sky ships, the younger Doomwing was speaking with Ragnar, who was sitting on his snout.

"You seem to enjoy sitting on my snout." The younger Doomwing stared at the dwarf.

"It's a comfortable spot." Ragnar had several bottles of booze with him. "A fine hunt. Want some booze?"

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"You'd need something a lot bigger than those bottles to satisfy me." The younger Doomwing chortled. "I thought you'd be more upset. I struck the killing blow."

"Bah!" Ragnar waved away the words. "Keep telling yourself that. It was clearly my axe that slew the beast."

"It was clearly already dead when you struck it. Besides, I gave you that axe."

"Believe whatever you wish." Ragnar turned up his nose and grinned. "I know it was I who slew it."

"You delusional dwarf. I should ask for my axe back."

Ragnar clutched the weapon to his chest. "You wouldn't dare!"

"He was a good friend," Doomwing said to Harald. "And amongst the dwarves of that age, I dare say there were few who could best him in battle."

"What happened to him?" Harald asked.

"He fell, as did almost all the dwarves and elves who loved the skies." Doomwing growled. "If you wish to see the full might of the dwarves of Third Age, I can show you. But be warned, Harald. It will not be an easy sight, for the height of their power was only shown in the moments before their fall."

"I I wish to see," Harald said. "But what could have destroyed people with sky ships like that?"

"I will show you."

There was a moment of nothingness and then they were suddenly elsewhere.

Harald gasped and looked around. This this was more than he could ever have dreamed.

In the skies around him were so many sky ships. There had to be hundreds or even thousands of them! They ranged in size from ships that were a few dozen feet long to behemoths that were over a thousand feet long. Some were of clearly dwarven make with polished wood, gleaming metal, and unfurled sails. Others must be of elven design, for they seemed almost alive with hulls of living woods, sails of giant leaves, and tree folk in place of cannons. And still others were a glorious union of the two styles, a perfect blend of mechanical mastery and cultivated biology.

And at the heart of the formation of sky ships, larger than all of them put together, was a city. It was a gigantic floating island that was roughly circular in shape and perhaps ten miles across. The buildings upon it were a combination of the shaped trees that elves preferred and the masonry of the dwarves. Holding the entire island together was a huge tree whose roots and branches seemed to connect to all of the weapons built into the island and to the vast engines, glowing spheres of magical material, that pulsed and hummed as they kept the island aloft alongside gleaming flowers and sail-like leaves.

"Behold," Doomwing said. "The city that soared through the sky and sailed through the clouds. The dwarves called it Cloudhome, and the elves called it Skygrove. But I always called it Aurai."

"Aurai?"

"That was the name of the dryad who dreamed of the sky, the dryad whose powers made the city possible." Doomwing nodded at the gigantic tree. "That is her tree."

Harald tried to take it all in the city, the sky ships, everything. "What what could have destroyed such a force?"

For the sky ships and the city were not alone. Countless other ships were sailing on the seas below, and dragons, drakes, and other fliers filled the skies alongside the sky ships. The largest of the dragons were of similar size to Doomwing. Each of them could have devastated multiple kingdoms with ease, yet they had apparently encountered a foe so powerful that almost all of the forces gathered here would perish.

"There." Doomwing gazed at the horizon. "There is our foe."

The horizon was a single mass of storm clouds that seemed to span the world. Rain poured down, and the black clouds were riven by endless bolts of lightning. The sound of the thunder was a single sustained roar that never seemed to end. Amidst the storm were other fliers. There were dragons, drakes, wyverns, griffins, and all manner of other beasts to match those beside the sky ships. Yet there were also strange winged serpents that Harald had never seen before.

And at the heart of the storm was a creature that Harald could barely believe was real.

It resembled a serpent but with eight pairs of draconic wings spread along its body and that body must have measured twelve miles in length. It writhed through the storm, and each contortion of its body called down more thunder and lightning. Each roar that burst from its throat sent the seas below into a frenzy and sent the waves surging upward and onward, swallowing up island after island after island. Tidal waves raced across the surface of the sea from horizon to horizon, and only the use of powerful magic kept the fleets below from being utterly destroyed before the battle was joined in earnest.

"Ancestors what what is that?" Harald whispered.

"We called him the Lord of the Tides." Doomwing's voice was filled with hate. "The wretched offspring of a tempest dragon and a tropical leviathan of the First Age. He hid when the Broken God declared war, and he hid when Mother Tree turned against us. He hid and he fed on the corpses of the slain that fell into the waters of the world. He fed and fed and fed, growing larger and stronger until, at last, he felt sure enough of his power to reveal himself. It was he who had driven the waters to rise, and it was he who wished to drown the world until only the oceans were left. He convinced many of the greatness of his vision, but we objected. Needless to say, negotiation was not possible."

"What happened?"

"We won," Doomwing said. "But the cost the cost was almost too much to bear. Aurai perished, and her people the dwarves and elves who loved the sky perished with her. True, a few survived, but their grief was such that they never dreamed of the sky again, and as the waters receded, they resolved to live as they had before the Third Age. Since then, no dwarf has ever dreamed of the sky until you."

"This this is a tragedy." Tears rolled down Harald's cheeks. "But to give up their dreams of the sky to just forget? I could never do that. Even though I have not flown since my roc, Goldwing, passed, I still dream of the sky. I still dream of flying. The sky ship we found if I could just fix it, I wouldn't mind flying again."

"It wouldn't feel like betrayal," Doomwing murmured. "Because you would not be flying on another mount."

"Yes." Harald nodded. "I could never ride on another mount, not after losing Goldwing. But on a ship? I could do that. But I don't even know where to begin. How can we possibly regain all that was lost?"

Doomwing chuckled. "I will tell you once we are out of this dream."

The dream ended, and Harald found himself stumbling back to his feet and rubbing at his eyes. His cheeks were wet, but he was not ashamed. What dwarf would not have wept at seeing what they had lost?

"You left your home because you did not wish to steal your brother's birthright." Doomwing flared his wings majestically, and only magic kept Harald and the other dwarves from being tossed aside like leaves in a storm. "I have an offer for you, Prince Harald. I am Dragon Emperor Doomwing. I desire able subordinates of honour and skill." An image formed in the air beside him. It was cruder compared to the dream he had shown Harald, but there was no mistaking the rugged terrain and gleam of lava. "In my domain is a land of fire and rock. You know as well as I that great riches can be found where the molten blood of the earth bubbles forth. Serve me, Harald, and you will be a prince no longer. You will be a king, and you will answer only to me."

Harald stared at the image, as did his honour guard. Doomwing spoke truly. The dwarves knew very well of the riches that could be unearthed in areas where the fiery blood of the world was exposed. "And what would you ask of me if I agreed?" he asked.

"I need your people and their expertise. I wish for you to aid the others who serve me. My domain will need buildings, roads, and mechanical devices of many kinds. You and your people shall provide them. In exchange, I will give you lands rich with the bounty of the earth. You need not fear that the earth will break and spew fire upon you and yours. I am Doomwing. I command the earth and fire and stone in my domain. Where you choose to settle, I will ensure it is safe. You have my oath on that."

It sounded almost too good to be true, but Harald could feel the ring of truth in the dragon's words. Doomwing possessed strength beyond measure. If he wished, he could enslave them with ease. Why go to this extent unless he meant it?

"Your offer is excellent."

"It comes with a condition," Doomwing said. "You must prove yourself."

"How?" Harald asked.

"With this."

The hills behind them gave way, and he gasped as Doomwing's power ripped open the hillsides. The ruins of the sky ship were lifted clear of the dirt with great gentleness despite their weight, and more magic was used to bind the broken pieces back together. Scaffolding of rock rose up around the sky ship, supporting it and offering a way for the dwarves to access it.

"All I have done is put the pieces back together. It is little more than a shell. It cannot fly." Doomwing gestured, and objects began to appear on the ground. "With these you will be able to repair the sky ship." The dragon's lips curled. "And that shall be your test. I told you that you would see all you need to fix the sky ship in the dream I showed you. You have been studying and excavating this ship for a century. If you cannot fix it now, with what I have shown you and given you, then you were never worthy of flying it in the first place. I will be leaving now for the last part of my journey. I shall be back in a week. If you cannot fix it by then"

"A week? That's" Harald wanted to say it was impossible, but he had spent a century studying the sky ship's pieces. With what he'd seen in the dream and the parts that he'd been given yes. He could already see how some of those parts might be used. And if he thought about what they'd learned of the ship from their studies, then more of the pieces fell into place. It would not be easy, but it would be possible. "We'll do it."

"If you do," Doomwing said. "Then the ship is yours to keep, and I will greet you not as a prince but as a king in my service." He took out a spherical object that resembled an enormous opal. "And if you need any further motivation, this is a phoenix egg. As a king in my service, you would have access to her flames. Think of what you could make with those."

Harald thought, and then he shook himself and hurried toward the scaffolding that held up the sky ship. "Gather everyone!" he boomed. "We have a week to fix this ship!"

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