Ere the End
All who are born must face the Dragon
Young Helios traveled a straight line west. With his first step, he passed beyond the realm of the familiar, yet as he progressed, each town, each people, became more like the last. He would have begun to wonder if he were not moving at all, but rather walking in and out of the same drab village again and again, were it not for the people getting older.
By this, he knew he was nearing the Dragon.
When children were scarce and no life but memory was left in the people he encountered, he stopped in a tavern to make an inquiry.
“This is the last town before the Dragon,” the barkeep said. “It lives beneath the great peak beyond the forest.” He raised his arms wearily and the common room quieted.
Helios gathered that he was supposed to say something. “Um . . . I’m Helios . . . and . . . I’ve come to slay the Dragon.”
He saw no hands move, but furtive and faint applause greeted his words from somewhere within the sullen audience. These people had been living under the weight of the Dragon their entire lives. This land had suffered the beast’s poison since Creation. The Dragon flowed through the earth, fell from the sky, and grew on the trees. Helios scanned the faces of those present and saw dim lights fading in their eyes.
“Go back the way you came,” a man said.
“It’s been quiet for some time. You’ll just stir it up,” said another.
The women were a little more encouraging. “Such a nice young man,” they said, patting his hand. “So full of ideas!” Yet an unspoken warning hung at the end of these sentences: “You’ll learn.”
Helios, no longer as young as the townspeople seemed to think, emerged from the tavern. He gasped for fresh air, but all he gulped was fetid with the Dragon’s breath. At the edge of town, a child — the only one Helios had seen for weeks — ran out from between two squat shacks and threw stones at him. The boy’s face was as withered and doomed as his elders’ had been.
One passing of the sun later, Helios found the entrance to the Dragon’s cave and started down. As he drew nearer the Dragon, its weight increased, pressing him down into the earth. He was putting on pounds and losing hair. His breath was labored from carrying his armor. He considered turning back. The people in the tavern had told him his task was impossible. None who had gone on this errand had returned, they said. Was he to walk straight to his death?
This was the voice of the Dragon. Helios recognized its forked tongue in his ear. He continued his descent. Let others capitulate. He would not.
Aging rapidly now, he reached the Dragon’s lair late in his middle years. The beast was a gargantuan serpent coiled atop the riches and ashes of the world. Its heat was debilitating.
“How long it has been,” the Dragon said through a lazy purr originating deep in its flesh. The wyrm’s coils unwound and its clever head hung over the man who had come to play at immortality. “This will be a pleasure.”
“Indeed,” Helios said, drawing his sword. The blade grated against its scabbard and a shower of rust dusted the warrior’s boots.
The battle was short-lived. When the Dragon burned Helios’s great shield to cinders, the old man knew it would soon be over. Making a final charge, he thought how good it was that he had come.
© 2021 J.P. Williams
