This flash fiction is inspired by art from @janditlev. To view the image that inspired this short fiction piece, click here.
Closing her battered wings, Carramorg landed on the snow-dusted ground. She knew it was only a matter of moments until the diseased surrounded her. Carramorg wouldn’t let their presence avert her from carrying out her aim; delivering the Chosen.
Her wings burned from the tares cut through during her flight from the Burkland Mountains. They created the gaps between the bones of her leathery wings, permanently scarring her from where the diseased attempted to bring her down. Taking in the severity of her wings’ loss in mass, she could hardly believe she’d made it this far into the diseased’s territory without having to risk infection by touching one of them. Yet she stood defiantly in the snow with no intent on returning before her task was complete.
She loathed these small, two-legged creatures that threatened her ancestral land. Pests that she had easily killed by the thousands before. They didn’t stop coming. Even now, as Carramorg watched them approaching through the trees, she didn’t see them as anything more than the infestation they were. The carriers of a plague that swept through her race. Unlike the other forgiving dragons remaining, when she looked at the small creatures, she only saw the destruction they represented. The weakened shells that dragons now produced as a byproduct of the diseased’s encroachment. The malformed clutches that dragon’s now born with increased regularity. The diseased, or humans as some called them, shot and stabbed dragons in their caves. They poisoned their rivers and hunted their food stocks to unsustainable populations. The diseased were driving them higher into the mountains. They displaced the dragons in every way of life with the flood of their ever-populating species. When Carramorg looked at the approaching humans, with their grappling chains in hand and the look of murder in their eyes, she was glad to know that her sacrifice was not in vain, for she was the bringer of their downfall. She was Carramorg the Defiant.
Carramorg snapped at the humans in their approach. She swung her tail, no longer caring if she touched one of them. If they passed the disease onto her, she would die knowing that she set the agents of her revenge in an unstoppable motion. She just needed to ward off the boldest humans until more of them could surround her.
A troop of the diseased edged closer through the trees. Carramorg held her ground. She didn’t flee like they expected her to do. Like most dragons did. The first of them struck out with his iron, sharp arm. She pounded her feet into the ground, causing the human to fall, dropping both his sharp arm and shield. The other diseased held their ground, waiting to see if she would kill their companion. Carramorg held firm, needing more than one of their bodies’ blood to inoculate the Chosen. There were four resting in her throat, and she needed at least one of the diseased for each egg. The inoculation would only take once she bathed the hatchlings with the diseased’s blood. Only then would the last of the pure-formed dragons hatch resistant to the human’s disease. Carramorg would die from the exposure to the humans, but not before she brought the eggs back into the safety of the Burkland Mountains. She didn’t care that only her mate would recognize her sacrifice. He would raise the dragons to take back what the humans stole from their race. Future dragons would know her as Carramorg the Defiant.
The chains clinked as the humans surrounded her, attempting to catch her. Carramorg arched her neck, regurgitating the four eggs she carried. At first, the humans backed away from her, assuming she was about to produce her fire on them. But She would not waste it on these diseased. These diseased would serve their purpose. As Carramorg stared down her muzzle at the four black dragon eggs, she heard the humans gasping. They’d never seen what she brought them, and they wouldn’t live to tell the tale. She looked up at them, their small faces close enough for her to tear into. With her talons raised, she swept, digging into flesh and blood. Blood that she doused onto the Chosen.