The orange dragon first appeared over the mountains to the north when the sycamore tree on the edge of West Village had the faintest hint of yellow in its leaves. Harvest season had just begun, so the town took little notice except to station an archer at the north end of the wheat field. The whole town had come together for the harvest, for winters came fast and hard to this part of the kingdom. The absence of the medicine woman was noticed, but no one took the time to investigate, as they assumed she was brewing cures for the inevitable onset of winter diseases.
The medicine woman had set out at dawn, a gray cloak covering her silvered hair and wrinkled face. She clutched a walking stick in one bony hand; in the other she carried a basket woven tightly enough to float. As she walked through the tangled forest, she kept her eyes to the ground and her ears open. She walked with a slight limp but seemed unperturbed by the rocky, uneven ground and the overgrown bushes. Though she walked where no path had ever been carved, she did not mark her trail.
When the sun beat down harshly on the back of her neck from overhead--she had long since taken off the stifling cloak--she stumbled, literally, upon the object of her hunt. It was a footprint, sunk three inches into the ground, with four talons, as wide across as two hands are long. It lay in a path cleared through the trees, punctuated by broken branches and inch-wide scrapes across the trunks of hollow oak trees. The old woman bent stiffly and sniffed the ground. Seemingly satisfied with her discovery, she changed her course to follow the trail of destruction.
The footprints ended abruptly at a river. She sniffed the ground again and smiled to herself. The day had grown quite hot and dry, but a faint breeze stirred the drying leaves. She put the basket on the ground in front of her an passed her hands over it, muttering unintelligible syllables. The basket shivered and grew to four times its size, but the cloak stayed folded in the bottom. Satisfied, the medicine woman placed it in the water and sat down in it, using the handle to hold herself steady. She used her walking stick to push away from the bank. The river caught the basket in its swift current and swept it rapidly downstream. The woman watched both banks, looking for a sign that would put her back on the trail of her quarry.
A short time later, the banks rose into rocky cliffs and the river sped up its journey. The four lines scratched horizontally in the cliff barely stood out from the jagged red rocks, but the woman saw them and muttered again in a strange language. The basket halted midstream and shot to the opposite side of the gorge. The basket shivered as she caught hold of a root and jammed her walking stick beneath it. She untied the cords that bound her tunic around her waist, letting it billow as she bound the basket to the root. Looking around one last time to be sure that she was alone, she slipped out of her tunic and left it folded neatly in the bottom of the basket, replacing it with the cloak. Despite the heat of the day, the cold mist of the river made her shiver as she waited.
Almost unnoticeable in the churning water, a blue shape moved away downriver a short time later. The woman dove into the river, gasping at the sudden cold. She floundered for a few moments before finding her resolve to swim, almost letting the current carry her past the scratches in the cliff. Once she reached them, she took a final breath and ducked into the icy water. The current thrust her against the cliff and into darkness. She swam blindly, her fingers at last finding air.
With the last of her strength, she hauled herself onto a sandy beach and rubbed water out of her eyes. The cavern was almost as tall as the cliff and a quartz crystal at its highest point let in filtered light that made the small pool of water connected to the river cast dancing shadows on the walls. The old woman dragged herself away from the water, seeking a shadowed recess from which bits of grass and waterweed hung. Hand over hand she hauled herself to a standing position by the cliff and peered into the recess. In a nest of woven grasses three spheres glowed with greenish light.
The woman grabbed the largest of the three spheres and clutched it to her chest as she sank back to the ground. It was nearly the size of her head and was extremely hard for her to hold with her failing strength, but she did not let it fall. She could not leave the cavern without the strength that it would provide but to commit the deed now would leave her entirely incapable of defending herself for several minutes. She knew the intricate magic involved and could not be certain that she had that much time to waste before getting away.
With her strength failing, she had little choice. She took the knife she had bound against her thigh and cut a neat hole in the top of the sphere. The glow dimmed, and as she held the opening to her wrinkled lips it seemed to turn to fire that burned her all the way down. Despite the agony, she finished the liquid, casting the brown leathery case aside. As she lost consciousness, she cast a concealment spell with the dragon magic that now filled her body.
Meddling with magic was dangerous. The medicine woman knew that well, as each spell that she cast beyond her limited magical capacity depleted her own energy and aged her far faster than she would have aged naturally. With only her own energy, she could have cast spells to restore her strength, but each would cut her life by a week or more. Dragon magic, stolen from an unhatched egg, would restore her completely and give her almost unlimited spell casting abilities. But dragon magic came with a price. The fire potential, though water dragons breathed no flames, that she had also stolen with the magic would burn her from the inside out. She had given herself a few days of absolute power--more if she squandered the magic by healing herself--rather than die slowly with her magic depleted. Her life was now attached to the magic she had stolen. As long as it existed, so would she.
The smoke from the cooking fires of West Village wafted above the tress and the orange dragon reminded himself once again that he was seeing a village of feeble humans, not a rival fire dragon. He paced across the ledge in front of his cave, glancing back and forth between the smoke and the dark entrance behind him. He tensed and relaxed his claws, carving furrows in the rock, and as the sun set he expelled a small burst of flame from his throat, singing a bush struggling for life on the cliff side.
"We will not have any shrubbery left here if you do not calm down!" cautioned a raspy, middle-pitched voice from inside.
"I am sorry, dear Venne." The orange dragon's speaking voice had the undertones of a bear's growl. "I worry that the eggs have come at the wrong season."
"You know that they have not. Today is the first of the harvest season; they will hatch on the first of the new growth season and gain flight on the first of the next harvest season. As long as you do not burn all of the firewood, we can easily keep them warm through the winter."
"I know, dear Venne," the orange dragon consented, "but you know that I make a habit of worrying."
"You have reason to worry!" gasped a new voice, still like a growl but more shrill, from the cliff face below.
The orange dragon paced to the edge of the cliff and peered down. A blue dragon clung to the cliff face, her wings trembling. She was a water dragon and had no gift of flight; her wing-flaps were fused to her forelegs as large fins so she could glide effortlessly through the water. The walk had exhausted her, so the orange dragon dropped his tail below the cliff face to pull her up. He was twice her size and strong from flight, so he had little difficulty bringing the water dragon the remaining tail-length up the cliff.
Once both dragons were on level ground, the blue dragon lowered her head and closed her eyes. "I thank you, Sky King Nallon," she whispered.
"There is no need to thank me, Tevas," Nallon replied. "What has happened?"
"The humans have stolen my strongest egg!"
Nallon glanced back at the cave entrance as Venne scuffled against the rocky floor, drawing her tail around her new clutch and reaching her head into the sunlight. The rays bounced off her golden scales, momentarily blinding Tevas, who was unaccustomed to bright light. The blue dragon tucked her head under a wing flap.
"Forgive me Tevas," Venne apologized for the brilliance of her scales. "What has happened to your egg?"
"I was hunting when I felt the pain of its death. A human swam into my cavern and drank the contents of my largest egg. I found no trace of the human; I assume she escaped before I returned."
"There is only one reason that a human would eat a dragon egg," mused Nallon. "It is likely that it was still in the cave when you returned, but masked by the stolen magic. I have studied the theft of magic, and a human could not flee quickly after stealing dragon magic. Had you held your ground, you could have caught it when it dropped its guard and tried to escape. Now there is a human who knows of your cave and who has a taste for power."
Tevas clenched her eyes shut as the truth of her position crashed down upon her. She knew that her other two eggs could not be left alone even for a moment.
"How shall I feed myself while I guard them?"
"You will not need to guard them for long. I will destroy the human while you do. Your egg still lives, but in the form of magic potential that will lessen each time that it is used. You will feel the blow each time a spell is cast. If you give me one of your scales, I shall put a spell on it that allows your connection to that egg to remain in that one scale. Then I will be able to feel the magic and follow it to its source. The rest of the magic potential will be destroyed along with the human and we will be safe from our own magic being used against us."
"It is a wise plan," consented Tevas. "I have a loose scale on my neck that I will remove for you."
Tevas used one of her webbed front talons to reach a spot about halfway up her neck, under her ridge, which was green and structured like the dorsal fin of a fish. A scale, about the size of a dinner plate, fell at Nallon's feet. He breathed blue fire over it and it glowed blue; Tevas shuddered as the connection to her egg was concentrated into the single scale. Once the scale stopped glowing, Nallon wrapped the spiked tip of his tail around it and dismissed Tevas. She slid down the cliff with much less grace than she had exhibited climbing it, caring about nothing but protecting her two final eggs.
Venne retreated into the cave and wrapped herself tightly around her own eggs. The only thing powerful enough to destroy a dragon was dragon magic, which the human now possessed.
Nallon settled on the cliff to wait for the tingle of stolen magic in Tevas' scale.
