Dragon Fire

It’s strange…you know the end of something great is coming, But you want to hold on, just for one more second…Just so it can hurt a little more. —Anonymous

Early on the last day of the curse, the dragon stood over the silver basin, alarm and despair clutching his heart at what he could not see.

“Show me her,” he asked it again. “Please—show me Belle.” He only wanted to see her once more before it was too late, only to know that she was safe and happy.

Once again, nothing happened. The water didn’t cloud, no pictures formed. It was simply water. Slowly, dizzy with pain and loss, he sank back down to the ground.

“No. No—why can’t I see her? Why won’t it work?” he mumbled. Shaking his head with bewilderment, he tried it a third time, with the same results. The magic was fading as his time ran out. It had been fading ever since Shaiya’s death, twelve years before. Now, not only could he not touch, hear, or smell her—he couldn’t even see her any longer.

Shaken to the core at the accelerated breakdown of his world, he padded away, ignoring the petals that whirled and eddied around his paws. He had mere hours left to be reverted back to his natural state, but what was that in the face of an eternity without Belle?

A thump from downstairs distracted him from the depression that had weighed on him since her departure. There wasn’t anyone else in the castle, so who…?

Oh God, could it be?

The dragon turned swiftly, intent on going down to meet her, and stumbled heavily. He shook off the lightheadedness impatiently, and hurried to the door. It exploded inward before he could reach it, slamming into the stone behind it and causing him to skid to a halt in surprise.

A man stood where Belle should, a man wearing ornate armor and carrying a wicked-looking blade. Startled, the dragon blinked and drew away.

“So you’re the monster that’s been bothering Belle and that fool, Rhys,” the man mused aloud, quite rudely. Automatically, the dragon bristled at his tone of condescension.

“Rather small for a dragon, aren’t you, you ugly thing? I was led to believe you things were bigger,” Guy continued, apparently to himself as he paced forward. This wouldn’t be hard, he thought smugly, not hard at all. He lunged in at the stunned dragon, jabbing with the blade.

With a snarl of pain, the dragon drew back again, a gash on his front leg stinging and beginning to bleed.

“What right have you to come in here and attack me?” came the growling question, rolling like roughened thunder. The fact that he spoke seemed to surprise the man, but he recovered quickly.

“I am a Poulinrey,” he shot back arrogantly; as though that meant the dragon should simply accept his fate and die. “What right have you to hold the citizens of my village captive? Especially the woman that is to be my wife?” He jabbed again, missing the dragon this time.

Denial mixed with anger and shock, to roil in the dragon’s belly as the youth attacked. Belle couldn’t have agreed to be this scoundrel’s wife. God would not be as cruel as to trap her with the lout, surely.

“Poulinrey. I recognize that name—about a hundred years ago, your family were the village geese-mongers, yes?” he asked scathingly, twisting to avoid a reckless charge, and lashing out to rake his claws down the man’s back, cutting through armor as if it were mere cloth. He scored five long scratches down Guy’s back, meant more as a blow to pride then to body.

“You certainly fight like one, goose-boy. Your form is despicable,” he sneered, knowing that the young man had an advantage all the same. Already, he could feel his dubious strength beginning to fade; flowing out of him like the blood was flowing from his wounds. Still, he didn’t want to kill the man—he’d rather die at the moment then kill to protect as worthless a life as his own would soon become. That didn’t mean he’d let the brat off easily, though, he decided as the sword pricked him again. And it certainly didn’t mean that he would allow the bastard to marry Belle.

There was silence as they danced the graceful, bloody dance, stabbing and slashing at one another until both were covered in blood.

All of a sudden there was a roar of pain, akin to both rage and despair, as Guy’s sword struck deep into the dragon’s chest. He snarled as the sword sunk into his flesh, and lashed out a final time, catching the man on the arm, so that he too screamed in agony, though it was barely more than a bad scratch—thorny vines or an angry cat could have done more damage.

Panting, holding his bleeding arm, the man stumbled away from the downed dragon.

“You’re finished, monster. You’re dying,” Guy gasped, too afraid to get close enough to take back his sword and finish the job properly.

“I was dying before you came, you fool,” the dragon spat, trying to stay on shaking limbs. “You’ve just hurried it up for me. Now get out—before we see how far I can chase you into the woods.”

He lunged, as though to catch the boy, purple flame licking at his teeth. A cry of terror streaming from his throat, Guy scampered back, out the door—and screamed, long and loud, when the magic of the castle seized him, and threw him bodily from the castle, into the woods. Even now, as it died, it would allow no physical harm it personally hadn’t inflicted to come to its prisoner.

With the threat gone, the dragon eased down onto his side, yanking the sword from its place in his chest with a growl. He doubted he’d be allowed to die until the curse reached its conclusion—already the blood-flow was slowing to a mere drip—but after that, he would be spared the prolonged torment of starving to death. Only several more hours to suffer, then, he mused. A bitter chuckle rumbled quietly in the confines of grey stone, for if he didn’t laugh, he would cry again.

The weather had turned dreary before noon, rain pouring from a bruise-like sky as though the gods themselves were in mourning. It wasn’t long after the rain had started the Guy finally stumbled back into the village, armor discarded, shirt shredded and the scratches on his skin burning like hellfire.

It was, fittingly enough, Belle who found him. Her eyes widened at his condition.

“What happened? What have you done?” She could see that the man was in no danger, and was, if anything, only cockier now, for he grinned rakishly at her. Then it struck her—there was really only one creature in the forest that could cause such injuries. The dragon. Guy had gone after her dragon.

“I have rid you of your problem, my dear, once and for all,” he promised, opening his arms for her to throw herself at him.

She drew away instead, face gone pale, whiskey eyes dark with something very like hatred.
“How could you, you heartless bastard? He’s done nothing to you!” she hissed. Without another word, she turned, and fled towards home.

“Belle? Where are you going? Belle! Belle!”

Less than ten minutes later, a horse and rider flew from the village as though demons were at their heels, plunging through the silvery rain into the woods.

Lost. Dread swamped her as the word reverberated through her mind. Where was the castle? Why couldn’t she find it now, when she could see the route so clearly in her mind?
Belle was soaked through, had been for hours now. The dim, watery light was starting to fade, and there was a terrible heaviness to the air, a kind of warning that pulsed through the forest, that frightened her.

Blood seeped onto stone, staining granite and silver scales. Rose petals, the same ruby shade as the liquid, were scattered around like pieces of a broken heart. A shining silver blade gleamed in a corner, washed with red nearly to the hilt. His chest rose and fell labouredly, every breath the harbinger of another wave of pain.

Startled, she shook her head, and the vision faded like smoke.

The dragon—her dragon—was dying.

“Oh, my God! Hang on—please, you have to just hang on!”

Horse and rider surged forward again, determined to find what was determined to hide from
them.

He coughed—a singularly painful experience when one has a hole in one’s chest that was nearly the size of a rose in full bloom. Blood splattered on the stone floor, joining the larger puddle that had been forming there, drop by drop, for hours. Panting, he lay back again, wishing that one of the two pains in his chest would go numb already, like the rest of his body. He didn’t care which, either his shoulder or his heart. Both blazed with pain, one physical, the other less tangible.

Surely it was a sign that his time was finally coming to a close when the angel appeared to him, standing framed in the doorway. Or maybe, he considered musingly, he was simply hallucinating from the blood loss. After all, Belle couldn’t be standing over him, her tears streaming down her pale cheeks to mingle with the rainwater that drenched her hair and clothing. The enchantment, even dying, wouldn’t have allowed it.

“You’re…very real…for a hallucination,” he murmured as she—it—pressed gentle fingers to his wound. It throbbed again, but he was too used to the pain to notice much.
See? The pain was starting to fade away.

“No, no—you’re not hallucinating. You’re going to be alright. Do you hear me? You’ll be alright,” she insisted, ripping at her skirt.

“I am not…dreaming this? How strange. Belle…” a clawed paw lifted, covering her hands soothingly, as careful as ever with her fragile skin. “It’s…too late. I’m dying.”

“No!” She shook her head in denial, the tears streaming down her face even harder now. “No, you can’t!”

But Belle could see the acceptance of it in his eyes.

Whatever answer he might have made was lost in another fit of coughing, the blood coming
more quickly now. And now he would inflict on her this final discomfort, he thought regretfully—having to watch him die.

“I’m sorry. But…it is…best this way…” He found he looked forward to the end of the pain. She would be free of him then; free to forget her strange sojourn in an enchanted castle, her time as an honored guest of an ensorcelled dragon.

“No! Never! How can you say that?” Belle demanded, her soft hands at glaring odds with the steel in her voice. The contrast brought a smile to his changeable eyes. They were violet now, with love.

“’If music be the food of…love, play on…Give me excess of it…that surfeiting…the appetite may sicken…and so die.’ Belle, love, it is…much too late for…”

The dragon jerked, eyes widening as his heart stuttered once, twice—

“…me…”

“No! Please! Don’t—Oh, God, please, no—I love you! You can’t quote Shakespeare to me and then die! No!”

It came too late. His eyelids flickered closed as if he hadn’t heard, and his labored breathing choked and halted.

The last petal, deepest of reds, tinged with blue, drifted from the basin and landed softly beside the dragon’s head, on her lap.

Sobbing, she bowed her head over his unresponsive body, weeping for him, for her, for what never could have been.

It didn’t come in a blinding flash of light. There was no music, or birdsong, or anything else storytellers like to add into a story when the evil curse is broken—possibly because the curse and the sorceress hadn’t been evil. It was sudden, though, and as unstoppable as flame. Like velvet, magic in its purest form slid around the still form of the dragon, as red as the blood he’d spilled onto the stone floor. Belle was pushed away from him, slammed back against the bed as power whirled around the room. She may have screamed, but if she had, she would have no memory of it. Instead, she would remember shining magic, every color imaginable—greens, blues, reds, every shade of grey from purest white to darkest black, and some colors that she’d never seen before, and would never see again.
If there was a sound to the exhibition of magic, then it would be the throaty chuckle of a woman pleased with a day’s work, kind and generous and matronly.

And then, nothing.