I turn to the stone slowly and I try moving backward only to be captivated by the stone cracking open and in shock, I see something miraculous that was enhanced by the glowing crystals. The rock — no egg splintered apart as something rose out of it.
Did I see its head pop out, followed by… two more heads? It pulled itself out of the egg without any fuss and presented its majesty to me. It had feathers that mirrored a gorgeous sunset with a slow gradient that went from red to orange to purple; the purple making up most of the creature’s color. Three separate necks held the three iconic-looking heads which gave away what this creature was, a dragon.
It must have been pretty cramped in that egg given how it was twice the size of a large German shepherd with its heads rising to my chest and the lizard-like tail and enormous wingspan. The heads had birdish features to them in how the top part of the ‘beak’ slightly overlapped the bottom jaw. All of its eyes opened at once as its nostrils flared in my direction.
Then I knew true fear, it felt like someone was gently running a knife-edge down my spine as I broke out into an immediate cold sweat. The pressure was immense, my knees were quivering and I could feel death’s cold grasp slowly reaching for my throat. My hands couldn’t stop shaking and tears welled up in my eyes as all sets of dangerously beautiful eyes locked with me, each pair were like works of art.
The middle head had ruby red ones that felt like they were gazing into my soul as if it could recite my greatest secrets with only a mere look, the one on the left had blue eyes that were only matched the grandest of sapphires or the deepest of oceans, and finally, the one on the right had eyes so pink it would cause roses to wilt in jealousy; and all of those eyes had the signature cold, and calculating reptilian slit. Tightness in my heart increased once they opened their mouths slightly and I saw multiple rows of pearly, white serrated teeth like sharks, and it wriggled front claws that I had no doubt could cleave through me without any resistance.
I can’t move, I can’t move and I’m going to die. The dragon slowly approached me without ever removing its eyes from mine. Every step it took felt like an earthquake in my heart and every breath it took, took mine away. I finally managed to close my eyes and I waited for the worst to come, but it never did. The sudden tenseness I felt immediately fell away as I felt something nuzzling my chest. I opened up my eyes and looked down and saw all three heads rubbing against my body.
What the hell, why? Why is this happening? Why am I not dead? ‘Shut up dumbass be grateful you’re not lizard food currently.’ The rational part of my brain said, ‘But why is doing this?’ The curious part of my brain inquired. That is a good question, which I have no answer to. I have no idea why this super predator is acting the way it is unless it is as a bird and it imprinted onto me and it thinks I’m its dad.
I slowly raised one of my hands and one the left head immediately swung around and locked its sight on it. I reached forward and started stroking the top of my head. It felt like I was running my fingers through a bunch of plush blankets as each feather went across my hand. Then the head started to coo quietly and my heart melted as it rubbed itself against me, the middle head noticed I was giving the left one more attention so pulled itself toward my other hand and started rubbing against it mimicking the actions of the left head.
The right head, not wanting to feel left out, started to approach the hand that was petting the middle one only to get snapped at by it. Well, at least I know that the dragon heads all have different personalities, now that I have established that I am not going to die instantly I removed my hands from their heads and gave the right one a small part because it looked dejected.
Now don’t get me wrong that these things aren’t trying to eat me; they are adorable but that might not last for long and I don’t feel like taking the chance that it won’t try later. So it looks like I am hunting for two now… Or is it four? Whatever, it doesn’t matter. I need to find out if any of my traps have caught anything yet.
I started to walk away from them and then I heard footsteps behind me. Ah, hell I turned to them with the warmest smile I could come up with and said as I was talking to a dog, “Stay, okay? Be a good boy.” In turn, the heads let out a low hissing noise, my heart started to pulsate once more. How did I screw up what I say!? I quickly blurted out, “ Uh, I mean be a good girl okay! Stay here, be a good.. girl? I just need to get some food.” The hissing stopped immediately and the right head smiled? Then rubbed its head on my chest, and the left head sighed, it sighed and did the same thing! Then the middle head looking all haughty did the same thing.
I patted them all then they went off back into the cavern. Now I know that I did not just have an ‘oh, so you’re a girl dragon’ moment! This is ridiculous on so many levels, why wouldn’t the dragon be hyper-intelligent. I swear to god if it – no she starts talking I think I’ll have a heart attack. I sighed and marched off to find my traps and I must say I am surprised out of the seven I placed, three of them were full. I honestly can’t believe that my makeshift handiwork managed to do even this amount.
All the traps were rabbits similar to the one I caught before I quickly killed them, reset the traps, and hauled them back home. I arrived back at the cavern and saw the dragon sitting where the egg once lay and she also appropriated the sleeping bag for something to lay on.
“Hey, I’m back!” I said walking up to her with the three rabbit corpses by my side. I approach her and realize I don’t even have a name for her. My mind jumped to the word once I remembered how soft her feathers were. “Beatitudine.” The dragon cocked all of her heads at once I said.
“That’s your name,” I said, pointing at her. The dragon processed this and then walked over to me and wrapped her head around my body. This honestly surprised me. She is showing extremely high intelligence, even what I considered beforehand about how she knew about what a boy and a girl are. “ Are you a good girl Beau?” The cooing from before started again as I petted her. The embrace made me feel dizzy from how comforting it was.
I released Beau and she took the hint as I got up to start the fire for more rabbit stew. I set up the bundle of branches and the pot for more rabbit stew. Here’s the fire starter I almost forgot where I put the thing. Beau watched with interest as I lit the fire. All of her eyes lit up as the sparks flew and how the fire came to life.
Even though she could be scary I could help but smile at her curiosity. “I am pretty cool aren’t I?” I said with a smug tone. She didn’t blink.
“Beau are you, okay?” She slowly moved past me and placed her faces by the fire, “ Hey careful Beau I don’t want you to burn yourself!” I said, wait why did I care this much. Did her imprinting on me affect me too? I reached over to grab her to pull her back from the fire, but then I heard a sound like a deep inhale coming from her and watched as she ate the fire. What just happened? Then as if she wanted to one-up her previous trick I felt a great heat explode out of her as reddish-purple flames jetted out of her middle mouth for an instant the small cooking fire exploded back into existence.
The heat was overwhelming. I almost tripped and fell as I had made a good amount of distance from the flame. I turned my head to look at the flames cooking the stew and saw how the bottom was glowing red and how steam quickly made the lid pop off. “ Beau stop it!” I shouted, the dragon made the inhaling noise once more and the flame stopped as quickly as it started. Ash now stood where the wood once was and the stone that lay underneath was melting. That is not an exaggeration, the floor where the flames ate was in a semi-liquid state and glowed like a goddamn hot plate. Thankfully the cooking pot didn’t melt along with the floor. Beau hung her heads in shame as she realized what she did.
She didn’t mean what she did, I guessed she was just following her instincts and there is not much I can do about it now, no pointing in crying over spilled milk. I approached her and stroked the back of her necks. She looked up at me with regret as I comforted her. I let out a deep sigh, food is probably ruined, I guess I need to go out again, huh.
“Beau, I want you to know that you were just trying to show off for me and you might feel guilty about it, but I don’t blame you for it, okay.” She does not look like she believes me.
I gave her a sympathetic smile, “ I’m going to find more food, okay, stay here.” I take off, it is almost 1:00 P.M now and we both haven’t had anything to eat, because I spent most of the day walking in the woods trying to find food. I hardly ate anything yesterday besides that one rabbit. So the hunger pains are taking over and I’m afraid that I might do something irrational to satisfy my hunger.
I checked my traps and of course, it appears that my luck has run out for now because all of them happened to be empty and one of them was smashed up by something and unfortunately I couldn’t tell if it was a normal animal or some type of fantasy-Esque creature. As I trailed throughout the forest I wasn’t finding a goddamn thing and the sun was beginning to start to set. Meaning I have been out for about four hours, I can’t risk being out here. So my search for food continued to become hastier and hastier and then I saw a deer. A glorious white-tail buck, twelve points on its rack, a trophy deer for sure, but more importantly it was food!
I started sneaking up on it making sure it couldn’t spot it by staying low and making sure to make as little noise as possible. A branch snapped, s***. The buck turned its docile face toward me, then I saw its signature white-tail flag up and it started to dash away. I charged it and actually managed to stab it in the throat. Yes! The deer gasped and sputtered with the spear lodged in its throat.
I whipped out my new dagger and stabbed in the neck twisting the blade, gritting my teeth. It finally fell, well that was exhilarating. I pulled the spear out and wiped both the spearhead and the dagger blade on the deer’s pelt. I then started to lug it toward the cave then everything went dark for a moment.
I fought for consciousness as I glared up to see an abomination staring down at me with gore in between its thin lips. An old man’s head appeared to be stitched onto a lion’s body that had a whip-like tail with multiple spines hanging loosely off it. Or at least it looked stitched on until it opened up its horrid maw that unhinged to an abnormal degree that looked like snake-like fangs in place of its canines and the rest of its teeth were janky and malformed.
Its eyes seemed to be smiling at me as it got closer to my face slowly as if it was some sort of sadistic hunter taking pleasure in its kill. It went past my face as it leaned closer and whispered out in a raspy, hushed and falsely concerned voice, “ Does it hurt?” It didn’t even move its mouth, the sound came out like it was being played off a recording.
“Does it hurt?” It once again whispers into my ear as I struggle to breathe as it has placed its paw on my chest pressing harder and harder. I gasped for air and noticed the dagger was by my side. I strained my arm to even pick it up and I grabbed that bitch and shoved it right into its throat and ripped it toward the side of its neck and pulled it out.
It screamed, It sounded like a man screaming along with the roar of a lion and the screech of an eagle, all blurred together in a hideous mess of sound. I pulled myself from under it as I watched a viscous green fluid drip down from its wound. I decided if a wound like that couldn’t put it down there is almost no way I could finish it in my current state so I had to run.
I picked up my spear just in case it ran after me, I only made it about ten yards before I heard something whistle by and it nailed me in the back. I felt the air leaving my body as I screamed my lungs out. The spine that hit me had venom on it, it felt like someone poured battery acid on my back, I could feel my blood boiling as I somehow managed to keep running. Tears poured down my face as I ran in a serpentine pattern to avoid the spines.
It’s following me, I could feel it catching up to me as I got closer to the cave I now could consider home. But the closer I was home the closer the creature was to hitting me with one of its spines or pouncing onto me. It knew this as it started taunting me as it got closer, it repeated the same sentence as before in a feverish manner.
“Does it hurt?”
“Go to hell!” I screamed back at it. The cave came into view and I shouted out, “Beau! Beau help!”
My lungs felt raw as I approached the cave opening, another spine whistled by again scraping against my cheek with the new dose of venom enough to cause me to writhe in pain and I dropped to the ground silently screaming. I saw Beau come into view as she ran to see me and she let out a cry of anger that caused the creature to stop in its tracks and it let out its garish war cry and charged Beau. I barely managed to see it pounce toward Beau.
Beau intercepted the larger monster by clamping down on its already open wound with her middle head and grabbed onto its front legs with her other heads. She shook her middle head, tearing the wound open farther. It started to flick its tail around trying to catch her so it dug its front claws in desperation between the small gaps of her necks. She cried in agony as it raked its claws onto the sides of her neck. It saw its chance as it started to whip its tail to get Beau.
Everything seemed to slow down as I somehow found the strength to stand and I dashed toward Beau. I could see the malice and joy the creature was taking in hurting Beau, I could see Beau in pain as she was crying out and I could see the sunset, the slight breeze blow-by, and the tree leaves gently falling as the breeze caught them in midair.
I threw the spear into the flank of the creature; it returned the favor with fury by throwing the spine meant for Beau into my stomach. I gritted through the pain as I lunged forward driving my dagger into its eye then I collapsed, unable to move any longer. Everything sped up again as the creature looked toward Beau with victory in its mind believing it had this. Beau reeled back and saw me barely conscious laying on the dirt.
That fear that I felt originally when Beau first hatched I could see it in the creature’s face when she whipped back roaring in complete bloodthirst. Her left and right head latched onto the creature’s top and bottom jaw, ripping them open as it struggled to get away and her middle opened up and unleashed a torrent of the reddish-purple fire into its mouth. It screamed like when I stabbed it before, but this was a true terror as it kept on clawing at Beau’s necks but she just kept going and unleashed hell onto it. Then at some point, it stopped moving. The fire ate at its insides and I could finally see flames jetting out of it. Beau breathed in deeply again taking the purple flames back in as she walked towards me and gently picked me up with her jaws and slung me over her back.
“Good job, Beau.” I softly whispered.
I heard her soft, pained cooing again as she walked back to our cavern, and then I lost consciousness.
