Scale & Flame - Part 3
In which orcs spoil the party.
NB: Reminder that this story is not connected to Tales of the Dragonlands.
Having said that -
When I post the next part of Dragonlands, you should read that and then come back and read this again. Scale & Flame is really an origin sketch for Dragonlands, so a lot of the basic ideas and world-building of Dragonlands come from this story. I’m writing both because I’ve decided there’s enough meat in Scale & Flame to continue it, even if I’ve scavenged some of the story for Dragonlands.
Chapter 6 – Damnable Orcs
Tarron flipped the closed sign on the door and locked it.
For the third night in a row, that plucky little human had entered their space and insisted he belonged there. Had tried to talk to them.
“You know this is the second one of…those…that’s come in here in the last couple of months,” Rax said.
“Yeah,” Tarron said. “Think this one’s working with the overgrown dwarf with the big beard?”
“One human coming in trying to make peace is a ridiculous anomaly. Two is not a coincidence.”
Tarron brushed something off of Rax’s shoulder and held the ruby draconic’s gaze for a moment, studying him.
Over the two months between their first meeting and now, the two had gotten into a groove with the bar and into something deeper with each other. Tarron even kept a few things in a drawer upstairs, and Rax had some stuff at Tarron’s apartment across town.
They’d even used the word “boyfriend,” although Rax hated it, preferring “partner” because he said it sounded less adolescent.
“I mean…do we hear him out?” Tarron asked.
“No.”
Tarron sensed something in Rax’s disdain for the humans. More than the usual draconic distrust of the creatures. Something personal. He hadn’t pressed, because it felt like a wound that Rax wanted to keep closed.
“Stop staring, blue,” Rax said. “If you want to know, just ask.”
“I just…what’s your history with humans? Gotta be something.”
Rax gave Tarron a look that spoke of something deep and broken.
“Years back. Me, young and in love. My boyfriend, hot and stupid. We went out alone to watch the sunset. Cliché as all get out, I know. But we did. Human raiding party, just a bunch of drunken idiots with swords. Swarmed us like ants. Gutted him, left me bleeding out on the rocks. I had to leave him there. Barely made it to a healer in time.”
“Holy shit, Rax,” Tarron said. “Holy shit.” He hugged Rax, hard, feeling the ruby draconic trembling with the memory of it.
“So you’ll excuse me if I don’t rush to parley with this creature.”
“Understood. Completely. Gods…Rax. I’m so sorry.”
Tarron had seen the scars on Rax’s belly, of course, but he hadn’t asked. Hadn’t felt they were his business.
After all, they both had scars. Secrets. Things they hadn’t told each other yet. Two months just wasn’t enough time to peel all the layers back.
“Just wish we could keep ‘em out, you know?” Rax said.
“Humans?”
“Yeah. Should be able to choose my customers.”
“You don’t want that right.”
“I know,” Rax said, shaking his head. “I do but I don’t. Obviously.”
“We don’t want to be like Caldera’s Heart. That place is just festering with hate and anger and draconic supremacist bullshit. But that’s really the only other way we could go. Hire some scalehead security, only let dragonkin in, buy off enough public officials to look the other way. Otherwise, we take all comers.”
“I know, I know,” Rax said. “You’ve always had that solicitor’s mind in you. Shoulda gone to law school.”
“Oh gods no. I do not have that gear in me.” Tarron shivered, thinking about just the reams and reams of paperwork and nonsense that solicitors had to deal with. So much paperwork and nonsense.
“So we just ignore the human. Let it in here, serve it drinks, walk away when it tries to talk to us,” Rax said.
Of course Tarron noticed Rax’s use of the depersonalized pronoun when he spoke of humans. Again, Tarron didn’t want to press.
Especially after hearing Rax’s story. Rax had a right to his anger.
And it wasn’t like Tarron hadn’t been influenced by the stories, legends, histories that dragonkin had been telling for thousands of years. Humans coming out of nowhere to slay the old wyrms, those colossal creatures with wings that blocked the stars, left smashed and bleeding on the obsidian cliffs stuck with dozens of poison arrows. Humans dragging the massive severed heads through their own villages, putting wyrm skulls on display like sick trophies.
Humans had started the war.
“Blue? You ok? You’re…staring at nothing.”
“Sorry, just thinking.”
Tarron looked back up at Rax, refocusing his eyes on the ruby draconic, and kissed him again.
###
The very next night. Four nights in a row. There he sat, nursing his ale, trying to talk to Tarron.
“Human,” Tarron said. “We’re not interested. Get the hint.”
“Every time you talk to me, it’s progress,” the human said.
“Oh my gods,” Tarron huffed, and walked away.
Movement from the back corner of the bar. A party of orcs. A flash of a blade. Tarron’s mercenary instincts kicked in. The blade flew from the orc’s hand. Tarron leapt to intercept, and did.
Just below his elbow.
Tarron hissed as the pain lanced into him, feeling blood pouring hot and fast out of the wound. In a flash, he saw Rax vault over the bar and grab the offending orc by the neck, murder in his eyes.
“Rax. Don’t. City guards outside,” Tarron rasped, stars in his vision. He sat heavily in a chair and blinked as the world went gray on him. He was vaguely aware of Rax throwing the entire party of orcs outside.
Then Rax was beside him, tying a tourniquet. Rax’s voice sounded very far away, and Tarron felt himself losing his grip on consciousness.
“Stay with me,” Tarron heard, echoing.
“I’m here,” he slurred.
Then he wasn’t.
###
Rax’s face, streaked with tears, calling his name. The world coming back into focus. Bright lights. Faces. Pain. The hard floor under his back.
Tarron groaned and managed a ragged, “I’m here.”
Rax leaned over him. “Gods…don’t scare me like that.”
Tarron felt tears dripping from Rax’s face onto his own.
“Hey, red, it’s ok. You got me.”
Tarron felt the stitches in his wound. Rax had done a serviceable job.
“Going to cauterize it now,” Rax said. “It’ll hurt.”
Tarron nodded. Rax blew a controlled gout of flame from his mouth onto a large knife until the knife glowed red. He pressed the knife into the wound, and Tarron felt (and smelled) his flesh searing. He hissed, trying not to thrash.
“You lost a lot of blood, blue,” Rax said.
“Yeah,” Tarron rasped. “Must’ve nicked a vessel.”
Tarron saw a new face appear above him. That human.
“Can I help you?” Rax asked, voice full of venom.
“Just wanted to make sure he’s ok,” Henry said.
Rax roared in Henry’s face, not with fire, but with hot dragon breath and all of his teeth. Tarron watched Henry stumble backwards, wide-eyed.
“Get it?” Rax spat.
Tarron heard the human’s footsteps receding.
Chapter 7 – Nevertheless, He Persisted
Rax kept the tavern closed for two days after the incident. He spent a lot of time scrubbing Tarron’s blood out of the floor, his mind screaming for revenge. The orc had been hauled away by the city guards and now sat in jail awaiting trial, but that wasn’t enough for Rax.
On the third night, after checking on Tarron, still weak but smiling in bed, Rax flipped the sign on the door and opened the tavern. He wasn’t about to let…oh fuck no.
“Not tonight,” he said, blocking the door as Henry the human tried to enter.
“I wanted to see how…your partner was doing.” The creature actually held a stupid little hat in his hands and was wringing it and looking down.
“He’s hurt. Go away.”
Henry looked at Rax and said, “Just want an ale, friend.”
Rax snarled, all teeth, his eyes flashing fire, the ember in his throat glowing hot. “Say that word again.”
Henry shrank back. “I’m sorry…”
“For what? For coming into my tavern? Making a spectacle of yourself? Making yourself a target? For my partner saving your hide at the cost of his own? For everything that your fucking species has done to mine? What are you sorry for, human?”
“All of it, I guess,” Henry said.
“Then leave,” Rax hissed.
“Ok,” Henry said. “But I’ll be back.”
###
And he was, the next night. This time Rax let him in. Just wasn’t worth the trouble to keep him out.
“Thanks,” Henry said, and sat on the stool he’d infested for the past halfweek.
Rax said nothing, just poured him an ale and walked away to attend to a party of gold-scaled draconics from the Sunburst clan.
“You…are aware there’s a human sitting at your bar,” said one of the Sunbursts, this one an older male in leather armor, a scar over one eye.
“Yes,” Rax said. “What of it?”
“It’s…sitting there.”
“Yes,” Rax repeated. “And?”
“And I didn’t defend the Obsidian Canyon from a marauding band of those things to drink with one.”
Rax sighed. “Friend, I hear you. Believe me. But I can’t bar it without reason.”
“You could,” the Sunburst said.
“No, I can’t. Sit and drink here, or don’t. Caldera’s Heart is always open.”
The Sunburst turned back to his companions without further complaint. For now.
This is going to become more of a problem, not less of one.
Rax took a breath and headed back over to the bar, leaning over the bar towards the creature.
“Look. Henry, was it?”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“What, precisely, is your aim in coming here?”
“Just to talk. I don’t even know your name. May I know it?”
Gods, the earnestness. It made Rax’s fangs ache.
“My name is Rax, of clan Stonefire.”
Henry put out a fleshy pink hand. Rax sighed, a curl of smoke coming out of one nostril, and then enveloped that tiny hand in his own claw before releasing a moment later.
“Nice to meet you, Rax.”
Rax grunted. “Say your piece, human.”
“Right,” the human began. “So, and I know how this sounds. Believe me. But…I guess. I want to learn about you. Your culture. Your history. Your side of the divide. I’m here to listen more than I’m here to talk. Nothing but respect, ok? I know almost nothing of draconic history, but I know neither of us has the full story.”
Rax’s eyes flashed fire. “Where do you want to start? With the first humans who felled a wyrm for flying? Or should we skip to the marauders who murdered my lover and left me for dead?”
Henry reeled back. “Oh my gods…I’m so sorry.”
Rax just looked at the creature, thinking about how easy it would be to just pluck that head right off of that weak little neck. Just twist and pull. Simple.
“Well?” Rax said instead.
“I mean. Shit. I could tell what I know of our history. If you’d be willing to listen.”
Rax saw three empty tankards and an elf waving a wine glass. He left the human and attended to his other patrons before coming back.
“Make it quick, human. I’m busy.”
“What our histories tell us is that the dragons started it. I mean, of course our history says that, right? Doesn’t mean it’s true. But our stories tell of dragons flying out of the skies and burning villages just to steal the gold out of burned corpses’ hands. Terrorizing our fields, our farmlands.”
“Yes,” Rax said. “The great wyrms did attack human settlements. But that was after you started sending marauders to kill us. Our stories start with you attacking us. And they continue that way. For thousands of years. Any attack from our side was self-defense.”
Henry nodded. “This is what I’m talking about. This kind of disconnect. There has to be a truth in the middle somewhere. Some way to bridge that divide.”
Rax laughed a frozen dagger at Henry. “See, the problem is that our side found that already. Me. Me and my kin. Draconics. The wyrms built us out of their own genes and a little bit of magic with the exact purpose of serving as a bridge to the human world. A tenth the size, a tenth the strength, walking on two legs, looking more human than dragonkin. You know what happened to the first draconic ambassadors sent to the human villages to parley? You burned them at the stake.”
Henry took a large gulp of his ale. Clearly he hadn’t heard any of this before.
“So you’re saying…draconics like yourself…”
“Repeat it all you like, human. Get it into that tiny, hairy skull, through those little round ears, and let it rattle around in there for a while. We tried this already. Get it?”
“Shit,” Henry said. “But…I mean, you telling me this—that has to mean progress, right? I mean, you clearly hate me. But here you are. Talking. So. Where does that leave us?”
“With you leaving, human. Give up.”
Rax walked away from the human and refilled the Sunbursts’ drinks. The elder with the scar over one eye leaned in again.
“You…spoke to it. Why?”
“Trying to get it to leave, friend. It has this insane idea that it can broker peace between humans and dragonkin.”
The elder just laughed, hearty and long, and stood in a mock toast, facing the human with his tankard held high.
“To peace between dragonkin and humans!” The sarcasm lanced out, aimed directly at the human’s tiny little heart. To its credit, the human did raise its own glass in a sincere toast.
This is so cool but I'm betting the humans started it. Never trust a human that's what I always say
OMG I love this! I'm otherwise speechless.