You are reading a novella in four parts. To read Part One, click here.
Prelude to Part II: The Legend of the First Dragon
“Let me tell you a story I once told your father:
The North Star used to be a lush Paradise.
Ruled by The Makers, they tended to its gardens with creative vigour, weaving genetic code in service of the Universe.
They worshiped the Universe. At the intersection of time and space, was a mesh of quantum reality. Through it, they glimpsed Its purpose, knowing It sought to fill the mesh with memories and with life. It crawled through the crevices of reality, building vessels to complete a whole The Makers could not fully comprehend, yet trusted in regardless.
It was in service of painting this cosmic picture that they moulded tirelessly in their Father’s image. Despite the numerous wondrous creatures they seeded Paradise with, the most glorious creature to inhabit their lush land was not of their creation, but something that preceded them.
No one knows how the First Dragon came into being. Not even it remembers how it came to coil endlessly in the soils of Paradise. Although respected by The Makers as another of the Father’s children, The First Dragon resented The Makers’ ability to peer into the quantum mesh and know their Father. For it so happens, The First Dragon could not die, its skin shedding with the promise of uncoiling from this mortal coil only for it to be reborn anew.
Again, and again.
It grew so jealous of The Makers’ creations, who seemed to only exist to die and return to the Universe. Such bliss, taken for granted.
‘We must respect life above all else,’ The Makers would say whenever The First Dragon, bitter and bored, treated the creations of Paradise as a snake would its rodent prey. ‘Father loves life.’
‘Why must I respect that which dies’? The First Dragon said, its venom and pretensions wrought by jealousy rising to a sharp peak. ‘I am immortal. Am I not then the closest to Father of us all?’
This disturbed The Makers. Eventually they conspired to cast the First Dragon out of Paradise. In their minds, there was no place amongst them for a being of such violence and spite.
Despite their best efforts to plot this in the dark, the First Dragon heard their whispers and took up infernal arms. Its most potent poison was a weapon capable of setting fire even to the quantum mesh’s deepest, most hidden spots.
Using a power mastered long before The Makers came into existence, The First Dragon shed its skin and took a different form than what The Makers knew. It wore a deception, specifically woven to entice. It bore the shape of what The Makers secretly dreamed about at night: a form so closely resembling the Father of their imagination, they believed what was before them was the Universe Itself, manifested as a living being in their reality at last.
One by one, The First Dragon possessed them, undoing all they made. The last few it could not ensnare, but alas it was too late for them. As the surviving Makers rallied to slay The First Dragon, it cast aside its mask and turned its great weapon to the heavens, setting fire to the very atmosphere.
The surviving Makers fled their home, leaving behind its ashes for a future irradiated by hatred for their eradicator. Thus, their experiments in their new Homeland were reduced to unholy recreations of the First Dragon, in a vain effort to recreate it the way they had previously attempted to recreate their Father.
In abandoning creation in service of the Universe, they created aberrations that eventually consumed what few of them had survived until only one remained, forever cursed with oracular vision and foresight of what it had no power to change.
Ever since, history stagnated. A paradigm of violence, in which the last bastard remnants of creation competed to kill each other for no higher purpose than violence itself.
Amongst the piling carnage, the First Dragon lies dormant, too prideful to confess its regrets. Beneath its layers of hatred, it grows consumed by a singular fixation: to return to Paradise, no matter the cost.”
Part II: Half-Past Paradise
Chapter 19: Symptoms of Mercy
2009
Every day is a funnelling patchwork of beige sameness.
I can’t escape Paradise.
I am lost.
Beige within beige. Same… same… a lattice of loneliness, and pain.
I’ve lost all sense of time—and I wish I could say the same of place. Oh, but alas I know Paradise too well. For every day, I:
Wake.
Stretch.
Greet the sun above, where it is framed by washed out clouds and dirt.
Put on my shirt, call the Hounds.
Spar for endless hours and revolving rounds.
Since Paradise is static, time is no longer a valuable metric. There is nothing to measure. Meaningless numbers, the same numbers ascribed to the times I:
Wake.
Stretch.
Greet the sun above.
Where it is—
“Son?”
I blink. father stands before me, observing me.
“Yes?” I say—robotic monotone.
“…I saw. What happened today,” he manages.
Ah, my brilliant moment. While sparring against my first ever Dragon today I’d done quite well, save for a little blip.
Holdfast was out sick, and so I’d taken on another Hound as a substitute. In a master stroke of fate, the substitute assigned to me had been my old nemesis from the training grounds. Bakor.
During the bout, there had been a window as the Dragon struck… for me to save him.
I chose not to.
It would seem father had seen my blunder. Always save the Hound whenever possible. Not out of compassion, of course. No—for tactical advantage.
“Any idea if he made it?” I ask.
father is unreadable. “I do not know.”
I grunt. Go back to polishing my armour.
“Son?”
I roll my eyes. “Yes father?”
“Just…” he sighs. “Please take care of yourself.”
Before I can respond he leaves the room. I’m left alone, with time. In a moment where it should stand still, had it not already been made redundant.
What just happened? Had that been fear? Compassion?
Later, at the end of my story, I will understand that that moment had been my father’s most profound gift to me. An outlier among his usual lessons in power and violence.
A glimmer of mercy; of how to be something… better.
Chapter Twenty: The Reclining Dragon
2036
The trek to the top of the mountain was fraught with wet vines and mud as thick as my knees.
Despite my status, which regularly results in the soiling of my appearance by blood and bowls, I console myself knowing such work precedes a cleansing dip in the baths in the company of my harem.
However, his trek, this spiralling ascension through dew drenched rainforest and elephant faeces, bears no such promise of luxury.
Here in the wilds of the Far East, rumours abound of a Dragon as old as humankind. Between Bullfighting bouts, I secretly arranged to fly out to these jungles to seek out the temple of this alleged ancient beast.
In the Far Eastern folds of the world, where my people seldom venture, they say an ancient Dragon not only lives on, but espouses peace. Is there power to be gained in such unlikely circumstances?
I wipe a muddy streak off my face and squint through the rain at the ornate temple looming over me.
Is this it? The home of The Reclining Dragon?
“Why have you come Mauricius?” A voice explodes the way I imagine a nuclear detonation would sound behind three thousand layers of soundproof glass. Blunted, yet still all consuming.
The ornate temple shifts and I realize this is not the home of The Reclining Dragon. It is The Reclining Dragon!
“What is this form you have taken?” I demand it to reveal.
“You ignore my question, and expect an answer to yours,” it says. Although it is defiant, I will admit I sense no malice in its tone. No fire on its breath.
“I no longer breathe fire” it says, as though privy to my thoughts.
I push aside my rage at its intrusion into my mind and ask the question I came to ask: “How old are you?”
The Reclining Dragon shifts again. Just a hair. A shining golden building of a beast, mouth open like a door, for all the stragglers to wander into to satiate its evidently ravenous appetite.
“I no longer consume flesh,” it says.
I can no longer abide by this. “How dare you read my thoughts! Venture into my mind again and I will gut you without mercy.”
It laughs. The ground shakes. The cheek!
“I do not read your mind,” it says. “I have no need to. In my long life, I have learned to read the body. You are a simple man, Mauricius. Every step you take is a cry for help. Alas, you are not open to receiving it.”
“You are wrong,” I say, quieting the fire in my heart (and throat). “I am open to your help. In fact, I came all this way for it.”
“You came for power,” it says. “Of the imperial kind.”
It spits its last words with such vitriol that they might as well be flames.
This dumb beast vexes me. “I don’t know what you mean. I came for scientific curiosity. You shouldn’t be alive.”
“Why not?”
“Dragons have a life span of a few decades… at most.”
A rumble from within the ornate temple. I wipe the rain from my eyes and look upon its shimmering golden form.
Not gold after all. Scales.
“Go home Mauricius, go home to die,” The Reclining Dragon says. “There is no curiosity in your heart. Only imposition.”
“Stop claiming to know what is in my heart, you arrogant fool,” I snap.
“You intend to return to your home with a special advantage to wield in your upcoming fights against your Matador challengers. You are heeding your late father’s words. His adages echo in the recesses of your heart, compelling you to use every advantage at your disposal to prevail. To that end, you sought me out, desperate for exotic ‘Eastern wisdom’ to escape the fate of every Matador who assumes the mantle of Dragon Bull.”
“Enough!” I scream, instantly regretting my loss of composure.
“Turn back,” The Reclining Dragon sighs. “The only wisdom to be found here is sung at a pitch your ears will not hear.”
The ornate temple shifts yet again, and although I cannot fully discern its features, I can tell it has turned its back on me.
The ‘Reclining Dragon.’ Pshh! A gluttonous behemoth of pacifism and arrogance. Dragons are born from Bullfighters who have weathered the deepest scars, to rise triumphant over countless slain Dragon Bulls. They are the Alpha, risen above all other living things, to be served and feared until their short lives expire at the hands of the next ascending Matador.
Glory then death. For their lives to exceed even just twenty years is unthinkable. father said the only precedent was The Morning Star. The First Dragon. The first and supposedly last lesson that no Dragon could be allowed to live, and yet…
This slow, stupid, bumbling thing lives on, in the middle of nowhere in some nothing uncivilized jungle far away. Why should he live on while I am condemned to die?
There is no wisdom here. Only another challenger to be slain.
Chapter 21: For Tartarus, the Limbic System is the Tastiest Morsel
2023
“What’s her name?” Hera asks with a measured tone. As though what she just stumbled upon were utterly innocuous.
There is nothing innocuous about it.
“Her name…”
The Other Woman’s name momentarily escapes me, though I’m overwhelmed by an impression of her in my mind. It strikes as loud as thunder—her lecherous spirit roiling beneath her flesh, flashing through her windows.
The soul resident haunts me.
And it is as dark as a smouldering black cloud contemplating whether to weep or strike me down. It is not mine. Nor do I belong to it. So why am I here?
When I raise my umbrella to her storm long enough to hear my heart beat, ‘here’ reveals itself to me. ‘Here’ is not a place. It’s… a face.
One of my own. One of the many I possess. One I can’t seem to retire, though many times I tried. Every effort I make to hang that face up ever higher—out of reach, for sure this time—it somehow slips itself back on my brow, cheeks, and smile.
I’m so very tired.
‘Here’ is a root, tethering me to this space I can’t escape. Growing me backwards into a seed of sinew and neurones—into a relic of Chaos from the beginning. Before my Forefathers slew their Titans. When my primal brain reigned.
In my mind’s eye, the corner of her mouth tugs a little, taunting me to bite it.
I am no Titan. My heart, shrivelled and small, beats lust. I swore I wouldn’t listen to it.
And yet, I’ve returned ‘here’ all the same.
“Her name is—”
Chapter 22: …For the Dragon, it is Validation
2028
Selene stares at me from across the room. Through the saturated purple and blue hues of the neon light enveloping us, all I see clearly are her eyes… peeling me apart.
People come and go, flitting between us in this heathen’s den of washed-up Matadors. A gathering of weathered heroes who survived many battles without ever slaying a Bull.
They invited me to their party because my star is rising. Brighter than Venus, where they say the Nordic gene comes from.
I left Heracles at home.
Selene is a defector from the Nordic Coven. The Nordics die slowly, condemned to live long lives as gimped gods (with little gs). A fate far worse than the death of a Bull, as a Nordic General once told me many years ago.
I wonder how old you are?
Hours pass by, and still I catch her flickering eyes in the dark, hungering for… power?
No. Something far simpler. Something… primal.
The more I draw the blood of Dragons, the more the Dragon within me awakens. I have taken many voyages between the Homeland and Paradise, enduring suffering and glory and life and death along the way. The Dragon and I nearly coexist now.
The Dragon responds to glory most of all. It hungers for validation. It is cold-blooded. It comes alive in the heat.
The blood that flows through Selene’s veins may be ice, but it brings heat when she lays her hands on me.
That’s what she wants, isn’t it?
She. Wants. Me.
Chapter Twenty-Three: Anemone
2035
I wonder what a hermit crab looks like without its shell.
The thought crosses my mind as I spot Hera standing at the precipice, toes curling over the marble edge of a city sinking into the sea.
Waves crash around her, spraying columns that once held up a painted roof with icy mist, like blood splatters from a fist against a broken nose.
From my vantage point atop the hill, she is a speckle in white against the white of timeless stone.
An empty shell that used to be a home, now a thing that has no meaning. A broken home for sale, or something hollow for the wind to pass through and make soft music with.
My son Heracles loved music.
This day just won’t end. Has it been a day?
I lost track of the sun. Is it day or night?
There is no light anymore. Just the dark maw of the empty shell before me.
Heracles’ mother lived in that shell before today. Though long separated from me, we held onto a shared spark of love. Now that spark has been snuffed out, and it won’t ever come back. In some ways, Hera has travelled further than our sweet Heracles. At least Heracles reached his final destination. His mother is an empty shell, neither here nor there.
And where am I? I don’t know anymore. There’s nowhere left to go. This place… it’s no longer home. It’s a decaying vessel, hosting two empty shells at the edge of the world, about to collapse into the deep.
I contemplate running down the hill, through the calcified heart of this once mighty Empire, to prevent the violent waves from curling their frothy tentacles around Hera’s dainty form to yank her to the bottom of the sea.
And I did contemplate it. Hard. That, and many, many other things.
My love belongs there, with all my other memories, like a collection of emptied shells collecting sand on the sea floor.
Chapter 24: I held the shell to my ear, and within its emptiness, heard the echoes of Thunder
1994
Rustling. Whispers, carried by the wind, with a message:
“Meet me outside.”
I slide out of bed, one of two side by side, and putter down the hall, keen to preserve the silence of the night.
To the left, Mother’s room. To the right, a junction with three paths:
Bathroom.
Master suite.
Family room.
This is Grandfather’s home. Where he and I would pick snails from his garden, their little spiral shells held gently between my fingers. Years later I would learn he would dispose of them when I wasn’t looking.
Grandfather’s garden was Paradise. Hidden in a fold of the Homeland where no one knew where to look for it.
Family room.
There’s a sliding glass door that leads to the garden. Everyone is sleeping.
Dawn is breaking.
I open the door and step into Paradise.
The twilight sky, vast and all consuming, is filled corner to corner with the flapping wings that summoned me. What these wings belong to, I cannot know. My eyes dare not look upon it.
“It is time to go,” It says.
“I’m not ready,” I whimper.
“Look in your hand,” It commands. With each flap of its wings, thunder echoes like a bell commemorating the rising sun. Or the warning of a coming storm.
I oblige and turn my gaze downward. In my palm, there is now a snail’s shell. It spirals around a point so small I lose myself in it…
“You’re awake,” Grandfather says.
I’m back in bed. Grandfather sits beside me, a book in his hand. And in my hand…
I unclench my fist, but there is nothing there.
“I dreamt of wings that filled the sky,” I say.
“Wakinyan,” Grandfather nods. “It came to take you home.”
I frown. “It’s not my time to—”
I’m back in bed. Grandfather has disappeared.
It may not be my time, but Grandfather’s has come and gone. There is no one left to tend to the last patch of Paradise. Morning has come, and in my palm…
A snail’s shell.
How many dreams can be folded into one?
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Calling Card of Carcohl
2041
The fossilised shell has a nice weight to it. My eyes ride the curves of its spiralling structure deeper and deeper into its hypnotic abyss. The emotion it evokes reminds me of how I feel when I wield my sword.
The small helix fossil in my palm belongs to something long forgotten, yet paradoxically unable to move on. It’s been frozen in time, yet there is no one left to remember its name.
I’m reminded of something else: a garden, a grandfather… echoes of the Homeland. A possibility (or memory?) long forgotten.
I tear my eyes away from the hypnotic helix and survey the wasteland I wade through. My nostrils flare as the scent of shit and piss waft, unwanted, into the deepest recesses of my brain.
There is no escaping it. It saturates everything.
“Must we linger here?” Holdfast says, his face contorted in a futile effort to stave off the scent.
“We’re close now,” I say. “Let us not forget why we came.”
Holdfast rolls his eyes, but does not reply. He knows I’m right.
I filter out the filth and take the city in for what it is: Paris, its many ‘arrondissements’ arranged in a clockwise spiral very much like the fossil in my hand.
…and, fittingly, very much like the shell of Carcohl, the Great Dragon that migrated from the south of this land to lurk beneath its ancient capitol, where it grows fat on the inhabitants and sullies this once great Kingdom.
I have come for its head. For what might be inside it in ancient wisdom, and for its severance—to mount it on my wall, where it will join the ranks of The Devouring Dragon, The Morning Star, The Reclining Dragon, and all other beasts that fell by my hand.
Across the street from where Holdfast and I stand is a small opening that leads down into sewers, towards the pit at the centre of the spiral that is the City of Paris.
Where Carcohl waits.
On our way, we walked through the gardens of Versailles and marvelled at the marble columns, pondering the successes and failures of Napoleon the Conqueror. How desperately he sought the same legacy and power of his forefathers:
Alexander. Augustus. Arthur.
His fighting spirit was bereft of greatness. Forever condemned to be the middling child in the brotherhood of Bullfighters.
“Are you coming?”
Holdfast stirs me from my reverie. I join him at his side and we descend into the depths of the city.
Carcohl knows I am here. I feel it stirring around us. The tides of sewage have shifted.
Ahead, a tentacle retreats deeper into the abyss. I point my sword in its direction. “He is there.”
We follow the tentacle into a dark corner. Where at last, we lay eyes on what we came for:
Lou Carcohl, the ancient Dragon of France. A gargantuan writhing mass of tentacles and teeth seeking refuge in its helix shell. A snail from hell.
“I come for your shell,” I say.
The Dragon’s reply is an immediate, snarling rumble:
“At least feed me your spare,” It says, one of its tentacles flicking in the direction of Holdfast. “It is dead. You prop it up like a puppet and make a mockery of it.”
His reminder sears my heart worse than any dragon flame. “Don’t you dare speak to me of Holdfast,” I say.
“He died fighting The Devouring Dragon of Bisterne. His death helped secure your victory.” It licks its scummy teeth. “How have you reanimated him thus?”
“The forbidden knowledge of The Morning Star,” I reveal, unsure of what prompted my candidness.
“Hm. You wish to similarly assimilate me,” Carcohl gurgles. “What about me do you seek to claim as your own?”
“Durability,” I say. “To take from you the thing you wear that shields you from decay.”
“Ah, yes, my shell. You said as much.” it nods. “Do you know how I acquired it?”
My silence demands an answer.
“I found it,” it says. “I retreated into it on the cusp of death and found myself protected and rejuvenated. It is a vestige of The Makers, a husk of one of their old creations. Abandoned long ago. I was never meant to wear it. But now it is a part of me. And soon, it will be a part of you.”
This startles me. “Do you surrender?”
The putrid beast chuckles. “Never, ḏū’l-Qarnayn. I will do all I can to hurt you. I have simply lived long enough to know this is where things end. Though I will live on, in a sense, in you.”
I nod, a vicious heat swirling in the back of my throat. “The Morning Star left me another gift. Would you like to know it?”
For the first time since our meeting, Carcohl falls silent.
“The fires of a place we dare not speak of aloud,” I say. “This will not be a fight. And you will not hurt me.”
“You know I must try,” it replies.
I spread my arms wide. “You are welcome to try.” Flames leak from the corners of my mouth, flickering through the gaps in my teeth.
Chapter Twenty-Six: A place we dare not speak of aloud
2039
The sun sets into the sea, dissolving into its waters in shimmering, frayed refractions as far as the eye can see.
The sand is harsh beneath my feet, shells of things that used to dwell in the depths crack beneath my soles.
It is too late for them. It is too late for me.
Standing on the shore, her back to me, is a woman whose hair is unmoved by the salty breeze.
A woman whose bare feet are unscathed as they playfully kick the water.
Whose fair skin is unblemished by hours in the sun.
As sunlight fades, the rays of Venus sharpen—a waypoint to ruin, in a sky that is neither night nor day.
“I often think of home at this hour,” she says as I approach her. “Where is home, to you?”
I bristle at the question. “I’ve been looking for you,” I say, standing at her side.
She smiles with softness, as though relieved, then turns to face me.
I gasp. Breath escaped me despite my best intentions, but what’s before my eyes defies all expectations:
The prominent brow, a gently crooked nose, lips neither wide nor narrow. Prominent cheekbones. A complexion that’s a complex mix of olive tone and ashen. Dark dense hair, swept behind pierced ears. Wide eyes rimmed with curled lashes.
She is beautiful, but it is not her beauty that is startling. I know beauty, I have seen it all.
It is that she is ‘me’ that is most unnerving.
There is no mistaking it, the configuration of her features. A mirror held to my face that shows what The Makers might have made me. Another possibility.
Her soft smile hardens ever so slightly.
“You recognize me,” she says.
“What is this deception?” I look away and fixate on Venus.
“You know me, do you not?” She asks.
I nod.
“And I know you, Mauricius. So, what deception am I guilty of?”
I sense her at my side, trying to catch my eye.
“I’ve waited a long time for you,” she sighs. “I’m so very tired.”
I stiffen at the sound of these words, words I often thought during my most trying times, but never brought myself to speak. “You’ve been waiting? Why?”
“Your exploits have made you known far and wide,” she says. “I expected you would find me.”
“I didn’t believe you were real,” I say.
“But your father spoke often of me, isn’t that the case?”
I turn to face her, startled by her knowledge. “How do you know this?”
Her smile fades. Weariness hangs heavily upon her, though not at the expense of her beauty.
“He brought you to me,” she says.
“He warned me to stay away,” I say.
“And aren’t those two things the very same?”
I shiver. The ripple across my skin is involuntary. In her presence, my mastery of self wanes.
“We’re old friends, your father and I,” she continues.
I scoff, recalling father’s sermons as I lay in my cot. “I don’t believe you.”
“I am the secret he pretended he didn’t keep,” she says. “He would send me away, but never too far. To himself and the public, I was the root cause of all calamity. Yet, letters penned by his hand would often find me. In them, he would chastise me, but in a way that invited my response on all manner of issues he was very plainly agonising over.”
She comes close. I discover I’m paralysed.
“It was in this way he sought my advice without ever asking for it,” she says, “and I gave it, and although I never heard back from him until his next raging correspondence, word would reach me of his deeds, validating how very often he heeded me.”
“I often said he belonged at sea as a sailor.” I nod towards the horizon. “Perhaps if he’d heeded me he would not have suffered his defeat.”
Her hand touches my shoulder gently. Both lust and repulsion compete to overcome me. “Same old story, Mauricius. I know it well. Blaming me for the sins of the father.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, struggling to stay focused on what I came to claim. “Your words don’t matter. Your forked tongue is not what I’m after.”
She removes her hand from my shoulder and rests it against my cheek, gently guiding my gaze back to hers.
“That,” she says, almost sadly, “is the first deception of our meeting.”
I can’t tear myself away from her gaze! The pull of her eyes, it strips the razor-sharp sand from beneath my soles, as though I’m falling…
Gnillaf.
“My tongue is exactly what you came here for,” she whispers.
Falling.
“I willingly give it,” her whispers slither into my ear and straight to my heart. “But promise me… with the power you’ll acquire, once you leave this world behind… promise me you will take me home. I miss it so much.”
She releases me from her trance and my eyes find their way back to Venus.
“What happened to it?” I ask. “To Venus?”
“Once you accept my gift you will know.”
I swallow. If I do this, I cannot go back.
My heart darkens. Anger rages hotter in me than Dragon fire. ‘Go back.’ Where? To the Homeland? To Paradise?
Both lie behind. Lies, told to me about a home I never belonged to. I belong to nowhere but the future.
I face her. Her lips are already parted, having never doubted my resolve.
I bring my lips to hers, and at first it feels as though her tongue is making its way into my mouth, but it is no tongue.
The First Dragon quietly discards the skin it lived in, fashioned after my likeness in anticipation of who it was always meant to join.
I grant the Dragon passage. It slithers between my lips to nestle in my throat, coiling into a comfortable curl where it will make its new home.
“You must make it look real,” it says inside my head. “They must believe you slew me.”
Vicious heat stirs in my throat. I allow the muscles in my jaw to relax, and I breathe The First Dragon’s Hellfire through my open mouth at my elegant gender-swapped doppelgänger.
Whatever she was—a version of me from another reality, an illusion, dead, living—is cremated into a pile of ashes that join the shells, where wind and sea will wash them away with the sand.
Chapter 27: Sins of the Father
1998
I’m in bed. The sheets are red on red, bearing the pattern of a cross, repeating over and over in shades of:
Scarlet, like the cape the Bullfighters of old waved.
Crimson, like the blotch of blood on my lower lip, where the Hound’s fist had hit.
None of it matters to father, perched beside my bed, draped in darkness like a gargoyle. Is he watchful or resentful? I think both.
I hate his stories, but they’re the only bond between us, so I cherish them.
“The First Dragon has many names,” he says. “It scorched The Makers’ home and escaped from its cage in the stars to settle here in secret to tempt mankind.”
father’s tales are religious parables that frame his work to give it Meaning. He tells them more for his own ears than for mine.
“…it grows a skin to lure them in, plying victims with forbidden wisdom. Then it sheds its old self for the new, embedding its essence in the soul it ruined, consuming it from the inside out in an everlasting revolution.”
Revolution. Circular movement of an object, or violent movement of ideas? I don’t believe The First Dragon exists. But if it does, perhaps one day I’ll ask it.
Chapter 28: To the Strongest
2027
“It’s an exciting time,” father says. “My Championship fight is tomorrow!”
He leans into his chair. A humble thing, so unlike a throne. He sits behind an equally humble wooden desk, in a sparsely decorated office. his Bullfighting awards glitter with recent polish. The only decor in his room.
he adjusts his scarlet cape and twirls the tips of his ever-lengthening moustache. he points at a small painting propped up amongst the medals.
“Do you know who that is?” he asks.
I do know. It is Alexander the Great. father spouted his dying words daily growing up. I had no interest in hearing them again.
“To the Strong—ah! The fruit is here.”
Georgio, my father’s manservant, walks into the room with a tray of freshly sliced fruits. He bows, then presents the colourful selection to my father.
“What is this? Where are my mangoes?” father says.
Georgio hesitates.
“No mangoes sir, we did not find any today.”
My father leers. “Well, did you look in more than one place?”
“I—”
“Enough! Get out of my sight and bring me my mangoes. My orders are to be obeyed without excuse.”
Georgio scurries out of the room.
“Nasiba!” my father roars.
Nasiba hurries into the room. She runs my father’s office while he’s away.
“Yes Sir?”
My father’s eye twinkles with the promise of violence. “If he fails to bring me my mangoes again, kill him.”
Nasiba nods without hesitation, and retreats.
My father composes himself, grips the arms of his throne. Looks at me. “Will you be there tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow is Heracles’ birthday.”
“Even better. Bring him along!”
“I don’t want him there.”
“Do you mean to say you won’t come?”
“With respect,” I sigh, “I don’t feel it’s appropriate.”
“I don’t have time to haggle with you and your moral quandaries. You will do as I say.”
“Perhaps we can discuss—”
“No. You will be there tomorrow.”
“I—”
“No.”
We stare at each other. I weigh my options.
I could stab him. Perhaps that’s part of why he went mad, the liberation from fear of consequences. No one ever managed to land a scratch on him.
Instead, I walk away. He taunts me as I leave. I don’t engage. I’ve learned that retaliating simply empowers him further.
In moments like this, I question why I ever returned to Paradise.
*
Days later, I’m playing with Heracles in my study. He is staying with me for the weekend.
He holds a toy Dragon in his tiny fist. A birthday gift, sent over by his grandfather.
“Bshhhhhh!” he roars in an imitation of a Bull. I watch him play, and wish I hadn’t given the toy to him.
There’s a knock at the door. I sigh. “Come.”
It’s Nasiba. She doesn’t step into the room. She seems anxious to speak with me. I roll my eyes.
“My boy, give me a moment. I’ll be right back,” I tell Heracles.
He pays me no mind. He’s absorbed in his game.
I rise to my feet, and join Nasiba outside of my study. She seems nervous. I suspect father sent her for some unpleasantness on his behalf. No doubt he slayed The Devouring Dragon, and underwent the Transfiguration at last. Now that he’s a Bull, I expect he’ll be calling for me often to pay tribute and sing his praises.
“What can I do for you Nasiba?” I ask.
“Your father. He’s… he’s fallen.”
Fallen.
.nellaF
It takes me a moment to register this:
He lost. He lost.
For some reason, all I can think about is the day he told me we were moving to Paradise. In my memory, I see only his sailboat against the backdrop of the lake, red in colour from the way it reflected the sun.
Red. Like blood.
Nasiba stares at me, waiting for my reaction. I can see she’s in pain. Perhaps even overcome with grief.
He should have been a sailor.
I shrug. “To the strongest.”
Faisal G. Binzagr
June 2026
To be continued in Part III
Featured Image by Sarah Baslaim
Website: https://sarahbaslaim.wordpress.com/
