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The Last Dragon of Ishveos
🕑 Added 2024-12-08 10:39:10 +0000 UTCThere were once dragons on Ishveos.
Now there is only one.
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There were once dragons on Ishveos.
They came through a tear in the sky above the Scovan Range, a rip in the Firmament that should have housed a labyrinth. They descended onto the moon in numbers so great their wings blotted out the sky, blotted out the stars, blotted out the sun, blotted out even Viseas.
They incinerated every village, every hermit, for twenty leagues in every direction, without making any demands.
Their demands began farther out.
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There were once dragons on Ishveos.
Their demands depended on one’s distance from their weir, their great communal lair below their hole in the sky. Oh, they demanded submission and obedience from all, but beyond that, their rules and laws spread in a series of great concentric rings.
And always they grew harsher the farther out one traveled from the center. The freshly conquered were treated harshly indeed, with painful tributes demanded. As the expansion grew, as more rings were added, the tributes lessened farther in, the rules relaxed, and more privileges added. The patrols of dragons came less often, if still unpredictably.
Nor were these rings imaginary lines on a map— they were great roads of ash, burnt into the ground by the flammable venom and alien magics of the immense dragons.
Many, god and mortal alike, fled the conquest, seeding refugees across the mountains, across the rugged coastal hills to the west and the vast plains to the east. Some would end up in the hands of the Gidran horselords, who were equally likely to run them down or to take them in with open arms. Some would even end up in Cambrias’ Wall— then still young, a great city already, but far from its eventual triumphant size.
Even then, though, the Wall was unkind to refugees.
Most of the refugees did not flee outward, though, but inward. Inward through the rings, inward to where it was safer, where the demands of the dragons were lesser, their rules less harsh.
Until they came to the final ring, that is. Until they came to the border of the Dragon’s Eye.
For the Eye, that twenty-league circle in the center of the expanding dragon queendom was forbidden to all of humanity, and to all gods that did not serve dragonkind directly. Reliquaries and shrines were flown out of the Eye, or turned to ash. The gods would not die, but nor were many fool enough to take up residence inside the Eye again. As for place gods that wouldn’t wholly submit to the dragons, who wouldn’t accept the prices for godgifts dictated to them by their new winged rulers?
Well, place gods have weaknesses that other gods lack. So many of them are not gods of any river fork, any forest meadow, but of a specific river fork, a specific forest meadow.
And the dragons were more than capable of reshaping the very landscape itself to destroy those places, to leave those uncooperative gods to starve over decades or centuries, unable to accept prayers without a home.
But few, god or mortal, were fool enough to violate that boundary, to enter the Eye— not least because a road of ash a quarter mile wide was hard to miss.
It was a clever scheme for governing the landbound— but it was not the scheme of the dragons of Ishveos. They were all young, ambitious, and following conquest schemes perfected over millennia.
But even the most perfect scheme will have challenges in execution, and require adaptation to local conditions and magics.
And the dragons of Ishveos did not rise to the challenges in execution, did not even know about them, for their lack of experience. And the dragons of Ishveos did not adapt their schemes to the gods of Ishveos, for their ambition and overconfidence.
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There were once dragons on Ishveos.
The rebellions against them started soon after the innermost ring around the Eye grew overcrowded, when its inhabitants started restricting access and places to live to those already there. Started lording over the outer rings.
This was not what provoked the rebellions. No, the cruel hierarchy of rings was a tool against rebellion, a deliberate social engine meant to turn humanity into their own jailers. The fear-filled, the entitled, and the ignorant are oh-so often willing to support an unjust hierarchy, no matter how well it treats them— so long as they fear falling lower in the hierarchy and have others to look down upon.
The rebellions started for two reasons— the patrols and the new gods.
The patrols were one of those challenges in the plans the young dragons could have avoided, had they been willing to accept older advisers, had they not been so determined to prove themselves entirely on their own.
Random patrols were useful in times of conquest, to take foes by surprise— but in times of occupation, they were a detriment. People of a great many species will accept harsh rule and difficult conditions if they expect consistency, if they do not live under a state of uncertainty. They are… if not happy to pay their tributes, begrudgingly accepting.
It was not that the dragons of Ishveos were completely unaware of this, the plans spoke of this risk. But the plans also spoke of the risks involved with scheduled tributes— of hidden livestock and falsified censuses— and the young dragons decided to keep up the random patrols.
And the random patrols brought uncertainty.
Which brought rage.
Rage alone would not have been enough to bring down the dragons of Ishveos, for seldom does rage burn half so hot as dragonfire. Even if that were not the case, the loyal subjects, the wealthy inhabitants of the inner rings, were wealthier, better armed, and more powerful than the outer rings. They had five Saints for every rebel Saint, and a dozen Divines for every rebel Divine.
But the rebels had mortal numbers— and as their rabble was incinerated or cut down, again and again, gods began to rise to their aid by the thousand.
Oh, most of those gods were the normal sorts. Farming gods, trail gods, the like. Traumatic deaths are more likely to give rise to a god whose gifts are worthy of battle, but it is no guarantee.
Still, even if only one in dozens of new gods were useful for the rebellion, the numbers began to add up swiftly.
Gods of fire resistance, gods of burn healing, and gods of preventing smoke inhalation.
Gods whose gifts let mortals hear the flapping of dragon wings from over the horizon. Gods whose gifts rendered their motion choppier, in a way that the human eye could handle, but disoriented the dragons. Gods who could make humans smell like dragons, to confuse and lead the winged tyrants astray.
Gods whose worshippers could craft relic-arrows capable of piercing dragonscale. Gods who let their worshippers manifest rains of strange, foaming liquids capable of quenching dragonflame, then dissipate back into godstuff after. Even gods who could bind dragons to the ground, prevent them from taking to the air.
And the dragons of Ishveos began to fall.
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There were once dragons on Ishveos, and they crushed the rebellion.
Then they crushed a second rebellion.
They crushed a third rebellion.
Then a fourth rebellion.
A fifth rebellion.
A sixth.
The dragons and their loyal subjects won every time. They kept expanding their rule— and kept making the same mistakes again and again, provoking yet more rebellions.
For decades, they waged their endless war of subjugation.
But each rebellion killed at least a few dragons— and gave rise to thousands more gods dedicated to the destruction of the dragons. The rebellions grew harder to put down, better armed, better funded. Their theological and political inertia grew, as other nations began to pay more attention to the dragons, began to covertly fund the rebellions.
And then came a rebellion— at a point where everyone involved had forgotten the number— where the rebels did more damage in their defeat than ever before. They killed dozens of dragons, sacked even more loyalist towns, and took huge swathes of territory before they were put down.
Worst of all, though, they closed the hole in the sky, the tear in the Firmament the dragons had entered Ishveos through. In most things, harm is easier than healing— but in matters of the Firmament, this relationship is reversed. The Firmament wants to heal, craves healing from any and all injury— and the dragons had only kept their gate open through great ongoing effort and expense.
The dragons still won, but at a price they could not afford.
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There were dragons on Ishveos, and they could not agree on their path.
Some argued that they should flee, wing their way to a labyrinth to take them home.
Most rejected that entirely. They had come to Ishveos to prove themselves, could not stand the thought of crawling back to their parents and birth-flights like snakes. And when the dissidents persisted, even sought to flee without the rest, the majority fell on them with tooth and talon.
The bare handful of dissidents that escaped did so wounded, and one by one were tracked down by their foes. Not one made it off-world.
The remainder cracked down on their subjects harder than ever. For the first time, the harsher rules began to creep inward once more, and the loyal subjects of the dragons were reminded why cruel laws are called draconian.
The plans, of course, warned directly against this behavior, but if tyranny listened to anything but the solipsist song of its own ego, it would never be defeated. Expertise is a threat to tyranny, and loss of control only ever results in a harsher grasp.
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There were dragons on Ishveos, and they lasted longer than they would have on other worlds.
The rebels weren’t the only ones gaining gods, after all. Though the loyalists spawned far fewer gods loyal to their own cause or opposed to the rebellion, they gained them still. And the gods birthed from the deaths of dragons averaged far more warlike than human gods.
Soon enough, the rebellions faced war Divines unlike anything ever seen on the moon. Oh, there had been dragon Divines since a few short years after their arrival through the hole in the sky— after all, it is easier to buy your way to power on Ishveos than it is to work your way there.
But these new draconic Divines were nigh-unstoppable engines of war, strategic assets that would draw attention from any nation on any world, from even the great multiversal Hordes.
And yet still they fell.
Sterrvenvax the Swift had wielded alien magic that lent unnatural speed to his wings even before his arrival on Ishveos. By the last years of the rebellion, he was close to challenging the speed of sound itself, and the winds bent themselves backward to curry his favor, to knock away spears and arrows.
They couldn’t save him from the net of theologically enhanced wires strung between two mountains that cut him apart.
Hestraflor Flamespear arrived on Ishveos with magic that let her control her flames after spitting them, let her launched them in concentrated streams five times farther than any dragon. By the last years of the rebellion, she could peer over the horizon with her godgifts, then split her fire into dozens of projectiles that could pinpoint targets anywhere within leagues of her, cutting down dozens of rebel Saints and Divines.
It didn’t save her from poison.
Turquoise Glyttyn’s indestructible scales didn’t save her from being drowned in her sleep by a sabotaged dam.
Nhereth the Hidden’s stealth boons didn’t save him from the assassin cartographers who spent years tracking down his hidden lair.
Lakral the Colossus, who had used body alteration and body enhancement godgifts to grow to half again the size of even elder wyrms, more than twice the length and three times the weight of any other dragon on the moon, was still tiny compared to the avalanche that crushed him.
And then there was one.
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There were once dragons on Ishveos.
And then there was only one.
After the mightiest had all fallen, the slaughter of the remainder was swift. No matter how many gods a force has on its side, there are limits to how fast you can manufacture more Saints and Divines.
But even as the dragons fell in scores, their queen remained.
Larkis Thornscale, named for the strange spikes that erupted from her largest, thickest scales. Larkis Thornscale, who had organized and led the entire expedition.
Larkis Thornscale, who had become the mightiest dragon on Ishveos as she accumulated godgifts by the thousands.
Her indestructible scales turned aside any blow.
Her thorns dripped two dozen venoms, each more horrifying than the last.
Her immune system rendered her immune to any biological poison after only a single dose, her enhanced liver and kidneys could filter even the most lethal elemental poisons, and her body could heal even the most devastating neurotoxic damage.
Her bones were freakishly durable even by the standards of dragons.
She could go days without breathing, weeks without drinking water, months without sleeping, years without eating.
There have been few dragons in the history of the multiverse as powerful as Larkis, and yet few beyond Ishveos have ever heard of her.
Because she fell too.
The rebels knew they couldn’t slay her in open battle, couldn’t poison her, couldn’t even trap her. Even dropping a mountainside on her, as they had Lakral, only slowed her down for the few hours it took her to bore her way out through solid stone.
So they wore her down through attrition.
She could go days without breathing, but it still wore at her soul, so the rebels regularly manifested unbreathable gases to temporarily suffocate her.
She could filter out inorganic poisons, but it still took effort from her body, so every time Larkis demanded livestock as tribute, she would end up consuming pounds of lead, copper, and arsenic as well.
She could go months without sleeping— so the rebels put it to the test.
Within three months of her last draconic ally falling, her kingdom was gone and her loyalists were crushed. For all her power, she was a refugee in the Scovan Range, pursued by gnats who could never bring her down in open combat.
For months, she never slept longer than a few minutes at a time. For months, she struggled to find unpoisoned food. For months, she had to keep constantly moving.
Dragons are not endurance predators, and long flights and lack of rest come with a great cost for them.
Six months after she became the last dragon on the moon, her heart simply gave out from the strain.
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There were once dragons on Ishveos.
And then there were none.
Their bones were used for shrines, relics, and reliquaries.
The ashland borders between the rings of their mountain kingdom began to slowly heal.
The wartime theonomy collapsed, and the region underwent a theonomic crisis as gods with anti-dragon boons found their gifts suddenly near worthless. Petty violence and banditry rose as the rebellion collapsed under its own weight, failing to cohere into a new nation— with a few helpful pushes from neighboring theocracies and kingdoms that had no interest in a new competitor.
Years passed, and gods and mortals moved on.
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There were no dragons on Ishveos.
And then there was one.
She was an old dragon, this one, her scales dull with age. Still, her mind was sharp, her alien magics cunning, and she dwarfed any dragon Ishveos had yet seen save Lakral.
Most of all, though, she was humble and cautious, rare traits in any dragon, let alone an elder wyrm.
She flew at night, in secret, as she worked her way from a distant labyrinth towards the old site of the dragon kingdom.
Her gorgon servants approached towns and villages for her, to inquire about the state of the draconic expedition. Gorgons were rare and unfamiliar in these parts, for Ishveos had never been a draconic dominion even in the days of their great multiversal empire, yet enough strange body altering boons existed that they were only a mild curiosity.
As the old dragon snuck her way towards the territory of the fallen dragons of Ishveos, her grief grew— and so did her power. For all the starving gods of the fallen dragons flocked to her.
It is a testament to the old dragon’s intelligence and magical skill that she made it all the way to the Eye itself without alerting any of the thousand of dragonfoe gods to her presence. It is a testament to her wisdom and patience that she successfully lay low amidst the ruins of the dragon queendom for years before her presence was located.
Or perhaps it was just her grief, the fact that she lay in a single, mid-sized lair for that whole time, hardly stirring herself, eating only when her gorgon servants brought her wild game or purchased livestock.
For the old dragon’s only child had numbered among the draconic expedition.
Who that child was, none knew save her. The child had not been one of the last great Divines, had not been Queen Larkis. One of the undistinguished winged mass, perhaps? Or perhaps one of those who had tried to flee, only to be cut down by their erstwhile allies?
The old dragon never spoke of it.
But she prayed. Oh, did she pray. Every waking moment of her grief, she prayed to the draconic gods born from the ruined expedition. Her gorgons prayed as well, and by the time the old dragonfoes learned of her presence, she was a Divine, and all her gorgons were Saints, at the very least, many Divines themselves.
And when they came for her, they found themselves facing a foe unlike any they had before, a monster even mightier than Larkis had been.
Yet…
The old dragon didn’t slaughter them. Oh, she killed a few, but for the most part she blocked their advances with walls of flame, destroyed their dragon-hunting siege engines, stole their banners and flags with her magic. She ripped through mountainsides without slowing her flight, yet the resulting rockfalls never crushed the armies. And her gorgons, who held true loyalty to the old dragon, stopped the dragonfoes from using the same tactics they had against Queen Larkis, but they only killed when they had too, seemed to play a game of capturing assassins and sending them back unharmed.
Well, mostly unharmed. The assassins tended to return to their allies with some truly embarrassing tattoos.
And finally, the dragonfoes deigned to send an embassy instead of swords.
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There were once dragons on Ishveos.
Now there is one.
She dwells in the ruins of draconic hubris, mourning her lost child.
She keeps the peace across a vast territory, while hundreds of dragonfoe temples lurk at the borders, watching for any sign of betrayal.
The Eye, once forbidden to mortals, has become a thriving city, deep in the Scovan Range. Even Cambrias’ Wall, which long-ago crushed the Gidrans, and countless other foes, sends their embassies with respect— though they still intend to absorb the Last Dragon’s territory into their own, as they do the rest of the moon.
The Last Dragon speaks to few, beyond the descendants of her gorgon servants. She rides to battle when she must, but most of her time is absorbed by one task alone.
Fulfilling the Purposes of each and every dragon god left on Ishveos, that she might let them pass out of existence peacefully.
It is a task that will likely take her centuries, if not millennia.
She has that time, though. Her own magics, along with the countless godgifts she bears, has seemingly brought her true immortality. Or perhaps she already had it— the old dragon, the Last Dragon of Ishveos, does not want to tell.
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There is only one dragon on Ishveos.
And she grieves.
Comments
John Bierce
It's definitely a favorite prose technique of mine! Hope you enjoy The Wrack!
John H
I definitely second patiencehoney, the cadence and mourning reminds me of how you wrote chapter 9 of the wrack (which I'm currently reading)
Catprog
Poor dragon.
Nate El
Darn it! I hope the factions that wants to share more info come to power.
John Bierce
And all the answers are [Redacted]
John Bierce
All fantastic questions-
John Bierce
Thank you so much! And I do a lot of my prose experimentation in my short stories- some of which finds its way into my novels, some doesn't, but it all helps me grow as an author.
Nate El
I love how you engage in such a technical level. The maths behind how creatures who can change sex ( cave fish) or have multiple complex expressions ( slime molds) or engage in pressure driven parthenogenesis were fun to check out at uni. Some creatures have hellishly complex reproduction and the chain can be interrupted numerous ways. There are creatures I know of that require a host of 7 or 8 external factors like other creatures to reproduce. Be curious to figure out the exact moment they became endings . Sooo many orchids who self pollinate and slowly die out because a wasp died ages ago and self cloning musabs etc. Can plants be endings?
Nate El
I love those themes and your handling them. Evolution and types of change is an interesting take on being an endling too. Does The first heavy mutation of a species count too? Perhaps only if it is a unique specimen and not a viable path with any other members. Any other fun edge cases you have in mind?
PatienceHoney
I love the way you told this story. Especially your use of the repetitive language cadence.
John Bierce
I'm glad you spotted that! While the Last Dragon of Ishveos isn't an endling in the most literal sense, she absolutely fills the same thematic role. While I very much want to keep exploring new themes and ideas as an author, keep pushing my own boundaries, there are some themes and symbols I just can't keep coming back to, exploring, reflecting in different mirrors. Endings are absolutely one of those, something I can't help but poke at again and again, iterate and reiterate. There's so much thematic territory to explore with them, so many different takes on the idea possible. Ishi, Last of His Tribe was an absolutely formative text for me as a child, and I could never help but be fascinated by stories of real life endlings- of the last thylacine, the last passenger pigeon. Beyond that, they serve as a brilliant symbol and gateway to a lot of other themes and ideas that are really important to me (what, I'll leave y'all to find out later on), and the endlings are only going to grow more important as the Aetheriad grows.
Nate El
An endling of sorts, to be in such an isolated community, only accompanied by ghosts .
John Bierce
The first short story was actually last month's short story! (Which itself had an extra to make up for the month before.)
Bronkeykong
Not that I’m complaining but 2 short stories in one month! What did we do to deserve this? Most intriguing thing in this story is that it mentioned the dragon queen “fulfilling Purposes”. So gods come into being when someone dies and then they depart once their purpose has been fulfilled. More and more depth keeps getting revealed by these stories. I love this.
GreenUruloki
YES!
Cole Schafer
Thank you so much for the chapter!
Angela Roberts
Well damn, beautifully sad.
Apotheosis
Damn ;-;
