We Who Defy Dragons

I am told I was the ninth body pulled from the fire that consumed my village. Nine, that's my name. My identity. 

I am told I was lucky to survive the destruction of my city. Those words are all I have to go off. I was a baby, after all. I have no memory of the day dragons appeared on the horizon. The day my parents and neighbors were helpless to defend themselves. The day an entire city was wiped from existence with the single contraction of a dragon's lungs.

Well, an entire city, minus the seventeen that managed to survive, of which I am number nine. 

Of the seventeen who lived to see another day, ten have died. Most passed as burn wounds poisoned their blood. Once infection spread, their fever grew as hot as the fire responsible for their wounds. Others made the fatal mistake of questioning the Dragon Lords, the reigning oligarchy merciful enough to let us serve in place of hanging for our villages' rebellion. I don't know much about the rebellion. It's outlawed to speak of, and those old enough to hold sympathy for the rebellion have since been hunted and killed.

I spend my days swinging a pickaxe at dragon stool, excavating it for venom ore. Knuckle Scrapers, we're called. Our days are dedicated to enriching the Commonwealth with an essential service—making sure their high never comes down.

I set my pickaxe aside and get down on my knees, scraping with my fingernails at the glowing crimson ore. Commonly called venom, this ore is a bizarre byproduct of the ordinary dragon's gastric tract. After extraction, it will be rendered down by alchemists into its purest concentration and supplied to Draconians for a pretty penny. From there, Draconians will do with venom what they please, though most snort its powder for its psychedelic visions. 

The economy will bloom from my endeavors, and I will toil in poverty so others may enjoy the prosperity of this great Commonwealth. Still, I'm told I've been given a great honor to be a Knuckle Scraper. To spend my days cleaning dragon enclosures of dung may seem overtly oppressive, but Draconians worship these oversized lizards like gods, and therefore regard me as a facilitator of god's byproduct. I am told I'm blessed to spend my days this close to the gods, but for some reason I don't feel lucky to be in this line of work.

It's not like I was given much of an option.

I am a fugitive of a dead war. 

My grown body still bears the burns it incurred as a baby. It's called the Kiss of the Dragon—the marks a survivor carries after withstanding dragon fire. My entire back is covered with the Kiss of the Dragon, its tough and calloused surface filled with twisting gnarls from its failure to heal properly. 

I am told my childish body was pulled off my brother when they found me in the wreckage. Thirteen was the only survivor old enough to vaguely remember the day dragons came for us. She said when they found me my back was burned to a crisp, so much so that the wood of our hut was fused with my flesh and embers bled from my spine. I am not old enough to remember my sacrifice, but in nightmares I often recall my brother's shrill cries calling through the darkness.

Us numbered survivors are all marked with the Kiss of the Dragon, which makes us a holy people. The title is little more than honorific. It gives us no societal prestige, no economic gain, and no elevated regard in the eyes of the Commonwealth. I shovel dragon shit for a living, and that is all I have to say about the privileges my Kiss of the Dragon has given me. 

"You find something Nine?" Scraggs calls, his groveling voice instantly provoking anger inside me. 

"Got a hit on ore," I reply, annoyed by his constant micromanagement. Scraggs is a Draconian Prefect, a glorified position for an unworthy man. It's what nobles do when they're good for little more than giving senseless orders to people already compelled to obey. He is a lame man born with a hunchback and one leg shorter than the other. I make fun of his limp when his back is turned and smile at it when he faces me. He is an ugly, ugly man. Without his birth status or familial reputation, he wouldn't have credence in thinking he's better than me. 

"Chip it all out then," he commands, needlessly wasting words to make himself feel in charge of the situation. It's like telling a monkey to peel a banana. I'm already halfway done with the ore's removal by the time he demands it. 

Dragon dung is hard as rock and large as a boulder. It can take days for us Knuckle Scrapers to break it down properly, and we are often on the dragon's time. We can only enter their enclosures when their riders take them out for scouting and pillaging. They are carnivorous beasts, after all, and if we ever got caught in their enclosure at the same time one was present, we would be a mouse in a house of cats. 

Only the Dragon Lords have the ability to control these monsters, and the Dragon Lords have had a monopoly on these demons for thousands of years, passing down their hatchlings to their descendants generation after generation.

Dragons are temperamental beasts and require their own, separate habitats. The Commonwealth has dedicated its vast wealth to erecting massive, domed sanctuaries for them. Each dragon gets their own enclosure to provide sufficient space—in order to prevent territorial battles. 

I have been assigned to Exodus's enclosure, and his sanctuary is all I've known in this life. Exodus is still young by dragon standards and requires extra terrain for development. Because of this, my assigned sanctuary is miles long with mountainous terrain for Exodus to practice climbing and gliding in his downtime. 

Exodus is still growing, and to grow, he has to eat. This makes my job a particularly laborious one, causing me to venture miles at a time to excavate his stool for venom. When Exodus is here, I watch him from the Observatory to mark his droppings on my map. It's real shitty work, pun intended. All the praise and honorifics in the world cannot make me feel dignified in the things I waste my life doing, though I receive no praise or honorifics at all, which makes it that much worse. 

My workload is difficult today. Exodus will be out with his rider until midday and I have a half dozen droppings to excavate, each one spread miles from the other. The stone I chisel now is my third since the sun rose and I only have two hours until noon arrives. Scraggs sits atop his horse and dozes off as he watches me extract the venom ore. Bit by bit, I place it in the cart his horse drags behind it. My fingers and knuckles bleed profusely, my scabs ripped open from years of scraping rocks for gemstone. 

I place a chunk of venom in the cart and return to my pickaxe, swinging furiously despite protest from my muscles. 

If there is any benefit from this line of work it's the impact it's had on my body. I know of no knights or lords who can attain this level of muscle from sparring alone. You don't build this kind of stamina from a life of leisure. 

When I'm not mining, I'm running beside Scragg and his horse to the next excavation site. When I'm not running, I'm doing a job that requires a crew team, all by myself. After all, the only people deplorable enough to accept a job like this are people taken captive as a price of war. For the rest of my life I'll pay for the sins of my village, though I'll never know what those sins are. 

It takes another half hour of swinging my pickaxe before I've broken this dung down and only a pile of rubble remains. I've hit several decent scores of venom ore and Scraggs's cart is nearly full. After our next location he'll need to return to the Observatory and trade in this cart for a new one, then meet me at the next location I've marked on his map. 

"Alright then, onward and upward ya scalawag. Only an hour and a half until Exodus returns. Can probably get two more done before we call it a day," Scraggs grovels, slapping his reigns into his horse's side. The horse breaks into a trot reluctantly, the cargo of ore rattling behind it. The terrain in this enclosure is difficult to drag a cart through. It is rocky and uneven, so though I have the burden of running, it takes Scraggs twice as long to get to the same destination. I retrieve my crumpled map from my pocket and look for our next stop. It is a little over a mile from here and a total of three from the Observatory. If only there was some way to train Exodus to use the bathroom in the same spot every time, then my life would be made. 

I tighten my ventilator and dab at the sweat on my brow. The temperature required to keep a dragon happy is much warmer than what causes me joy. The Draconian Engineers monitor these sanctuaries scrupulously and are responsible for their erection. Without their genius minds and kinetic powers, there would be no way to contain beasts this large. 

Although the walled perimeter of this dome is made from thick stone, the dome itself is a projection cast from Engineer spells. Made from pure energy, the dome is able to keep any matter from passing through its membrane. But they do more than safeguard our gods; these kinetic barriers thermoregulate atmospheres that sustain a dragon's life. A dragon cannot exist in the wild without arid, merciless heat. Few environments can provide that for these creatures, so the Engineers constructed their own. 

Steam releases from my ventilator. It may protect me from the toxic fumes emitted from dragon excrement, but it sure as hell is uncomfortable. Its straps chafe the scars along the back of my head. Kiss of the Dragon my ass. My flesh will forever be maimed from what these demons did to me. 

I look up at the harsh, artificial sun with squinted eyes. It's winter outside this dome—bone splitting cold. But this desert of barren rock will never—

"Scraggs," I call out, pulled from my internal monologue. "What is that?" I point to the horizon as a section of the dome opens, revealing a plume of smoke amidst falling snow.

Scraggs follows my finger as his ventilator expels a puff of steam. He raises a hand to block out the light and squints his eyes. "Heaven's Hydra," he exclaims under his breath, his ventilator distorting his voice. The smoke expands as alarms from the Observatory go off. Alarms that warn too little too late. Scraggs stutters, "Druh...Dra…Dragon!"

Scraggs is a coward through and through. I have never seen him move this fast in all the years I've known him. I hear him pull the key ring that detaches his cart. The cart's handles hit the rocky ground and twist on its unevenness, spilling the ore I've spent hours collecting. "Onward Bayard!" The horse senses Scragg's panic and feels the release of the cart's pressure. Bayard's hooves kick up a cloud of rocky dust as he takes off, leaving me behind as venom ore topples toward my feet. 

I don't yell or protest for Scraggs to stop and take me with him. Why would I? He knows I would only slow Bayard down if we rode double, and me being here means Exodus will have a distraction to allow for his escape.

I look back at the sky and watch as Exodus plummets to the ground out of control. A guttural roar of pain escapes his agonizing throat. Something is wrong. Very wrong. I've watched Exodus fly more times than I can count. This is not what he has ever looked like upon returning. And what's worse, his rider, Dragon Lord Commodus, is missing. Dragons never return unaccompanied, and they never return before their expected time.

I look at the sun dial on my wrist. Exodus was to return at noon. He is an hour and a half early—with no rider—and spiraling out of the sky uncontrollably. This is all wrong. This is all very wrong.

There isn't time for me to make a run for it. The Observatory is miles away. I am a sitting duck, easy prey for Exodus to feed on upon his arrival. I didn't expect my life to end this way. Seventeen people managed to survive my village's pyre. Seventeen survived, but thousands died. Of those seventeen, I am number Nine. Nine, that's my name. My identity. Of the seventeen who lived to see another day from my village's pyre, ten have died. I will be number eleven after today.

No one will remember me.

No one will mourn me.

I won't be buried, because Exodus's flames will leave nothing but ash behind.

Or maybe, just maybe, if Exodus eats me, the Knuckle Scraper they replace me with will find my bones in tomorrow's dung.

I was brought into this world with the Kiss of the Dragon, but whatever luck enabled me to survive dragon fire once will not avail itself to me today. There isn't enough luck in this world to survive dragon fire twice. I drop my pickaxe and map, then unfasten my ventilator. If I'm to die, I want to breathe fresh air one last time. The air in this enclosure is artificial, but it will have to do.

I don't remember what burning as a child felt like, but all I can hope for is that it's a peaceful transition to the afterlife. Exodus curdles my blood with his scream as he crash lands atop a distant mountain. The rock crumbles beneath him as he claws to slow his descent. It's only a matter of time now. He is a god, and I now stand upon an altar ready to offer myself as a sacrifice.