The Dragon and the Skall

It had been several peaceful days since our run-in with the floating island of the Sorcerers of the Endarkened Sun and their nasty Veil-creatures. The only ships we saw off in the distance seemed the normal trade sort and paid us no mind.

The northern seas of Vanya were starting to get crowded with icebergs, though, and motes of steam billowed out of your mouth when you spoke into the cold air. I was fairly accustomed to the cold. Spending most of my life in the colder climate of the largest mountain city in all of the known-world had served to prepare me for the colder weather of the seas near Khelek. Some of my other friends were no so-accustomed to the chill in the air, however.

Varis and Praxis spent more of their time below deck, hiding from the weather. Gar still preferred the open air to the stuffy cabins after spending too much time underground, but I could tell the cold was getting to him. The further north we traveled, the more of his bed linens ended up draped around him.

I thought about asking for Gar's help in my revenge on Varis, but I wasn't sure whether or not he would just go blabbing my plans to Varis. The Admiral's ideas all involved removing "unnecessary" parts for Varis's body. Quite disturbing, if you ask me. I would make it a point to never to get on the Admiral's bad side. He was serious when it came to his revenge.

Anyhow, almost a week had passed. It was one of those rare moments when everyone was above deck. I was standing by the railing, looking out over the water. There came a flutter from above that sounded different from wind in the sails. I looked up to see a white creature hovering over the ship. A moment later, great wings flapped and I heard the wind rush with their force. A dragon!

I had only read of them before—the things of legends. Growing up, I had believed every word I read in books. It was my sister, Camelia, who told me that my stories were just made up. Fanciful dreams of dreamers, and no more. I still remember her smug face when she told me, "dragons aren't real, stupid."

"Well, who is the stupid one now, Cami?"

"What're sayin', lass?" The Admiral gave me a wary look.

I held a finger up to my mouth, jabbed a thumb toward Varis, and then pointed upward toward where the dragon still hovered above the ship.

"Dragon," the Admiral muttered, despite my warning. Varis seemed to wake up and scrambled to his feet, nearly tripping on his cloak that he had wrapped tightly about him.

I rolled my eyes and waited for the inevitable, "Let's shoot it," that I knew was coming from the kill-happy Varis. Instead he suggested we follow it. Like a caravel could keep pace with a dragon. Sheesh.

The Admiral ordered us to snuff out all lights and keep low and quiet. I hunkered down and watched in wonder as the dragon soared through the air, it's skin white and glowing in the dusky light. I imagined it was made of snow and ice come to life. It's wings, sheets of iridescent ice and it's spine and talons made of icicles.

It wasn't long before the dragon sailed ahead of us and we lost sight of it on the horizon. I went to sleep that night and dreamt of dragons.

In the morning, the sea had crowded with icebergs. Once the new day's mist had dissipated, the lookout spotted a ship ahead, anchored to an icy shore. We decided that we would try to get close enough to see the name on the ship, hoping that it might be a known slaver ship with a bounty.

On the shore, the lookout spotted several men jumping in dinghies and hastily returning to their ship. Others seemed to flee toward the rocky outcroppings away from shore. Before we could get close enough to make out the letters on the bow of the ship, it was already retreating from the shore to the west, and quickly. The schooner was two classes larger than our Fool's Errant, lightly armed and built for speed.

It broke through ice drifts with ease, while our ship struggled to maneuver around the larger pieces. We would never catch her. Instead, we decided to continue on to the shore and see if we could discover the crew's purpose for visiting this frozen landscape.

As we came closer to shore, we could make out several huts with a few fires still burning. We decided to put down anchor off shore and take a dingy to the icy banks. While my friends and I explored the huts, the crew would stay ready and waiting in case the schooner decided to return for an ambush.

Once on shore, the snow crunched under our feet. I used my magick to extend my hearing into each tent before we entered. In most of the tents, there was no sound except the wind lifting the fabric walls. In others, there were scuffling noises.

After long moments of listening in on a tent with shuffling noises, I heard a muffled moan. It sounded human, but I wasn't sure if the human it came from was still alive. In our experience, shuffling and moaning meant walking dead men. Praxis poked his head in the tent without hesitation.

"Captives," he announced. I rushed inside the tent and was taken aback by the creatures I saw. They were bound and beaten and looked at me with wary, yellow eyes. Their skin was scaled like a dragon, but their limbs were long and spindly like a human or elf. They were Skall. Another legend that proved to be more than a story.

I tried to talk to them, but they clearly couldn't understand me and I couldn't understand them. The first one I freed, a male I gathered, stepped back from me and hastily began to free the others. Once the others were free, they shouted to each other in their strange language and quickly darted around to set fire to the rest of the uninhabited huts. We hadn't the time to search them all before they were set ablaze. There was no way to halt the Skalls' destruction of what may be some good information on what business the people from the ship were about. An educated guess said slavery, but it would have been nice to have more details.

I offered some rations to the Skall and they soon ran off to the northeast. Rather than follow them, we decided to set out after the humans who hadn't left with the schooner. Tracks led in various directions, so we picked one at random and started following their path while we still had light. The ground began to rise and dip as small hills turned into mountains. There were hidden dangers beneath the snow—slick sheets of ice and deep, hidden crevasses. We narrowly missed one such crevasse. By the skidding of the tracks in front of us, it appeared the people we were tracking weren't so lucky. The skidding tracks and disturbed snow at the mouth of the crevasse told us their decent wasn't planned. So the question was, what did we do now? It was too late to head back to the shore and chose another path to follow.

Did we return to the ship for the night and return to search in the morning? Did we stay in the only still-intact hut for the evening and head back to Fool's Errant and set out for open waters?

As we were arguing, like we usually do, Gar hauled off toward the hut, slung his pack off his back and announced that he was settling in for the night. That pretty much made the decision for us. I felt awful bad for leaving Gar behind when we went ashore at Doveport, and we really couldn't leave him alone on this frozen bank.

I had, unfortunately, left my bedroll aboard Fool's Errant. It didn't take too much begging for Praxis to share his restful bedroll with me. I think he was really just cold and didn't want to admit it. He jokingly mentioned some "survivalist tip" where sleeping naked would make you warmer. A lot of sense that made! Pah!

Gar was snoring soundly before we had a chance to pick watch shifts. So, he would get the worst watch: second watch. The watch where you were woken up just as you drifted off into that nice, deep sleep. Varis would take first watch, Praxis third, and myself last. As it turned out, second watch proved to be the worst watch for more than one reason.

Gar woke us up with a panicked yelp of, "dragon!" When I peered out of the tent, I saw him hiding behind a wooden totem about thirty paces away. I readied an arrow and hunkered down, hoping the dragon would simply go away.

We had no such luck, ... probably because the boys started attacking it!

I had no other choice but to try to help them out. I let an arrow loose on my new bow, but it missed. I guess that's the kind of thing you need to practice before you really need it, but who has time for that? I put my bow away and inched closer to my friends in case they needed my help tending to their wounds. Gar seemed to be controlling the dragon somehow, pinning it down and stopping it from flying away.

I thought we wanted it to fly away. Fly away and leave us alone! I knew we should have slept on the boat! Here we were on the dragon's turf, and he didn't seem to like it. Either that, or we just looked appetizing, though there was not really much meat on any of us.

Anyhow, Gar had the dragon pinned down for Varis and Praxis to hit, and they sure did hit. I helped them land a blow or two, but mainly focused on keeping my friends upright—yes, even Varis. It would be too cruel to let him die. It might be different if I knew I could bring him back to life like Snake Sister, but I didn't have that kind of power. If he died now, he would just be dead-dead. I didn't want him dead-dead, or even mostly-dead, so I did my best to keep him alive.

That wasn't too difficult to do, because the dragon flew off mid-fight. We must have done something to scare him off. I didn't spend too much time questioning what that might be and went back to sleep until my shift. I got Praxis's bedroll to myself for a few hours of glorious uninterrupted dozing.

Dawn had already come by the time Praxis came and woke me up. I decided to go ahead and fix a meal for myself and my friends. The smell of food seemed to coax more than just my comrades from their beds. It coaxed my new friends out of hiding, too. The Skall had returned and seemed much more relaxed than the last time we had encountered them. We tried to communicate with them through pictures drawn with sticks on the snow. Being scaled like a dragon, we hoped that they might know more about the one that attacked us.

Our picture must have done some good because they beckoned us to follow them. Without hesitation, we let them lead us further inland. They were careful to keep us from sliding down icy embankments and falling into those large, hidden crevasses. Eventually, we came to a mouth of a cave. Warmer air poured out of the cave and spurred our curiosity for what lay inside.

The interior of the cave opened into several natural caverns that led this way and that. More Skall filled each nook and cranny, peering out at us with their strange, amber eyes. We were led to a natural room-like structure at the center of the complex.

The Skall inside wore bones laced together to make a morbid mantel. His strange, scaly skin was covered with tattoos or paint—I couldn't tell which. He chanted, moving his body to the cadence of his words until suddenly, we could understand what he was saying!

Not only that, but he could understand us, too! They all could, and we all could. It was such a relief to be able to communicate with them. I had so many questions to ask, but got the feeling that this wasn't the right time. Something about this room and the Skall before us told me that he was the person to ask the questions, not the other way around. It wasn't an oppressive presence, like Adona, but more that you felt this Skall deserved your respect.

The group who had led us here explained that they had seen our scuffle with the dragon in the middle of the night. They were impressed with how well we handled ourselves. The dragon had been plaguing their people of late, and with it came other cold creatures—more dead things that hunted the living. Only their description was different than what we saw on the island-that-wasn't-Laara'Tal.

The elder Skall told us a brief history of their people. The story passed down generation to generation was that there was a wizard who lived here among the dragons. He built a tower up high in the mountains so he could study the great beasts. He followed a dragon back to it's lair and cast a spell to put it in a deep sleep. He then tried to harness it's immense power for his own means. His spells went arry, and instead he became the first Skall—A humanoid creature with lizard-like eyes and scaled skin. Ashamed, the wizard locked himself in his own tower, and by all acounts, went mad.

It was years later when a ship happened to wreck upon the icy shores. Seeing the wizard's tower as the only sign of habitation, they followed it like a beacon. They found the wizard, whom they assumed was sleeping, in his bed. When a man tried to shake the wizard awake, he felt the hard texture of his cold, scaly skin. As the sailor watched in horror, his own skin took on the same scaly appearance, and he ran from the room, pushing all of his comrades out of his way.

Any human who touched the scaly skin of a dead Skall would himself turn into a scaly-skinned human. The Skall were unable to mate until a human female transitioned.

The recent slavers that visited the island were brutal. We didn't need the Skall's account to tell us that. They left dead and beaten Skall on the snowy bank. They also left with more than one newly-turned-Skall crew member.

The group of Skall who led us to the cavern explained that this was why they hastily burned the remainder of their dead on the shore. They didn't want us to turn into Skall like them. Skall born to this life didn't see their appearance as a curse, but those who were turned usually didn't take well to the change.

What a fantastic story, though I had to question how much of it was true and how much had been made up to explain away something they didn't have an answer for. I didn't remember seeing a wizard's tower anywhere. Then again, I hadn't really looked for one either.

The answer to my question came in the form of a request. They wanted us to kill the dragon for them, and to strike while it was wounded. They knew where it's lair was, below the ruined wizard's tower, and were prepared to show us the way as soon as we were ready to depart.

Eager for the next fight, the boys were ready to leave immediately. Surprise, surprise. I couldn't argue with striking the beast before his wounds had a chance to heal, though. Legendary creature or not, he was hunting and killing my new friends. He would have to be stopped, for their sakes.

A Skall led us to the dragon's lair, beneath the base of the crumbling wizard's tower. Our guide left us at the mouth of the cave and wished us luck.

Luck did seem to be on our side. Well, luck and Gar. We quickly dealt with two icy, creatures gaurding the dragon at the mouth of it's lair. Gar managed to pin down the dragon again and made it easier for everyone to attack, all except for me. I finally gave up and decided to just help my friends hit the dragon harder rather than try to hurt him myself. The boys didn't need my help, other than Varis who almost died ... again. A 'thank you for saving my life,' would have been nice. It's like he just expects me to tend to his wounds, like it's my job or something. Hoity toity elves.

The boys killed the dragon and Varis immediately searched through his hoard before the poor beast had stopped twitching. It seemed the dragon and Varis were kindred spirits, hoarding shiny things all to themselves. The dragon had a large cache of gold and silver coins, gems, and a few shining magick items. I got a nice magickal pearl and a no-maintenance hound I could summon whenever I was lonely. I hoped he wasn't green-tinged, or else I might have a hard time telling the difference between my hound and Gar when he wild-shaped.

~Zaly

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