Once, there were dragons that walked the earth.
That age is now long turned to dust, so distant that even its legends are now but dimly recalled. These scattered scraps of truth left behind in yellowed and brittle scrolls that only the very wise can decipher are but dim echoes of the dragon's true majesty, neither as terrifying or magnificent as that which has been. Dragons were more strange and wondrous, and terrible, than any fairy story or legend could ever reveal. This is the way of the world, it seems. True marvels are ignored and ancient glories are replaced with mundane scientific explanations, and all that was magical and marvellous vanishes from the world as if it had never been.
Yet in those ancient times, dragons roamed the land in such numbers that they were a great danger to any man or beast they fell upon. These serpentine creatures were of every conceivable size, shape and disposition. Some were small. Some were huge. Some, like the thick legged rock dragons, were stupid and malicious, no more than saurian brutes. Others were more intelligent and less aggressive. Most were some shade in between. There were a very few who could truly be deemed wise, and a handful that could be said to be wholly evil. I suppose they didn't differ so very much from humans in these respects, and though the years of the dragons were ever greater than those of feeble mortals, man has since striven to be the dragon's equal in all things if only through sheer exuberance.
It is said that man and serpent have long been enemies, but it wasn't always so. There is truth in the tale of the serpent of old that taught mankind forbidden knowledge, and much of that tale is owed to the ancestral memories of the dragons of yore. The dragons were once the servants of the ancient master race called the Elohim, who some say were the gods themselves. The Elohim entrusted a secret with the dragons, a secret they were sworn never to divulge to any of humankind. But, for reasons we may never fully fathom, a certain dragon decided to rebel and reveal this secret to humanity.
This, then, is the tale of that revealing.
I.
In the long forgotten days of which I speak, the legendary empire of Lemuria had spread its vast shadowy wings over the face of the turning earth. Crimson-sailed war-galleons dominated the jungle-lined shores of the Southern seas and the mountainous, icy cliffs of the Eastern coasts. Silver-clad armies had trod the kings of nation after nation beneath iron-booted heels. The blood of princes adorned Mu's gladiator pens. Queens and countesses became the whores and drudges of a conquering race, and their children were made into slaves.
The Lemurians were an ancient and terrible people, steeped in the lore of nefarious magicks formed in those ancient yellow times before chaos itself had been molded into reality. They were held in their control by a group of powerful beings who many had foolishly mistaken for gods, those called the Elohim, and with the aid of fiends from the outer darkness, they assumed lordship over most of the civilized lands of Earth, especially the southern nations.
But that dominance was never entirely complete. In the North, in what were then known as the Savage Lands, new races were forever rising from the shadows of their primeval past. These were vicious lands, and held no mercy for the weak and helpless. The hardest and cruelest of these climates was the ragged and mountainous country men named Arcturia, a place of icy blizzards and wind-ravaged, barren mountain slopes fragmented by immense and fathomless canyons. Whatever meager sustenance was afforded in that naked desolation was fought over tooth and nail by its few forlorn inhabitants. Warfare was bloody and merciless, as wars generally are when fought over such non-lofty principles such as mere life and existence. The land was hard and unforgiving. The Arcturians hadn't yet developed the art of forging metal, but this in no manner served to curb their fierceness. They had taken to slaying each other more brutally with clubs and spears, or even their bare hands when nothing else was available. And they were efficient. Born and bred in a land of death, they became the ultimate killers.
Few lived a long life in that land of icy hell, and fewer still died of natural causes. In addition to the inherent dangers of the climate, the terrain, and death at the hands of their fellow man, the Arcturians often had to deal with far worse terrors. The mountains that bordered Arcturia were part of the main hunting ground of the terrible northern dragons. These great serpents were the bane of the mountain tribes. Both livestock and fully-grown warriors had been known to vanish down their hungry gullets and entire villages had been laid to waste in a single fiery breath.
Yet, life will ever persevere and its force will not be denied, no matter how dire the adversity, no matter how grim the circumstances. Thus it came to pass that one day a child was discovered in the midst of a fierce and bloody battle. He had been christened with the blood of the fallen, and though none knew his true origin, this was seen to be a good omen, and he was adopted by the tribe and hailed as a true child of their race.
The child's life became no gentler or easier for him in the years that followed. He was not like the rest of his tribe, and this was evident even in his physical appearance. He was lean and wiry, where the Arcturans tended to be thick boned and stocky. His hair was dark brown and wildly curled and tangled, where they were mostly light haired. These differences set him apart from the rest of the youths in his tribe so that he was often ridiculed, so he made no attempts to make friends amongst them.
When he was nine, a pack of starving wolves attacked the camp and dragged him and several other children into the forest. He killed three with his bare hands, but not before one of the ravening beasts, a monstrous creature, dragged another child into the forest and devoured him. He was severely wounded, but he did not cry out when the clan healer, a wizened frog of a man named Isiwolk, cauterized the wound with a flaming brand from the fire. He spoke not a word in those weeks after this calamity, but when he was fully healed, he vanished into the fury of a blizzard and was not seen for three days. All feared him dead, and the old grey haired woman who had nurtured and cared for him since he was a babe put on her mourning cloak and went into lamentation.
Then, from the midst of the chaos of the swirling storm, he reappeared. In his hands he bore the head and pelt of a great grey wolf. It was this feat that earned him his warrior's name, Mantegor, or "Master of the Wolf" in the tongue of the Arcturans. His foster mother fashioned him a cloak and hood from the pelt of the fallen beast, and this is the garment he wore for many years after.
From that moment on, he was a grimmer man, and brooded often in the shadows, wrapped in the dark shroud of his wolf cloak. He was greatly respected by the warriors of his tribe for his battle prowess, but he did not seek out nor abide their company. He didn't drink with them or hunt with them. Instead, he wandered alone thru the bitterly cold, mist-shrouded canyons, crossing steep narrow crested ridges under ebony star flecked sky fields. He often discovered himself atop immense and perilous vistas of stone where he stood paralyzed for hours while the icy northern winds howled about him. These long journeys left their marks on him. The midnight shadows became his domain. He grew gaunt and sinewy, as strong as a mountain lion. Fey and dangerous, he was prone to fits of ferocious and brutal anger, too grim even for one of his own tribe. Men and women both avoided him, naming him accursed and moon-mad. But he paid them no mind. He spoke seldom, and then only to his adopted mother and to one other, the old man Shingar, whose days as a warrior had long ago come to an end.
It was Shingar who had first trained Mantegor in the arts of battle. From Shingar he'd learned the way of the knife, the axe, the staff, the club and the spear. He had practiced these arts with an intensity that was surprising even for one of his savage race. His skills in battle were severely tested time and again by the constant incidents of inter tribal warfare which never ceased in that brutal land. In countless engagements, Mantegor slew warriors of greater size and experience than himself. He became a crimson fury on the battlefield, nearly as perilous to friend as he was to foe. Utter carnage followed in his path, and the widows of his enemies cried countless tears.
Sometimes, in the silence of the winter nights, when the loneliness of the steppes became too much even for him, he would sit with Shingar by the fire, staring into the flickering flames. As the spectral curtain of the aurora borealis danced over the naked crests of the icy ridge of Mount Kama to the North, while the wind howled tortuously through the narrows of the winding canyons, Mantegor, shrouded in his dark wolf''s cloak, listened to the old man spin tales of his journeys to the distant Bright Lands of the South and their colorful, fantastic peoples. He spoke of the great shining cities that arose shimmering above the crystalline waters of the southern oceans. He spoke of endless summers, silver-blue rivers, jade leaved trees laden with multicolored fruits, and women more beautiful than the dawn.
"The city of Orquaz on the southern peninsula, which I once visited as a sailor," Shingar said, "Was all bright and golden. Its slender towers were blinding in the sun and glittered like hoarfrost under the light of the stars. Their image is captured in the waters of the Moon-mere Bay, whose surface is as smooth as a wind-swept glacier. There I saw tawny-fleshed, scantily clad women serving wine to dark, armor clad warriors on the docks. I longed to join them, but I had no coin to pay for the wine......"
"Enough!" cried out Mantegor at last, "I've heard this tale too many times. "Shingar, I would know once and for all.........are there no ships that still sail to the Bright Lands?"
The old man paused a moment, his hand scratching at his grizzled chin.
"I know not," he admitted at last. "I've heard tales that the ships no longer dock at Manatruus where I sailed from in my youth. There are legends of a trail leading south thru the Mountains of the Red Moon, but that path is fraught with countless dangers. And of course there are dragons, which are already perilous enough. Besides, what would it avail an uncultured, penniless youth like you to reach the Bright Lands? You've naught but a wolf-pelt and a stone axe to your name! No gold or silver or precious gems are yours, nor any other thing that men value."
Mantegor pulled at the tangled hairs of his young beard and stared off past the glow of the flickering fire.
