Here Be Dragons: Book 1 of the Emergence Series

Pryce had gotten his lantern so that the torch didn’t suffocate the two of them, and he sat facing Fathom as the dragon spoke of his past.

“I hatched 52 years ago, my father and mother are very strong dragons,” Fathom began, gesturing at some dusty looking shards of eggshell. “Dragons leave parents when they are ten years old, and that is what I did. I was strong and fast, so I won many fights,” he said, looking nostalgically at the glittering trophies embedded into the wall as he recalled his youth. “I tell you this earlier, males fight males, females fight females, strongest two dragons can become mates.”

“What if…they don’t like each other?” Pryce asked, bemused by this alien method of courting.

“Mates do not need to like each other,” Fathom said, equally confused. “Mates only need to make egg, protect hatchling.”

It sounded more like a business transaction than a romantic affair, which Pryce supposed made sense when compared to the total lifespan of a dragon.

“Sometimes mates like each other, stay together after hatchling is adult,” Fathom added, seeing Pryce’s confusion. “They become…friends?” Fathom said uncertainly.

“Usually, humans have some or many friends, but only one ‘mate’,” Pryce explained.

“Strange,” Fathoms said, tossing his head, though he had to take care not to hit the ceiling as he did so. “I was speaking, you stop me,” he chided lightly.

“Sorry, sorry, I’ll let you speak.”

“I was 31 years old when I beat the other males in my province, this is very young for a dragon to have an egg,” he said pridefully, though without much of his usual bluster. “I become mates with a dragon, his name is Ahnngyr-ǂ.” Fathom gestured to some shed scales embedded into the wall, surrounding an iridescent ammonite fossil; it seemed the treasures were arranged in chronological order. If one were entering the chamber, then it would start on the left with his eggshell and progress clockwise to this fossil at around 3 o’clock.

“His?” Pryce asked, then realized he had never taught Fathom gender-related pronouns. Both Pryce and Fathom were male, so the topic had simply never arose. “Oh, for male you say he, him, his, for female you say she, her, hers.”

“English is so complicated,” Fathom grumbled. “What name do you want to give…her? H…she was blue, like me.”

“Yes, that’s right, and how about…Abyss?” Pryce suggested.

“What does ‘Abyss’ mean?” Fathom asked severely, squinting his eyes. Apparently, he did not trust Pryce’s naming sense.

“Abyss means deep ocean, or deep hole in ocean,” Pryce said, hoping it would be suitable.

“This…is a good name,” Fathom said, low and quiet. “We have egg 21 years ago, hatchling hatch 20 years ago, her name is Ahnoumh-ǂ.”

Fathom looked expectantly at Pryce, who struggled to find a name for the dragon’s hatchling. “What color is she?”

“She is blue, like me and Abyss.”

Pryce nodded; it made sense that two blue dragons would know the trick to getting lots of blue-pigmented prey for their offspring. He’d name the hatchling’s parents Fathom and Abyss, and to fathom an abyss was to…actually, Pryce didn’t think there was a word for understanding the impossible. To ‘divine’ something was the closest word he could think of, but he wasn’t going to name a dragon that. But another word for divine was…

“How about Celeste?” Pryce asked. “Celeste means sky, or sky-like.”

“…Yes, this name is good,” Fathom nodded in approval.

“Is your hatchling’s name the first half of Abyss’s dragon name and the second half of your dragon name?”

“Yes,” Fathom grumbled, “We fight to see which of us give first half of our name. She win.”

“You fought? How did you fight?” Pryce asked, unsure if this was a physical fight or some kind of competition.

“We see who can hunt and bring back bigger prey in one hour,” Fathom said, still grumbling but sounding a bit happier at the memory. “I hunt a not-adult black tortoise, she hunt a not-adult …thing I draw with long arms.”

“Oh, that. I will call it a ‘Bull’ for now, I maybe change the name when I see it.”

“She hunt a big bull,” Fathom huffed. “She can not carry big bull, so she used her claws to carve bull, make it lighter. I did not think of that.”

“She sounds smart,” Pryce said, smiling.

“Yes,” Fathom sighed. “One year I go hunting in a storm, but…wind was very strong, I fall,” the dragon said, shamefully presenting his left wing to Pryce.

A dragon’s wings consisted of a membrane stretched between four bones that were approximately analogous in structure to human fingers, but only now did Pryce realize he had not seen Fathom’s left wing up close before, and that was why he had never noticed that the phalange of Fathom’s index ‘finger’ was somewhat bent; not by much, but it seemed like it might cause some issues with flight.

“…This was a broken bone, broken bone that did not heal right is called a ‘malunion’,” Pryce said, grimacing in sympathy. “How much does it change your flying?”

“I fly good, but not very good like before,” Fathom said, voice low and subdued. Then he perked up and asked with voice full of hope, “You are healer, you can heal this?”

“No, no,” Pryce hurriedly denied. “I heal humans, human body very different from dragon body. I know very little about dragons, if I try to heal you, I probably hurt your wing more.”

Fathom’s excited spines slowly lowered along with his head as he sighed, though he looked like he wanted to argue the point. Pryce felt bad about dashing his hopes so badly, but it was best to be truthful. He might have some chance of helping him in the future, but that was years of study later, if at all.

“So, what happened after you broke your wing?” Pryce asked, prompting Fathom to continue.

“…One year after I broke my wing, a dragon come to fight me. Abyss tell me to not fight, but…after I break wing, I can not fly for more than one hundred days. When dragon come to fight me, I want to…know I can fight. So, I fight.”

“To show you are right, or to show that you can do something is to prove yourself,” Pryce said, nodding sympathetically.

Fathom closed his eyes in pain, and with a great effort said, “I lose.”

“But…dragons don’t kill each other?” Pryce asked, unsure of why losing was that big of a deal.

“No, but Abyss help me. She stop fight,” Fathom said, as if admitting some great sin. “Mates fight together, this is normal, but if a dragon need help then this is very bad. I fail my…’responsibility’.”

They both sat in silence for several moments, Fathom sulking and Pryce unsure of what to say.

“But you tried your best, right?” Pryce asked into the silence.

Fathom flattened his spines. “No, if I tried my best then I not fly in storm, break wing.”

“You made a mistake, all people do that,” Pryce tried, but the dragon only looked down and did not meet his gaze.

“Abyss die.”

“…how did she die?” Pryce asked gently. He wasn’t shocked; he had only seen one sleeping space, so he knew Abyss had to have either died or left, but he had hoped it was the latter.

“When Abyss stop fight, she get small wound. I had more wounds, bigger wounds, but…she get sick. She die thirty-eight days after she stop fight.”

Pryce grimaced in sympathy. Of course, dragons weren’t immune to infection, but they seemed so full of vitality that it was difficult to visualize a dragon brought low by disease.

“That was probably infection,” He said, pausing as he wondered if he should tell Fathom that was what antibiotics cured.

“It is very very bad for infection to kill dragon. Dragons die in big fights, or storms, or when hunting dangerous animals, but infection is…not good death,” Fathom finished awkwardly, but Pryce understood the gist of it; dragons were supposed to die with ‘honor’, and not on their metaphorical sickbed. “You…can heal infection?” Fathom asked, his voice oddly monotone.

“Most infections…yes,” Pryce said carefully. “That is what antibiotic do. This is why I make antibiotic.”

“…I understand,” Fathom said, bobbing his head solemnly. “After Abyss die, my territory too big for one dragon and hatchling. Other dragons fight me, my territory become smaller.” He hung his head in shame, and said, “I tell Celeste to leave when she was 6 years old, I can not protect her. After this, I leave my home, fly here, make new home.” His turned his head to look at the wall behind him, and Pryce had to move to see the much smaller scales embedded into the wall there.

“Where…is Celeste now?” Pryce asked cautiously.

Fathom shifted his wings sluggishly, glancing at another piece of eggshell on the back wall of the cave. “I hear where her territory is, but she is 20 years old, does not need me now.”

“Maybe you should try to talk to her someday,” Pryce said. “Some human children do not talk to their parents, but years later they wish they did. Wish is a little like want.”

“Humans are not dragons,” Fathom said skeptically, and Pryce could only shrug; he wasn’t the expert on draconic culture here.

“Still, we are not very different. You should try talking to her later,” Pryce encouraged.

Fathom rumbled as he considered this, though he did not respond.

“And here are my things,” Pryce said, glancing at the mirror, coins, and other trinkets he had given Fathom. Even a pig skull was there, its flesh meticulously cleaned off from the bone. These objects were placed on a piece of wood and had not been placed with as much care as the others, probably because Fathom had not had the time to do so. “You have wall here for more things in the future?” Pryce asked, pointing at the empty span of wall from 9 to 12 o’clock.

Fathom made an inconclusive noise, then said, “Some parts of wall is for more things, small part is…I do not know how to say this,” the dragon grumbled in frustration.

“When something does not having something in or on it, it is called ‘empty’. Do dragons keep small part of wall empty because they wish to get more things? Or because dragons wish to live more years?” Pryce asked, suspecting it was something like a superstition.

“…that is close,” Fathom said, tilting his head back and forth.

“Well, that’s interesting. What’s your favorite treasure here? The thing you like most?” Pryce asked, thinking it would be his eggshell, or the ammonite, or his daughter’s eggshell.

Fathom’s spines flattened slightly, and his eyes darted around the room. “Things are all different, but I like these most,” he rumbled, gesturing to the ammonite, eggshell, and Pryce’s own gifts.

“Makes sense,” Pryce nodded in understanding. “I guess you don’t show other dragons your shiny things?”

“No,” Fathom snorted emphatically. “This is a secret.”

“Then, thank you for showing it to me.”

Fathom shrugged. “This is a secret because other dragons will take things. You are too small to take much, and you cannot run away,” he said pragmatically.

“True,” Pryce chuckled.

Pryce spent the rest of the day referencing the books he brought as he looked over Fathom’s shiny things. A few sizable crystals were actually sapphire or topaz, and he had even found a diamond, though most of these crystals were common minerals like quartz and amethyst.

The sand-glass Fathom mentioned was…somewhat underwhelming. Pryce knew it wouldn’t be pretty, but for some reason he expected more than shiny globs of dirt-colored glass. At least some were shaped into interesting shapes before they had cooled, one in particular looked like it was modeled after a whirlpool or a vortex.

Still, he took many pictures of many things, eagerly cataloging what he could as Fathom watched and listened with interest to his opinions. Pryce masked a little of his disappointment over the sand-glass with enthusiasm over the things Fathom had built, such as the shelves and the wooden shutters he used to cover up holes in the cave walls. This was made from a rather painstaking process of splitting dead trees or unhealthy trees along the fibers, then carving them into the desired shape with their claws. Fathom even used tree-sap as a sort of glue, which was evidently quite effective at holding wood together.

The dragon did caution Pryce to be careful with the glued-wood though, so it did not seem to be very strong – at least by draconic standards.

Pryce had expected dragons to require a great amount of food, but Fathom left to hunt for food two more times that day, despite having eaten an entire pig that morning.

Pryce didn’t feel any ill effects from the tiny piece of leaf he had eaten earlier, so he ate a mouthful at sunset. Most poisons took effect in a few hours or days, so if these leaves didn’t make him sick in that timespan, then it was probably alright to eat…unless it was a slow-acting poison, but he tried to not think about that.

“Celebrate is what people do when something good happens,” Pryce said later that night. “Celebrating means having fun with other people, eating food, and sometimes drinking alcohol together. Do dragons celebrate anything?”

“What is ‘fun’?” Fathom asked, confused at this new word.

“Oh, right, fun is…when you do things you want, like flying, or winning fights, or getting shiny things,” Pryce said, guessing that these things were probably what the dragon considered to be fun.

“I understand,” Fathom said. “What do humans do when ‘having fun’?”

“…depends on the humans,” Pryce said, realizing that perhaps he was not the best person to ask about ‘having fun’. He had something of a reputation for being known as a workaholic, even among his peers. “Many humans like to drink, or to…play games.” Before Fathom opened his mouth to ask, Pryce answered, “Games are like…competitions, and competitions are like fights, but people don’t get hurt. Like if two dragons fly to see who is faster, then that is a competition. Games and competitions are things where you try to do something.”

Fathom perked up his spines curiously at this. “What games do humans play?”

“There are…a lot of different games,” Pryce said. “I’ll tell you about them later. Do dragons have any celebrations?”

Fathom hummed in thought before answering, “Dragons celebrate longest day in a year.”

“Humans celebrate this too; it’s called the summer solstice,” Pryce said, smiling at this similarity. “And the shortest day in a year is called a winter solstice. Humans celebrate something called ‘birthdays’ too, for dragons, this is the day you are hatched in a year.”

“Day you hatch on is birthday? These words are not like each other.” Fathom chuffed in disdain as he assumed this was another oddity of English.

“Well, humans are born, not hatched,” Pryce said. He had used ‘hatched’ when referring to human births because it was easier to use one word to refer to the same general process, but now he had the words to correct that simplification.

“What?” Fathom asked, tilting his head in confusion. “How are you not hatched? What is ‘born’?”

“Well…human hatchlings are called ‘babies’, and babies come out of the mother without an eggshell.”

“Without…eggshell?” Fathom’s spines twitched in confusion; he was clearly having difficulty imagining this.

“Yes,” Pryce said, unable and reluctant to describe in further detail.

“Humans are very strange, and dragons do not celebrate ‘birthday’…is dragon birthday ‘hatchday’?” He asked before shaking his head in dismissal. “Dragons do not celebrate this, not important. Why do humans celebrate things like birthdays? Birthday is not like a fight you ‘win’.”

Pryce understood Fathom’s perspective to some extent, as there was a time when Pryce had felt birthdays to be a pointless exercise, but he also could not deny it was fulfilling if one had genuine friends to celebrate with.

“A tradition is something many people do for a very long time. Celebrations can be a part of tradition, and birthdays are a very old tradition. Humans in the past died much more often, so maybe each year we live is a ‘win’,” Pryce guessed. “But I do not know, maybe it is different. Why do dragons celebrate the summer solstice?” He asked, seeing as Fathom was not convinced by this explanation.

“Dragons see who die, then we have competitions and fights to see who is best, and best will have egg.”

“Okay, this makes sense…” Pryce said, but some things still confused him. “Do all dragons want eggs?”

“Very many dragons want eggs, why?”

“So why don’t dragons kill other dragons to be able to lay more eggs?” This was of course reprehensible by human standards, but the truth was that things like infanticide or filicide were not uncommon in the wilderness; all that nature cared about was the ability to pass on one’s genes.

Fathom shook his head – a bit of body language he had picked up from Pryce, though it looked strange on the dragon’s comparatively much longer neck. “This is complicated, dragons are hard to kill. One dragon can kill second dragon, but second dragon can kill one dragon too. There are other things too; dragons talk before fights about what dragons can or can not do.”

“What…happens if a dragon does what he says he will not do?” Pryce asked warily.

“This is…complicated,” Fathom shrugged ominously. “Do humans celebrate other things?”

“Yes, we celebrate important days. Big groups of humans live in cities, lots of cities make a country. Different people in different cities celebrate different things, but some things like summer and winter solstices are celebrated.”

“Why do humans celebrate shortest day of year?” Fathom asked, confused by this odd behavior.

“Humans celebrate shortest day of the year because very long time ago, humans think short days mean sun is going away, so humans celebrate to make sun come back,” Pryce explained.

“…This does not make sense.”

“Yeah, lots of things that humans do make no sense,” Pryce agreed.

“What is the difference between game and competition?” Fathom asked after a few moments of silence.

“Well, when someone uses a game, it’s called ‘playing’ a game. A game can be played by one person, but usually needs two or more people. Competitions all need at least two people.”

“How you play a game with one person?” Fathom asked, blinking in thought.

“Well…things you can or can’t do are ‘rules’, and all games have rules. Games can also be anything, games can be like this,” Pryce said, picking up a few rocks. “The rules are to hit that big rock with these small rocks without moving from this spot,” he said, throwing a rock at the boulder some distance away. He missed twice before a clear crack sounded through the mountainside.

Fathom wordlessly picked up a few pebbles – which were rocks about the size of Pryce’s fist – and threw one, missing wildly.

Ten rocks later, he was almost growling in frustration.

“…I thought you said dragons use rocks to hunt?”

“We throw rocks in the air with our feet, not arms!” Fathom growled as another rock missed. “This game is stupid!”

“We can play another game-” Pryce tried to suggest.

“No!” The dragon hissed, whipping the last rock in his immediate vicinity at the boulder, which struck the tip of the boulder before careening off down the mountainside.

“Good!” Fathom cheered, bordering on a roar.

“Usually humans say ‘yes’ when they win,” Pryce suggested, lips quivering as he fought back a smile. “Do you want to try a different game? You don’t need to throw rocks for this one,” he added.

It took a few minutes thanks to Fathom’s enthusiastic pitching of the surrounding rocks, but Pryce gathered a few fist-sized ones along with a few pebbles. Next, he got Fathom to scratch a 3x3 grid into the rocky ground and explained the rules of tic-tac-toe.

“What is the meaning of the name tic-tac-toe?” Fathom asked.

“I…don’t know, actually,” Pryce said, realizing he had never thought about it.

“How do you not know the meaning of your own words?”

“It’s an old game, now are you going to play or no?” He asked impatiently.

Fathom grumbled and placed a large rock in the center grid.

Pryce followed suit, and they quickly reached a draw.

“…Who win?” Fathom asked uncertainly.

“No one win, this is a tie.” Pryce said.

“This game is not good, person who go first win or tie, person who go second lose or tie.”

“You learned that fast,” Pryce said, impressed. “This is a very simple type of tic-tac-toe, we can try 4x4 now.”

Fathom rumbled skeptically.

“I won,” Pryce said as Fathom stared at the grid, frozen in indecision. “Anything you do, I can win.”

“…again,” Fathom grumbled.

“Okay,” Pryce shrugged.

Several losses later, and Fathom was picking up on the strategy. Several more after that, and he tied Pryce more often than not. Many games later, he finally won, resulting in much celebration.

Then they moved onto a 5x5 grid, where Fathom repeated this pattern of rapid improvement.

“One last game,” Pryce said, clearing away his pebbles.

“…Yes,” Fathom said after some thought. “What do you want to…trade?”

“Trade?” Pryce asked, looking at the board and back up at the dragon. “Oh, you mean loser gives the winner something? That is a bet. What will you bet?”

Fathom hummed in thought, then asked, “What do you want?”

Pryce…wasn’t sure what he wanted from the dragon. All his shiny things – even the precious jewels – were really just trinkets with no applicable purpose.

“How about you give me…a new animal I have not seen yet?” Pryce asked. “It must be old or injured, no killing healthy animals.”

“This is good, I want…your chronometer.”

“No.” Pryce said firmly and without room for argument.

“Then I give…ten new animals?” Fathom asked.

“I’m not giving this away for anything,” Pryce said tightly, enunciating each word clearly.

“Why?” Fathom asked, confused but not at all frustrated.

“Ask for something else.”

“…if you win, I give you new animal, but I can eat afterwards, if I win, you give me chronometer and teach me how to read it, then after one minute I give it back to you,” Fathom offered.

“…You promise you will not hurt chronometer?” Pryce asked.

“I promise.”

“…Okay,” Pryce sighed.

“Son of a bitch,” Pryce breathed, then glared at Fathom. “You were pretending to be bad?”

“I do not know what ‘bitch’ and ‘pretending’ means,” Fathom said innocently.

“Pretending means to be like something else that you are not.”

“You do not explain what ‘bitch’ means?”

“Nope,” Pryce said, pulling the chronometer out of his zipper pocket. He opened it so that Fathom could see its face, and the curious dragon peered over his shoulder as he pointed at the arms and explained what they meant. “These small sticks are called arms. This arm is for hours; this arm is for minutes, and this arm is for seconds. If arm is between two numbers, read smaller number,” he grumbled. “Be careful, it is fragile.”

“Yes, I promise I be careful,” Fathom said, extending his arm so that Pryce could reluctantly set the precious device onto the palm of his foreclaws. He flared his wings and tilted his head to listen intently to the rhythmic, cyclical ticking of the chronometer. “This is like a living thing, like heartbeat,” Fathom said in tones of wonder.

“Yes, it is an amazing device,” Pryce said. It was true that other modern machines were far more complex, advanced, or visually impressive, the chronometer had an elegant simplicity to it – at least in his admittedly biased opinion. It produced no waste and required no fuel except the potential energy stored within the brass winding.

“Now time is…eight hours, twenty-one minutes, fifteen seconds?”

“Yes, and it has been around a minute now,” Pryce said, making a beckoning motion.

“No, it has been 4 beats, 48 seconds,” Fathom said, jerking his foreclaw away possessively and causing the chronometer to slide off his smooth scales. Before Pryce could shout, Fathom snatched up the falling Chronometer out of the air with his other claw.

But he was not used to catching such small and smooth objects, and the chronometer snapped shut as it bounced off his palm and past his gap in his talons. From Pryce’s perspective, it seemed to fly through the air in slow motion until it hit the ground, where it began to roll along its rim down the bumpy mountainside, picking up speed with each passing second.

Pryce had started to move forward the moment the chronometer fell, but Fathom bounded forward the moment the chronometer escaped his claws to chase after it.

None of it mattered, the chronometer bounced down the mountain faster than Fathom could descend, regardless of how he ignored the sharp rocks that dug themselves into his scales with each leap down.

Whether it lasted ten seconds or a hundred, Pryce did not know. He could only stand and watch as the mechanical marvel bounced one final time before it smashed into the side of a boulder with a sickening crack.

When Fathom wretchedly offered the retrieved chronometer to Pryce, his head and spines were flattened in shame, though Pryce did not see this. The once-pristine casing was scratched and dented beyond belief, and when he brought the device up to his ear, there was only silence.

“…I can not catch-” Fathom began.

“Stop.” Pryce said, his voice completely devoid of emotion. “It’s late. Please take me back to the ship.”

Fathom bowed his head, and the trip back was stilted and awkward. Pryce did not say a single word in the air, and the dragon kept his eyes on the skies to avoid looking at the human’s face.

Pryce stumbled onto the deck when Fathom gently set down both him and his bags with extreme care. He only stiffly turned to say, “Thank you. Goodnight.”

Fathom did not know what to say, and Pryce did not seem to be expecting an answer. The human soon retired into the depths of the ship, and Fathom could see him tightly clutching the piece of broken metal and glass.