The Tale of Heorogar

Once again circumstance forced him to forget the distant, flapping thing in the sky.

For an enormous, four legged beast of black scales and horned hides was galloping toward him. The thing looked to be taller than three stories and was longer than any galleon Heorogar had ever seen. From its upper jaw long, jagged teeth sprouted, even with its mouth closed, and its glowing blue eyes had a look of savage gluttony that Heorogar had never before glimpsed in his life. A Miragon. Ere I never felt such fear. His eyes flicked about the dale for a cleft or hole to hide in, but there was none. He was trapped, and the beast was nearly on top of him. Sweat clung to his body and beaded about his face, he felt only despair in the moisture his body produced, felt his stomach tightening painfully. Such men as I, he thought, should not feel such fear.

A feeling he could not explain began to flow through Heorogar's body, one which erased the widespread thoughts of terror and replaced them with a primeval lust for blood and for destruction. He tensed his muscles and he raised his rusted sword into the air. His free hand gripped the top of the ravine and hoisted him with incredible force above it, into the wasteland once more, where he faced the Miragon, which had neared him to within twenty feet. His eyes met its eyes, and they locked together, both pairs of them bathed in utter hatred for each other. With the pendant stinging at his neck, Heorogar raised his sword higher still and charged the enormous, sky-dominating beast.

The Miragon's jaws widened and smote the air with thick, vaporous flame in a canorous screech, the pillar of it overtaking Heorogar and reducing him to nothingness. Cryda's sword and the singed, severed hand that clutched it with undying zeal clattered to the blackened rock. The Miragon lifted its carriage-sized head and belched a churning tower of smoke and fiery wrath into the green-tinted sky, its primitive gesture of victory. The wide, pumping wings of the distant flying creature (the only parts of it visible) wheeled about, and it continued upon its original course, passing in front of the sun as it had only minutes before. Soon the bleak world went on as it had without Heorogar the traveler, and where he had stood only his pendant remained.

Fate was merciful to Heorogar, who saw only for an instant the seething wall of inferno, who felt only for an instant its tongues of heat lapping incessantly upon his immured skin. His reality was there, and then it was gone. Heorogar fell into a verdant haze of dreams, and thrashed about wildly within them, his muscles too busy with fighting the currents to allow his mind to think. In this void he began to suffocate, and at last he gave up, inhaling the thick fumes and globules, his body sagging in the mist. The fluid around Heorogar began to tug at him, and his feet rested calmly upon a rocky surface as the vapors were drained away by an unknown force.

His body abruptly burst to life, and he retched violently, his lungs angrily forcing the thick mucus' out onto the charred stone. Heorogar coughed and clawed at the rock with his fingernails, his eager body clamoring for air. After awhile he calmed and was content to lay there, sucking in the poisonous fumes, his insides fighting for the little oxygen that could be gleaned from the gasses that threaded about him. Still coughing, his hands searched in the haze for the pendant, and quickly made contact with its chain.