skonen_blades

The dragon’s mouth is my home. It’s formed its dry tongue into a chair. When it peels back its lips, I can look out through the teeth. At night, it straightens its tongue into a bed. It’s warm in here. I’m protected. The fumes smell weird but I’ve gotten used to that. I smell like burning peat wherever I go. It’s in my pores.

It marks me as dragonborn. There are scents on the market to try to emulate it but the real smell cannot be duplicated. Once you’ve smelled it, you recognize all pretenders. Some tough guys try to use the scent to intimidate, to extort. It works as long as no dragonborn actually find them or catch them.

We feed all impostors to our dragons. It’s risky to pretend to be dragonborn.

I’d say it’s my pet but it’s more symbiotic than that. I’m not its pet, either. We’re like extensions of each other. I go places his enormous frame can’t. We see through each other’s eyes, we put our brains together to solve problems. My dragon is quite intelligent but its brain is animal and ancient, more akin to a cat’s than a human. His solutions lack sympathy and tend not to take collateral damage into account.

But his solutions are solutions. They work when they’re called for. I’m the diplomat. And with the dragon to back up my words, I’m a very effective diplomat.

On this island, there are seventy-six of us with close to a million pairs worldwide. We’ve ruled the lands for two dragon generations now. That’s nearly three hundred years in human time. We’re effective. We are judge, jury, and executioner unless the situation is more complex and requires a trial. In that case, a court is convened in whatever hall or town square can handle three dragons to render a decision.

We are fair but we are feared. It’s hard not to feel like a tyrant.

My name is Bledmear. My dragon’s name is Blood. I’ve had other names in different areas. Nicknames. The Ghast, Holy Justice, Underkiller, Flametooth, Bloodknuck, Tortenfist. All exaggerations of my power. My dragon’s had names too. His names were not exaggerations.

I’ve very pale.

My armour is black, mostly because any colour at all just gets sooty and ends up looking untidy. There are riders that try to ride with white or blue armour but in my opinion it’s more effort than it’s worth to keep it clean.

My hair is bright red when it gets long enough to be seen but the fires keep it singed back to a flamecut and I like it that way. It hasn’t been long since back in the the peace time when I was a teen.

My dragon is a dark ruby, humming with heat and power at all times. A living reactor.

I’ve just perched on the southern turret of Forktown, unfortunately and uncreatively named after the fork in the river that forms a moat around half of it. The locals accent make the name sound much more rude to my foreign ears.

I’m here to investigate a murder. Again. Why can’t people just get along.

The moon is out. No one’s here to greet me but that’s okay. Nothing will start until until morning.

Blood curls up, glinting dark under the moon, and opens his mouth for me to leave. I walk forward and lean against his bottom fangs, looking out.

Looks cold.

I think to Blood that maybe I’ll just sleep in the mouth tonight until morning.

Blood lifts his tongue and playfully pushes me over the ridge of his teeth and tumbling out onto the parapet. It’s been a long flight and he wants me to go have a bath and get the lay of the land to be more prepared in the morning. He tells me that he’s not a cave of procrastination.

I laugh in my mind with him. My eyes crinkle in twin with his.

The door to the castle opens.

“Surrah Flamewarden Bledmear of the Justice Division, Second of His Name, Protector of the Realm, Fairness Incarnate, Killer of the Dread Shackles, Leader of the Northwest Acres?” asked a reedy voice with tired precision?

A Keeper, then. A secretary of the house. Slightly insulting to be greeted by an underling but his use of titles is correct and at this time of the night, the leaders might be indisposed.

“Yes, tis I. The documents of my office are with me and if you wish, you can just call me Bled. I appreciate your attention to detail but that’s a lot for a person to say every time they want me to pass the salt.” I said with a smile.

Blood puffed a sulfur cloud of laughter up through his skyward nostrils.

“As you wish…Bled.” He was clearly uncomfortable with the protocol-destroying use of my first name but was accommodating me. “I am Aowyn. I am to show you to your quarters. Will your dragon stable here? Or shall he retire to the stables? Or the forest?”

“Blood will retire where he wishes. I assume outdoors. But he will return in the morning to this parapet to commence the trial. Now, where can I wash up?” I asked.

“Right this way,” rasped Aowyn, turning back to the door and into the darkness within, beckoning me to follow.

Blood and I bade goodnight to each other and I walked into the door.



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This is a locked room.

Terms and conditions apply. There are stacks of contracts here, all of them signed in blood, a disturbingly high percentage of them marked with a big, red letter X. One doesn’t need to be able to read to make a mark.

There are tricky logistics involved in keeping paper records safe in a dimension known primarily for fire. An organization that has been operating since the dawn of cognizance has a lot of records to contend with.

It’s a paper trail that can’t be traced.

There are stacks of parchment here. A wing for stone tablets. A few rooms containing bark. There are mile high stacks of cheaply made photocopier paper, bound together and alphabetized by the damned.

It’s the latest room that has the devil smiling, though. It’s the new storage wing that came online in the early nineties. It’s empty except for a hard drive that isn’t full yet, not even after ten years. There are millions of .docs stored on it.

A new clause has been invented. It states that if the signer of the contract promises to sign in blood once they are at the threshold of Hell, they can forgo the actual blood signing at the time of the contract acceptance.

This makes it possible for the devil to reach out online.

He’s slipped contracts into the privacy term agreements of several large internet companies without their knowledge. Over seven thousand lawyers from Hell have managed to boil the essence of the standard contract down to an airtight paragraph of generalities.

No one reads those things anyway.



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