The Dragons (rough draft story bit)

This section is rather loosely based on Beowulf because I was reading it recently and it occurred to me that there were many factors that were relatively the same, already, and I thought it would be cute to play them up. It may be even more loosely based by the time I get around to something beyond the rough draft, though.

 "Listen well, with hearts and ears: you have heard of the Norse Kings and their ascent, by consent of the Chaos of Ordem, to the throne of Kaenisbeth, have you not? In the old days, they were warriors of great physical stamina and virtue.

Rysia, the son of Sæbjörn, was an orphan child, found by Chaos, drifting in the sea. For all are aware, Chaos does love to drift wrecklessly amidst the waves of time and tide, to see what may be caught and claimed.

“I need me, “ said Chaos, “ a net of some size, for which to catch a dragon.” For this was a time when all were at war with the dragons, before the tentative treaties were in place. Scooping in sea water, sea weed, fishies, and briny baubles that scuttled, he was disappointed to find not a drop of netting coming his way. Yet, what was this he heard?

A cry, shrill and powerful, rose from the fishies.

“What ho, fishies!” he exclaimed. “Why do you yell so? Do not be afeared for by and by you will die and fry, and then there'll be no more need to cry.”

The fishies did not seem to care, for on they went with their wailing, driving him to madness. Which was, admittedly, never a far journey to travel.

Tossing fish about, throwing them out into the waters, he howled and cursed their very fins. Since this was entirely the reason that dragons came into existence in the first place, One would have thought he'd have been more careful, yet he did not stop to consult with One but kept on with his activiites.

“May your frontal fins propel you ever onward out of the water... may your throats parch to the point of emitting flame .. may your tails lengthen and coil and I hope you have entirely the sort of legs that do you no good in the sea, henceforth. Take that as payment for your howling.” he had screamed, so long ago, and by his whim and will, an entire race of being was formed, separate from all others.

This time, the fish chose to ignore him, for it was not their wailing. After they had seen what he'd done to their ancestors, the monsters some had become, they dared speak no longer even among themselves, except in the deepest drinks.

The wailer, however, had another reason to choose to ignore him. For it was quite aware that the curses were meant for it, as it was aware that it was driving this two legged creature mad due to the noises it emitted unceasingly. Yet, it had something the fish had in lesser measure: a will of it's own. Not to mention that it's wailing was by way of it doing it's duty for the preservation of Mankind.

“Ugh!” Chaos exclaimed in disgust, noting what had recently come into his hands, during his mad scrabble amidst the dwindling fish pile. “A baby!”

If the fish had been courageous enough to give voice, it would have been a hearty, chortling, laughter that he heard from them. “Ugh, “ they thought collectively, “ a baby, indeed!”

“This shall hardly do! You are not any sort of net at all, much less one capable of catching dragons!” he said to the baby.

The baby waved its little chin about bravely, seeking out the thumb of his Capturer. Finding purchase on a little bulge of thumb flesh, the mouth ceased it's wailing.

“Well, I never!” exclaimed Chaos. “What sort of thing is this, to come onto my ship unannounced, wail like group of doomed fish, and then to actually suck on my thumb? If I wanted my thumb sucked on, do you think me so incapable I could not do it myself?”

The baby didn't answer, except to occasionally release itself and give out little cry, before returning to the thumb.

“I believe, Sire, “ said Servant V “that it has little choice.”
“How so, V?”
“Sucking on your thumb is a biological imperative of the species.”
“Eww. You mean there may be more out there waiting to attack my hand?”
“Possibly, Sire, but it is not your thumb that is the imperative, it is to feed.”
“It's eating my thumb?”
“It's hoping your thumb is another body part altogether, on a different sex, from a different sort of Being.”
“Like an Aardvark?”
“Like a woman.”
“Ah! Who needs those creatures?” Chaos asked, rather sulkily.
“Babies, Sire.”
“Very well. Let us find a port to put into and we'll get us one.”

Port was put into, and a woman found, who Chaos paid well for the raising of Rysia, as he was named by Chaos because, as it was told him at the time “I needed a net to catch the dragons and put an end to their reign of terror. Since you are not a fish, and since my whim and will must be obeyed, I have to assume you are what I called to me.”

The babe grew to boy and the boy to man, and the man to King, having taken his enemies throne. Such a King he was, as terrified many a warrior, whose shrewd dealings with friend and foe caused the land to prosper, so that people everywhere listened when he spoke.

Having been blessed by Chaos, he had a son, to comfort the people and keep them from fear, for that future time when Rysia should be no more.

Alfarr was his name.

Alfarr was famous, throughout the land of Ordine, for his generosity; and the land prospered under his beneficent eye and open palm. So it was that when Rysia bade his people his last farewell, they mourned but they did not wail.

It being the custom of the times that a King should be whenever possible, sent back to the gods in the manner which he came to his rulership, Rysia, with his time upon him, set himself in a well built, slim-lined ship which had stood in the King's harbor in readiness for many long years. Propping himself up against the mast, he waited as his people came, filling the ship with rememberances of times past: shields, swords, locks of hair, and in the case of the Queen a chipped dinner plate and a tear.

He left with more than he had arrived owning, to be sure, since it was Chaos that arranged his fate from wailing beginning as an orphan to stalwart end as a beloved King. Oftimes, still, it is quipped that in Rysia's case, he could take it with him and, indeed, he did.

Alfarr ruled for a very long time after the death of his father. To him was born the magnificent warrior Grimarr, whose fierceness in battle was only equalled in strength by the fear of his enemy which stood most directly before him.

Grimarr eventually took the Kingship for himself, his father having grown old and enfeebled. Born to him were three children: Heorogar, Högni, and a daughter who married Onela, King of the Plentarchs
.
Högni it was who became King after his father Grimarr. He won many battles, was willingly obeyed by family and friends alike, and so they shared in his glory. So it was that Högni decided to build a mead-hall, the greatest the world had ever seen or that could be imagined, to share out there with young and old alike, all that Chaos had blessed him with that be stored up in his treasury.

Orders went out far and wide, to all the tribes throughout Ordem, to set to work on building the mead-hall. And so built it was, as magnificently put together as it was planned: towered and turreted, gabled, and lightly stuccoed on the outside. And, by popular vote, it was named after the great King Högni: the Gilded Hogsnout!

Later on, once it was realized that the word snout didn't mean what the majority of people on Ordem thought it meant, the vote was rescended and a new name was attempted to be placed, but Högni was far too amused to allow a change to occur.

After it was built, Högni did as promised, handing out treasure at huge feasts wherein young and old, rich and poor, mingled together in common causes of drunkness, ribald laughter, a sentimental shedding of tears at appropriate times, and occasional debauchery.

For their amusement, musicians were hired, poets were cozened, dancers were captured as they attempted to make their way to someplace less bawdy, and the joy of the people echoed throughout.

One poet told how the world came to be, how Chaos had made the earth of it and the surrounding waters, set the sun and the moon in their brackets to shine down upon Man, and all sorts of other nonsensical fairy tale things.

“Here, give over!” shouted an anonymous, assumably male, being. “That's all fairy tale garbage. Everyone knows it doesn't exist.”

“Never deny Chaos!” warned the poet, his words flying into the swiftly silenced air.
“I'm not, then, am I?” retorted the unseen personage.
“I would rather not converse with you any longer for it may be that I shall have to share your doom. Thank you.” said the poet.
“I meant the Earth, nuge. There's no such place!”
“Chaos says that there is.”
“Yes, but he also says he's an Athabaskan bloodhound bent on dominating us all at Parcheesi.”
“Does he?”
“Yes,” five people emphatically responded.
“What does that mean?”
Several people shrugged.
“It don't matter, does it then?”
“The point is, “said the poet, taking a dangerous step towards the rational “that he says a lot of things that either are not true or that we do not understand. Why should we choose to believe him about the Earth?”
'Well, there are those weird things that show up every now and again, like text books and rather sexy aviatrixes, what mention Earth at times.”
“All part and parcel with his nonsense.”
The rest of the conversation is not important as it was mostly just more bickering back and forth as to whether anything Chaos says means so very much after all. It is only brought up now because, while some say it was simply a coincidence, it so happens that on this very night of all nights, Motte Flügel, the dragon, began his crimes.

He was of a race of monsters, exiled from mankind by Chaos, and of all the monsters he was the largest, most vicious and carnivorous. It was said he did worse with female victims than devour their flesh and rumours of mutant children, born from the consummation of his dark desires, flourished.

If the rumors be true, then from Motte Flügel sprang all Non-Men who dwell, down to this day, anywheres upon the land of Ordem.

One night, after a particularly rambunctious party, the Norse Once Removed, those born of the orphan's bloodline, settled in the hall for sleep. Sleeping as Christians was a thing never heard of by them, yet their slumber was much the same as it should be. Which is to say it was the sleep of those who know no sorrow, who have put their trust in their King.

Mott Flügel put his trust in his stealth, his hunger, and his brawny strength as he slunk into the mead-hall and snatched up several persons of varied sexes and occupations, then went home, laughing in amusement at the newly awakened ones' shrieks of fear.

When dawn came, Mott Flügel's strength and stealth was learned of, though the fates of his victims remained a mystery. There was great weeping, from King to chambermaid, as the news was learned and relearned of the bloody footprints found, of the shattered pottery, of the noises heard in the hall but mistook for quite other activities than they were now sure happened.

The following night, Motte Flügel killed more of Man. Those who had been previously unsure of whom the culprit was now had no doubt, due to the walls of the mead-hall which bore his mark, where his long and frightening claws had dug in and etched out his name.

The mead-hall was closed in the early Evening after that, and that is why, down to this day, we always close at 6: PM on the dot.” read the sign posted outside The Tavern of the Gilded Hogsnout.

“It seems rather more run down than it should be, dont you think, if it is the great mead-hall that the grandson of my foundling King built?” inquired Chaos.

“Yes, Sire, but perhaps there is another sign with an explanation for that.”
“Perhaps there is another sign with an explanation for why I would care?”
“You were seeking something, Sire, and you believed it to be inside.”
“Don't patronize me, V. I do have a cover charge.”
“As you wish, Sire.”

They stood nearish the tavern door, waiting. Though they were not wating for any person to come out, nor for any person that might be going in. What they waited for was for a breaking point to saunter into a head and alert some nerve endings. The mystery was whose nerve endings it would happen to, first.

Surprising both fellows, Master and Servant, it was neither of theirs as witnessed by the fact that a bar maid came charging out of the door, swinging a tray in various directions, and effectively pummeling them both to the ground before trampling over them and running into the woods.

“I say, V!” grinned Chaos. “This might just be a great mead-hall after all! Let us do go in!”

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