Billy The Dragon

Chapter 8

"Something's changed," the red dragon mused, shifting his weigh atop the accumulated wealth of a dead nation.

"My lord Tyranus?" a nearby human spoke, its tiny voice barely reaching Billy's ears.

Billy was the dragon's name, and it was how it thought of itself, after all these years. Born in a lab, the first thing to cross Billy's eyes had been humans, and for the first three seminal years of his life, he'd though he was one too.

The researchers had been astonished by Billy's intelligence, and they had amused themselves by affording the baby dragon a classic education, which in retrospect may have not been the best idea.

"My lord Tyranus?" The man said again as Billy twirled a twenty seven pound gold bar between two claws. The trick was to slow down on the upswing so that the momentum of the gold could carry it around the claw.

The only problem was, having been raised by humans, Billy was considered to be a pansy by other dragons, despite having grown bigger and stronger than any wild dragon under the tender care of the Harvard Biology Department. A couple hundred years after the fall of man he'd even found his family, and they had dismissed him offhand for not following dragon etiquette.

Why should he have to ritualistically posture and fight, stretching his neck as high as possible to compare heights? It made no sense. Dragons were naturally more intelligent than humans, but an education was something to disdain, especially if it came from humans.

If the dragons had studied the planet's history before they declared themselves the masters of the world, they may have been ready when Billy sent some expendables to their lairs with backpack nukes.

Needless to say, There were no other dragons left on Earth. Now that Billy was entering his adulthood though, he was beginning to experience the longing for companionship. Perhaps he could go through one of the Gates and court a female of his species.

Billy sighed, a gout of flaming liquid dribbling between his massive fangs and spattering on the ground, evaporating into the air as it combusted. He didn't really know what a red dragon courtship entailed, but if the behavior of the others who settled Earth's land was any indication, it would involve him wrestling his mistress to the ground and taking her by force.

While such an animalistic method had appeal, Billy had always wanted to try cowgirl.

"My lord Tyranus?"

"What!?" Billy asked, turning his head to address the man standing at the edge of Billy's pile of gold and gems. Billy's voice boomed, ringing from sheets of hanging brass and silver, creating a melodious undertone to his question.

The force of Billy's breath rocked the man back on his heels. A small amount of burning liquid squirted out of Billy's mouth before he was able to shut the flap in his throat, and it trickled down the pile of gold, like a merrily burning stream down a mountain, ending its journey at the man's feet.

"I'm sorry, my lord, but you said something had changed?" Billy's chamberlain, a large man by the name of Thomas, asked.

Billy blinked slowly, unwilling to admit he'd become lost in thought. He rewound his short term memory, and found the moment Thomas spoke of.

"Yes," Billy said. "I felt a disturbance in the force."

Thomas didn't get the joke, but to be fair, it was somewhere around six hundred years before his time. Hell, it had been ancient when Billy had been born.

Thomas stared back, blind devotion written across his face. "What was it, my lord?"

"I felt one of the threads of the world snap," Billy said, using imagery to describe leylines to the ignorant savage. "There will be recoil of some kind, you can be sure of it."

Billy paused and closed his eyes, breathing in deeply, and strummed the leyline below him like a guitar. The echo that returned was off-putting and discordant.

"Something has stirred," Billy said, feeling the land through the magical current. "There was something evil underground. A presence that had been there for so long I had grown numb to it is gone.

Billy's mind raced, crossing out ideas. It couldn't be another dragon, they had all been accounted for. Humans didn't have enough magical 'weight' to register on the leylines. Elves had settled a nearby site of power, but they hadn't yet intruded on the forest, where the presence had been.

It could have been an elf, Billy reasoned. How would an elf have survived for six hundred years hiding from the humans in a cave? The obvious answer was magic, so a powerful magical practitioner moving for the first time in centuries was Billy's first guess.

It was times like this that Billy wished the internet was still around. He could probably get a clearer picture with google maps.

"What shall we do?" Thomas asked.

Billy shook his head. "It is no threat to me," he said, glancing at Thomas. "But it would best be dealt with quickly, that it does not impact my people too harshly, don't you think?"

Thomas nodded. "Your concern honors, uplifts and obligates us, my lord." Thomas said, saluting Billy.

"Prepare the stage," Billy said, Idly squishing the gold bar between his claws. "I wish to address my people."

The next morning, with the rising sun glittering off his scales, Billy stood on a concrete platform, where a statue had once rested, but in no living memory but Billy's, had there ever been anything but the stage.

Billy stood at the center of row after row of bright crimson, black and white banners, which from any vantage point, drew the eye to him. A massive milling crowd stood below him, desperately pushing to get closer and perhaps receive the blessing of their living god.

"My beloved people," Billy said, his rumbling voice amplified magically until it reached every corner of the city. "My most treasured possession."

"A hundred years ago, in the time of your great grandparents, a choice was made to follow me in separating from the ignoble way of the empire that dominated the Mississippi. I am eternally grateful for your trust, and the honor you have given me over the years." Billy said, his voice stirring the crowd.

"I bore witness to you, a weak, broken people, cut off from your roots, starving and poor, grow into the proud warriors you are today." Billy shifted his wings as he reared back, overlooking his domain.

"Your ancestors fought," Billy said. "The empire tore at them as men, tried to make them animals. Every day, they would struggle, and burn, and hunger, for the one chance that could see them free."

"Every day they witnessed the evil that had corrupted the empire," Billy said, scanning the crowd. "The evil that turned it against us, but more importantly against itself."

"The Mississippi Empire follows a doctrine no man can ascribe to," Billy said, enjoying the transfixed stares. "They think to enslave the world and supersede your proud race beneath another."

The assembled humans murmured darkly. "Yes," Billy said, grinning inwardly. "I speak of elves."

"The ruling class of the Mississipi Empire seek to abandon their blood, favoring that of the elves," Billy said. "The emperor himself is tainted by their blood, and hopes to win immortality for himself."

"Let me reiterate," Billy said, holding up a claw. "The very same man who treated your great grandfathers like dogs, who attacked and killed many of your grandparents, and who you and your parents are locked in a fierce war against, is the Emperor of Mississipi."

"And while he schemes and brings woe to generation after generation of our people, the elves slowly tighten their stranglehold over his country, marginalizing humans further and further, causing women steal away from their husbands at night hoping for trysts with elven men."

At this, loud boos and disgruntled yelling washed across the crowd, and Billy allowed the anger to grow, waiting until it had sufficient force before he directed it.

Billy's wings snapped out with a crack of thunder.

"Do not blame them," Billy's voice boomed over the crowd. "They do not do it for sport, or some perverse attraction to the inhuman creatures. These women see no future for their pureblooded children, and so they do what they must. The roots of the problem run deep, spreading through the lifeblood of the Mississippi and taking hold like a cancer."

"If we are to survive as a nation, and as a people, we must defend ourselves from the encroaching threat." Billy said.

"And we are a nation, truly," Billy said, stretching his neck to peer out over the crowd. "Your great grandparents gave you freedom, your grandparents gave you land, your parents gave you thriving cities. It is this generation that sees all these things come to fruition."

"As a nation, We have the metal and the mettle to defend ourselves as we have never done before," Billy said. "To that end, we must set the needs of the nation in the forefront to ensure a strong country for your children, and their children in turn. We will not dally in the games the empire tries to play with its currency, we will keep our workforce strong and pure. The compulsory labor is a necessary measure to keep ourselves free from the grasp of the Empire that seeks to enslave you.

"And once you have built the foundations of your own great empire," Billy said. "Your children will live a life of happiness and security, with my blessing." A smattering of applause rose from the crowd.

"But we cannot do this in the shadow of the empire, my people," Billy said. "We must purge the corruption that we have witnessed from the face of the earth. We will give the arts and literature of our people to theirs, and remove the spread of malignant ideologies, burning it from their consciousness like the cancerous growth it is."

A wave of cheers washed over Billy as he spread his wings and released a gout of flame into the air, sending a wave of palpable heat over the skin of the massed onlookers.

"We must be vigilant," Billy said. "For this taint encroaches from more than our north and east. I have felt stirrings from the west as well, an ancient beast that lay dormant for hundreds of years has begun to move, and it will seek to spread its corrupting influence through our land. Guard yourselves, and guard your neighbors, for the most priceless possession that this country has is its people, and it is with solidarity that we will drive back the forces that seek to see us undone!"

With a final flare of flame, Billy brought the speech to an end among chants of 'Tyranus, Tyranus!' The poor fools didn't even know the meaning of the word he'd chosen his public name from. Billy supposed that was only to be expected when he himself was the author of all books on history and literature. All truths save his own had been washed away over generations of controlled education.

The exception to this were people long-lived enough to see what he had turned his nation into, namely elves, especially the ones who'd been around in the beginning, of which only a few hundred remained. Billy wanted to erase their knowledge more than their selves, since elves made such excellent snacks.

"There is a spy among us," Billy said with total confidence despite being personally unaware of one, but when wasn't there a spy? His voice cut through the chanting while he extended his senses through the crowd. The hearts of three of the humans in the crowd began to hammer. "There are spies among us." Billy corrected himself.

"Not to worry, I've marked them, my people," Billy said, almost gingerly stepping down from the pedestal, the crowd flowing around him like water as he walked. Hands reached out to touch him, seeking the blessing of their god, feeling a bit like rain. It didn't particularly bother Billy, as oil was good for his scales. The three humans began to leave, backing away from where they stood in the crowd.

"Link arms," Billy commanded. "Join hands with those around you."

At his word, the crowd went from a liquid to a solid, trapping the three spies inside the wall of flesh. At this point, in the stillness of the crowd, the struggle to leave was made glaringly obvious, and Billy's worshipers grabbed these men who tried to flee of their own accord.

Pleased at not having to track them down himself, Billy sat on his haunches in the center of the crowd. "Bring them to me," he said, waiting. A wave of hands lifted the three men into the air and deposited them in front of Billy, kicking and screaming.

"Hold them down," Billy said. the three men were held fast to the ground by dozens of willing hands, only capable of turning their heads.

"Do you know," Billy said, lightly breathing on a claw. "What the empire does to spies who have failed their mission? Especially ones who've given away state secrets?" The men, stared up at him with terrifified, wide eyes.

"We'd never tell you anything, monster." One of them, quite probably the youngest, said.

"You've told me that the empire is experiencing a famine," Billy said, craning his neck to look down at the emaciated man before him. He blew a controlled jet of flame over his claw and then sliced through the man's homespun shirt, burning away the wool in gouts of flame as the spy whimpered.

The shirt fell away, smoking, revealing ribs that stood out from the skin, and red rashes across his body.

"Hold his head." Billy commanded. Hands secured the boys head in place. Billy switched to a different claw and pressed up on the boy's lips, studying his gums, then his eyes, tongue, and heartbeat. The little heart trembled beneath his touch.

"It's okay," Billy said as he found himself smiling. "I'm a doctor."

"Unfortunately," Billy said, "I never took the Hippocratic oath." Billy switched to his hot claw and began lightly carving the symbol of his supporters on the spy's inner thigh. At the spy's tortured screams, Billy hummed to himself, wondering when the boy's libido would eventually get him killed.

Probably a woman down on her luck in a cheap brothel would turn him in to the state. Billy wished he could see how it would all turn out, but his part in the play was done. Billy set a claw lightly on the spy's forehead. "forget," he said, and the spy's eyes rolled back in his head.

"Let this one go," Billy said cheerfully. "He's served his purpose." As the spy was carried away, Billy turned his head and locked eyes with the more grizzled spy, a bearded man decorated with scars from a life of hardship.

"Next," Billy said jovially, reheating his claw until it glowed a cherry red. As they dragged the man closer, billy took the opportunity to sharpen his claw, dragging his others across the cherry red one, sharpening it while it was relatively softened.

Billy repeated the inspection on the older man, and came to the same conclusion; the empire was starving. Billy ran his gaze over the scars of whip lashes, and the thick calluses on the man's hands.

"As an adult male of some age, you've probably got a much more developed sense of stability," Billy said. "How would you like your own land to the east? As far from the empire as possible."

Billy's read on the man was that as a former slave or convict, he would gladly accept independence from a nation, and be his own master, but the man shook his head, tears in his eyes.

"I can't," the man said. Billy raised his eyebrow incredulously. "They have my wife n' kids."

"Ah," Billy said. Billy reached down and pricked the man's shoulder with his claw, letting his blood form a small pool on the cobblestones. He dipped his claw in the pool and scratched out a circle of symbols on the stone. With a flash of light, three small humans lay in the center of the circle, two girls and an infant in the eldest girl's grasp.

"Well, now I have your kids," Billy said. "So what'll it be?"

The man showed a heinously tortured expression. "I-" he began to speak when Billy interrupted him.

"Hold," Billy said, raising the girl's hair away from their ears. "I see," he said, turning his gaze back to the spy. "You must be considered quite successful back home, having a half-blood for a wife."

"Unfortunately, I must rescind my offer, and replace it with a new one," Billy said. "A job offer, one for you, and one for your... spawn."

"Don't worry," Billy said, savoring the man's anguish. "it's not as stressful as spying."

"Consider your girls lucky," Billy said. "They are young enough to be taught their proper place."

"I think you men can take care of that," Billy said, addressing the crowd, who chuckled, crowding around the unconscious girls.

"No!" the spy shouted, "Leave them be, I'll tell you everything!"

"You'll tell me everything!" Billy boomed, his voice ringing from the mountains. "Or they will die. What happens to them while they live is no more than a consequence of their birth. And I hope you were listening to me as well." Billy swung his head to address the crowd. "they must live, so treat them... gently."

Cheers rang through the crowd as they escorted the sobbing spy away. There was only one job for a man who'd been tainted by the touch of an elf. They were sending him to live out the rest of his life in hard labor. The same was true for women born with the taint of elven blood, although their duty required less heavy lifting.

"Next," Billy said, crooking a claw. The third man was brought before Billy, and he immediately began to grovel.

"My lord, I care nothing for Mississippi, I swear I'll tell you everything-" the man said, before Billy rammed a claw through his lungs.

"I hate it when they think they can manipulate me," Billy said before tossing the corpse into his mouth and swallowing it whole.