It was a difficult time for the world of men. The shield-leather goblins were spilling out of their hills again, and the imaginary dragons had returned to the goodwives’ rumors. That they were imaginary dragons did nothing to diminish their villager-eating, village-burning, villa-demolishing ways, and only made things worse for the villagers. You see, imaginary dragons were— No, it is easier just to show you:

“Urol! Sandiche!” My name came as a scream, and even though it was the second of the two, I was the first through the door, shortsword drawn.

The door opened to the manor lord’s nuptial chamber. It was customary to post an honor guard outside on the night of consummation, but poor, old Urol had expected an easy third watch. His watery eyes were wide, his creased, papery cheeks drained of blood.

Lord Iru stood behind his bed, still clutching the thighs of his new bride. He was naked and sweating and still buried in her, but his face distorted with wild-eyed fear. He was only a year or two older than me, and his body was massive and muscled and solid the way a border lord’s should be, but his eyes suddenly looked older even than his dead father’s. His bride’s back had arched at the swing of the door. She was all smooth, pale skin and red nipples and lips and glistening black hair and eyes. She seemed more surprised than frightened, but her upside-down frown looked like a wicked grimace from my angle. The old maid tasked with witnessing the consummation was a crumpled heap in her chair in the corner.

“She’s a dragon,” Iru screamed.

My eyes flicked back to the bride; she stared aghast at him. “No! How could you say that?” Now came her fear – her voice was a shriek. It was better even to be named a witch than a dragon.

“Lord, are you certain? She doesn’t seem-”

Urol cut me off by drawing his own polished-bronze sword and holding it high. In a voice surprisingly full for one so old, he proclaimed, “Were Lord Iru the Pit Fiend himself and you a white-winged sunbeam, Lady, he’s named you dragon, and I serve my Master!” His sword never fell. An unseen hand split the air and caught him by the chest, lifting him high and crushing him against the lintel over the door. His blood and innards seeped out between the useless bands of ceremonial armor. His skull was a smear on the wall. Even the armsmount on which he’d been skewered had been flattened against the lintel like it was wax instead of iron.

So she was a dragon.

I had ducked, and my sword flashed through the air between the lintel and the bride, but of course I felt nothing. A mature dragon’s glamour was so strong that she could have brought the whole building down around my ears and I wouldn’t have known it unless she wanted me to, or I was crushed beneath a ceiling beam and already had my soul measured on Tomar’s scales. I’m not even sure about the second one. I only prayed that I’d struck her, but the chance of this polished sword doing the least bit of hurt to dragonscales was laughable. Even goblin leather would have turned this blade.

Lord Iru was screaming again, this time something wordless, and I spun back to the bed to see something entirely unnatural. She was standing on the bed now, hunched like some wildcat about to pounce. Her thighs were clenched around Iru’s hips; he was still impaled in her sex, and hanging bent-backed between her legs. His teeth gnashed in ecstatic agony.

Then the ceiling was collapsing – I could see it. Tiles fell like plate-sized hail, and the air beat so loudly with invisible wings that I could do nothing but cover my ears and crouch beneath the frame of the door; I’m sure that was her plan. The last glimpse I had of them was a purple effervescence ascending between the ruined roof like the last embers of a fire.

I ran from the room and out into the paved yard, screaming, “The arrow, the arrow!” and flailing my sword into the sky. If the alarm hadn’t already been raised, no doubt the captain would have cuffed me across the face sooner than allow the order of a rank transcript to sound, even though I had been on the honor guard. Still, his eyes narrowed at me as I ran up to his post. At the top of the tower, a tiny green spark appeared and shot off across the black sky after the fading purple glow.

Everyone stood and watched the green spark disappear, but otherwise did nothing. I couldn’t believe it. “What are you waiting for? We have to leave now! There isn’t a moment to lose. A dragon has Iru!”

This time the captain did backhand me, hard enough to fill the edges of my vision with stars and my cheek with blood. “Shut up, you fool! Iru is dead. So is anyone who follows him – there’s no way to kill a female that large. Let’s just hope she has what she came for and will leave us be. If we anger her, she’ll be back to burn the village for certain.”

He grabbed me by the back of my arm, but I shook him free and called up to the tower for that arrow’s stone. It was a bit of magic, that stone, which meant it came from dragons itself; but you had to be a bigger fool than I to discard the weapons of the enemy just because of their source. A small leather purse fell into my hands, and I opened it enough to see that the stone inside was in fact glowing green in the direction the dragon had fled. I pulled the drawstrings shut and lifted my head to the yard. “I’m taking the sword.” I had meant for the captain in particular to hear, but I didn’t face him; I only prepared myself for another blow.

“The sword stays. It belongs to the manor and the people and whoever will rule next.”

“The sword belongs with the one who has the stones to use it. If Iru still lives, he will have a chance to defend himself. If not, it shall avenge him.” No one – including the captain – tried to stop me again.

Once I was out of the noisy mantrap of the ceremonial armor, I moved quickly. Goblinskin made much better armor than metal, which is why I had lived through the troll’s charge last year when Iru’s father had been left holding the contents of his belly in shaking hands. Goblinskin let me move quickly enough to catch the troll before he turned and put the old lord’s spearhead through his neck. I moved quickly through the hills in the direction the dragon’s stone directed, running when the moon showed me a path. The moon was a liar, of course, and twice she nearly tricked me into turning an ankle.

Finally I found the cave; it had a wide mouth, but was hidden well behind a tumble of boulders. I’d passed a goatsherd’s cottage only several miles back; the dragon was either very reckless or very confident to have a lair so close to man’s lands. I thought it was likely to be the latter.

Though I hadn’t exaggerated when I told the captain we hadn’t a moment to spare, my steps became sluggish as I rounded the boulders. What did I think I was going to do? It would have been foolhardy for me to attack a male dragon in his own cave, but at least I’d stand a chance of coming out alive. The males rarely grew larger than a horse, and those were the big ones: the mountain-bound recluses who did everything they could to hide from their cannibal mates. In daylight, with the sword I carried, I could have killed the average male as easily as I might another man.

Or so I assumed; the last male anyone had seen had been killed generations ago. It had been a clever plan, really: to eradicate the dragons, my ancestors didn’t risk a suicidal fight with the females; a whole army might be slaughtered trying to take a single mature female down. They simply hunted the easier, softer males to extinction, and let time do the rest. It took decades of course, and the females were none too pleased when they discovered their mates (and a primary foodsource) were being systematically exterminated, but mankind weathered their firestorms and eventually the females retreated to their glamour. Their long-burning grudges refused to die, however; every few years there would be word from some other valley of a town razed, or a family eaten, or flocks picked off one at a time over a month of nights. Worse, the clever plan had backfired. The dragons seemed able to produce offspring from the seed of men.

I unwrapped the sword I’d taken from Iru’s hall – the blade was as black as iron, but looked and felt more like quartz. I’d heard Iru’s father say many times that it had been forged from the hindclaw of a female dragon through the application of skills no longer known to man. It was one of the few things sharp enough to cleave a dragon’s scales. I wondered how much good a sharp edge would do without the dragoness’ strength to wield it, but I hefted the sword and stepped into the cave. My eyes were good; even in the pitch black of the cave I could make out shapes and some false color.

I heard her a moment before I saw her, so my stomach was already retching when I dropped into a cavern and saw her sitting sprawl-legged on the stone floor, ripping meat from Iru’s legs and stuffing it into her mouth. I wondered that she’d let me see even that through her glamour; she still appeared to be a nude, pale-skinned, raven-haired maiden, perfectly harmless but smeared with blood.

“Sandiche,” she hissed at me, without looking up from her feast. “I smell your man-name in your fear. Have you come to stick your little prick in me? Do you think becoming food to strengthen your master’s progeny is a suitable vengeance? Or do you think perhaps to put your own seed in competition with his? Perhaps both.” She sniffed at the air. “His blood is richer than yours, but you have a boldness in your scent I find intriguing. It’s been a lifetime since a male sought me out.”

I knew her words could only serve her benefit, so I said nothing as I hefted the sword in both hands and took a cautious step closer. She appeared to be dozen paces from me, but that was only an illusion. For all I knew, I was already under the shadow of her wings.

She stood, and Iru’s body fell limp from her lap. He was dead; I could see that his throat had been torn open. I knew then that I would die; my only hope had been in his providing a distraction. Still, I angled the blade and lunged, only to have my arms wrenched back. The sword slipped from my broken grasp; it clattered and snapped against the stone floor, as worthless as glass.

“You fool.” The unseen claws holding my arms lifted me from the ground as she approached. “I can hardly believe the degree of ignorance in your villages, and yet, more than a year I spent preparing for my night with your lord, and all of you saw nothing. Nothing but the lies we drape so casually before your eyes, the way a child might frustrate a nest of ants with a couple of sticks.” She waved a hand, and my goblinskin was torn away like paper. A few more careful swipes, and I was naked and oozing blood along several long weals. “I used to curse you for what you made us give up. Live young are so much more of a nuisance. I could have left a clutch of eggs here and never thought about them again; the half that ate the others would have been strong and perhaps four or five might have survived to feed me or one of their aunts or sisters. There might even have been a female in the brood. Now, I have to tend to my young until they’re old enough to accept the lies and pass in the towns. Do you realize how difficult it is to breastfeed what you should be eating? Of course you don’t. You’re just a fool male.”

Her hands stroked the air, and I could feel claws playing down my face and neck. “Two in one night. I cannot remember the last time I was so greedy.” She sniffed the air, and warm breath washed over me. “A proud prince and an ignorant warrior – perhaps your offspring will be equally prodigious. At least your ignorance will be cured this night. A hot, wet mouth clamped down around my head.

When she raped me, the glamour fell from my eyes like scales. Through the cage of her dagger teeth, I could no longer see the innocent maiden; the serpent who replaced her filled the cavern with her wings and sinewy coils – she’d had to contort to give me space to enter the cave. My body was crushed ingloriously against the pale lavender scutes at the base of her tail, clutched by her hindclaws while the organ I’d been forced to penetrate drew out my seed with an irresistible vigor. Her teeth closed and opened with each hot, humid breath, threatening to nip off my neck at any moment. Long strands of saliva dripped from beneath her tongue and over my face in anticipation of the moment my stones would empty and she could tear me to pieces. The hooked talons of her foreclaws clicked together anxiously.

But that avoidable, unspeakable doom wasn’t what made me scream. Past her tongue, past her teeth, Iru’s body had disappeared as well; in its place was a tangle of ripped, white reptile flesh still oozing black-green ichor over pebbled blue scales.

My own hands, which fought with desperation against her underbelly, raked at her with small, hooked talons.