A quiet place, hidden and dark, beneath the eves of a wood forgotten long enough to be safe. Its form following function: to hide and to protect, the way forests hadn’t done for years and years. And within it, vagabonds and tricksters, an underground driven from hidey-holes and made to secrete themselves away, and with good reason.
The lands to the north were still good, the air still clean and safe—but to the south, where war had raged and ceased to rage as anger vanished in the face of a common enemy, the skies filled with reeking smoke and the fog of new factories, tanning leather and burning coal. “Opportunism,” Arthur called it, quiet and exhausted. The insides of his lungs coated in grime.
“It stopped the war,” Alfred returned, fresh-faced soldier of peace, making up for violence with compassion too thick to stomach, and no clue what to do with it but take it to the deepest parts of the woods.
“The cost, though, remains to be seen.” Arthur again, grim-faced, sallow-cheeked.
Monsters, abominations they’d been called, twenty, fifty years past. Driven to white cliff tops where even the thickest of roosts would freeze come winter, the air so thin that the great beasts would suffocate trying to breathe.
To the south, though—a weapon would always be a weapon, no matter its origins, no matter its state or sentience. They would kill each other, and themselves. They should have—it would have left a balance of sorts, or made one come about, and disaster could have been halted, made harmless. Trees grew from ash and rivers would not cease to flow.
“And what are we to expect in the north?” Alfred questioned, shrewd and discerning, suspicious of a man he’d not known for more than a day.
Arthur shrugged, busying his hands with whetstone and broadsword. “Pariahs and outlaws, most likely. Dragon-speakers and spell-casters. The righteously terrified.”
Idealistic, young, Alfred balked. “We aren’t terrified! We aren’t running! We’re not—outlaws, or pariahs—“
“You became a criminal the moment you stepped beyond the city walls with that.” Dragon curled around his shoulders like a living pelt, snoring gently against its new master’s shoulder. “And I long before that.”
Alfred thought for a moment to ask, to question what Arthur had done and why, a perverse curiosity made all too appropriate. How was he to trust a man he’d never met? Kitted out in the garb of a knight, chain mail and armour more practical than ornate, a steadfast glare beneath his helm, but with knowledge of lands best left alone coming all to easily to him.
Arthur stood, sheathing his sword and giving Alfred a level look. “I depart at dawn. If you return, prepare to face execution. And leave that—“ He gestured towards the dragon, whose snout was now buried in Alfred’s collar, “—in the woods. Its kin will find it.”
“How do you know?” Alfred suspicious and the dragon awakening with keen eyes trained on Arthur.
Who smiled grimly, smoke streaking his cheekbones, and spoke like he knew. “Why do you think the city is walled?”
spacedrunk’s dragon AU! Hope no one minds me mucking around in this sandbox;;
