Dragon, Rampant

by

William Thrash

Cover Photo by Steve Groves

www.ESI-Media.com

DRAGON, RAMPANT is a work of fiction. Names, locations and incidents either are a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2014 - All Rights Reserved

And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.

Isaiah 13:22

~ ~

CHAPTER 1

Gregory Smith was dying.

Again. United States Army Doctor of Biological Psychiatry, Major Amy Nelson scanned over his records.

Psychotropic drugs, blood infusions, DNA tests...

Everything but electro-shock therapy, she thought. While she could not legally administer shock treatment to this soldier, shock treatments were making a comeback in certain circles. She was one who considered the notion a valid method of treatment. She looked over his history again.

Greg gasped, shaking on the gurney. He emitted a low moan, like a croak. His arms twitched in the restraints.

She ignored him and continued skimming his report. Caucasian male, blue eyes, physically fit. Inducted into the military, the man was transferred to their facility direct from the Military Entry Processing Station. There was no notation he had exhibited seizures or other abnormal behavior to cause the transfer, but here he was. Amy shook her head. She had seen stranger decisions by the army.

What was being left out? This can't be the whole record.

She sighed and pushed the intercom button. Subject D-four-one low vitals. Administering blood was not her responsibility.

*  *  *

Greg opened his eyes to the brightness of white walls and fluorescent lights. His mind and vision swam. What are they injecting me with? Why am I here?

He tried to rise, but was strapped down. He struggled harder, panicking. He hated being restrained and was a touch claustrophobic. No more nightmares, he said. His voice was a croak. No more nightmares. No more nightmares.

A face appeared over him, a stern face, a woman. She peered down at him and furrowed her brows in study. Then her face softened. But not by much.

He looked away, hating that face. She had injected him many times. Damn your needles. Machines were around him, displays fluctuating and blinking.

You are psychotic. I am the psychiatrist assigned—

Damn you.

The face disappeared.

He waited, dreading the needles. But the needles did not come. Not this time.

*  *  *

Margaret Peggy Gramm stooped outside the ugly glass building and scooped up a dime someone had dropped. With her father suffering from Alzheimer's, every little bit helped.

She knew she didn't look very presentable. She wore a large coat that belonged to her father. It had a hood for the rain, but she wore it up all the time. It hid much of her pretty face and from a distance she looked like a bag-lady. People left her alone.

She glanced up at the glass. It rose high, a federal building. The money spent on such things could have been better spent on the exploding illnesses that were ravaging society.

And people go on as if everything is normal, getting sicker and sicker... She whispered to herself, Almighty God, may your mercy find those inside.

She often prayed. Sometimes with a purpose and sometimes on a stray whim. The voice of God? She didn't know. Sometimes she just felt it was the right time to offer a prayer. She hoped they did some good.

She hurried past the ugly building. It was nestled amongst the older stone and brick buildings of more pleasing architecture.

*  *  *

Greg floated, feeling sick. He drifted again into sleep or unconsciousness. He did not know. The whiteness around him softened to something else. His mind wouldn't focus. Jagged lights shot across his vision, though his eyes were closed. He hyperventilated, feeling the need for breath, but finding no satisfaction in breathing.

Troubled, again? his friend said.

Greg opened his eyes and groaned. He was on the hilltop, overlooking a valley of grasses and flowers. His peaceful place. A place of rest, but also trepidation.

His friend was a man in a long black cloak with a hood. A light shined within his eyes, but not with friendliness. Knowledge, power, perhaps, but also restraint in servitude. Still, he was Greg's only friend he knew was real. Or was he? The nightmare of white, again.

His friend said nothing. He stood there, cloak wrapped around him and grasped from the inside. Only the man's face showed. It was devoid of expression.

Bothered by his friend's silence, Greg said, They come more frequently.

They shall.

He didn't like that and shook his head. When his friend spoke, he spoke of truth. But he didn't have to like it, did he? I do not want it.

We endure what we must endure. The voice was patient, as if waiting for objections only to soothe and repeat.

I don't understand. Why am I sick? Why am I like this? He held out his arms, displaying the hospital clothing.

Should the wolf ask why he is a wolf? Should the sparrow ask why he is a sparrow? The Almighty makes us as we are. It is not for us to question.

The hill shifted a little, not physically, but Greg felt it. A smile lit his face. Then he laughed. Finally, the nightmare is ending. I'm going back home.

You will come back and you will go back. You are yet in nightmare. What you think is real is not. Beware, lest you lose yourself in it.

Mists drifted fast across the valley towards the hilltop bringing hope and promise.

Greg pointed. There, do you see it? They come to take me home. His voice was frantic, wanting his friend to see.

His friend did not look.

His friend was gone.

Tears streamed down Greg's face and he turned back to the mists. They were almost upon him.

Home, he said. He lifted his arms in surrender, an embrace of the mist.

A buzzing filled his ears and lights flashed across his vision, less painful than before. Light swallowed him.

*  *  *

The white nightmare was over. He was in flight. He stretched out his wings and luxuriated in the feel of being real again.

How had he gotten up here? Where had the nightmare started? He didn't remember. But he was flying, and he enjoyed the sensation of gliding on the air currents with only a flap or two for loft.

Gregory, taken from R'Grogorth, felt he was late. He angled his large black head down. In human form, only his hair was black. In dragon form, he was solid black with a white breast and underbelly.

Some might have thought him beautiful, but humans feared dragons. On the ground, he often went as a human.

What was he late for?

Circling lower, he saw the caravan stop in a cramped clearing at King's Fork. Wagons bundled high, higher than normal, were coiled loosely. Smoke from a couple of fires drifted languidly into the air.

Ah, Wilhelm, the merchant. He remembered then. He was to meet the merchant at the request of the Frankish king Sigibert. Bandits had plagued the trade route from Rheims to the barbarian tribes of the Saxons. Sigibert wanted the bandits destroyed.

He remembered being hired as such before, even in the distant past. Sometimes he fought battles for men when he could see a good side and a bad side. He did not like to dwell among bad people so he usually found himself employed by the good. Mostly. Advisers sought him out in the name of this king or that queen, seeking to use his abilities for their gain. Sometimes in desperate need of his salvation. To break a siege. To destroy the enemy commander's tent. To slay a beast left over from the Age of Old. To secure a merchant's trade route.

He circled yet, still gliding lower, but not diving down for a landing. His large leathery wings tilted, adjusting his descent, fighting gravity using his speed of flight. He wanted all the humans to see him.

They would be agitated. Angling his head to the side, he gazed down at the wagons. Horses were rearing and men were rushing to calm them. He heard shouts, distant, from below. Many dragons had been enemies of man. Most of those had been hunted down. The men down below would be wondering if the dragon above them was coming as a predator, or out of curiosity.

But the merchant expected him. He could see one man, waving his arms at people, shouting. He banked, losing sight until he tilted his head the other way. He could have landed some distance off and walked to the camp, but then he would have to have convinced the merchant he was who he was.

Time consuming. Inefficient.

Landing at the edge of their caravan stop was easier, faster and made its point: R'Grogorth was not a foe. Though he expected a few of the humans to chuck spears at him.

Kings of this age had moved beyond belief in dragons, though a few of his kind still wandered. Most dragons he felt were in human form, not showing themselves to humans. As a predator, the day of the dragon had passed. Something in him said their day had died and was going to take the entire species with it.

But