Almost a century ago

  Meriel sat on a grassy plain overlooking the forest below him, trying not to fidget and look to his side. The most beautiful woman he'd ever laid eyes upon sat right next to him, humming softly to a tune that he didn't recognize. It unnerved him, yet it calmed him as if it was his mantra. A strange contradiction.

  ‘Calmed’ would probably be too strong of a word, though. He could barely breathe for how nervous he was on his first date with Elsa. Finally, he found the courage to ask her out, and she agreed readily, preparing the date in advance. They didn't tell the rest of their party about the date—not like they had anything to do with it anyway. But they decided that should it not work out, they'd rather keep the fact they'd been on a date at all a secret.

  Okay, say something—you can't just be quiet for the whole date. He reprimanded himself in his mind, but whenever he'd tried speaking, it felt as if there was something clawing at his throat, blocking the words out. He hadn't been this nervous ever in his life—not when he entered the Academy, not when he left Mura for the first time, not in his first battle, and not when he tried some of his first summoning spells, fearing for his life, as every wrong line in the magical circle could mean that his summon could attack him instead of his intended target.

  But there was no magical equation that could help him here. Nothing to study. Nothing to mentally prepare for. And being embarrassed was harder to get rid of than loneliness or the fear of a risky spell.

  "You okay there, Meriel?" Elsa's voice took him out from his head, and he snapped back to reality. Her voice was like honey, her blonde hair like the rays of sun. How had such a beautiful woman agreed to even give him a chance? He still hadn't understood that. But he should really take some action. Before she decided that his silence bored her.

  "Yes, I'm okay, I'm just a bit nervous," he admitted and smiled, unsure himself if it was caused by him being shy or the fact that she seemed to take his comfort into account.

  "So am I!" She giggled and offered him a tankard full of wine. "But I guess two people being shy is better than just one, isn't it?"

  He almost got lost in that smile at that moment, and had to physically tear himself from it. He accepted the cold liquid in the tankard and clinked his mug to hers. "I suppose so. I just haven't been on many dates." That was the truth. It wasn't like there weren't any women who were interested in him. Quite the opposite, in fact. From what he gathered, he was quite popular back in the Academy, but nobody ever took his interest as much as Elsa had.

  "I have," she admitted. "Though all of them were disastrous. Apparently, being an elf, most people assume that they can treat me however they want or they just treat me like I'm some exotic thing they really want to own," she said, her voice hinting at an unpleasant memory, and it pained Meriel.

  It wasn't like she was a full elf; she was half-human, just like him. Even if she were a full elf, what would that matter? But he had long gotten used to the stupidity of fellow men.

  "Well," he stuttered, once again breaking eye contact. "I promised not to treat you that way, ever." He promised and forced himself to look at her again. "God, I'm so terrible at this, aren’t I?"

  She laughed at that and her hand brushed his. "I think you're doing just fine."

  It was a calm day in Manilir. Mawr looked at the sky, puffing on some Bant seeds. The smoke curled in the air above him, dissipating. He loved having guard duty. Not only was it one of the highest-paying jobs in all of Egoros, but it also offered him the chance to not do much at all.

  Most of his days were spent doing simple tasks—reading when he had some time, taking care of the weapons of the Wilderness Explorers, and talking to the locals whenever they had some complaint to tell him. Here and there, a rare trader had come through the city, looking to trade with his fellow elves, but it was a rare occurrence and it had become even rarer in the last century. Whatever had happened in the continent that caused it, it just meant less work for him, more time to ponder about the intricacies of the universe. He looked at the crate of wine placed under a nearby table.

  Fellow soldiers were already two cups deep, and he wondered once again whether he should join them, but he decided not to. He disliked drinking on duty, always had. Yes, nothing happened in all of the three centuries he served as a guard, but he preferred to remain vigilant. Rather be safe than sorry was his life motto after all.

  If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  "Hey, come join!" One of the voices carried and he smirked. The temptation was getting stronger in the last few decades. But they knew that if they waited just an hour longer, he would join them after the shift was over. He wasn't sure if they just liked trying to test him and break him, but he wouldn't give them the satisfaction.

  "I'll just meet you in the pub in an hour from now on, okay?" He repeated the thing he had been telling them for the last decades as well. It was a familiar exchange, repeated several thousand times over, but he liked the monotony. There wasn't an elf who didn't, actually.

  For how could you live for centuries if you didn't like doing some things over and over again? He looked away from his colleagues and wondered how he should spend the last hour. Reading was a fine thing to do, but sadly with traders deciding not to come to Egoros anymore, it also meant that he finished all of his collection. Maybe he should go to the Three Cities to acquire more, but he didn't feel like making the journey. Maybe he should send one of his sons instead? He wandered on and on, putting some more of the Bant seeds into the pipe.

  He looked up at the sky, inhaling the smoke and enjoying the way it filled his lungs. Perhaps he should ask his wife whether she'd allow him to send one of their sons, yes. She had more connections in the three cities anyway, would know who to send them after. Perhaps he could tell her that there was some inquiry about why the traders had stopped coming.

  It was bad for her business as well after all.

  He took one more drag and was about to turn to talk to his colleagues once again when something stopped him from doing so. There was a dark dot in the sky. He almost discarded it as a large bird flying around, trying to find some source of meat, but in the last few minutes it had grown significantly larger. It was too large for it to be a bird. Maybe a wyrm then. But wyrms didn't live around Egoros. Too many trees meant that they had a hard time finding nourishment.

  Something told him that this wasn't an everyday occurrence. He remained watching, and suddenly the shape began making sense to him, and he felt a shiver running down his spine.

  It couldn't be. It can't be! He muttered but he felt that there was no other option. No, it was truly what he thought it was.

  A dragon, dark as night. Its teeth sharper than any sword. A creature of myth.

  They were thought extinct in the southern peninsula, or at least in these areas. And now it was heading straight towards the city. He felt his legs shaking and forced himself to move on, head towards the bell. He needed to raise the alarm. Raise it right now before anyone got hurt. Somebody still would die of course, but if he sounded the alarm soon enough, perhaps he could prevent some casualties, stop some eternal life from ending prematurely.

  He ran on, forcing himself not to fall on the ground, yet he fell anyway. His legs just refused to listen, as if they had a mind of their own, and that mind was too scared to listen at this moment.

  But whenever he stumbled, he got up, and continued running. His colleagues shouted after him as he ran for the bell tower, but he ignored them. The drunkards wouldn't be able to keep up.

  He reached the part of the walls that connected to the tower and began running up the stairs, taking them two, three, no, four at a time, his legs finally regaining form, his mind becoming sharp with focus. He had been a guard for centuries, and he wouldn't fail the first time that something worth taking note of actually happened. No, this was his time to shine. He didn't know whether somebody else noticed the dragon—while it seemed large to him, he didn't know of many others who had chosen their eyes as their mana enhancement when they reached adulthood.

  He saw far further than most, and this was the very fact that allowed him to see the shape of the dragon.

  Finally, the large wooden door appeared in front of him, and he swung it outwards, not stopping to close it back again. The bell was right in front of him. He looked out from the gaps between the walls and saw that the dragon was even closer now. It would be here any minute.

  But what was the alarm for an attack on the city again? He never used it, studied it a century ago for the last time. Yes, he had to take some re-examination every 20 years or so, but he didn't pay that much attention. The officials just let him pass without doing much testing these days, assuming he knew it all already.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” He muttered, trying to remember, but the cogs in his mind felt rusty. Finally, he decided that trying to think of the pattern would serve nothing at all. He should at least try to ring it no matter what. That signal it would carry would capture some attention at least. He grabbed the giant handle and the bell reverberated through the city.

  He glanced up into the air once again, and found that the dragon was right above the city. How had it sped up so fast? And why wasn't it attacking? As far as he knew, dragons were more intelligent than some of the other creatures and monsters of the dungeons, but they were still beasts. Ready to slay and eat as many creatures as they could get their claws on. Personally, he had never seen one, but so close he felt a mix of admiration and fear, the two mixing into a violent concoction that stopped him completely.

  Most people down in the streets were screaming, running for shelter, but it was too late. He wasn't fast enough. The dragon, instead of diving for the crowds, waited for the street to clear, and began descending slowly. Mawr was confused. What was it doing? Was it playing, toying with its victims? But no, there was something strange about this all. Namely, the lack of aggression coming from the dragon.

  Finally, once it got lower than the tower, Mawr finally understood. There was a human male sitting on the top of the dragon, holding onto its wings with one hand and a stump of the other one. He looked at the empty street and seemed to meet his eyes. Mawr shivered. A dragon-rider was amongst the elves.

  He wondered what this would mean for him.

  How did you discover this fiction?