death roar

My name is Randall Erik Ddraik.

I’m a Dragon.

A fact I’d only learned about myself somewhat recently. It was 1524, I was eighteen years old, and for the first time in my life, a thought I’d never had before was burning through my mind... I might die today.

I whipped my sword up over my head to block a savage two-handed swing my half-brother, Elliot, sent screaming down at my skull. My shoulders recoiled painfully from the force of the blow. He was four inches shorter than me but outweighed me by at least twenty pounds, and was using every one of them in his powerful swings.

I staggered, slipping on the grass, wet from the steadily falling mist.

“Die, peasant!” he spat at me, pressing his attack.

I took a quick step backwards and regained my balance just in time to block another vicious blow. We were fighting on the highest promontory of the cliffs of Duncansby, just feet away from a sheer drop into the ocean. I could hear the waves crashing into the rocks far below us. Gulls whirled and screeched overhead in the grey sky.

“Why are you doing this, Elliot?” I raged back at him. “It’s a fool’s act!”

He strode forward, raising his sword for another attack.

“You dare call me a fool, peasant! I am of noble blood!”

He really was of noble blood, though not of title. Our father, ever the rake, had charmed the bloomers off a local duchess, and when her husband the duke had demanded satisfaction, pop lopped his head off during a duel. The duchess kept Elliot, and he grew up with her other three sons. He was constantly belittled, beaten up, and bullied by his stepbrothers, who never let him forget he was a bastard. To say that he grew up bitter, angry, and hateful would be putting it mildly.

“I’ll have your tongue for such insolence!” he shouted at me, his ego raging.

He charged with a bloodcurdling roar. I could hear the Dragon in it, and it unnerved the bloody hell out of me.

“The only fool here is you!” he snarled as his blade sliced the air towards me.

I fended off one blow, then a second, just barely. On the third his sword slipped past my guard and dug deep into my bicep, spraying blood. I howled as pain ripped through my arm, and retreated again, getting dangerously close to the cliff’s edge.

Elliot spun his blade lightly in a circle with one hand, as if it weighed nothing, while I was now forced to hold mine two-handed, thanks to my wounded arm.

“I should just send you over the edge and be done with you. You’re not worthy of my blade.”

“It’s too soon, we shouldn’t be fighting!”

Brothers don’t normally start killing each other until we reach at least a hundred and fifty years old. There’s no rule against it, no Dragon law, it’s just an unwritten, inherently understood code. The older brothers allow the younger to experience life, mature, learn fighting skills, and experience combat. When you fight one of your kin, it’s not only to thin the herd, but also to push the victor to the limits of his skills, so that he emerges from the battle even better than he went into it.

“It’s never too soon to be rid of a lowborn cur like you,” he said, his voice dripping with condescension, like audible venom.

Elliot was only two years older than me, and he’d fought as many battles as I had, which is to say exactly none, but he had more time training with our father, which made him better with a sword, and he knew it.

He was also better armored. Clad in a full breastplate with shoulder pauldrons, gauntlets completely covering his arms, and plate greaves and cuisse protecting him from shin to thigh. The benefits of wealth.

“You’re a filthy maggot. Common peasant gutter slime,” he mocked.

Shame and jealousy burned through me at his words, made worse by the fact that I very much looked like the peasant he was describing. I was wearing rags by comparison, wool leggings, a simple cotton shirt, and tall leather boots.

My only protection was the thick leather jerkin covering my chest, to which I had hastily attached some thin metal plates and steel gauntlets to protect my hands and forearms. It made me nimbler than he was, but not by much. His Half-kin strength more than compensated for his heavy armor.

I am not going to die today!

I willed myself to believe it as I went on the offensive, more than anything to get the hell away from the cliff’s edge. The fall would kill me as surely as his blade, and given the choice, I preferred the blade. At least there was honor in that, I told myself.

I was all raw strength and scared fury, desperately trying to make up for my lack of skill and training. Howling like a madman I swung low and caught him by surprise as my blade skittered under his block and slammed into his leg. He hissed in pain. The strike didn’t pierce his armor, but it dented it and knocked him off balance. I whipped my sword up and brought it whistling toward his neck. He blocked me this time, moving faster, but I still drove him back a few more steps.

I pivoted on my heel to change the direction of my attack, and swung in a slicing arc at his mid-section, hell-bent on driving my blade through his armor and deep into his ribs. I didn’t even get close.

He stepped inside my swing, blocked with his sword, and slammed his steel-clad fist into my face. My nose shattered, stars exploded in my vision, and I tasted blood. Before I could fall, he grabbed my wobbling body by my jerkin and yanked me close. I sagged in his grasp.

“You sicken me,” he hissed. “You’re an embarrassment to our kind.”

As I fought to get my wits back, I felt something surpassing the pain and the fear. It was anger. I was righteously pissed off. I’d actually felt sorry for this “royal” twat and the way he’d grown up, and this is how he chose to treat me?

When I became aware of Elliot, I was thrilled to have a brother living so close to me. I’d had fantasies of us becoming fast friends, traveling the world together, training, bedding lots and lots of fair maidens, and sharing adventures. Sure, eventually we’d try and kill each other, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t be mates for a while.

“Why?” I asked, “We could have been friends, Elliot.”

I wasn’t exactly sure when he’d become aware of me, but he clearly harbored different ideas about our relationship.

“With a festering gutter dog like you?” he scoffed. “Don’t be absurd! Noble blood does not lower itself to friendship with commoners.”

Out-fighting him wasn’t working, but Elliot did have a chink in his armor. I knew the worst part of his upbringing wasn’t the torment from his brothers, it was the utter lack of love he received from his own mother. She disdained him, seeing him only as a constant reminder of her own infidelity, and worse, as the person responsible for her losing her husband. I attempted to exploit that wound, in a desperate play to save my life.

“You’re so alone in that house. I know your mother doesn’t love...”

I wasn’t able to complete the sentence, as Elliot drove his fist into my stomach, taking all the wind out of me with it. I dropped to one knee, gasping for air.

I weakly swung my sword at him in an intentionally wide arc with my injured right arm, turning my body slightly with the swing to cover my left side. As he moved to block, I reached my left hand to the inside of my boot.

“My mother loves me!” he shouted.

His block knocked the sword out of my grip with such force that it flew backwards, clattering against the rocks before it disappeared over the cliff’s edge.

“She loves me!” he shrieked, boiling with rage, spittle flying off his lips.

I’d hit the nerve I was aiming for. He was seething, unfocused, and off guard. All I needed now was a whole lot of luck.

“Who could love a bastard?” I said with a sad laugh, “I pity you.”

His face contorted with unbridled hate, and he drew his sword from hilt to tip across my shoulder, cutting it deep. My whole body spasmed as my arm ran red with blood, and I struggled not to scream. I half succeeded. His smile of pleasure at my pain was sadistic. He pulled our faces close again, just inches apart.

“My whole family loves me, gutter dog.” There was cold hatred in his voice. “But no one will miss you when you’re gone.”

He drew his sword arm back, the tip of the blade aimed right at my heart.

“Well, perhaps your mother will. When she learns of your death, I’m sure she will need... consolation. I think I’ll visit the whore. A good tossing by a young noble will do much to soothe her loss, I’m sure.”

Oh, you bloody, fucking, cunt.

Three things about us gutter dogs. One, we learn quickly that no one is going to hand us anything in life and we have to work or fight for everything we get. Two, we’re most dangerous when cornered and we don’t fight fair, we fight to survive. Three, don’t ever talk shit about our mothers.

Before he could strike, my left hand flashed upward, driving the knife I had pulled from my boot straight into his throat. Blood sprayed all over me as Elliot stumbled backwards, a look of utter shock and disbelief on his face.

Oh, and four, gutter dogs always carry knives. Never know when you might have to shank a bitch.

His sword fell from his hand, and he dropped slowly to his knees, his hands clutching feebly at his pierced throat. His mouth moved, trying to speak, but I had cut his trachea, and nothing came out except the wet gurgling of splattering blood.

I moved to him and pressed him onto his back in the wet grass. There was no resistance in his body, and his eyes were wild with confusion and fear. I knelt beside him and began quickly stripping off his breastplate.

“I am not going to die today,” I said aloud, my voice calm and steady.

I wasn’t trying to mock Elliot’s death. I was confirming my own life, through the ragged exhaustion and pain I was feeling. Acknowledging myself for having survived my first battle against one of my kin. My heart sang with a fierce, indescribable joy.

“I am not going to die today,” I repeated, as I tossed away the breastplate and lowered an ear to his chest, drawn by some instinctual need. I listened to his heart.

Bu-bum… Bu-bum… Bu-bum…

Each beat came slower, quieter than the last, and as it quieted another sound grew, one that was primal, bestial. It swelled in his chest, growing exponentially with each fading pulse of his heart, and when the last beat finally came, that sound ripped upwards through his ruined throat and exploded out of his wide-opened mouth. It was his Death Roar, a clarion call marking the end of his existence as a Dragon.

It was savage, and raw, and transcendently pure. It hit me like a sledgehammer to my brain, and I was too young to be in any way prepared for it. It was utterly overwhelming, and it blasted me into unconsciousness.

When I woke up, I found myself lying across Elliot’s lifeless body. I pushed up onto my knees and looked down at the empty shell. I felt no compassion for him, strangely I felt... contempt? My mother would be horrified by my lack of empathy. I was actually surprised, and confused, by it myself. I couldn’t explain it, but Elliot had fallen to my hand, proving he wasn’t good enough, or worthy enough, for the Test. So there was no reason to feel empathy... was there?

His family wouldn’t miss him, and for that I did feel sorrow. With Half-kin, the one that killed you would never feel bad about it, but to not be mourned by someone, anyone, was a tragic thing.

All my pain was gone. I checked my wounds. My bicep was completely healed, and only a small scar remained on my shoulder. His Death Roar was the cause of that I was certain. I felt vitalized beyond measure, so full of energy I was practically bursting with it. It was as if I had absorbed his very life force. I would come to find out later from my father that, in effect, I had.

I pulled my knife from his neck, then stood and lifted Elliot, throwing him over my shoulder. I needed to dispose of his body and disappear from here. Being found with a dead noble, covered in a fair amount of his blood, wouldn’t end well for me, unloved bastard or not. I walked to the cliff’s edge and flung him unceremoniously over it, into the sea below. His armor was heavy enough to carry him to the bottom and keep him there. A moment later I sent his sword tumbling after him.

I began the long trek home, one thought consuming me the entire trip. I had to be better. To win every battle and earn every Death Roar, I had to be better than all of my brothers, better than every other Half-kin. Hell, better than everyone.

To this day I believe, and I’ve never learned otherwise, that I’m the only Half-kin to ever hear a Death Roar at such a young age. It fundamentally changed me, as the first roar is supposed to, far sooner than most. It drove me into training with relentless dedication, and a burning determination at an age much younger than any of my kind, and it’s made me a better warrior than Half-kin far older than me. It was a gift that’s given me great advantages in my life, and one that I’ve never taken for granted. Elliot proved himself unworthy of the Test, but I will always be grateful for him, and honor him for giving me that gift. He was still a douchy little twat-waffle though.

 END