THUS THE DRAGON DOES ASCEND – CONNOR VAN BUSSEL
The Vision
When I was small my Father told me that I was a dragon, that our family line was ripe with dragons. One night he sat me down in his study, in an armchair beside the fire, and laid out a blanched scroll on the central table—an ancient scroll, so he told me—a family tree that went back generations. He took my hand in his and together we traced our roots back up to our earliest ancestors.
“This was your Grandfather, this his Mother, this his Uncle…”
Soft words in the gloom, as the fire crackled on across the room. I remember only a calm, cozy feeling aside from the roughness of his voice and hands. Together we drifted through the ages. With each notable member he told me stories I would forever cherish. My great-grandfather, who invented the steam-train, my great-great-great Aunt, who had served as hand of the Empress during her long reign. There has always been a certain pedigree in my line; enough rich blood to fill a fountain.
But as we went higher, the names became unreadable to me. Many were written in letters that I did not recognise or could not pronounce. The common names changed. Lestrim became Lestim, which became Lesir, Lazir, Laszier, and finally L’aszeth. By the time we reached the earliest names at the top of the parchment, even my Father who was well versed in the history of old could not pronounce them, and had to make the sounds one by one like a child learning to read. The higher we went the vaguer the stories became. He told me briefly about the origins on our line, how a great war had caused our ancestors to flee to the southern fathoms, out of the mountains, where the air was warmer and new alligiences were formed with the Hewing Tribes.
Then came one of the oldest names at the top of the tree, written in smudged ink that made me squint to try and read.
“This is a very special name,” said Father. “Can you say it?”
“Ah-” I began to sound it out. “Ah-ss-z-eer.”
“Aszir,” my Father echoed. “Do you have any idea who that might be?”
I scanned my memory but came up with nothing. I’d only just started to study world history, my tutor had started me off with simple things—the famous wars of history, the division of land through the course of time.
“No Father,” I said. I knew better than to lie. Lying could mean a deft hand to the back of the head. “I don’t know.”
“Aszir was a dragon,” he said, his finger pressed against the name. “A true dragon, from head to tail. From wing to wing.” As he spoke I saw such fire in his eyes, a fixed intensity towards the parchment that I’d only seen in him when he was deep in drink and foul-tempered. There was something alarming about it, something maddened in those eyes that looked ever-so much like mine. “Aszir had scales, wondrous scales. Teeth as sharp as rapiers, eyes that could see for a thousand miles. He was black as night. Magestic as a cloud once he took flight.”
“What about fire, Father?” I asked. “Could he breathe fire, too?”
“Oh yes. He could breathe fire. It is said that when Aszir took to the skies all those on the ground knew to run for cover. Farmers hurried their sheep into their pens, women coddled their children in the dark; armies floundered at the mere beat of his wings!”
He was looking out the window, standing erect like a statue. Sometimes that’s how I thought of him - a chisled man, carved out of stone, always looking to the distance. That evening all there was outside was rain, an endless veil that obscured the lowlands. He looked pleased with himself, somehow, no longer in the room, the sides of his mouth taut in some glorious vision of the past.
“But Father,” I questered, knowing well enough to choose my words carefully. “How can it be that our ancestor is a dragon? We don’t look anything like dragons. We’re normal folk, like any other.”
The triumphant look on his face faded into a scowl and I cowered deeper into the back of the armchair. He knelt down beside me and for a moment I worried if he would change on me. ‘Changing’ was what I called it as a young boy whenever he snapped at me. In these moments he was not my Father but a demon who’d replaced him, or one who possesed him at random moments to get me. Thankfully his hands, although rough, did not strike me that evening. Instead he pressed one against my chest and made me look him deep in the eyes.
“Oh no, no, no, my sweet boy! I can’t have you believing what the others do out there. That’s just the same question they ask, don’t you see? We can’t have that. This is the greatest lie ever told. You must know this.”
I remember feeling uneasy, I caught a tenebrous flicker of shadow across the warm glow of the fireplace behind Father. He pushed his hands tighter to my chest.
“If there is one lesson you ever take from me, then know this: you are a dragon. I am a dragon. Though the bloodline has dwindled through the years, through misuse and treachery, we are dragons. The blood I gave for you is dragon blood, don’t you see? Wonderous dragon blood; potent as flame. You do see it, don’t you?”
And then he gripped me by the collar of my shirt and pulled me closer so that he could whisper in my ear. A low voice, a growl that reminded me an awful lot of a dragon from an old story.
“You are a dragon, aren’t you? I need to hear you say it. I am a dragon, Father. I am a dragon. Say it!”
“I am a dragon, Father!” I stammered, he was pushing up against my chest so hard that I thought my ribs might crack beneath the weight of him. “I am a dragon!”
He hesitated, then released me, and his face softened into the warm smile that I like to remember him by. A dragon is not only fierce. A dragon is also merciless and wise, and kind when the turn of the wind takes him.
“Yes you are, my boy,” he said. “A dragon indeed. A real dragon. One day we’ll shed these filthy human bodies, and then the whole world will know, won’t they?”
“Yes Father,” I said.
He and I had that same conversation more times than I could count. At least once a span I was taken to his study, where we would scour the map. In those days my Father neglected his land and title, preferring to spend long hours beside a lantern, reading old books. He’d often explain to me his ‘new discoveries’ and I knew well enough to be amazed by them. At the end of each session he would grip me by the shirt just as he’d done that first evening, and wouldn’t let go until I repeated the words tenfold.
“I am a dragon, Father! I am a dragon!”
In time I grew to believe that I truly was. I’d see wings in my reflection, at the wash house, in my Mother’s dresser. A great shadow enveloped my own, one with jagged angles and leafy scales that shed from my wingspan, a gaping maw that opened wide to yawn up at the night’s sky; sown as it was with stars.
As I grew I usually kept the dragon to myself. Other children laughed at me, my elders gave me funny looks whenever I asked about it. In their minds dragons had long faded from the world—a sentiment that always made me laugh. How could they be gone from the world, when I was one myself?
Sometimes I’d be forced to show my wings. When some boys at the academy threw stones at me I let them burst from my back! I hovered before them, roared in splendour, sent them crashing to the cobbles! After that they were all tears and apologies—and there was blood on my lips, on my tongue; the delicate taste of iron. But mostly I kept the secret all through the years, as I became a young man and my Father’s health faltered.
In his final days they had to lock him in a room. And there he sat, there he babbled on for days in a row about dragons; our family line, how the world had treated us so unfairly. Despite his withered face and body, still whenever I came to him he would grab me, press his ear to my lips, and make me say the words:
I am a dragon. I am a dragon.
It was our little secret, one that he kept with him until the grave. I made sure they put a dragon crest on his coffin, ignoring the disdain of my Mother. She couldn’t understand. She couldn’t possibly know anything—for she was of lesser blood. She should have been praising my feet every day. Few mortals have the good fortune to birth a dragon into the world. And I was just that, now my Father was dead. A dragon. The last living dragon.
And that night, with his body freshly buried, I decided that I would transcend the mortal skin I was riddled with. I would do what he could not. As I slept I said the words tenfold to the darkness of my room: I am a dragon. I am a dragon. Only this time I was surprised to hear a voice call back to me.
Yes, you are the dragon. But there is much work to be done.
Assembling Parts I
The Carapace
It took me a long time to realize, through years of scroupilous research, that dragons do not have skeletons in the same way mammals do. A dragon is somewhat closer to a crustacian, though such a comparison belittles my race to an insulting degree. However, I would not be a realist if I did not admit that all dragons have a carapace. This was to be the first item on my list of parts. It seemed to me to be the most integral part, the centrepiece from which my new body would be crafted.
Back then my progress was slow. I waited years, saving up the funds, learning who my allies were and who were my enemies, until I was able to make the first moves; the first purchases. Sure enough, my Mother wasn’t awfully encouraging of my interest in dragons—in my vision—so I had to wait until she was aging and frail. After that I took up sole leadership of our noble house and flew dragon banners from the walls of our maison, and made the servants address me as ‘Arch Dragon.’ They would have to get used to it, sooner rather than later, for unlike my Father I knew that time was against me, that my mortal body could only endure so much before it was soiled by the rot of time.
I found part of a carapace in the Northern Reaches. This was my most excellent discovery. I organised an expedition to the ruins of the old Kingdoms and there - beneath the rubble, we found the remains of a long dead dragon. Had it been trapped in ice perhaps I’d have been able to salvage more of it, but the worms had done fine work and only half of the carapace remained. I had it brought back via steam-train to the family estate.
The second half proved more difficult. I arranged a hundred meetings, chased a thousand breadcrumbs before I finally found that an affluent collector at the very bottom of the Fathoms had a piece in his collection. The top half of a carapce, though it was cracked and weathered. Still, it was the part I needed, and I spent almost a quarter of my Family’s long hoarded fortune to have it sent back to me, from the desert to the lowlands. It came in a crate dusted with sand.
I felt no remorse in spending such a great deal of money. Father would understand. Father would be proud of me—for I am a dragon, as was he.
Assembling Parts II
Scales
Dragon scales are remarkably durable and strikingly common, though not as common as mortals would have you believe. Although there are a plethora of fake charms and pendants dotted around the world, allegedly encrusted with dragonscale, most of these are sadly fake; appropriations of the bodies of my race, used by mortals to fulfil their greed or lust. I have seen an ungodly amount of these fakes in my life, and it became tiresome to swim through them in my quest to locate the real ones.
It is written that an adult male dragon may have up to three-thousand scales on the upperside of its body, so I needed many of them. Had it just been one or two, I dare say this part of the assembling would have been completed in a mere span. But it took years. I was always having gifts sent to me, I was always checking them beneath my monocular to insure their authenticity. So many were fake, and each time I discovered one I felt a rage inside me that I could hardly contain. I broke mirrors, windows, beat my hand against my desk until it was plump with bruises.
One peasant man—from my very own land, if you’d believe it—came to seek an audience with me, after hearing of my proclivity towards dragon related artefacts. I’ve never forgotten the mud he dragged through my hallway, his pitiful attempts of decorum as he spoke.
“My Lord, I believe I may have something you’d like to see.”
“Wonderful news! I very much hope so.”
“My Sister, you see, she got sick when she was but a babe, and her mother went to the old witcher woman who lived in the woods, searching for any possible cure that she could.”
Witcher woman? There was that rage again, deep inside me. In those days I called it dragonfire. What would happen to this poor soul before me, should I let my true nature show? Should I descend upon him with my glorious wings and sink my teeth into his filthy skin-
“-and what she gave her was a dragonscale necklace. It cured my sister right up, my lord. Cured her from toe to crown. That’s how we knew it was real. Pox faded in a span and the babe was healthy again.”
Dragonscale. This got my attention.
“Bring it here,” I asked him, and suddenly the old peasent didn’t seem quite as foolish as before. I took the pendant in my hand and peered at it with my monocular. I searched for intricate etchings, tiny crystals that signified the supremacy of my race.
It took only a cursary glance for me to know this was not dragonscale, but a fragment of granite carved into the right size and shape. And then came the rage again, as soon as I looked up and saw his empty gaze and filthy clothing. I had him beaten near to death, and thrown out of my estate. I should have killed him, upon further reflection. I should have bellowed fire and scorched him down to the bone, a small price to pay for mocking me.
There were many upsetting encounters such as this, and the scales weren’t gathered in their entirety until I was thirty-three summers. I can remember counting out the last one in the twilight of my birthday, gazing down at my trove of wondrous dark scales, and grinning wide. If only Father could see me now, if only I could speak to him for one moment longer.
Assembling Parts III
Wings
It was with much fury and disappointment I discovered I would not be able to salvage a pair of wings. The wings of a dragon are the most delicate section, and most disappeared off the face of our world. Collectors picked them clean, twisted the fragile bones into weapons and chandliers, making them unsalvagable. For a quintet of seasons I paced the halls of my estate, ruminating, searching for a way to create a glorious pair of wings. It became clear to me that real bone was just not an option.
So I employed an engineer, a man who was tryingto create a flying machine. He’d studied birds for many years, he understood how the wings worked and to my luck—he was fascinated by dragons. It was a shame he never quite understood that I was one, but I paid him well so he began to construct wings for me. In the grand foyer of my maison he began laid out the materials. Most mornings he and I would speak. I would give him pointers whenever he was stuck or bewildered by the request.
“It will be hard to simulate the material,” he told me.
“But try we must,” I said.
He refused to call me Arch Dragon. It was a matter that filled me with violent energy, but he was the best I could find so I let him call me Lord instead.
Another issue was the sheer practicality of my vision; the finer details of how I would ascend. Though many nights I would come and stand before my creation—the wings, the scales, the carapace—with my eyes closed and my body ready to change; but it appeared that change would not come so easily.
So I employed a surgeon. A frightful man, really, infamous for his heinous experiments with human flesh. My house staff feared him, they cowered away whenever he walked my halls. I kept him in the foyer too, allowed him to bring his assistants to live under my roof, and bought him all the materials he needed for his own sordid work. I offered him a slice of my land for his services. There would come a time where I would no longer need it, for a dragon’s land is the sky and the mountains.
One morning I came to him to ask how my vision was manifesting, and he told me something that made me sad.
“Arch Dragon,” he whispered, and for the first I saw fear flash across his eyes. “What it is you want—to become a dragon—there are no ways I can fathom that would allow me to detach your brain, your heart, and place them into this body. It’s impossible. No man of science could do such a thing.”
After that morning came the dark time. For a blur of days I sat locked up in my room, in the dark. It is a terrible thing for a dragon to be locked away in the gloom, but I knew better than to unleash my fury on the Engineer and the Surgeon. I still needed them. I couldn’t risk an outburst. So I allowed myself to hibernate, to sit beneath my blankets through the heart of that winter, speaking with the voice that came when night fell and the world was silent.
“How can I become what my Father wanted?”
Ascend, said the voice. There are ways…
“But how?” I whispered. “They say it is not possible?”
Does a dragon care what is possible to mortals?
“No,” I said.
And thus the dragon does ascend...
When I came out of my slumber I found that my surgeon had drawn up a new diagram. A humanoid body covered in scales, with small wings, powerful claws, and a jaw that could snap the neck of anything living with just a mere bite. I confess, just the sight of it, the detail, was enough to bring a tear to my eye.
“This will be but the first step,” gasped the Surgeon. “Arch Dragon, we will find a way. This will be the beginning. Afterwards, we will find a way to make your vision complete.”
“Thank you,” was all I could say. I touched his scarred face. “Thank you.”
Assembling Parts IV
Heart and Eyes
The Pale Queen sent me my next part; a treasure from her private collection. I could hardly contain myself when I touched it for the first time—half a dragon’s heart, preserved in formaldehyde. That night I took it to my room and unscrewed the lid. I dumped the liquid into the latrine, saving only the heart. With it in my hands I felt truly strong for the first time in seasons. This was my true heart, not like the weak mortal pump that sent frail blood coursing through my veins.
The heart and I watched each other for quite some time, as drifts of snow beat against the window. And then I devoured it. It was awfully hard to keep it down, for the meat of a dragon is too rich for a mortal stomach, but I stood tall over the latrine and turned my stomach to stone as it went down. With each bite I could feel myself becoming stronger, I could feel the dragon inside screaming to escape from its mortal cage.
In those days I was finally changing. The Surgeon had done fine work to attach many of the scales to my skin, to morph my hands into the great claws of a dragon. I felt powerful, ravenous, more dragon than man. It was beautiful.
The next morning I went to the foyer to see how the work was coming along. Two days before, the weak members of my housestaff had vanished. Where they went I never knew, but now my maison lay silent and lonely. No longer was there music in the halls, nor the scampering of obedient feet attending to my every whim.
“Arch Dragon,” said the Surgeon. “I have a gift for you.”
I took the wrap of linen cloth from him, hardly able to believe it could have been something that would please me. But my eyes widened when I unravelled the fabric to see red and white.
“My assistant was able to retrieve it. My gift to you. A section of a dragon’s eyeball.”
Oh wondrous sight! I felt like crying again, but dragons do not cry. That was something my Father taught me. I held it in my hand and felt in that moment as if I could see for a thousand miles. It was only a matter of time before we exchanged my eyes for this. Only a matter of time-
“The Engineer left in the night, Arch Dragon,” said the Surgeon. “He left without a trace. It seems he took his pay with him.”
“The bastard,” I growled. The last time that man had seen me he’d almost pissed himself; just by the mere sight of my scales and claws. It made sense. For aeons mortals have been scared of my race, and for good reason.
I asked the Surgeon about his progress, namely about the matter of attaching me to the carapace. I was sure he was the fellow to puzzle it out, though for the last few seasons he’d been unable to think of a single way. Sometimes I wondered why I was paying him, or promising him my estate. I’d seen so much of his work by that point that I was considering taking over the project myself.
“The Carapace,” I said.
“My Lord-” he started, then buckled when he saw the look in my eyes. “Arch Dragon - I have tried to tell you this a thousand times over. It is just not possible to attach you to the carapace. The human body is just too complex to disassemble in such a drastic way-”
“Human body?” I whispered.
“Your current mortal shell,” he said. “It’s impossible. I can continue to modify what we have, I can change your face so that you are more like a dragon - but we must face facts - I will never be able to attach something so big to you. The carapace is complex-”
The fury came again, bubbling from within me. I cannot recall quite what happened next, not the words he said to me nor how we ended up on the marble staircase as I gripped him in my terrible claws and roared at him.
“It is simply too big,” he said. Were there tears in his eyes? Could he see how powerful I’d become? How strong? “You must know this, you must see this!”
Limb from limb, said the voice. He has failed you. And thus the dragon does ascend-
The surgeon had failed me, so I tore him limb from limb. When it was done I laid him out on the foyer floor. I let him know exactly what I was—who the Arch Dragon really was. I devoured some of the flesh to sate my anger, and then I went to work without him. His assistants fled before I could get to them. A shame, that. I was becoming hungrier by the moment.
The maison was abandoned, and for a stretch of days I fashioned my own parts. First came the eye. Though I’d long considered it, the act of removing one of my own and replacing it was less painful than expected. My own eye went to the latrine and the new eye formed. Half of my vision became ensared by darkness but it did not matter. Soon the eye would awaken. I knew this. Soon I would have the sight of a dragon, I would be able to perceive things that no mortal ever could. All I had to do was wait.
Next came the wings. I was moving fast now that I had no foolish mouths telling what I could and couldn’t do. But as the days moved on there was nothing but darkness in my right eye. No sight. No wondrous sight! I rampaged around the maison. I broke things, shattered the artefacts of my family line. Everything would have to be removed, everything erased. Soon I would have no need for material possessions.
Wings. What I needed was wings! One day not long after, I took a sabre to my back to carve a hole, and attach the wings the surgeon had made for me. They were terribly small, but I supposed I would have to make do. A true dragon can fly any time they want. I promised myself my wings would grow, that one day I would awaken to find them sprawling and gorgeous; that soon I would ascend!
Ascension
I walked my lair with my scaled feet and majestic claws. I took flight from the battlements with my all-encompsing wings! I should say wing—for I was only able to bear one attachment, but it turned out that one was all I needed to fly. I gazed down on my land from afar, I swooped and grazed upon the few dregs of cattle we had left. When the peasants saw me they screamed and ran. They left offerings for me, hoping I’d leave them alone.
How long did I rule over the skies? A few days? A year? An age? Time stopped making sense for me, for I was immortal and had no fear of death. The only chance of such a thing could come from my enemies, but I was too powerful for them, too harrowing in my great size and power. A dragon. Finally a dragon!
But soon rough men in dark capes came to my lair. They wanted my gold. My body. They were envious of me. When they knocked the door down and came to see the desolation of the foyer—it’s strange that I once called it that, for I came to know it as my lair—I was not frightened. All I had to do was bellow fire, scorch them, send them running for the hills.
Somehow, my new body failed me. Their mortal weapons breathed more fire than I could, and soon I was a heap on the floor. I saw blood—mortal blood—not like the gold I’d been promised by the Surgeon. As they tied me up with rope I looked at his skull, hollowed now and stripped clean of even the smallest shreds of flesh. I cursed him as I was dragged screaming from my home.
“By the Lady what a sight,” one of the soldiers gasped when he bent down to regard me.
All I could do was laugh. He was envious, no doubt. Soon I would regain my strength and burn them all to cinder. It was only a matter of time.
Yet my strength never seemed to return. My body ached, my wings fell limp and lifeless, they sheared off one of my claws to keep it as a trinket. It unfolded as before - the curse of my people. Mortals always covet the parts of a dragon. Mortals always destroy and steal.
They threw me in a jail cell, up in the Northern Fathoms, their homeland, horrified by the sight of me. When they asked me questions about who I was or how I ended up this way, I heard pity in their voices. Disgusting pity. How could one pity a creature such as I? I vowed to burn them all, to burst free from the prison and once more take to the skies.
But instead I was displayed in a cage. They took me along to an opera house where I was kept behind the red curtains of a stage and unveiled to a gasping, horrified crowd. Though I am not proud of it, I confess that the sudden attention made me cower. And then I roared.
In these showings I found a kind of admiration that I’d never felt before. All wanted to see me, all came from far and wide to gaze upon my body. Finally I was getting the recognition I deserved. Finally my race was back in the world and even though I was in chains, at least the mortals could see how powerful a dragon really was. I saw it in the way they looked at me - in the twisted expressions of horror. It was ecstasy.
On the third night of my display, the Empress came to look upon me. I supposed it was logical for a powerful woman such as her to be interested in the body of a dragon. There was pity in her eyes, too.
“I simply can’t look at him,” she said. “It is a sad thing, what madness can do to a man. We must end this.”
“Hanging, lady Empress?” asked one of the guards who tormented me.
“Oh no,” she said. “We must study him. We must keep him alive. He shall be kept in the dungeons, until we discover the truth.”
And so now I wait. Forever in the dark, forever alone, but a dragon all the same. They feed me scraps of meat. Sometimes they ask me questions but I always tell them the same thing. Or I roar, proudly as I can, all the while inside promising that soon my strength will return and the walls of this prison will crumble beneath my potency. I will burn the empire to the crowd, I will cup the empress in my claws and eat her up, just as I ate the Surgeon all those years ago.
Sometimes when I gaze into the darkness of my cell. As I wait for something to change, I hear the voice again. It tells me the same thing that my Father did, ever since I was but a hatchling.
“I am a dragon,” I ask. “Am I not?”
There is often silence after that, a silence that lingers for so long that I wonder if the voice will ever return to me. But it always does, eventually, I hear it loud and clear against the sombre dusk of my cage.
Oh yes, it says. You are a dragon. And thus the dragon does ascend.
Connor van Bussel is a writer from Cardiff, UK, who specializes in horror and fantasy fiction. After graduating with an English Literature degree from Cardiff University, he was lucky enough to get a poetry chapbook titled Under the Neon published by Lumin – an independent press and magazine from Cardiff. Since then, he has focused primarily on novels but has also found some time to write short stories on the side.