Tynasian Dreams

presents

The Hunt of the Begroth

The Hunt of the Begroth was the beginning of my love affair with an alternate reality where dragons, not humans, gained the upper hand.  This is a humorous world where we see everyday objects with the merest hint of a twist.  This was finalised in my parody of fantasy and gumshoe fiction - The Holistic Brothel Mystery.  In Begroth there's less humour and more of the flowing fantasy with which I'm familiar.

Sungarius' eyes flicked open and, for one, fleeting moment, he felt blissfully serene. Then the alcoholic haze of the previous night's over indulgence flooded up through his body in a wave, and sent his head into a spinning orgy of pain. He groaned and sat up, reaching across for the goblet of water on the table that stood next to his large, four-poster bed. Sipping at the cool liquid Sungarius felt his head clear a little, but, as it did so, he realised with sudden dread that his nose was itching and that he needed to sneeze. Frantically he threw back the bedclothes and moved as quickly as he could to the window. Throwing it wide he stuck out his head letting the fresh, mountain air clear his head. For a second or two he felt the incessant itching at the back of his nostrils subside, then, without warning, his muscles contracted, his head flew back before darting forward again, and a forty foot jet of flame swept out over the courtyard.

Below him he heard the sudden commotion and looking down saw the guards running for cover. He gazed sheepishly out and saw that, for once, he'd been lucky and that none of the buildings were on fire. With a shrug he returned and crawled back into bed, pulling the covers up over himself and trying to stop his head from aching. Why, he asked himself, did he always drink too much at the meetings, especially when he knew the effects that it had on him.

Later, his head a mere throb somewhere on top of his shoulders, he eased himself down from his rooms to the great hall, and gingerly moved over towards the fireplace. A large, welcoming fire greeted him, warming his scales which, despite his thick furs and heavy velvet houpelande, had become chilled. As he crossed the hall he spotted the unmistakable figure of Prince Harzarius seated at a table, eating. He paused to turn and bow. The young prince rose.

'Sungarius, here, come join me. I hate eating alone.'

'When I feel like this,'muttered the elderly dragon, 'I hate eating at all!' More loudly he said, 'It would be a great honour, my lord.'

'Oh, Sungarius, how many times have I told you to drop the "my lord" bit. Why, by my father's tail, you all but brought me up; surely such formality can be dispensed with.'

'It is a hard habit to break, my...........friend.'

'There, laughed Harzarius, a smile setting his eyes twinkling, 'not so hard was it?'

The prince was a handsome creature, his long, regal snout protruding well forward and his twin horns polished, and oiled so that they gleamed. The long ridge that ran down his back glowed a fiery red until it was covered by the robes he wore. So unlike me, thought Sungarius, whose own ridge was a sombre grey, and whose horns had long since lost their shine.

'I'm going hunting later,'said Harzarius picking at a tooth with one of his manicured claws. 'I hear a pack of Begroth have been spotted down in the valley. The vermin have already killed a couple of our farmer labourers, and their families have appealed to the king for help. Don't you wish you could thrill to the hunt, Sungarius?'

'Indeed,'lied the old dragon. In actual fact he'd never really had any inclination towards sport, rather he preferred the softer pleasures of the library, or the music room. Now, at eight hundred and fifty seven years old, the thought of flexing his wings and taking to the skies filled him with dread.

Harzarius laughed, throwing back his head and letting smoke wisp up out of his throat. 'Father tells me you were never one to hunt. Is that true?'

'It is. My calling was to altogether more scholarly pursuits.'

'Well, someone has to do it I suppose,'observed the prince teasingly. He was, in fact, a very good student himself, and held a great deal of promise to replace his father, the king, in a century or two.

'I had thought the Begroth extinct,'said Sungarius, seeking to change the subject.

'So did we, after the last great freeze, but it seems some survive beyond the Crystal Peaks. Now they've drifted through the Pass of Sighs and threaten our harvest.'

'Destructive parasites. Proof positive to me that Gormadiok had an off day when he created the world.'

Harzarius feigned shock and horror. 'How can you speak so irreverently of our god?' he asked.

Sungarius shrugged. 'At my age I feel close enough to him to be critical,' he replied.

'Well, you must come and see us off later,'said Harzarius excitedly,' It'll be quite a show.'

Sungarius nodded picking at a buttered roll. Already he felt his stomachs beginning to complain.

The sunlight was crisp and fresh as Prince Harzarius rose up into the sky with the Royal Guard at his back. Their mighty wings beat at the air and filled the wide courtyard of Castle Ekroma with wind. Sungarius stood in one corner, honouring the prince's wishes, huddled inside a thick fur cloak and shivering. Soon he could go back to the warmth of his study and continue with his reading. For the moment, however, his gaze was fixed skyward as the sun darkened with the mass of dragons rising towards it. They were, he had to agree, a glorious sight.

When the last of the young dragons had departed, and the beat of their wings faded on the still air, Sungarius turned back towards his rooms. As he did so a sudden thought struck him and, on an impulse, he decided to visit the King's Begroth museum. He walked slowly across the courtyard to the old keep and shuffled up the wide, stone steps. Above him the mighty tower of black stone rose up towards the sky, its top almost too distant for his fading eyesight to make out. There, he knew, the kings of old, preserved by the mason's arts, still gazed out over the world.

But the old keep was seldom used now, since the present king's father had ordered the building of the new apartments along the west wall of the castle. Once completed the centre of habitation had shifted away from the old, more austere setting, to the new, richly decorated one. Since then various other additions had been made, until the once solitary keep was all but surrounded by ornate layers of architecture.

Inside the Keep was cool and gloomy. High windows sent coloured threads of light drifting down to the flagstone floor and the fire that burned perpetually in the Great Hearth gave an orange glow to the vast chamber. To the left, a staircase spiralled up into the dark recesses of the ceiling, and Sungarius shuffled over to it, gently placing his forepaws onto it, before beginning the long ascent.

At the top the staircase opened out into a wide, wooden floored room lit by high, tracery windows glazed with clear glass. Once the king's own suite of rooms had been housed here, and the trapping of royalty still shone through despite the fact that all the furniture was gone. Ornate carvings decorated the stonework, and the ceiling was a rich tapestry of contrasting vaulting. Down the centre of the room and around the walls were the few remains of the Begroth, collected during the war before the last great freeze. Sungarius wandered down through the centre aisles looking at each item individually, sometimes pondering the mentality of the creatures that had created it.

As he did so his mind wandered back to the one and only time that he had met one of the creatures. It had arrived at the castle requesting an audience with the king, and Sungarius, being young and curious, had manipulated events so that he might have some time alone with it.

The first, and most notable thing, was its size. It was so small for such a destructive animal, barely five and a half feet high. Then the fragility of it struck him, for despite being a mere baby at forty five years of age, it had lost most of its hair, its teeth had gone black, and the bones in its back had begun to twist out of shape. That such a creature should have the audacity to lay claim to the world and destroy much of the forest in the region, shocked him. They had spoken for perhaps an hour before it was time for the creature to meet with the king. Thereafter he had never seen it again. Later he had learned that it had come with an offer of peace, but that the Begroth's had gone against their word and killed the king's herald. Thereafter their fate was sealed, and Sungarius had been pleased when the short war ended and the king declared the species extinct.

Now, sadly, it seemed to have reappeared, and was once more ravaging the king's domain.

Sungarius stopped before a collection of metal plates that hung in the shape of a Begroth. Strangely the creatures sought to protect their soft skins by covering then with this substance. It offered no defence against dragon fire, indeed, it only made it worse, for the fire got inside and had nowhere to escape. The small, pink creatures simply cooked in their own juices. But, he considered, it probably offered some protection against themselves, and from the lesser creatures of Gormadiok's creation.

He moved on, coming eventually to the array of tooth picks and needles that the Begroth's used as weapons. It seemed incredible to think that they could be so insanely confident in their own abilities that they would even consider using such a thing against a dragon. Sungarius ran a claw over his thick old hide and smiled. Why, even Septimius the Healer used sharper, more deadly tools than these. With a contented shrug, his curiosity satisfied, Sungarius made his way back to his chambers, his mind drifting off into the thesis of philosophy that he was currently compiling, and forgetting for a while the prince and his guard who were, even now, heading off over the Forest of Zedra towards the farmlands of the Indiacus valley.

The wind roared in their faces, the mighty peaks receding behind them as they began the long, fast glide down towards the plains. Beneath them, far, far below was the green tips of the trees speeding by, and through their veins pulsed the life blood of Gormadiok. Overhead the clear, cloudless sky shone a magnificent blue, and far off to their left the waters of the ocean glistened.

Prince Harzarius felt the sun warm the scales on his back, and turned his long, wide, horny head this way and that to watch his companions surging along beside him. He held his wings steady, adjusting their angle slightly as the air currents changed around him. His hearts beat faster and faster as they neared their destination. Soon, up ahead, he could detect smoke rising, and knew that the Begroth had fired their fields, destroying the crop that would feed next seasons brood. There must be time to save it, for the queen had laid three eggs this year, possibly the last by the aging king, and to loose them through lack of food would break the old dragon's heart.

Then the trees thinned, and the open grasslands sped away towards the horizon where the mountains rose up. Harzarius gave the order to descend and, almost as though it were one large creature, the dragons wheeled and dived, their wings thrust together along their backs.

Below they could now make out the seething mass of Begroth, tiny insignificant creatures that milled around the pyre that had been the village. Harzarius gave out a roar as he saw the carcasses of several dragons piled on the top of the flames, their flesh burning, their eyes milky with death. Had there been any hint of doubt in his mind that what he was about to do was correct, it now fled as the anger flooded into him. He roared, and those at his back took up the call, opening their wings to slow their descent and send them screaming over the village towards the mass of creatures that had brought death and destruction to their kind.

Harzarius reached deep within himself to where the fire lived and drew it forth, spewing it out in a thin, deadly stream letting the long tongue of flames play over and blacken the creatures below. All around him he felt the heat of dragon fire as it coated the earth, and then he was rising, banking to the left, and looking over his shoulder towards the spot where the village had stood. With grim satisfaction he saw the multitude of Begroth that had perished, their bodies turned to ash inside the metal coffins they wore.

Then, suddenly, the ground opened to reveal deep pits filled with Begroth slaving around massive wooden constructions. A moment later the air filled with a terrible wail and long, black darts flew skyward. Harzarius felt the touch of one as it passed his left side and saw one or two dragons fall, pierced through by the long spears of metal. He hissed out a warning and took his soldiers down, low over the ground, skimming the surface to avoid the bite of the Begroth's new weapons. Then the pits opened up beneath him and he was filling them with fire, watching the wooden machines of death explode in flames. His ears filled with the screams of the dying, and he could see the Begroth struggling out of the pits, flames dancing around them, the oily substance that fed them clinging to the creatures'skin and clothes.

Back and forth they went, over and over, until the whole area had been cleansed, and then they beat their wings and headed back to the castle.

That night Sungarius sat close to the royal table so that he might overhear the conversation of the king and the prince. He smiled during the retelling of the attack on the Begroth and the saving of most of the crops. Tomorrow, the king promised, Harzarius would ride again to ensure none of the creatures still soiled their lands, and then they would seal, forever the Pass of Sighs. Later he heard Harzarius saying,

'But, my liege, we must fly beyond the Crystal Peaks to where the Begroth now live and destroy them.'

'That is not our way,' the old king replied.

'But, my liege, they have weapons now that can harm us, they have learnt better ways to kill.'

Gormadiok will look over us, as he always has,' said the king tiredly.

For a few moments Harzarius was silent, then he swished his long tail angrily and said in a quiet, menacing voice. 'If we do not kill them all, one day they will find a way to kill us.'

The king sighed, tiring of the conversation. 'When you are king, Harzarius,'he said, 'then you may lead our people to whatever part of the world you wish, but so long as I rule we will not take death to others.'

Harzarius rose from the meal and bowed.

'As you wish,' he said.

Sungarius watched him go, his head held high and his tail poised just above the ground. When he was gone he took a long, steady drink and thought dark thoughts. What if Harzarius were right, what if the Begroth were breeding beyond the Crystal Peaks. Could there be a time when they might prove something other than a nuisance. He sincerely hoped not, but deep in his hearts he had the vaguest notion of doubt.