Search the Community

Hey-lo, and welcome to my medieval fantasy (with dragons) version of an adult baby story: Drakevisions! Now, our dragons are quite different in this story (and it will be explained later on), but I wanted an exciting first chapter to start with. Now, there are numerous content warnings for this story. This is definitely under the realm of mature for a very good reason. In this chapter alone, there's implied war crimes, stated sexual assault (including one case of a teen) and implied abuse stemming from this, implied baby dragon killing, major violence (including blood and broken bones), and implied murder and mass murder, including that of baby dragons. Later on, we'll be delving into a few more of those themes plus brainwashing and gaslighting, transphobia, bullying, sexism, bigotry against small town people, war crimes, animal (dragon) cruelty, abuse of both humans and baby dragons, character death, implied intentions of genocide, and various other topics. I advise people to ONLY get into this if you're willing; I will never ask people to read this if they don't want to. Please remember: VIEWER DISCRETION IS STRONGLY ADVISED. About critique, feel absolutely free to tell me what I'm doing wrong; in fact, I encourage it with all my heart! I want to publish this under my pseudo penname in books for AR/AB stuff, and in order to publish without mistakes and errors, I absolutely need to know what I've done wrong. If you can't find anything wrong, then tell me what you liked, please! These things make me a better writer. I'm not soft when it comes to critique, and I'll always listen to it. Thank you in advance! And now, for the first chapter of Drakevisions! - Chapter One: Visions of the Past - Ermendrud was nervous for her first day at her job for Queen Dominica, First of Her Name, Ruler of the Five Realms, The Beauty of the World. Well, technically, it wasn’t just the Queen that needed it; it was the entire city of Deofolmece and everyone in the Light Realm from the evil drakes in the Shadow Lands and the treacherous, loathsome Oathbreakers who led them. It was the job of the Immortals, the Queen’s famed major army, to protect the villages, but after the drakes had torn through Blodham, the second-largest city in the Light Realm, slaying all in their wake, it was almost becoming a necessity to find a weapon that could stop them. Not that it was easy, because even wounding a full-grown drake was considered almost impossible. No, Ermendrud wasn’t in the Immortals; only those big enough, strong enough, fast enough, and brave enough were capable - and she was none of those: only a girl of seven-and-ten, shy and gentle as a flower, and the Immortals did not allow women in their ranks, by order of the Queen. Her job was egg raising, drake egg raising, to be precise, along with many others who either intended to join the Immortals or make drake bloodletting a career. Drake blood had a potency that was unmatched. It was said to cure any sickness, no matter how much it spread, any wound, even mortal ones. It could even cure deformities in babies and children. And thus, even with how dangerous fully-grown drakes were, the eggs - and the little drakes inside of them - were immensely important. It was a blessing and a curse, then, that drakes were immortal…in a manner of speaking. Kill one, and its body would simply return to being an unbreakable - yes, unbreakable; swords, hammers, axes, spears, all of them would shatter on impact - egg, which then hatched it into a baby drake all over again in two years. Out of all five species of drakes, only the rare phoenixdrakes would ever remember any of their previous lives, sure, but it meant that nothing would ever put them down for good. And so Ermendrud was to harvest the blood of baby drakes, she pondered, as she walked over to the gatehouse where she was to sign up, all the way from her small village of Blaecham. She kept wondering if that was a good idea, to kill babies of any kind for blood, but drakes were cruel to humans, were they not? “Hey, Ermy! Are you listening?” “Are you ignoring us on purpose? I’m hurt, Ermy; I thought we were friends?” “Realm to Ermy, are you there?” Ermendrud turned to her three lifelong friends - all from the same village she was from, all seven-and-ten years of age, and all staring at her - startled out of her thoughts. There was Faramund, a six foot, five inch and somewhat heavyset man at nineteen stone exact with oily, caramel brown hair that was slicked back to the nape of his neck, a patchy beard with slight ginger hints on a face with a jutting jaw and high cheekbones, and cautious green eyes, his muscles showing from his short brown shirt and breeches. He was the smart and serious one, wise beyond his years, always the one with a solid plan to do things every day, stoic and always reliable, even with his analytical mindset. Second was Widogast, a tall and gangly man at six feet, five inches and fourteen-and-a-half stone, with shoulder-length strawberry blond hair, a thin mustache and the hints of a wispy goatee, and mischievous gray eyes on a rodent-like face, his long dyed blue shirt and brown breeches baggy on him. He was always ready with a joke that nobody else seemed to get, a constant grin on his face, always positive and willing to cheekily argue with the more dour Faramund, constantly keeping up their spirits. Finally, there was Wulfgifu, a woman taller than any of them and most grown men at six feet, seven inches weighing fourteen stone, with large breasts and hips showing through her long homespun brown dress, long and curly burnt-orange locks falling to the small of her back, and icy-blue eyes filled with surprising warmth on her chubby face. She was brash and bold, confident and dauntless almost to a fault, but stronger than any man she knew, despite being a woman, never to be bettered by any man. And yet, she was a very kind and nurturing woman as well. All stood there with bags carrying their meager possessions (it wasn’t that they were poor; they just didn’t have as much as the castle inhabitants did), seemingly waiting on her to pay attention. Ermendrud shuffled her bag on her shoulder nervously, her long auburn hair pinned into a bun, even though lengths of it still fell into her hazel eyes, shifting from the lightest brown to a brownish-green in the light, each with gold flecks. She was small for a woman at 5’1” and slightly heavier than seven stone. Her plain brown dress purposely hid her breasts, large for her size, even though her petite frame would do her no favors on the childbearing (partially why she wanted not to have children, along with not wanting the responsibility). She and her friends called themselves “The Four Routiers”, having known each other since early childhood. They protected each other (well, it was mostly her three friends protecting her, but she helped dress their wounds afterwards; she was slated to be a healer early on before the interest in drake-keepers grew and her profession was changed), they sang together, fought together, did everything together. And now they were becoming drake-keepers and moving to the castle together. The thought was a lot for her. “Well, um, I was just thinking about the drakes in question,” she answered, her thoughts on the potential hatchlings. “It just seems like a lot, you know? Coming from Blaecham all the way to Castle Tungol…who would’ve thought?” “Who would’ve thought it would be us?” Wulfgifu answered kindly. “Why shouldn’t it be us, Ermy? We’ve more than earned our way, learning how to read, even in our small hamlet, learning as much as we could. Isn’t this what it’s supposed to be?” “And it’ll be fun!” Widogast said eagerly. “I want to see what the drakes are like as well!” “You mean before we kill them?” Faramund finished. “That’s what they’ll be expecting. I don’t like it one bit, and neither does Ermy; I can tell.” “Fary dour, ever sour,” Widogast snarked before finishing in a dark tone, “There’ll probably be Immortals that do that. I never want to be one, even if they demand it. Not now, not ever.” “Never is right,” Faramund agreed with vehemence in his tone. “After the Sack of Wolcenham? After everything we’ve lost? Never.” “Even if I was a man, never,” Wulfgifu echoed, her voice raw with fury. “Never, ever, ever.” Ermendrud felt empathy towards all of her three friends, as they stood outside of the castle gatehouse, thinking about the Immortals. All of her friends’ fathers and mothers had died while in service as infantry to the Immortals against the drakes (which led to the law that no woman could join the Immortals after they had been killed by the drakes). Widogast had lost his older sister after she got into a fight with an Immortal when he was eight, and Faramund had lost his older brother during the sack. Killed in battle, was what he stated an Immortal said to him, but he knew that was a lie. As for Wulfgifu’s anger against the Immortals, all of her family, down to the newborn baby, had been butchered by what she believed were Immortals when she was a child, the only survivor of the attack. The Immortals said the murderers were bandits, but she never believed them. Meanwhile, Ermendrud was the product of a brutal rape by some horrible excuse of a man, her mother being younger than she was when it happened, having barely survived the birth, according to the midwife who had told the story to Ermendrud. Her mother always said she never wanted her, that she hated her child, that her eyes reminded her of her rapist every single time, to never come back after permanently kicking her out of the house when she was a child. Her gentle heart knew that her mother was just traumatized from what had happened, and others wiser than she had said her mother was far too young to properly care for her. She had no idea who her father was and never wanted to know, if that was the kind of “man” he was. The four had been mostly raised by a kindly friar by the name of Ealhstan (now Brother Ealhstan); a compassionate man who helped them along with the nuns of Blaecham, keeping them from the more unsavory orphanages and telling the four that they were a family and to hold onto those bonds for their days…and so they did. “HEY! Are you four just going to stand out there gawking?!” All four of them jumped when they heard the sound of a gruff woman, part of a group of three women who revealed themselves. The speaker was a bit taller than most women, willowy, clad in leather armor, a dagger at her hip. A scowl was on her freckled face. The other two women were also tall and more portly than the speaker, but clad in the same armor. Wulfgifu answered for all of them. “We’re supposed to be drake-keepers. This is where we sign up, right?” “Drake-keepers? You four? HAH!” The woman spat on the ground. “You and everyone in every small backwater town!” “We had letters that told us to sign-” “Nobody cares!” the speaking woman snarled. “Nobody cares about you fucking poor hicks!” “Who says we aren’t wealthy?” Widogast asked cheekily. “Your clothes, smartarse,” the woman growled. “Cheek me again, and I’ll cut your fucking tongue out.” Widogast gave a sneaky look at the woman before touching his right cheek, then his left, before he finally stuck his tongue out. “Fucking cocksucker!” The woman rushed at Widogast almost faster than Ermendrud could blink, her dagger drawn. One of them drew her own dagger, while the other had a sword, both rushing Faramund and Wulfgifu, obviously saving the smaller Ermendrud for last. Widogast dodged the initial knife swipe, landing a solid blow on the woman’s nose that broke it, leaving her gasping in anger. Ermendrud, seeing Wulfgifu holding the arms of the sword-bearing woman to prevent the two-handed sword from coming down, gave a quick kick to the woman’s leg with her heavy boot that sent her crumpling to the ground with a crack, howling in pain, before Wulfgifu knocked the woman out with a blow to the head. Faramund had disarmed the other dagger-wielding woman with a hard twist, breaking the woman’s wrists as she screamed, before kicking the dagger away from her. The willowy woman flipped the knife to her other hand, stabbing at Widogast, who merely sidestepped the attempt and landed a blow that knocked a few of her teeth out, leaving her stumbling before he finally disarmed her and held her arms behind her back. “You fucker!” she spat, blood pouring from her nose and mouth on the ground, trying to squirm out of the skinny teenager’s grip like a bucking horse. “All your hands will be mine for touching knights! And then I’ll have your tongues, and then your cocks and tits, too, you fucks!” “What do our cocks and breasts have to do with anything?” Widogast asked, rolling his eyes. “We don’t want to fuck you or nurse you; we just wanted to know where to sign up for the drake-keeper occupation.” “You fucking hicks will never get it! And I’ll still have your fucking hands, tongue, and cock!” “Really know only those words, don’t you?” Widogast said, rolling his eyes again before he nodded at Ermendrud, to which she quickly gathered the swords and daggers away from the three knights. “Listen, you dumbarses, you attacked us for no good reason,” Faramund said coldly, still holding the other woman’s arms behind her back. “We only wanted to know where to sign up, not deal with you idiots.” “What the Hell is going on? Who are you four?” Ermendrud noticed the people coming in with a sinking heart. More knights. Men this time, a score and a half of them, in full plate armor. Half of them had arrows notched on longbow strings aimed at them, ten of them had swords, while the other five were on horseback with spears. We’re so fucked… - Some of the names have been taken from Anglo-Saxon English. There's a whole list of words that I used for the towns and stuff, so keep that in mind. With that, I hope y'all enjoyed~