The crew of the Kraken, a ship filled with high tech equipment to fulfill every treasure hunter’s dreams, was in high spirits. They were anchored in the Irish Sea, several miles offshore of Dublin. Their metal detectors had picked up a significant amount of hard metal in a sea trench a few days ago. Now, on a calm August morning, with all of the proper paperwork and permits filled out, they were ready to begin their excavation. They weren’t sure what it was they’d found, but they sure as hell were going to find out.
Two divers went into the water each with their own submersible drill, the bits large and designed after those used in deep sea mining. They dove, keeping in radio contact with their crewmates at the surface.
“We’ve reached the site. It looks like…” the diver flashed his light over the area, “Chains? Thick ones. Might be some Navy scrap from the wars.”
The second diver swam closer, “Each of these links is bigger than my head and they’ve no sealife growing on them…I think they’re holding something down.”
Of course, neither diver could read the inscriptions on each link—it was far too intricate to see in the dim waters. Getting the go ahead from the captain, the diver’s started their excavation. The drill bits broke upon the stubborn metal of the chains. Undaunted, they surfaced and then re-submerged with underwater welding torches. The torches proved the chain’s doom as link after link was gradually cut and fell away. The brilliant flare and spark kept the divers from noticing a strange green light emanating ever stronger within the coils of chain until it made their work area seem lit by a green sun.
“Something strange going on here,” the first diver said after turning off his torch. The second diver followed suit, swimming across the site to investigate. “Bones! They’re massive bones in the chains!” The water began to toss and boil about them, remaining eerily calm just over the bones and chains. The links moved, seemingly shoved aside by that green light. The radio filled with expletives as the full skeleton became visible, appearing like a large dinosaur… with wings.
The light pulsed, clearly coming from within the bones themselves now, then expanded, the light whirling about the ancient skeleton in clear green streams. The divers swam further away, keeping out the light’s current. Turning back they watched as muscle, sinew, and organs formed on the skeleton. The light’s intensity growing as finally hide and scales covered the massive body, then disappearing and leaving the diver’s with just the light from their headlamps.
Krah, krah okaaz…Su, Su’um! Alok, alok fah su! (Cold, cold sea…Air, breath! Arise, arise for air!)
The dragon’s eyes popped open, two golden lights in the black of the sea bottom. Her mind whirled in a haze of pain and need and she barely noticed the two strangely garbed men as she suddenly launched herself towards the surface. Her mighty wings and sinewy tail propelled her up and up, until finally she broke free from the briney waters and into the afternoon sun.
“Su, Su’um!” The dragon exclaimed at her first eager gaping breath. The waves from her escape crashed into the ship, she noted the small figures of humans on its deck running wildly, some screaming from her roar and appearance. They shouted in an unfamiliar language and one man held a strange apparatus she didn’t know was recording her hovering above the ship, streaming live for the whole world to see over the internet.
The sun felt warm, welcome on her cold hide and scales. Sun…but there had not been sun before. Before there was night and moon. And the women, one with a song and another with a sword…her memory flashed painfully, incomplete and episodic. She roared again in her anger and pain and flew in great circle, scanning the waters for the hated women. They weren’t there. She could not smell them, could not see them, could not hear the siren’s song. The dragon roared once more. It’d been night when she’d last seen them and now it was day. Perhaps they had fled back to land over the night.
The strong beat of her wings carried her back over her beloved Eire. She hoped those women had not done damaged her land too terribly. The dragon gaped in wonder, as the forests and fields she’d once known were no more. Instead there lay a great sprawling city. It stank of humans, their filth and other things she had no words for. How could this have happened so quickly? What had been done to her homeland?
A bit of green midst the buildings called to her and she landed gracefully despite the shaky unnerving feeling that something was horribly wrong. Her stomach rumbled, the sound breaking through a pained search of her memory, and she became aware of a great hunger as if she’d starved for weeks. The dragon was gorging on her third deer when she became aware of her audience.
The Dublin folk who’d decide to enjoy themselves at the world-known Phoenix Park stood staring at this creature of ancient myth, her maw covered in the blood of the park’s prized fallow deer herd. They made sounds of astonishment and had little devices that clicked when they held them in her direction.
She hissed as one came too close, her tail whipping the air. Then her ears were assailed by a piercing wail and strange contraptions with flashing blue lights on top came close. Uniformed men came out of them, herding the rest of the humans away while others trained devices on her. The dragon didn’t know what the devices were, but the humans carrying them walked like warriors and she could only assume they were some strange form of weapon. She hissed at them again before one human, clearly in charge, put something to his face and used it to amplify his voice to shout at her. Her wolf-like ears went back, not recognizing the words, but knowing the warning in them.
The little humans thought they could scare her with their tiny weapons and shouting. This wouldn’t do. She dropped her jaw wide and roared “Fo krah diin!” Frost issued forth from her mouth, spilling onto the humans. Some screamed as their skin grew black with frostbite, all shivered in the chill force of air. She heard an odd crack from one of the devices and screamed as her left wingvein was hit. More cracks issued and while the small pebbles couldn’t penetrate the armor of her scales, she saw other humans arriving, their devices far bigger.
With a defiant roar she took to the skies again. The hole in her wing would soon heal and it didn’t hinder her ability to fly, as much as it had stung. The pebble that’d hit her must have been iron. With Dublin so changed, she felt a great longing for home, her true home. She flew southwest, instinct guiding her when the landscape below was too different to be recognizable.
Here, here was home. But where were the trees? The great oaks and beech and pine of her forest? Why had the great lake at its heart become a small mire? One spot remained the same and she landed there. Her great body just fit in the middle of the circle of standing stones. The standing stones had been here before she hatched and it was hear she’d held council with the inhabitants of her forest. Animals, stalwart adventurers, anxious villagers and even the wandering druids had met her here. Now, only three trees stood about it.
“Aan munax ahraan. Zu’u luv, zu’u uslaas krosis.” (A cruel wound. I am tears, I am unending sorrow.) She reached her head up, looking around the surrounding field while sadness filled her heart. There were still birds above. And before there’d been deer. Maybe her animal friends could tell her what had happened. At least she wouldn’t be alone.
“Raan mir tah!” She cried out, her tail wrapping about her body as precious few creatures answered her call.
