Our favourite self-proclaimed archeologist dragon makes a return! Courtesy of title limits, the story's full name is... different to this title. Rheal and his human assistant happen upon the ruins of the oldest human society, to discover the origin of the oldest stories shared by human and dragonkind... of the events that helped to shape the relationship between the species. This one has been in the works for a long time... could never get it quite how I liked... but, I hope you all enjoy

This story was made possible by my supportive patrons! Whose donations have made this increase to my writing quota permanent. If you're interested in supporting me, or just want to read my stories a week earlier, check out my patreon https://www.patreon.com/user/overview?u=9679574



Rheal and the immortal guardian of the ancient throne

It was a rare day when Johan just found himself sitting outside in the sunlight, watching the world go by. Outside the offices of his company was a sole bench, in a little, grassy area. He supposed he would call it a garden… if it wasn’t so small it would disappear beneath Rheal’s scaly rump if the dragon chose to sit there. All in all, he found he was fond of this little town. It was quiet, mostly. When a trader or group of them passed through there was, a flurry of activity, but when there wasn’t instead an expectant calm settled in. People were, waiting, preparing for the next rush. His work was tethered to the trading routes also… not that it touched him personally. His employer sold what he found, after he had taken notes, examined it, saved away the… items of most important meaning. He hated to do it… to give away any of these relics, these treasures, to uncaring hands. Those… traders were just looking for something to sell on, and to the right customer… But then, to most, the past was a novelty, to buy, to sell, to concoct wild theories from a comfy chair while brandishing something they barely understood… for him, it was about finding little glimmers of truth… and trying to piece together the past…
He sighed, resting his head to a hand. Bizarre the only kindred spirit was a dragon, not even another human… and even Rheal was in it for entertainment. An eccentric, the equivalent of, some human collecting curiously shaped dog faeces, otherwise meaningless leavings of some other species, totally unimportant to all but that, one individual.
Idly he watched a cart roll by, the owner guiding a squat little donkey. It was a lazy sort of day, but, he concluded he’d had his token breath of fresh air. The musty relics of the past beckoned.
As he got to his feet, a familiar thumping sound began to echo, far off in the distance. It caught his attention. He peered… a small shape was coming their way, carried on vastly wide wings… only a dragon had a wingspan like that. A bright smile alighted on his features. Odd perhaps, even to himself, but he was excited to see Rheal again. If nothing else that dragon had a knack for discovering many an interesting spot to explore. But there were a lot of ruins in the regions where dragons roamed… often, because dragons roamed there. Or just, because few were foolish enough to wander into a dragon’s hunting grounds to search for relics.
Certainly, the dragon was approaching fast today… that meant Rheal was excited, and an excited Rheal… boded well for his prospects of getting even more fresh air.
The golden-brown behemoth swept in towards the village gate, overshooting it with hammering wings, plants gusted, a roof tile or two sent wheeling in the air. The donkey pulling the cart brayed and turned, bolting away from the landing dragon, the unfortunate cart owner left to chase it. Rheal settled with a thud, paws settling on the road, wings folding carefully, Rheal glancing left and right to make sure he wouldn’t catch the precious membranes on a roof.
Johan hurried down to the dragon, waving on his approach.
“Johan” the dragon greeted warmly, dipping his snout “got lucky… almost landed on something”
“You’re lucky our main road is so wide” Johan added “what has you so excited?”
Rheal slowly rolled his forepaws forward, settling down to his belly, pointing his nuzzle to his back “climb, I have somewhere I must take you”
Johan sighed “Hold on. Just wait, do I need my tools?”
“Oh… tools, right. I forget” Rheal huffed, lowering his head onto a paw “yes, but hurry, please, it’s exciting”
Johan reached to stroke a hand down the bridge of Rheal’s snout, before turning to hurry inside. He tended to keep his tools for exploring in a little, ready to go bag… especially since he met Rheal. He checked the contents quickly, the better to be sure he had what he needed, but then moved outside again, approaching the settled dragon. As he neared the flank, bracing to use the forelimb and shoulder to climb up he shot Rheal’s settled head a look
“Will you tell me what you found?”
Rheal hummed faintly. The scales were almost quivering, he could, feel the heartbeat, rapid beneath them “it’s, a door, sort of, some old ruins… and at the back, a huge door, with words, big enough I could fit through it… but I can’t open it… and you’ve told me not to try and, force my way in… because I’d break things. It goes underground, so hard to find, and really, really old”
“Well, you have my interest” Johan mused, easing up onto Rheal’s shoulders, gripping tight “now just, fly calm… you have a passenger, ok?”
“Of course,” Rheal’s quick reply gave Johan no confidence, and he clutched tighter as Rheal rolled up to his paws, and sprung, tail catching across the side of a building in the dragon’s haste, the beast wheeling up and away, leaving Johan to cling on for dear life.

The journey was a long one, and flight was one of the few times when Rheal wasn’t inclined to be a chatterbox. It was fascinating to watch, really. Johan found he spent the time watching the dragon’s wings, small adjustments of each bony digit that ran through the membrane, altering the shape and the angle. Behind, the tail shifting its position, angling the tip, presumably to, correct. The amount of, delicate mathematics that must run through the brain of a dragon… the same of most birds, he supposed… but flight for something so big must be, a delicate balance.
“Is it hard to fly with me on your back Rheal?”
A hum drifted back to him, and for one brief moment Rheal glanced back “sort of…” the dragon looked ahead again “I’m used to maintaining a very tight balance, and so long as you stay right there, you don’t throw it off. Talons are ok, but…” he seemed to muse “humans climb trees, don’t they?”
“Sometimes” Johan conceded”
Rheal hummed “I’m used to carrying things in my talons, when I can position the weight right below my wings… but carrying weight elsewhere, it would, be like trying to walk along a thin branch with a heavy weight on, one spot of your body. Throws you off… And if I lose my, forward power, or it gets, deflected away, it’s really, really nasty” A shudder ran through the scales beneath him “Falling, from the sky is terrifying, the most awful thing I can imagine. The feeling of powerlessness, of losing, the command of the skies. You couldn’t make me risk that”
“Momentum” Johan added, “you’d lose momentum”
“mmm” Rheal hummed, beginning to lower his flight “I need to focus now…”
Johan compliantly shut his mouth. He had no desire to distract from the careful balancing act the dragon was going through. The land below was littered with trees, Rheal looking around quickly, eyes intent, taking in the surroundings. His back rolled, wingtip rising above a higher tree, maintaining his balance, rising above a cluster. A careful, precise weave of wing to eye co-ordination. Flashes of ruins came beneath them… and Johan could see what Rheal had meant. There were, the echo of ruins, foundations, overgrown and barely peeking through the ground… so old little remained to even say anything had been here.
But, ahead there was indeed something, a large door, built into the base of a cliff, surrounded by trees… in fact… out here, he doubted it would be easy to find, unless one had wings…
Finally, after sweeping above the canopy, Rheal seemed to spot an open area he liked, and dived to the ground with a thud, wings folding tight to his back.
“Sometimes, I’m glad you’re doing the flying”
Rheal looked back, chest puffing, a proud little smirk on his scaly lips “I’m a good flier. I may be a scatterbrain, but I’m focussed when I fly. Need to. Lots of looking, lots of adjusting, no blind spots. I think it’s one reason we have necks like these, so I can look right under myself to watch for things… all I need is to clip a paw, and I’ll tip forward… face and wing first into the canopy… a dead dragon. I suppose it balances my tail too”
Johan slid down Rheal’s side, pausing to pat the settled forelimb “Many of my kind dream of flight… though the more I see of you on the wing, the more I realise, how heavy a price you pay for those wings”
Rheal looked to his wings, spreading them a moment, before folding them “I suppose… I can see how heavily my kind have needed to adapt to the wings… but, your kind adapts to your needs too… wings are a fine boon to gain, despite the, fragility it brings”
Johan moved past the seated dragon, feeling the, impact of Rheal’s paws as the beast set to follow him. The door was indeed, impressive… but he hoped Rheal wasn’t being, optimistic
“You can fit through it, you think?”
“if I crawl”
Johan took a moment to size Rheal up “maybe… anyway, you need this door open first… I’ll see what I can do…”
Johan approached the door, the world here silent, but for the repetitive thud of Rheal’s tail. He considered the door, nodding to himself “Now this is interesting… there is writing on it… It would take time to translate…” he sighed, doubting Rheal could be that patient… “but what I can tell immediately, is that I’ve seen some of these marks before… there was an old culture of people who, spread quite far before they died out… this, is not their only site, but this is the largest I’ve seen…”
He tapped one series of runes “and this one I know, it means throne…” he looked back to the dragon “Rheal you wonderous beast… you may have found their long-lost capital”
The dragon purred a deep, grating sound, the thuds of tail increasing in tempo “I knew it had to be important. I mean, why else have a dragon sized door”
Johan rolled his eyes… and didn’t bother adding the door wasn’t dragon sized… not really. If humans had intended a dragon enter, it would be twice the height… still, he looked over the doorway… time had ravaged it, but, what was inside… that might be pristine. He considered it… old or not, it was a door, and the door hadn’t changed that much through time… he saw two, doors, he supposed, in the stone. A feel at the base implied to him, perhaps they were meant to slide apart… he pushed at one, but, nothing happened.
“I tried that” Rheal added
Johan stood back, considering… it could be jammed… or… locked. There was no key he could see… so… he moved to the side of the door. He saw a lot of rocks… but, one spot on the cliff looked different, just a little too, straight an edge. He tugged some moss away and found, a single prong of stone… nicely hidden. He gripped it and pulled… to no avail.
“Rheal… put your claw here, and push down, slow but firm. I’ll bet this was meant to be done by several humans at once…”
He backed away as the dragon leaned in close, complying and hooking one claw upon the, lever, he hoped. Rheal pushed, and a low, grating creak echoed as the prong lowered, a dull click from the door
“Good… now try pushing again, where I was… it might work this time”
The dragon wasted no time. Johan barely had time to stumble back fore Rheal advanced, placing both forepaws to one side, where the rocky door jutted out. A low creak echoed from deep within, before the wall of stone began to slide away, seemingly right into the rest of the cliff.
“remarkable workmanship on such a scale” Johan reflected, the door becoming, more visible as the dragon parted it. It was a sliding door, right into the stone… he assumed the door itself had to be made separately… the weight involved, must have been intense “as basic as practices go… make a hole, make something that fits the hole, and slide it in, and out… I assume there is something beneath it to aid in the rolling…” he moved into the doorway, as Rheal pushed one door all the way, and set to the next. Peering to the floor, he saw it. The doors were sat in a groove… and below the groove, seemingly, set in place, were what looked like columns, were those stone also… “The wheel… making it possible to move objects too heavy for us easily since the time of fire…” he smiled a little “It’s cliché, but I truly do adore that… it’s so symbolic for me, of my kind?”
Rheal panted, thudding to the ground, with the space opened “why?” he managed to grunt past his breathing
“Well… a group of people, could never move this huge block of stone” he gestured to the door “normally. How many times the strength of one human, would it take, to move it all, in one instant. But the wheel… it, seems to allow us to, increase the time we have to apply that force. It’s a factor of strength, and time” he explained “even you would have trouble moving those doors I’ll bet, were they not rolling”
Rheal hummed, looking to the heavy rocks “agreed… each of those probably weighs more than me… certainly, actually…”
“I’ve always felt, really, when I think about how we compare to the might of, your kind… our greatest strength, is the ability to… make things that magnify our strength. Like the wheel… the strength of a few humans, can do the work of tens or hundreds, through the application of thought and understanding”
Rheal rumbled softly “I’ve always liked how humans think… so tricksy” the dragon padded through the door, looking back with, a glimmer of excitement lighting those eyes “Why do you think I love these exploring times? It’s in these old ruins, where I see the purest human ingenuity, when you had naught but rocks and twigs, you accomplished things even a dragon could not do. My kind never thinks this way, we never learn to, because we never need to. You humans need to, so you learn to… but then, you do things, beyond what you need, you gain a power that has few limits… It fascinates me… but on that note”
“On that note, you’re simply fascinated to see what else the people who made this place left behind?”
“Exactly… come on, how often do I actually get to come inside?”
“Point taken” Johan wandered in after Rheal, looking around. The tunnel seemed, simpler than he’d expect for the door. There were patterns on the wall, but they held no meaning, just, decorative as far as Johan could tell, and he’d seen enough languages to know when he was looking at one.
“This is very, very old” Johan observed “I do think, this may be the capital of the old kingdom… a, misleading name… but it’s what it is, commonly referred to as. It was the first grouping that you could call, a society of my kind. The first gathering of tribes under a common banner…”
“That sounds very important” Rheal looked back hopefully, before wincing and crouching lower as a wingtip hit the ceiling “this wasn’t made for a dragon…”
“If the old stories are true… it might have been, actually” Johan murmured “a trap for a cocky dragon. If such a beast crawled in here after them, they could seal the door, and have it helplessly trapped”
“Don’t even talk like that” Rheal whined, a shudder running his body “I’ll have nightmares about being trapped in a hole…”
“Hold on…” Johan murmured “I hear something…”
He moved ahead of Rheal, peering into the gloom… deeper, he saw light… a fire, a torch hanging on the wall “that’s, impossible”
“Someone got here first?” Rheal suggested despondently
“There could be other entrances… I’d be surprised if there wasn’t… but… I thought I heard, something…”
They advanced, slow, listening, watching as the torch got closer, and closer. There was an archway approaching, beyond it, what looked like an open space, promising. Yet it was by that archway that the torch burned. As they approached, so suddenly, a figure moved from the gloom. Both froze, the gleam of metal in the darkness, a sword levelled in their direction. The wielder was grey haired and ragged, his attire was worn, but looked like it had once been armour, even ornate. He seemed, out of place, and his appearance was sudden
The man swished the blade in the air before bringing it back to position “You are not welcome here, leave at once. None shall enter the throne room while I am at my post”
Johan stared at the man, mind running theories, considering questions, till Rheal spouted the obvious one “who are you?”
“I am the eternal guardian of the throne, I have guarded it since before you were born, and shall guard it after”
“I doubt it” Rheal continued “humans don’t live that long”
“I am immortal” the guardian claimed, his voice carried, a lot more strength than one would assume to look at him “No blade can end me, no dragon can wound me, not tooth or claw or tail shall move me… You had best go back the way you came”
“You actually claim to be from the time this place was… new?” Johan mused aloud “and immortal?”
“I want to go past” Rheal added “you’re not going to stop me”
“I am immortal, the eternal guardian” the man claimed, levelling his sword at Rheal’s snout “you may battle me if you wish dragon… but you shall never defeat me, nor force me from this spot”
“Ok” Rheal noted, and before Johan could react, the jaws had jabbed, gripping the man around the middle, lifting him from the ground. A shake of Rheal’s head sent the blade clunking to ground. The long, scaled muzzle tipped back, and in a few deep lunges, the guardian disappeared past the scaly lips. Rheal licked his chops “little musty”
“Rheal!” Johan blurted “we… talked about you eating people in front of me” he watched the dragon’s neck… the ripple in the scales, met the chest… the man was… deep now
“Does he count… if he’s from so long ago? Were your kind even called humans then?” Rheal mused, before humming “besides… how could I resist. I love experiencing history, how could I turn down a chance to learn what they tasted like back then”
Johan rolled a hand to his face “Rheal… he was probably some crazy hermit who found a secret entrance in here, dressed up in armour left lying around and… convinced himself he was part of this place”
“Oh” Rheal’s ears drooped lightly “he didn’t taste that different to normal certainly… oh well, we can go in now”
Johan shot a distasteful look to the belly of the dragon… right beside him. He didn’t envy the fool… “No taking it back now… lets go and make the most of it”
Rheal swayed into the next chamber, bouncy and gleeful as ever… Johan followed, trying to quash his distaste. He supposed Rheal had just been… defending himself… and whoever that person was couldn’t have a good quality of life out here… he shook his head. He’d focus on archaeology…
“Pretty pictures in here” Rheal called back. The dragon was sat in the middle of a circular room, and indeed, the walls was completely covered by deeply carved images, the colour remained… they were well preserved. Though, as he looked, he saw a story in the pictures. His heart soared for a moment, and he stopped “the images are still so detailed and coloured… and, I know this story”
“Story?” Rheal stopped, looking to the walls, back and forth “oh, pictures… the pictures are a story? Look, there’s a dragon on this one” Rheal leaned close, blowing dust off the wall.
“Yes… Reushin, if I’m right”
Rheal’s muzzle withdrew with a snort “Reushin?!”
“You know the name?” Johan looked to Rheal, genuinely surprised, already fishing for his notebook… If only he’d brought enough paper to get a rubbing of all of this…
“Unfortunately,” Rheal huffed “He’s the most hated dragon amid our kind… long dead of course, but he’s sort of the, spooky evil in the shadows in all our stories…”
Johan considered the walls “yes… this is, the story of the fall of the old kingdom… but, these images put so much of it in more context… look, there, right where the story begins at the door we came in, the dragon, surrounded by light. It’s a religious image. In the earliest days of my kind, most groups took to worshipping dragons. We always turned to religion for things we did not understand… and dragons, we did not understand”
Rheal nodded “and the one beside it… the, dragon perched on a rock, with the humans laying down… our story about him starts there. He took the humans”
Johan nodded lightly “most of your kind seem to react with, disgust or just, are unnerved when humans worship them… dragon worship disappeared, soon as we started to understand you, and… well, most of those cultures died out” Johan moved to the wall “here though, this dragon, Reushin, chose to encourage it. Now, the way our story goes, seems in line with the wall… he, enslaved them through their religion, kept them under heavy paw… ever distrustful”
“Paranoid, our stories go, paranoid and mad” Rheal added
“And here…” Johan traced a picture “without predation, many humans came to join the tribe under the dragon… but this one, it shows the dragon sitting high, the shadow, is cast over this image which… must be the city outside… when it was built. I think the symbolism is, of oppression”
“We have a saying” Rheal noted “fool is the dragon who stands in the path of the river and expects it to stop” he looked to Johan “because no matter how large an obstacle you are, the river can and will move around you. More generally it means, do not make yourself an obstacle to an unstoppable, malleable force; like nature, which wove the crafty wiles of humans. Seeking to stop your kind from… being your kind is like standing in a river… your kind, I admire your tenacity to work around the obstacles being so small gives you… but it is your curse also, you always try to move around an obstacle, without ever wondering why it is there. Your movement is as, intent as a river running downstream”
“Not a bad comparison” Johan reflected “here… is the moment it all changed” he looked with distaste, right above the throne, centre in the story, two images, almost identical… one, showed a human, surrounded by bright, standing before the dragon with hand raised, the next, tinged red, the dragon’s paw where the man had been in the previous image. “supposedly he disliked the very idea of any human using any tool, nothing new could be, brought to bear without his say so. It could only cause dissent. Nothing he could do could stop people getting ideas. If you see a way to make life easier, to gather more food when people are going hungry, to lessen the work when your back is aching, and be denied it for no reason but, he says so… There was no way that sort of persistent resentment could last. And in the end Reushin made his most fatal mistake. He assumed his power meant he had control and command. The words are likely built up with time… but in our story, that man there… is a scholar, a thinker and speaker. He stood to the dragon and said something like ‘do not fish get to swim, birds to fly, dragons to hunt… why does your, infinite wisdom insist humans may not learn?’ and the dragon stomped him flat and thought that the end of the matter. But he assumed he could be a living god… but that’s just it... the moment he accepted the role, it was doomed to end. As I said… religion is the placeholder for understanding. Once he began to lord over, he became a lot easier to understand, and to see. He wasn’t an unknown power, he was an animal, like us, like anything. Same weaknesses, and understandable strengths. He stopped being some unknown power. He became a comprehendible problem, one that could be studied… if at that point, he had yielded control, shed his pride, admitted he had underestimated humanity… maybe it could have worked out… but he created a martyr”
“And no end of grief for my kind” Rheal snorted “All dragons are different, we all have our own ways and methods… but our stories tell that many of my kind had been trying to, teach your kind our ways. Of balance, to help you learn the calm lessons we had learnt over centuries. To help you grow, but grow understanding your consequences… then he turned us into tyrant lizards in human eyes… manipulative tyrants”
Johan sighed, looking along the remaining wall “the rest is a sorry story, and a futile one. Reushin assumed, in his prideful way that he could obliterate humans in an instant if he cared to and building them in one spot would make it easier… who knows why he was so, naïve. He did attack, he killed many. But a city with two exits means he can only pounce on one. His wrath was impotent to the goal. He created more martyrs… he also neglected to remember we could adapt. We build our homes in the open because it’s convenient… he taught those who survived that they had to change that idea. We’re very good at hiding when we need to. They moved underground. Vast tracts of forest, and they’d be buried under a tree. He stood no chance of finding them all… so he made his final mistake”
The pair looked to the final two images, it showed the dragon rising from a river, blue water before a ragged corpse, and green after it… the last image, showed the humans in the sunlight, walking past dragon bones. “Poisoned himself”
“Committed an unforgivable act for my kind” Rheal added with distaste “ruined his own hunting grounds, and the bile he placed spread to other territories. It is the first thing we are taught… the chain of life is a balancing act, one thing invariably effects another. Kill wolves and deer will rise, and trees will fall… and the deer will start to starve… but if there are still wolves, they will hunt well, and the balance restores… so long as you do not push too hard and break it. If it breaks… we are perched on top, we have the furthest and hardest to fall. Poisoning the water is… the height of stupidity, he had himself to hurt only. His prey got sick, the humans were smart enough to avoid his attack, and he starved to death with a belly of his own bile… good riddance. In truth, many of my kind wonder if, had other dragons realised what he was doing sooner, if they would have stopped him. It is not our way to interfere with the territory of others. If we have any… universal rules, they involve that. Others only realised, the mess he was causing when the poisoned beasts began to roam across their borders”
Johan nodded faintly, looking up to Rheal “with luck, you and I will have a nicer story than all that, hmm?”
“But of course,” Rheal chuckled “I don’t have a territory”
Johan shoved the dragon’s side, and got a low groan in answer “the story hasn’t given you a stomach-ache, has it…?”
“No… the human, he’s still squirming” Rheal complained “he’s lasting quite a while… it’s getting uncomfortable”
“He can’t hurt you, can he?” Johan asked, feeling… a mix of emotions as he wondered who he was worried about more…
“Not really” Rheal grunted “but strike the flesh enough and he’ll bruise or cut it… I’m not worried or anything, he’s just going to make me ache…”
Johan turned from the morbid topic, moving for the throne itself “I wonder if this was ever used… the society rather crumbled after their city was ravaged… honestly it wasn’t much bigger than a town by today’s standards, but… big enough no one dragon could kill them all. But those who remained… some stubborn holdouts, otherwise they fled… it was only for a brief time that they had their own ruler… I wonder if this was a temple of sorts before then… of if those who remained managed to carve all this… they can’t have done the door after the attack, they’d need time. But they must have had access, to add these carvings…”
He paused, looking to the side of the stone chair, a rod of wood, elegantly carved… he picked it up, turning it in his hands.
“Found something?”
Johan looked to Rheal “it looks like a sceptre… in wood… amazing… could such a thing even survive this long… I suppose the environment down here is very contained… but even then, to last so long without rotting or being consumed by insects”
“You may keep it” Rheal noted “I’d only break it…” he looked around “I didn’t find much… some plants growing over there…”
Johan nodded quietly, rubbing his thumb to the smooth wood “I might like to come back here someday, take rubbings from the walls. Images like that can have all sorts of little hints and meaning in the fine details”
Rheal nodded, leading their way to the tunnel out, though, Rheal paused once in the corridor, a paw pressing to his belly and rubbing, letting Johan pass
“Ok… I’m spitting this one up…”
Johan looked back with some, horror, seeing the jaws parted, the dragon, retching, pressing to his belly, a shape, reappearing in the throat… Rheal coughed, hacking as a lump landed back in the stone, dripping slime, drenched through every inch, but still… the, guardian staggered to his feet. There was a deep contempt burning in his eyes as once more he fixed archaeologist and dragon in view.
“you shall never defeat me…”
Johan shook his head slightly “it’s hard to take that stance seriously when you just got spat up by a dragon”
“It matters not, while I live you shall never even lay eyes upon the treasures of this sacred place”
“We already saw them, we slunk in while you were locked in mortal combat with his digestive tract…”
“A fight I won!”
Johan considered the man before him… a glob of ooze dripped to the floor, yet still he recoiled when suddenly, the golden-brown snout dropped into his view, the man, re-engulfed in Rheal’s jaws. The draconic snout lifted again, a jab and swallow, the already slimy shape sinking easier this time
“Rheal… why, did you do that?”
The dragon eyed him with a snort “I was willing to just spit him up and wander off… but I won’t have him saying he beat my stomach in a fight… I’m no quitter, he can just stay there. My belly never loses to my prey”
Johan grimaced “I, am just going to pretend this never happened…”
Rheal licked his chops, and resumed his sway back up the tunnel “you don’t suppose he really is immortal, do you…? I don’t want him in there forever, and he’s… uh… too big to, pass, whole”
“I seriously doubt it” Johan noted, his mood was properly soured by the topic “Like I said… likely some crazy hermit. Still, who knows what the people of the past discovered. Despite being primitive, sometimes those in the past gain knowledge we don’t have now. They had to try things blindly, and sometimes, you learn a lot that way. There are some things we don’t try anymore. Why eat every plant in a forest to see if it makes you feel less ill, when we know of a couple that already do. For all I know you’re just noticing him wriggle because you’re thinking about it… or maybe he discovered some old vial of heartburn medicine, who knows…”
Rheal rumbled, swaying on ahead “Immortal guardian meets dragon stomach, what a match up, hmm?”
“Rheal… I’m not going to share your amusement… to me you’re still digesting another person, alive… I’m trying not to think about it”
“Mmm, ok” Rheal padded outside into the fading day, stretching his wings before settling down to his belly, looking to Johan “Hop up then, I’ll take you home”
Johan obligingly scaled to the dragon’s back, hearing a deep, heavy gurgle from the dragon’s stomach. Rheal huffed “still going to feel so accomplished when I show him my stomach doesn’t lose…”
Johan wearily petted the dragon’s shoulder, looking back to the door as Rheal flared his wings. He wondered what things would be like if this place had never come to be… maybe it would always have ended that dragons and humans, saw things differently, and resumed their individual lifestyles, only meeting when, one unlucky human met one hungry dragon… perhaps this one moment was only a catalyst of a change happening more slowly.
He shrugged… he was getting too close to guessing, rather than theorising… and focussed on the dragon back beneath him, clutching tight as Rheal took off… he could ponder all he liked once he was home, on nice, solid ground…