Fiction: ‘Of Fire and Blood’

Always I can see them on the horizon.

First they rise high above the skyscrapers, and then they dive down like frenzied birds feeding on a school of fish. The power of their bodies is immense. I thought they wouldn’t look quite so indestructible from above.

I was wrong.

As our jets raced overhead, I could see the force of their impact spread through the city in a shockwave. A ripple of destruction. And then they’d fly back up like asteroids deflecting off the planet. The rhythm of their wings bashed against the flimsy shell of our aircrafts. You could hear it from underground bunkers and behind thick walls made from steel.

They were the drums of war.

Their hideous cries drowned out the sound of screaming from below. In time, nothing but smoking ruins could be seen from above, and from below we were always cast beneath their shadow.

We no longer recognised our world.

Their roars were the wind, their fiery breath our sun, and the blood of their prey replaced the river systems that ran through the land.

We had passed them off as mythological.

It just didn’t seem possible for such monsters to exist; ones which took to the skies and reigned destruction upon us.

But the dragons had finally come.

And we were too stupid to realise what we had done.

                        ~ Ekaterina