Traitor's Ouroboros
Flash Fiction
Submission for Iron Age Media’s Prompt: The Elderflame
“BACK!” Shouted the irreverent Barbarian, whom spilled blood in the service of a cultured people.
In rhythm with the aforementioned irony, scores of men clad in steel bearing the colors of royalty just barely managed to plug up the fortified pathway which led to the Keep housing the last survivors; perhaps thousands who were able to escape a siege by monsters of opulent legend and horrifying proportion.
Unfortunately for the barbarian and his richly prepared host whose gold purchased the finest of wears for the men putting their very lives on the line, it was not enough.
Large bat like creatures soared through the sky, overwhelming the defense and swinging their odd forms against the unfortunate in their path, talons parted metal, and fangs plunged into the throats often of cattle after each assault.
Greatest of the beasts coating the horizon with its physical superfluity, was a rather sickly Dragon who had already martyred the countless lives which spitefully resisted its advance for as long as they could have.
The Barbarian, for all his lacking in civic inculcation knew this beast well, having fled from its wrathful wake for more than three decades, since his own family had been treacherously trampled, in a great betrayal.
Now, the Barbarian was forced to swallow any lamentations or regret he had about leading the beast to what was once the strongest of Kingdoms. As the royalty hid underneath his shadow, so too would he earn their trust by ending this force of nature.
Voluntarily parting ways with his armor, and by force of his own will, the Barbarian let those vampiric beasts lust after his very veins, as more blood was spilled, the more bats descended upon him, and the closer the Dragon got to its elusive prey.
Leading this horde back to its cause, back to its roost if not by any other name, crawling through the earth just to get his way, the Barbarian; offering what flesh remained, let the Dragon devour him whole, taking himself, as well as those tenebrous bat like mutants with him.
It would be their venom which blistered the throat of the Dragon, and it would be in the Dragon’s belly which the Barbarian would form a tolerance to each beast.
Stuck in a stupor for unknown years, it is said that the royalty of that safe and sound Kingdom regard the Dragon and the Barbarian as one and the same, unable to tell where one ended and the other began.
And one day the Dragon would betray as it always does, bringing rise to new prey, of which another Barbarian may rise.