Chapter Text
A THOUSAND-SOMETHING YEARS AGO..
..there were Dragons. And there were Titans…
… and your classic, arrogant, gold-obsessed dragon gets humbled HARD.
***
The Turbulent Townspire was a quaint witch village set precariously at the bottom of a mountain range called the Curling Caldera, as it consisted of bending, twisting peaks so tall they pierced the clouds. The mountains were home to rather tempestuous bouts of wind that screamed through the village for hours at a time, and unfortunately for the Townspire, something worse than a petulant gale also called the Curling Caldera home.
A winged shadow swept across the land, across minuscule villages. A roar sounded. Smoke smoldered off of red-hot scales.
Trembling pointy-eared townsfolk screamed and slammed the doors on their wind-warped houses in a futile effort of protection.
“IT’S THE DRAGONN!!”
“Take cover!”
“Pray to our lord and savior!”
“When was that hill there? Did we just get that installed?” followed by “Shut up and run for your life!”
THOOM.
A massive serpentine figure landed heavily on the crest of a mountain preceding the village, and villagers who couldn’t get to their houses in time cowered in terror before it.
Fringed scales in shades of red and gold and black coated the creature, and its four long muscled legs resolved into scimitar claws that carved through the stone beneath it with ease, as it idly dragged a talon across the ground. Scalloped black wings, spattered with gold and gems, rose up on either side, and a crescent-spike tipped tail lashed behind it. Its head was regal and elegantly swooped downwards at the snout into a hooked point. Its jawbone and forehead were crested with various sized spikes that fanned out on all sides, and it wore gold bands at the bases of the largest ones. It threw its head back and roared loudly, relishing the terror the bone-shaking sound induced.
With its azure gaze, it looked down its nose at all the citizens gazing back up at it warily, and a perverse smirk tugged at its muzzle.
“Citizens of the Turbulent Townspire,” it rumbled. “I, the Archdragon Torrelone, am here to bring upon you a day of reckoning. For you have slighted me by missing three weeks of tribute in exchange for my protection, and I have reached the dregs of my patience. ”
“What?” A townsperson piped up. “But… mighty Archdragon, we don’t have any -“
They shut up instantly as the dragon turned its huge head towards them; they were likely no taller than his forearm.
“I do not appreciate your disrespect done through this action, and your negligence to atone for it,” he growled. “And now you will not see the light of another day, only the flames of my fury.”
The crowd shrank back, and he chuckled, a sound like boulders grating together. “Oh, you poor things. I almost feel sorry for you. But business is business, and you have slacked off your end of the deal for far too long.”
Unbeknownst to Torrelone, a shadow even bigger than him was rising up behind him. He was too lost in his speech to notice the crowds’ eyes shift to behind him, or even the shadow slowly falling across his own scales.
“Pray to whatever fickle god you believe in. You cannot be saved from the destruction destined to fall upon your wretched souls.”
With a grim, jagged grin, he began to inhale, his throat glowing orange, and the crowd scattered, screaming.
Just as Torrelone noticed the shadow eclipsing his long neck, a massive voice from above boomed: “OH, NO, NO, THAT JUST WON’T DO.”
Utterly confounded by the disembodied voice, the dragon ceased his fire breath to say “Huh?” before he was abruptly yanked up by his tail. He roared in outrage because how dare something pick me up which shifted to fear because wait just what IS big enough to pick ME up. Believing he’d just possibly been spirited away by a god he’d scorned, he twisted his head around on his long neck to spit fire at his assailant, only to be faced with an absolutely colossal set of fingers ever so gently pinchering the tip of his tail. It was as if the mountain itself had come to life, and the very points of its peaks were now gripping his scales. He had no hope of destroying or combating even a single claw of this colossal monstrosity, so he wisely shut his jaws and waited, as clouds battered his spiny back and air rushed through his wings, complementing his ascent.
The world shrank and shrank until the insects he’d been about to obliterate looked even less insignificant, like mites on an ant; until what he could see of the world was drowned almost entirely in morning fog; it was incredibly jarring to be flying this high while he wasn’t the one in control.
At last, the howling wind slowed and died as the mountainous talons came to a stop. The dragon looked to his right, to the fog and the snarled mountain peaks of the Caldera, then to his left, and stared. And stared. And stared, his jaws opening slightly in awe, because staring back at him was a yellow eye easily the size of one of those frivolous villager houses. It sat within an eyesocket the size of a cavern, a cavern big enough to house a subadult dragon. The socket belonged to an unfathomably huge, horned skull sat on top of a mass of dark gray fur. Torrelone looked down and saw a hulking neck and shoulders and torso and the behemoth’s other front talon waaaay down below; all covered in gray fur. White rib patterns— no; actual, exposed ribs—curved around its tremendous chest. And where those.. ? Yes, they were; the tips of batlike wings poked out of the morning fog on either side, that he was sure could destroy a whole forest with a single downstroke.
His holder was some kind of gargantuan dragon… no. The realization hit him; the ash colored fur, the immense size, the heavy, horned skull. It was a Titan.
The Titan’s jaws suddenly gaped, revealing rows of teeth like stalagmites. Torrelone snarled, ready to claw and torch his way out if it decided to devour him. But, no, instead it simply yawned and arched its spine; as if waking up from a nap. The cracks and snaps of heavy bone— an unpleasant noise that sounded like several maritime ships crashing into rocks in sequence— assured that fact.
Torrelone was impatient. He had a certain village to demolish for overdue payment. He had prey to hunt and gold and various other alluring artifacts to obtain. He was not going to be held prisoner like some sort of pathetic insect while he waited for this colossus to wake the nine hells up.
“Will you please unhand me already? I have got places to be,” Torrelone said, as polite as he could muster but unable to completely hide his annoyance.
The Titan smacked its lipless jaws, and then leaned back down to peer at its catch.
“AH, MY APOLOGIES.” it rumbled, its voice a cavernous yet oddly laidback baritone. When it spoke, rocks and even boulders shuddered and tumbled off of nearby cliffs. It caused Torrelone’s wing membranes to quiver, reverberated through his entire chest cavity, and made his inner ears vibrate intensely. The archdragon winced and clutched at his ears despite himself.
The Titan surprisingly noticed his discomfort. “IS THIS TOO LOUD?”
Torrelone was too proud to answer verbally. He gave a curt nod.
The Titan shrugged, a normally casual motion that both looked and felt more like an earthquake on his scale; his fur rippled like grassy hills during a tremor. Torrelone would’ve gone into vertigo at the bobbing the shrug caused, had he not been a sky dragon accustomed to heights and quick movements.
When the Titan spoke again, his voice was a few decibels more tolerable, and Torrelone lowered his talons.
“I WAS HAVIN’ A VERY GOOD NAP WHEN SUDDENLY A COMMOTION WOKE ME. LO AND BEHOLD, I FIND A PESKY LIL’ DRAGON BULLYIN’ THE LOCALS.”
Pesky? Little? Torrelone bristled, a snarl bubbling in his chest, but did not dare to make his disgust at being disrespected known. “May you put me down, great one?”
“OH YES, YES, O’ COURSE,” the Titan said. “THAT MUST BE UNCOMFORTABLE.”
A massive shadow at the corner of Torrelone’s eye moved, and he craned his neck to see the Titan’s other hand sweeping around underneath him with the same energy as a collapsing rock column. The first hand slowly lowered Torrelone onto the warm, leathery palm of the second. And the moment it released Torrelone’s tail, the Archdragon took off in a flurry of sunset-speckled wings.
”NOW WHAT YOU DID WAS— OH, C’MON,” the Titan sighed as Torrelone flapped off. The dragon didn’t get very far. He’d barely put a few kilometers between him and the Titan before the world blacked out; it had clasped its hands around him like someone catching a fire bee.
Torrelone roared in fury. He rose up on his hind legs and blasted flame up into the segments of the Titan’s fingers, scratching his scythe-like claws at its palm.
“OW. DON’T BE LIKE THAT,” the Titan reprimanded. “I’M NOT GONNA EAT YOU OR ANYTHING, RELAX.”
“How do I know you won’t?” Torrelone hissed. He slammed himself against the Titan’s hands, and felt them tense up.
“SERIOUSLY, STOP.” the Titan said sharply. “I DON’T WANT TO CRUSH YOU BY ACCIDENT.”
The Archdragon blinked at the sincerity in its voice, and ceased struggling. Sunlight beamed back onto his scales as its top hand receded, leaving Torrelone a lot of open, level space as he stood on the Titan’s outstretched palm.
Foolish behemoth, Torrelone scoffed. He snorted a cloud of steam and made to take off again. But before he could, there was a tap on one of his wingtips, and then a terrible cold heaviness settled into his shoulders and wings. He tried launching himself into the air, but his wings simply didn’t respond; they didn’t even slightly unfurl. He looked over his shoulder, and gasped as he realized his wings had been frozen in place with some kind of shimmering magic. Outraged and terrified, he whirled around to face the Titan, who was nondiscreetly retracting his talon.
“What did you do ?” the Archdragon in question demanded, sparks shooting from his nostrils. “Unbind my wings THIS instant!”
“NAH. SORRY, BUDDY, BUT I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO DO, AND I’M NOT GONNA LETCHA. THEM WITCHES ARE LOVELY FOLK-”
Torrelone expelled twenty-foot flames from both his nostrils to cut the Titan off. It blinked away the smoke, and then its eyelid half-lowered in exasperation.
“You don’t control me!” Torrelone snapped, lashing his tail. “By preventing me from purging that one blasted negligent village, you are only making me want to demolish ten. Release me at once or I will see to it that every dragon in the Demon Realm is after you!”
The Titan paused, a look crossing his face, which was strange because it was made of expressionless bone. He turned his head back and forth with a sound like a battleship creaking, leaning in, scrutinizing his catch. His other eye socket was empty, so only a single ring of gold glared down at the dragon. The luminous eye stared down at Torrelone for a few moments. Its gaze was languid, lazy, yet seethed with an absolute authority, as intimate and internal as one’s bones were to one’s body; running as deep, as grounded, as the bowels of the Demon Realm itself. An instinctive understanding made itself known, that all the Titan had to do was utter one breath and any energy around him would obey his every command. Not even an arrogant warmonger like Torrelone would want to directly challenge that kind of authority, especially when coming from something that could pick up an Archdragon as if it were a paper crane.
“OH MY. I SEE WHAT I’M DEALIN’ WITH HERE.” the Titan said, and shook his head with an odd weariness.
“You heard me, did you not?” Torrelone said through gritted fangs. “I will be out on the warpath for you. Release me. ”
“THAT WON’T BE ARRANGED,” the Titan said, not fazed in the slightest by the threat. Torrelone’s fury made him sorely tempted to bite one of its fingers, but his fear held him back. “NOW, FIRST THINGS FIRST. WHAT’S YOUR NAME?”
There was a beat of awkward silence as Torrelone petulantly stomped his foot, but did not challenge the Titan.
“THAT WAS A QUESTION, DRAGON, DO ANSWER IT.” the Titan said. His word choice was testy, yet his tone was calm, patient, almost patronizing, like a father reprimanding his kid.
The archdragon inhaled, flicking back his spikes haughtily and trying to maintain dignity. It didn’t help that his voice sounded like a whelp’s yowl next to the titantic voice. “I am Torrelone the Archdragon,” he said mightily.
The Titan blinked. Then he chuckled, which was both mortifying and terrifying.
“What?” Torrelone snapped. “This is not an amusing situation. Cease that noise, you wretched colossus.”
The Titan’s head swung around to look at him and Torrelone snapped his jaw shut, expecting to be squished into oblivion. But the Titan only laughed and shook his head, startling the cloud of dodo-griffins that had roosted on his horns; causing a few of them to flap around and defensively upchuck spiders before settling down again.
“AN ARCHDRAGON, NOW I GET IT.” he said, his laughter rumbling in his chest like an avalanche (and almost causing a real one). “THAT MAKES A LOT OF SENSE. ”
“What is yours, pray tell?” Torrelone said with more feigned politeness.
The Titan squinted and scratched at his bearded chin. The normally mundane motion was deafening. “EHM. MY NAME IS—“ he made a bunch of strange chitters mixed with guttural noises- “—BUT NOBODY CAN PRONOUNCE THAT, SO I’VE BEEN CALLED A LOTTA DIFFERENT NAMES. YOU’RE WELCOME TO MAKE UP A NEW ONE.”
“Big-Ass Nuisance,” Torrelone retorted with great dignity. “Your new name is Big-Ass Nuisance.”
“HAH!” the Titan barked, tossing his head back and sending the griffins fully scattering from his horns with indignant squawks. Torrelone stumbled as the Titan’s hand quivered, almost falling off. A few passing griffins straight up fainted from fright at the thunderous laughter; the Titan casually reached out and caught them in one hand.
“I DON’T MIND IT, BUT ARE YOU SURE YOU DON’T WANT TO CHOOSE SOMETHING MORE… PRESENTABLE? IT’LL BE AWKWARD, ON YOUR PART.” the Titan said, his tone amused. He opened his talon and let the handful of dazed griffins fly away.
The archdragon regained his balance with difficulty and rolled his blue eyes. “Fine. Your new name is-” he looked to the Titan’s great mane of hair encircling his skull, then at his exposed ribcage “—Lion..heart.”
The Titan let out a rumbling purr of consideration, then nodded appreciatively, sending wind roaring through his horns and scraggly beard.
“Curse my pristine claws,” Torrelone muttered, half wishing he’d kept it something mortifying. He resented the Titan for taking him prisoner, yet he respected it. Mostly because it could squish him like an insect. He looked down past the Titan’s bony phalanges at the ground miles below, now just wishing to return to his lair.
“GOOD NAME, I LIKE IT. BUT WHAT’S A LION?” the Titan said curiously.
“Half a griffin. The back half,” The Titan gave him an amused, confused look, to which Torrelone said in an annoyed rush. “The real thing is more elegant than a griffin; a big cat with nearly indestructible hide, like you, and a raggedy bunch of fur around its neck, like you, and they have an exquisite taste— may I leave now?”
“NOPE!” Lionheart said cheerfully. “WE’RE NOT EVEN STARTED. COME, WALK WITH ME.”
”Do I even have a choice—ARGH!” the Archdragon began to bemoan, but then the Titan’s hand abruptly ascended. Torrrelone stumbled, his tail sliding off the side of its palm. He shoved the yelp of fright back down his throat to die, berating himself as he stabbed his talons into the heavy leather of Lionheart’s palm. What the nine hells is wrong with you. You are an ARCHDRAGON, not a novice whelp, stop whimpering about heights.
But most Archdragons didn’t have their wings bound while hundreds of thousands of feet in the air. He was begrudgingly forced to accept that, as of now, he was as susceptible to falling from massive heights and dying as any other lowly creature would be.
Lionheart deposited him on his skull, on the ridge of bone over his working eye. The Archdragon clutched at that ridge, aware that he was basically sticking his claws into the Titan’s eyesocket, but desperately not wanting to fall off, he did not lessen his hold. Lionheart chuckled, sensing his unease. “YOU OKAY UP THERE?”
“Yep,” Torrelone said through gritted teeth. “Totally fine.”
“MOVE BACK INTO MY HAIR, IF YOU WISH.”
The Archdragon pulled back, and glanced behind him. The Titan’s four horns jabbed up into the sky, and a few bedraggled looking dodo-griffins roosted in the tufts of gray fur encircling them. One of the avian felines had a terrible cough.
“I would rather not,” Torrelone said haughtily. He remained where he was, reluctantly settling down on the bone of the Titan’s skull with a smoky sigh.
“ALRIGHTY. SIT BACK AND ENJOY THE RIDE!”
And then with a heavy jolt, the Titan started moving.
The Titan walked on all fours like any terrestrial animal—Torrelone had a feeling that he did so because if he stood up straight, his horns would jut into the clouds—but he certainly did not feel like an animal. It felt like an entire continent had decided to get up and go on the move. It was surreal. It was impossible for something that big to be able to move. Things this massive should remain immobile, yet the Titan did not.
Torrelone leaned down and glanced down past Lionheart’s towering muzzle, seeing its front talons powering away in an easy, oddly graceful gait way below. The Titan’s steps were very carefully timed, stable, almost gracious, so as to not jolt or terrify his passengers. He stepped with ease over the faint zig-zags of mountain ranges; the quilt-like expansive grassy fields; the tiny blue threads of rivers. They all steadily passed by, way down below; all easily dwarfed by Lionheart’s sheer size. The Archdragon drew back and downcast his gaze, noticing two things: one; the bone of the skull below him was not one smooth, solid surface. The Titan’s cranium had squiggled jigsaw lines, cracks, and pockmarks all across it, and the ends of the four massive horns were weathered in a stripped-away pattern like rotting wood.
And two; it was full of life. What looked like barnacles crusted in clusters at the base of the horns, while critters with too many eyes and too many legs scuttled across the great arcs of bone. Rodent-like beings nested in the Titan’s hair, getting snapped up whole by nearby griffins if they chanced a leap out of it. There were water-worn circular crevices here and there, set in the surface of the Titan’s skull; he spotted birds–or rather, snake-like beings with bird faces– roosting in some.
A spidery-looking thing crawled across one of Torrelone’s claws, and he jerked his talon back with a scowl and a shudder. He could never imagine letting vermin live on one’s body. He wrinkled his snout and shook out his talon, suddenly wishing to take a nice cleansing bath in lava. It didn’t help that Lionheart’s pace was tedious, as he walked very, very carefully, and thus slowly; slow to the point it was agonizing. Once, he straightened to his full height and took one big step to safely get over a large city; a comical movement that would’ve been amusing if Torrelone wasn’t irritated by this whole situation. For goodness sake, the Titan had the power to eradicate entire civilizations just by walking through them, and yet he was trying his absolute hardest not to.
The colossus walked on, as the sun steadily climbed through the sky. Torrelone boredly tapped his claws against the bone under him the whole way, the rhythm getting faster until he snorted with impatience. Making sure to hold himself in place, with his front talons hooked in the countless grooves lining Lionheart’s skull, he leaned his head out and down over the Titan’s eyesocket to peer into its eye upside-down.
“May I get off now?” he drawled. “You are terribly slow.”
The eye rolled up to look at him. “AH, BUT WE’VE GOT NOTHIN’ TO DO AND NOWHERE TO GO. THAT’S THE BEAUTY OF AN EVENING WALK.”
“Wrong. I’ve got things to do,” Torrelone growled. “I have a lair to maintain, need good quality prey to hunt, and there is possible nasty vermin to exterminate. Speaking of which, you need a bath, most terribly.”
At “nasty vermin” the Titan winced, a motion that was more felt rather than seen, but then his eye suddenly lit up, and then crinkled up at the bottom edge in a parody of a smile. “TELL YA WHAT, FORGET WHAT I JUST SAID. WE GOT AN OBJECTIVE NOW.”
Torrelone looked to the corner of his eye in thought, and then looked back into Lionheart’s eye sharply. “What are you planning?”
“WHATCHA HUNGRY FOR?” Lionheart said casually, his terribly slow gait slowing to a complete stop.
The Archdragon tilted his skull. “Beg pardon?”
“YOU SAID YOU NEEDED PREY. WHAT WOULDJA LIKE TO EAT?” the Titan said, sitting back on his haunches with an uncontrollable jolt.
Torrelone blinked as the world stabilized, then realized with surprise the Titan was offering to bring him food.
“Well, now that you took me from the tallest mountain range full of delicious prey found exclusively in that area,” Torrelone said stingily, sitting back. “I do not know.”
“HMM,” The Titan tapped his chin with a claw, thinking, but Torrelone got the feeling he was pretending to think to give Torrelone time. So, surprised, but oddly pleased he was getting more respect from such a large creature more than he ever did from villagers, the Archdragon obliged.
As Torrelone thought of a good substitute for manticores and Nemean lions, he noticed that the Titan kept his head locked at a straight-on angle, parallel to the horizon so Torrelone wouldn’t tumble off to a far-too-early grave. Absentmindedly noticing slight jostling movements from the Titan, he craned his neck over to see that Lionheart was drawing a line in the earth with a finger as he waited for a response from his passenger. And Torrelone just now noticed, with his sharp vision, Lionheart hadn’t stopped for no reason. Down below, there was a large seal-like figure, a selkidomus, flailing on the ground a good ways away from a river, and the Titan was casually terraforming a path from the river to the selkidomus with one finger. Torrelone watched with slight awe as the tip of one of Lionheart’s claws glowed blue, and then a fountain of water abruptly sprang from it, filling up the impression he’d made and sending the selkidomus on its way down into the river with a happy bark.
“POOR THING GOT DISPLACED FOR PROBABLY HOURS, AND WAS DRYING OUT,” The Titan said ruefully. “ANYWAYS, I’M GETTIN’ KINDA PECKISH AND I’M ASSUMING YOU ARE TOO. GOT ANY IDEAS?”
Looking at the water, Torrelone remembered a creature that was large enough to be a decent sized meal. Two or three Nemean lions would satisfy him for a while, but larger meals from the sea meant he didn’t have to leave his lair often, and as of now he didn’t even have to do any work.
“Kraken,” he said, leaning back down to Lionheart’s eye, “Kraken sounds good.”
If the Titan’s face hadn’t already been stuck in a neutral skeletal smile, Torrelone was sure he would’ve grinned. “MY FAVORITE! NEXT TO BREAD, OF COURSE. ALRIGHT, HANG ON. GOTTA LOCATE THE NEAREST OCEAN.”
Torrelone groaned. More waiting. “Fine. Make it quick.”
The Titan broke into an easy lope again, and a few moments later Torrelone’s eyes widened.
“Wait. You’re not going to fly there??”
“HMM?”
“You have wings!” the Archdragon exclaimed. “Use them!”
“WHAT, THESE OL’ THINGS?” the Titan said with amusement, extending a cliff-face sized wing shot through with holes and slashes, and Torrelone cringed for multiple reasons. “THOSE ARE FROM THE PESKY-AS-EVER TITAN. . . HUNTERS? SLAYERS? TRAPPERS? WHATEVER YA WANNA CALL THEM, THEY NEVER GIVE UP TRYIN’ TO KILL US.” He lowered the ghastly looking wing, thankfully out of Torrelone’s sight. “ I’M AFRAID FLIGHT AIN’T GONNA BE AN OPTION. WE’RE GONNA HAVE TO WING IT, WITHOUT THE WING.”
Lionheart chuckled merrily at his own joke, but Torrelone groaned heavily at it, which only made the Titan chuckle harder. Torrelone collapsed into a pile of grumbling scales. “Who in the nine hells has wings and can’t use them. . .?”
The Titan began moving again. “SETTLE IN. LOOK AROUND AND SEE THE SIGHTS, IT MIGHT BE A WHILE.”
Torrelone sighed, and got up; the hard, curved bone underneath him was finally making his scales ache. He trodded back across the Titan’s skull until the material underneath his paws changed from bone to tufts of ashy fur, waving gently in the wind like the wheat fields he’d seen on the outskirts of villages.
Torrelone returned his attention to the mane of fur. A few of the griffins already nesting there stirred, cocking their heads up at him suspiciously.
“Hi,” the Archdragon said bitterly, then snorted a small cloud of flame at them. They screeched in alarm and took off. He scowled after them and their trailing feathers, then, after making sure the fur was clear of rodents and irregular-shaped insects, he turned in a circle and laid down in their place. The Archdragon crossed his front paws and leaned his chin on top of them, settling his useless wings and lifting his head to the heavens above as the sky bloomed into an active forge of molten copper and gold. Between and beyond Lionheart’s top horns, he saw the colossal footprints the Titan had left, carefully placed on open fields devoid of any obvious life. He then stared at the faint streak of dawning twilight on the horizon. Though most of him wished to return back to his life back in the Curled Caldera, moving without doing any work—even if it was really slow— was peaceful, refreshing, and the long, soft fur blanketing his scarred underscales was comforting. So was the slight ship-like rocking beneath him, as well as the faint, thudding thoom of Lionheart’s footsteps, as the Titan continued on at an easy stride.
He blinked increasingly quickly, his eyes suddenly heavy. He began to think, just before he drifted into sleep, that it was very likely Lionheart wouldn’t notice he’d fallen asleep, and that maybe encountering this insistently benevolent Titan was grounds for something new.
***