Ever since Lyra was sentenced to the position, her heart would not steady. She dreaded the passing of every second as if it were the lash of a whip, the culmination of each tiny cut intended to bleed her dry. She was woken early in the morning, as if the guards were determined to remove her from the cell with windows before the last sunrise she would have seen. They brought her to a wing of the castle which was hidden deep in the ground beneath the servant quarters; the only thing here was a stark hall with three doors.
The nearest door led to a room that was once a kitchen, but was now simply a chilled place to store animal carcasses. A large door at the end of the hall lead to a massive cell, and a small door directly next to it led to a human-sized cell. Built into the larger cell to preserve space, a stone cube with walls only six inches thick would be the barrier between her and the other prisoner when she was off-duty.
Deep beneath the kingdom, a dragon of legendary might was humanity's captive. It once roamed free, ignoring the affairs of humans beside devouring anyone foolish enough to lust after the treasure it hoarded. Scattered incidents of armies sent to avenge the fallen or collect its treasure being slain in minutes were remembered with enough visceral horror for humanity to leave it cautiously unprovoked since the dawn of history.
Thousands of years ago, a king lusted for power beyond human capability. He had a precious stone stolen from the dragon's hoard, and cast an enchantment upon it; anyone who held the stone had the dragon's perfect obedience. They only needed to possess it as they spoke; the dragon would then be forced to obey their orders until they were either finished, revoked, or the person who uttered them died.
Lyra walked slowly around the meat locker, the echoes of her footsteps pounding across the stone as if to form the syllables of the last words no audience would hear. She grabbed a pair of gloves off a massive wooden cart left near the door; the enchantment upon them allowed her to lift six deer carcasses as if they were weightless. She placed them onto the cart with a grotesque slap of flesh about to rot. The smell was approaching rancid. The contents of this locker were livestock slaughtered in excess and game from the leisurely hunts of nobility, once the time had passed for it to be worthy of human consumption.
The dragon was used by the king to conquer other lands. It had jaws that could crush stone and claws that could slice through the strongest armor. It was venomous as well; even the slightest scratch would rapidly spread complete paralysis throughout the body, and the victim would soon fall unconscious, defenseless as the dragon consumed them. Its flames melted the earth they danced upon as it vaporized all the king's eyes fell upon.
For years it tortured enemies, decimated armies, leveled cities, and disposed of the bodies, leaving only ash in its wake. While the king commanded it, it was the terror of all the surrounding lands. It was the nightmare that tore all of humanity from their slumber, only to face a harsher reality.
Lyra paused, staring for a blank moment at her hand. No matter how she tried to keep it still, it trembled. She fumbled with the handle of the cart despite the ease with which it should be gripped. She dropped it. When she crouched down and made several attempts to pluck it off the floor with hands she could hardly guide, her knees locked. Her body was panicking; it didn't want her to move from the spot.
In the peace that began with the king's last breath, such a catastrophic weapon was not necessary. Such atrocities could never be repeated. The dragon also could not be released; the king had committed an act of hubris in forcing a dragon to heed his commands.
Dragons were ferociously prideful beasts; to have no choice but to obey the commands of a human was an insult that would never be forgiven. Should the dragon ever be free, it would take vengeance upon humanity for the indignities it had suffered. All would end in ash and flame in the wake of the monster the dead king had provoked.
Lyra took a sharp breath and forced her legs to stand, gripping the handle of the cart with white knuckles. The burden upon the cart was far more than one could usually pull alone, but the cart carried a similar enchantment to the gloves. The enchantment kept the cart at a consistent weight regardless of what it carried, to ensure it was light enough for prisoners of any build to pull with ease; nobody would be spared to help this inmate with her perilous task. The guards had all but fled back up the stairs once they had finished escorting her here.
Killing the dragon was an option considered, and promptly deemed out of the question; such power as command over a dragon could not be thrown away because it was abused once. There could come a time that power was required to defend the kingdom. It would be wise, the council decided, to keep the dragon alive.
The dragon was simply ordered not to leave the prison the king had built for it beneath the castle, and the stone was locked somewhere secret, retrieved only to keep the dragon contained. Every time a new king or queen was coronated, they and three trusted members of their court would pass the stone amongst themselves, reciting the command. The redundancy was to ensure a moment never passed in which no living person had ordered the dragon to remain imprisoned.
The war machine which once held the continent in its claws silently crept beneath the kingdom, trapped only by words. Every human lived and died in a stalemate with the beast, which desired only to crawl from the earth to punish them for the sins of their ancestors.
Most citizens never had to worry of the dragon in reality, and there were some who even claimed the presence of the dragon to be a hoax. Lyra wasn't so lucky. She bit her lip to hold back tears. She wanted dignity at least. She wasn't going to die blubbering.
The dragon needed to be fed if it was to be kept alive. This required someone to enter its cell three times a day. The dragon's temper was volatile, and it loathed humans for its imprisonment. It often ate the poor soul tasked with feeding it, even when enough meat was supplied that it didn't finish the meal it was brought; it did so simply out of spite.
Lyra slowly pushed the door to the meat locker open and pulled the cart into the dim corridor, the flicker of the fire causing her shadow to shiver. She glanced around through glossy eyes, wishing they would fall upon anything worth taking in. The hall was empty, a simple rectangle of grey stone with minimalistic rectangular doors, and torches affixed to the wall with a single loop of metal. It was designed as if to be bleak as possible.
The task of feeding the dragon quickly replaced the death sentence. The dragon became an executioner, the length of each prisoner's stay on death row decided by how quickly it tore through those ahead of them. While the official language referred to the prisoner as the dragon's servant, the dragon was mockingly referred to by the guards as the kingdom's incinerator, eliminating their refuse.
Lyra's footsteps continued to echo along the halls, the sound dancing to the discordant rhythm of her floundering pulse. It took every ounce of willpower she had to trudge forward. If flesh could overpower soul, she would flee.
The dragon's servant was killed and replaced roughly once a day, typically at the last meal of the day. It seemed to enjoy taunting them and letting them flee a few times to draw out the process. Sometimes a servant would survive two days, depending entirely on the dragon's mood; the servant was killed and replaced three times a day when it was in a particularly foul one. The longest a servant had ever lasted before was three days; he would open the door, push the cart inside without stepping in, and shut the door before fleeing. He was believed to be clever for a moment there.
The dragon seemed to resent this attempt at a loophole, as on the third day it waited by the door, and snatched him with its tail through the doorway. It made a show of crushing him before reaching its tail through the doorway again to snatch a guard sent to confirm the prisoner's death. It devoured them, and spat their armor at the feet of their fellow guard as they fled. By the survivor's account, it was certain she was only spared to share the horror with the other humans. After that, arrangements were made so the servant could conduct their business without aid or observation.
Lyra wasn't sure if she hated the cacophony of her ears ringing and her footsteps rattling across the stone more than she would hate the silence of its absence. Her body felt like it would crumble from the solitude. The only part of her mind capable of escaping dread at the moment thought only of how badly she could use even the slightest bit of reassurance from any company at this moment. She even wished a rat would scurry down the corridor, just to see another living thing. Rats were far too clever to stray here, however.
Guards retrieved the condemned from their cell, took them to this corridor, pointed them to the meat locker, and left. A spell was cast on the door to the meat locker that would alert the servant when it was meal time. If too much time passed between the spell activating and the door being opened, it meant the servant was dead; the spell would sound an alert, and their replacement was sent in.
The servant needed no command to perform their duties; if they attempted to refuse, they would simply be killed when the meal was late and their guard arrived with their replacement. Their corpse would then be added to the dragon's meal. The dragon's venom at least guaranteed a painless death, while human hands often relished suffering. It was also more dignifying to die in private rather than be hacked up and tossed atop a pile of animal corpses. To choose death at the dragon's fangs was the last thing resembling control anyone in Lyra's position had.
For thousands of years, society's castaways had been sent to this wing of the castle and promptly forgotten. Lyra had access to a service kitchen upstairs to feed herself for as long as she survived; the meals she had there would be her only chance for human interaction if it wasn't tradition to ignore the dragon's servant. They were too close to dead to invest a single word in. Hardly anyone had made eye contact with Lyra since her sentencing, and those who did gave her such a pitiful look her chest wished to implode just to avoid the fate they saw ahead of her.
The section of corridor which housed both the kitchen and the stairs down to the cell was closed off at night by a massive set of doors. Guards patrolled the area outside this door only to stray from the watch of their superiors; a spell was cast on the threshold that would stop Lyra's heart if she crossed it. The dragon's servant was a convenient excuse for a blissfully uneventful watch, but required no human intervention to keep imprisoned.
Lyra arrived at the door to the cell. She was almost numb with grim, visceral fear, but frustration provided an oddly cohesive background to the anguish. She was enraged to know that she would perish because the dragon would see her no differently from those who imprisoned them both. She knew it couldn't be blamed for the assumption, but she loathed being seen in the same light as them by any creature, no matter how foul or misguided.
Lyra wasn't the first servant to believe they didn't deserve to die, and she wasn't the first to be correct. The dragon tore through servants at a ravenous pace, and the death sentence loosened to align the dragon's fangs with the agendas of the powerful.
Lyra gently pushed the door open. It creaked horribly, causing her to wince. She didn't want to make so much noise. Lyra stepped as quietly as she could into the cell, looking around cautiously. The room was an expanse large enough that Lyra could not see its walls or ceilings.
Scattered patches of sunlight filtered down from somewhere above as the only source of light. The morning sun was strong, but the entire cell was carved from dull stone in a shade which greedily devoured most of the light to preserve the darkness. Pillars about ten feet in diameter rose from the ground in wide rows, the columns in each row connected by support beams about fifty feet above the ground. As far as Lyra could see, there was no deviation from the pattern or border to the room, aside from the wall hosting the door she came through. The cell was a minimal and dreary grey expanse, just like the corridor. Lyra felt a pang of morbid sorrow as she examined the bleak space left for the discarded to strike down the condemned.
There was no sign of the dragon anywhere. Lyra wasn't sure if this would bode well for her as her heart sank. She was happy not to be struck down immediately, but had been explicitly instructed to present the dragon with its meal. Should she simply leave it by the door, the dragon would take offense to being fed like an animal, and wait by the door to slaughter her the next time she came in. That was the only thing she was told, during the one very short and dismissive conversation about survival she managed to pry out of a guard. Apparently, the dragon responded quickly and violently to any disrespect, any hint of treating it as an animal or prisoner. Lyra grimly supposed it was the last thing resembling pride the dragon had left.
The sunlight was patchy, and large areas were eclipsed with darkness. Lyra walked from patch to patch of light, her soul emptying its contents simply from occupying this space for a moment. Lyra could feel it in her chest, thousands of hands reaching from the darkness to hollow out her ribcage. She could feel every chunk of flesh being ripped away. She couldn't imagine being here for thousands of years.
Lyra heard the rhythmic scrape of something against stone. Scales. The sound echoed, making it difficult to discern its source. She held her breath and didn't dare take another step. Her heart beat like wings which tried to carry her to safety, breaking itself against her ribcage as it failed to escape.
"Rather bold of you to disturb my slumber, when you are far more appetizing than the rations I'm given," a low voice rasped through the chamber. Lyra's stomach lurched; she hadn't spoken. She'd tried to be quiet. She silently cursed the stone beneath her feet as she looked wildly around. She saw nothing, until she looked up.
Out of the darkness, eyes like pools of liquid platinum with white slit pupils leered down at her. They were in sharp contrast to their gloomy surroundings, as if reflecting light to pierce the darkness. The dragon had been laying across the support beam between two columns, and began rising to its feet with a menacing snarl.
Each of its jagged teeth was the length of a human forearm. Its face was reminiscent of a viper, and it had a long reptilian body, the bone structure of which somewhat feline as well. It stood on four legs, but the front two feet resembled hands with ferocious talons. Its scales were a rich silver with a faint shimmer to them, an odd white pattern adorning them as if painted for war. It had massive, bat-like wings folded against its body. Lyra was frozen in fear as she watched it shift into position to strike.
"Your heart pounds as if to escape your chest. Perhaps it requires my assistance," the dragon growled, baring its fangs. It leapt down, landing directly in front of Lyra. The stone crumbled beneath its feet upon impact, the sound like the crackle of wildfire. Bits of rubble lashed against Lyra's skin and left small cuts. Embers escaped from the gaps in the dragon's teeth as it hissed menacingly.
"I was just bringing—" Lyra said the first thing she thought to, choking on her heart as it slammed into her throat. The dragon cut her off with a harsh, rumbling voice which quaked through the foundation of the cell.
"Yes, you were just bringing me old meat so I only figuratively waste away beneath the feet of humans." Lyra leapt back, but couldn't escape the dragon's range as it lashed out with a claw, scratching her arm. For a split second Lyra counted herself blessed to have dodged a fatal blow, and stumbled back a few steps, grateful for the distance she had achieved.
Her stomach sank when she realized it wasn't possible for such a precise and dangerous beast to inflict such a small cut from such close range unintentionally. Her arm went numb, and hung uselessly by her side no matter how she willed it to move. Lyra could feel the numbness rapidly spreading through her veins as her frantic heart betrayed her. She struggled to remain on her feet. Before her panicking mind could even conjure a word, the dragon continued, its voice raising in volume and resentment.
"Oh but let me guess, you're not like them, you didn't put me here." With a sweep of a tail thick as a tree trunk, it knocked the wind out of Lyra, hurling her back a few feet. The blow was as painful as the harsh landing upon the cold stone, but from the dragon's movement she could tell it was effortless. Lyra was being batted around like a mouse.
Lyra struggled to clamber to her feet, which was impossible to observe. She was frozen in the position she landed, sprawled awkwardly on her back, her head sore; she had done her best with the last bit of movement the venom allowed her to attempt to protect it upon landing, and only lessened the sharp blow enough to survive it.
Her frantic heart pumped the venom through her body at a rapid pace, and now the edges of her vision were blurring. She was losing consciousness. She watched through wide, tear-slicked eyes as the dragon lowered its head with a vicious growl, the thunderous echo of which quaking through the chamber.
It slowly approached, baring its fangs as it spoke, "Humans invented atrocities beyond my imagination, forced me to carry them out, then condemned me for their sins." With a front foot the dragon pinned Lyra to the ground. This was hardly necessary, although the dragon seemed to enjoy her panic.
"You're human just like them, but I'm sure you're not like them, are you?" Its voice ignited the air with its molten loathing as it repeated words it had clearly heard thousands of times before. The heat of the flames spilling from its breath began to lap at the space near Lyra, although the look in the dragon's eyes lowered the temperature of the room by several degrees.
"I— I'm sorry," Lyra's voice grew quieter as open jaws with jagged fangs slowly descended above her, a snarl rumbling from the dragon. She lay frantically motionless as the venom slowly began to tug her out of consciousness.
The last detail she could make out before the venom took hold and everything was consumed by darkness was the dragon's eyes, widened for some reason. The last thing she thought was that she truly was sorry. Neither of them deserved this.