The Terror Within

Once upon a time a great coldness fell upon the village of Last Hope. It was not the coldness of winter. It was not the coldness of snow or ice. It was a coldness that chilled the heart and made the spine tingle. It was a coldness that raised bumps on the arms and sent chills down the spine. It was a coldness such that it made men’s blood run cold in their veins.

This coldness came because the village of Last Hope lay in the shadow of the great and ancient dragon Malzath.

You have probably heard of Malzath. It was he who nested in the peaks of the Zathron Mountains. It was he who had scorched the earth of the south so that nothing was left but desert sands. It was he who froze the peaks of the mountains so that the snow never left. When he spread his wings to fly, great hurricanes swept the coasts of the seas, and when he stomped in anger, the entire earth shook beneath his feet.

And the people of Last Hope dwelt in his shadow.

In truth, Malzath had never had issue with the people of Last Hope. He scarcely knew they existed, but the people were terrified of him nonetheless. He was a great and terrible dragon capable of devouring their little village in a single bite. With one claw he could open a rift in the earth that would swallow them whole. The fear of Malzath increased to the point that people began to whisper among themselves that something had to be done about Malzath.

When people live in the shadow of fear, grave things begin to happen. It began as the village council met. As the Elder stood to speak a young man stood up and shouted, “What are you going to do about Malzath?” At once the council house was filled with chaos as anger took root amidst the fear.

When he had regained some control, the elder spoke calmly and reassuringly. “There is nothing to be done about Malzath. If we simply ignore him, he will ignore us. Let us not awaken the sleeping dragon.”

But the people were not happy with this answer. They called the elder weak. They accused the elder of having no principles. They brought down the elder and ran him out of the village where he became a wandering pilgrim searching for the meaning of truth.

Without an elder to lead them, the villagers turned to the shaman. “What shall we do about Malzath?” the people demanded of the shaman. With no elder, the fear had grown among the people. Without a leader, they were blind and willing to follow anyone’s lead. But the shaman knew the volatility of the people and so he offered his solution timidly.

“Perhaps we should offer a sacrifice to Malzath,” the shaman said. “We will appease his anger and he will look kindly on us.” This seemed like a good thing to the people of Last Hope. If they pleased the dragon, surely he would leave them alone. And so the day of sacrifice was set.

The people of Last Hope were excited about the new plan up until the very moment when they staked a poor young boy to the mountain where they thought Malzath would find him. When the deed had been done, the people were saddened and filled with remorse. When they went to rescue the boy, he was gone. They turned their anger on the shaman and drove him from the village. He fled with his life and became a hermit in a far off forest.

The people turned next to the village wise woman. She, having seen what happened to the elder and the shaman offered no solution, but slipped out of the village that night and became an itinerant midwife for the villages on the far side of the river.

And the people of Last Hope still dwelt in the shadow of Malzath.

At last there was a whisper. No one knew who started it, but soon the whisper turned to rumor and the rumor to a decision. “We must,” said the people, “slay the dragon.”

The village came together, young and old, and decided that the best way to choose who should slay the dragon would be to draw lots. An equal number of black and of white stones were placed in a pot and all the people drew out a stone. Those who had white stones prepared the pebbles for the second round of the lottery with an equal number of black and white stones. Those who had drawn black stones in the first round drew again in the second round. This was repeated until only ten people had drawn black stones in the penultimate round. Then ten stones were put in the pot – nine white and one black. The last ten people drew their final stone.

It was a maiden who drew the black pebble.

Now this maiden was not the strongest person in the village. Neither was she the smartest of all the people, nor was she particularly clever. But she was fair-minded, and having drawn the black lot, she was content to go out to slay the dragon. She was armed as best the village could arm her. She was provisioned as well as the village could provide. And on a day of great celebration, the village sent their Last Hope out to do battle with the dragon.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I will slay the dragon and then I will go on to see the world. If you never see me again, you will know that I was successful.”

And so she set off on her adventure.

As she left the village, the people noticed already that it was a little less cold. They had sent a champion to do what none of them felt able to do. And every day she was gone, the hope increased and the coldness of the shadow lessened. When she had not returned in a year, the people began to nod their heads and smiles appeared. When she had been gone for seven years, people began to celebrate. When she had been gone for twenty years, people had begun to forget about the dragon, and the coldness had lifted from the village of Last Hope.

As for their champion, she soon discovered that she did not really know what the dragon looked like. She did not know how to slay it if she found it. And it was not likely that she would find it since she did not know where it lived. So she began a pilgrimage that took her all across the earth, but never closer to her dragon.

Now as it happened, the maiden wandered and met a man who fell in love with her. Since she could not and would not stay with him, he wandered with her. He dressed in a simple shepherd’s manner with leather trousers and a sheepskin vest. He was pleasant company for the maiden. He was stronger than she, so when a band of brigands fell upon them, he drew his sword and chased them off. So great was his rage that the brigands were never seen on that road again. In a city, when the maiden was about to be cheated by a merchant, the companion stepped in to right the situation. His justice was so swift that merchants in that city have been honest ever since. When she wept with loneliness, he comforted her. When she danced with joy, he sang. When she smiled at him he wept with joy.

When the maiden dragonslayer was very old, he laid her to rest where her ashes could nourish the crops and his tears would water them.

Some say that when she died, he went far into the mountains and was never heard of again. Others say that he wanders the roads yet to this day, wearing his shepherd’s clothes and telling stories of things that might have been.

But what is certain is that the Village of Last Hope has never been under the cold shadow of Malzath since. Nor shall you be ever again terrorized, for the shepherd now walks among you.

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