Pen Dragons

In one universe, reality was shaped and held together by the stories that played on common tongues. These stories often featured dragons that lived in the seas, wingless and serpentine, revered and worshipped as symbols of creation. Eventually, oral tradition could no longer keep the realm intact as more imaginations expanded the realm, causing it to crack and split. But one clan bound itself to the dragons by blood, and the dragons evolved wings and shorter bodies. With them the clan ruled both seas and skies, uniting all people under its reign and stabilizing the realm with the written word.

The clan forged a steel quill with dragon flame, and the Pen, as it was called, maintained the realm and moved it forward each story at a time. The Pen kept the clan in power, but the clan made the mistake of believing it could control the Pen as it controlled the dragons. After a century, the Pen grew tired of the clan’s stories, and it felled the entire bloodline with a single tale of its own.

From thereon, the Pen ruled the realm from its isolated castle with compelling as well as humbling tales for mortals, though many strived to prove themselves worthy of being written about. Schools to train potential heroes and villains were built in hopes of catching the Pen’s attention, and they did. The Pen gave less focus to the commoner and more to the ambitious, less morally ambiguous, and often royal.

But not everyone was satisfied with the Pen’s storytelling choices.

One night, a dying seer visited the Pen’s castle and spoke of a prophecy.

“The spirit of a sea dragon will return in the flesh and defeat you, my Lord,” the seer said.

The Pen was horrified. The prophecy couldn’t simply be written away, for it was a magic locked in the stars, and the stars only communed with those who had the Sight.

“But there is a way to stop the prophecy,” the seer said. “Two star-blessed brothers like myself. They will swear themselves forever to you. I will show you where to find them.”

The seer went up in stardust that scattered and connected into a map, showing the Pen the kingdom in which they lived, before the heavens reclaimed the seer’s essence.

The Pen called the two brothers to its castle. Once they were there, standing before the steel quill, they swore their lives to it in blood and were immortalized. They lived in their new residence, watching the stars for a prophecy that was soon to unfold.

Days became weeks and weeks became months. The older brother was growing too restless to remain in the castle any longer, and he snuck out one night and visited a nearby city, where he met a mysterious man and had an affair with him. The man bewitched the brother into taking him to the castle, and the man attempted to capture the Pen with powerful chains of dark magic.

What the man didn’t know was that the younger brother had awakened in time, and he intervened and slayed the man, breaking the spell that the older brother had been put under. The younger brother scolded him, and the older brother was ashamed and promised to never leave the castle again.

But the older brother couldn’t keep his promise for long.

While the younger brother was asleep, the older brother snuck out of the castle and visited the city again, where he met a mysterious woman and had an affair with her. She did not bewitch him, but the Pen felt bewitched. It was not her appearance, but her character and backstory, both of which were inaccessible. The Pen could not understand why this was, and it struggled to focus on writing as it couldn’t help but fixate on her, tracking her every move, until she was lost to somewhere unknowable in the shadows.

Every night, the woman and the older brother met in the city, and the Pen’s steel form glowed hotter and hotter with jealousy. One day it spoke to the older brother, granting him permission to let the woman visit the castle, but that same night when the two met again, the woman declined the offer.

Furious, the Pen took matters upon itself. It created itself a new form, the form of a man, and like a dragon, he took flight into the sky and flew to the city. He watched from above, waiting until the woman was alone, and when she was in his sights, he swooped down and captured her, and he carried her away to the castle and locked her in a windowless tower.

“Tell me who you really are,” the Pen demanded. “What is your name?”

“I go by all and none,” the woman said, with a coy smile. “There is not a single name that is entirely mine.”

The Pen was tempted to threaten a name out of her, but held back.

“I will set you free if you lose your trickster tongue,” he said.

“Then I shall accept my place here indefinitely,” the woman replied.

And so the Pen kept the woman trapped, believing she would eventually give way under the pressure of such isolation and confinement. He forbade the older brother from seeing the woman, instead appointing the younger brother with the task of providing her with mere necessities, and each morning and evening he visited her tower. The Pen expected her will to weaken as time passed, but according to the younger brother, she seemed no less calm and content, which infuriated him.

The younger brother continued to do as he’d been tasked, and the Pen focused on telling the stories that no mortal would question. Then, one night, the younger brother disappeared—along with the older brother and the woman. The Pen searched the castle. He searched the kingdoms. He searched the lands not yet named. The three were gone.

The only place he hadn’t searched was the ocean, and there he found merfolk who’d claimed to have witnessed two mermen with a sea dragon. Fear and betrayal shook the Pen. The brothers had sworn themselves to him, yet they’d fled with his enemy. They’d lied to him. The seer had lied to him. All he wanted to do was round up the kingdoms’ armies and declare war.

The merfolk pointed him in the direction of the two mermen and the sea dragon, but the Pen sought out the sea witch instead. She was not a seer, but she could see anywhere and everywhere in the ocean.

The Pen found the wishing well made of bones and swam down to the bottom. The witch’s bulging eyes glowed yellow in the dark, her hair like seaweed, blending with her tattered dress that was draped over her skeletal frame. Being a witch who could see all in the ocean waters, she knew who this man was and would give him what he wanted.

“Where are the two seers and the sea dragon?” the Pen asked. “You must know where they’d gone.”

The sea witch smiled with pointed, jagged teeth.

“I do indeed know,” she said. “Behind me is a door that will take you to them.”

The sea witch moved aside to reveal a wooden door. Before the Pen could move forward, the sea witch raised a bony finger.

“But I warn you, my Lord,” she said. “This is a place beyond your control. It is the sea dragon’s domain, and soon it will become its own realm, free of your rule.”

The Pen’s soul blazed with dragon fire.

“Then you will give me what I need to slay her,” he said. “Giving those in need exactly what they need is your purpose, is it not?”

The sea witch smiled again.

“Of course,” she said, and she reached into her seaweed hair and withdrew a mother-of-pearl sword. “When you’ve entered, listen for a heartbeat.”

“A heartbeat?” the Pen repeated, thinking he’d misheard.

“Yes, my Lord. A heartbeat. It will take you to where the sea dragon hides.”

The sea witch handed him the sword, and the Pen took and sheathed it. He approached the door and pushed it open, stepping out of the water and into a thick purple forest under a twilight sky. The trees had twisted branches and their roots ran through the ground like arteries, and that was when the Pen heard the heartbeat. He followed the steady sound that trembled under his boots, growing stronger and stronger, until he found a giant heart sprouting with branches from which books hung like leaves.

The Pen approached the heart, unafraid.

“I am looking for the sea dragon,” he said. “Is she in one of those books?”

The heart didn’t respond to him, continuing to pump life into this strange place. The Pen would have to find out for himself, gripping the handle of his sword.

Then one of the branches shook, and a book fell as lightly as a feather into the Pen’s hands. It was plain and bore no title. He opened it to the first page, and the scene around him changed: now he was inside a mother-of-pearl castle, standing before the sea dragon who was seated in her stained-glass throne like a queen, radiating with beauty and power. On either side of her were the star-blessed brothers, no longer mermen.

The sea dragon, the woman he’d once held captive, smiled down on the Pen—not with malice, but with warmth.

“I mean you no harm,” she said. “I simply desire peace between our realms, and for all to walk freely between them.”

The Pen glared at her.

“There can’t be two realms,” he said. “There can only be one Pen that holds one realm together, and that Pen is me.”

The sea dragon conjured a pen of her own, gold and bejeweled.

“I have written a bridge,” she said. “If you write your part of it, our realms will coexist without issue.”

“I would rather go to war,” the Pen said.

The sea dragon smiled.

“I know you would,” she said, “which is why I have made you mortal.”

Naturally, the Pen would have laughed. But he had realized his greatest mistake.

He had walked right into the sea dragon’s trap.

He had disregarded the sea witch’s warning.

The sea witch who had conspired against him, along with the brothers, along with the old seer and the stars.

Never before had the Pen felt such terror.

“I’m sorry,” the sea dragon said. “I don’t want you so vulnerable, but as my realm believes in rehabilitation over punishment, these measures are necessary. If you change your ways for the better of the people, I will return your magic and immortality.”

With a flick of her gold pen, the Pen himself was cast into a different place: a bustling city where nobody recognized him and everyone treated him as just another newcomer. The Pen wanted nothing more than to destroy the sea dragon. He regretted not having slain her when he’d had the chance. The mother-of-pearl sword was still in his possession. Wasting no time, he made it his mission to find her again.

The problem was there was no way out of the city. It was surrounded with thick, towering walls of stone, and the gates only opened for the Feast.

On the first day of every month, a group of people were selected for the Feast, which wasn’t a feast for anyone but the Dragon King. This group could consist of peasants as well as nobles, criminals as well as innocents, elders as well as children. The selection process was determined by unseen forces, as those who would be sacrificed developed a star-shaped mark on their forehead, and none could hide from the Dragon King.

Upon learning this, and how everyone was so easily accepting of such a threat, even going so far as to romanticize it, the Pen’s anger chilled to terror. Sheer, mortal terror. For the first time in his godly existence, the Pen understood exactly how powerless mortals felt in the face of horrors beyond their control. He remembered all the trials he’d put mortals through, all the tales he’d spun with an excess of violence and suffering and death. And now, he was one of them—a character in a story, subject to the whims of its author.

But that was what the sea dragon wanted: to change him. To show him that he was no more important than any mortal. And that just wasn’t true. She was the one who needed to be humbled.

So, the Pen waited until the next Feast. In the meantime, he had no choice but to share his living space with unkempt strangers, possessing neither the status nor money to live as comfortably and isolated as he once had. He experienced hunger and lust and weakness and sickness, mortal problems that almost drove him to insanity, though he made his boundaries clear with his mother-of-pearl sword on more than one occasion. He at least still knew how to fight.

Finally, with the new and unfortunate group prepared for the Feast, the Pen slipped through the gates as the victims marched to their deaths, and the gates closed behind them. Outside the city was a scorched wasteland that extended for miles, appearing endless. Some victims were silent. Others broke down in tears. At the thunderous roar of the Dragon King, they all ran.

A dragon of impossible size swooped down and gobbled up each victim. The Pen ran with the last one, and when the beast swooped down again, he drew his sword.

The Dragon King opened his mouth and unleashed a blast of fire, incinerating the victim along with the Pen.

The Pen found himself back in the city, exactly where he’d started. Nobody knew who he was, nobody treated him any differently. He had failed to slay the Dragon King, and so he tried again.

And again.

And again.

The Pen tried so many times that he lost count. He’d even managed to rally together people beyond the group to fight against the Dragon King. But the Dragon King was simply too great, too powerful. The Pen was no match. Nobody was, not even in numbers.

Words couldn’t embody the Pen’s wrath toward the sea dragon. He hated her. He wanted to smite her. Yet a deep and primal, unknowable part of him still loved her, wanting to covet her as if she were the most precious jewel in any realm. Like a piece of himself that he’d lost. Sea and sky, two dragons profoundly linked, one of them battling with love and power and losing between both.

When the next Feast came, the Pen stopped the ill-fated group from exiting the city. The knights fought him, but he disarmed them all, a feat that impressed the leaders enough to allow him to proceed through the gates, alone.

Gripping his sword, the Pen waited for a sign of the Dragon King. At the first roar, he still waited, watching the beast swoop down to devour him.

Then the Pen did what he’d never thought he would: he threw the mother-of-pearl sword away, offering himself completely weaponless to the Dragon King. He closed his eyes, accepting his powerlessness and mortality and the love he longed for and might not ever have.

Delicate fingers stroked his face, and the Pen opened his eyes. He was back in the mother-of-pearl castle with the sea dragon gazing up at him. He realized the sword was still in his hand, and his veins ignited with dragon fire, tempting him to use it.

Instead, he let go of the sword and conjured the steel quill that housed his soul, and the sea dragon conjured her gold and bejeweled pen. Together, they connected the tips and drew them away, finishing the bridge between the two realms. From then on the Pen ruled his realm and the sea dragon ruled hers, and the Pen allowed people to leave and return freely, even during a tale. They always returned, and they brought with them experiences from the sea dragon’s realm, enriching the Pen’s stories in ways he couldn’t have imagined otherwise.