The Alien King’s Prey (Royal Aliens 1)

For a moment, she barely believed what she was seeing. Perhaps she was hallucinating. She had nibbled on a few mushrooms while in the woods. Sometimes one with a little magic slipped in. Sometimes she had one on purpose. Today, though, she had been careful. The war between the village and the tax collectors was escalating. There were reports of troop deployments and perhaps even some kind of secret weapon. It was not the time to go getting high in the woods. This was a tragedy, as Iris’ entire adult life up until this point had revolved around getting high in the woods. That’s what being a wise woman meant. She was a relatively young wise woman, but she was all the village had.

A dragon falling out of the sky was bad news for a great many reasons. Besides the general dragon-ness of it all, she was going to be expected to explain this, and probably answer as to why she hadn’t seen it coming. A wise woman was expected to be a healer and a seer. Iris’ mother and grandmother had both been exceptionally wise. Iris was pretending to be somewhat knowledgeable, and for the most part she had been able to pull it off - but she was buggered now. Failing to foresee a dragon was the wise woman equivalent of a blacksmith who didn’t know how handle metal.

Curiouser and curiouser, the closer the dragon plummeted, the more details she could make out. There was some kind of alien on its back, a massive beast perched up between his wings.

Obviously, Iris was not the only one to have seen the monstrosity. Even the least observant villager noticed the shadow of a monolithic collective nightmare appearing more or less out of nowhere. Their attempts to repel it with spears were fruitless and pointless, largely because they’d wasted most of the spears on the first attack and now only had shouts and stones to try to keep the thing away.

Her father, the chief, had decreed that nobody should leave the barricades. The forest was full of spies and tax agents, but Iris had defied him to gather the berries she needed to brew a tonic for her monthly blood. Chiefs did not understand things like monthly bloods, but without the brew she made from the berries she spend five days rolling around in agony, and she was not prepared to do that.

There was an alternative. Getting pregnant, but given the male warriors in the village were all her brothers, Iris was not terribly open to that idea. She had her berries clutched in her pocket, ready to make a fresh batch.

But anyway, now there was a dragon.

Iris knew as well as anybody else that dragons didn’t exist. But this one did. This one shone red and gold, sun flaring off ominously shining scales as the beast circled the village, roaring with ferocious intensity.

She crouched down, hoping that she would be able to avoid the worst of whatever terribleness was about to unfold. Fear warred with awe in her chest as she stared at the dragon and its rider, uncertain which of the creatures was more terrifying. The dragon was the obvious choice, being a dragon, but surely anybody who could mount such a beast would have to be even more dangerous a creature.

The dragon continued to circle around the village, clearly intent on doing something nasty to the inhabitants. Iris racked her brains for an action which would make a difference, but she did not know how to stop a soldier, and she certainly did not know how to stop a dragon. Her great-grandmother’s books might have had something about dragons in them, but they were inside the walls, and she was outside.

She was helpless and uselessly awestruck as the dragon circled so closely to the ground she could feel the draft from it buffeting the ground. It cruised overhead and then hovered over the village, its neck arched, its wings beating the air to stay in one spot and allow its rider to speak in impossibly booming tones which were unnaturally loud. It was as if he was speaking through the dragon, somehow using the beast as his own voice. She almost thought the dragon itself was speaking, but for the fact that the rider’s mouth was moving and he was gesticulating with the words which emerged from the dragon. Maybe they were one entity. One thing.

“Humans! I am your king!”

As introductions went, that was quite an impressive one. Still very much frightened, Iris found herself paying less attention to her fear and more to the intrigue which was aroused by the appearance of this fearsome monarch.

They had heard of the king, but never seen him. Some had even doubted that he existed. General Naxus was king as far as the occupants of Zeta were concerned. He was also judge, jury, and more often than not, executioner. But he didn’t fly on dragons, and he certainly never appeared in the provinces.