Discord drabbles - round two. Male dragon x reader (sfw) (Patreon)

When the shouts that the dragon had been sighted rose above the lyre music in the chief’s hall, you grabbed your longsword and charged out into the night. 

Over the last few years, the town had expanded, the latest addition being the new water mill about a mile up the river from the main conurbation, and ever since then the dragon’s attacks had increased in frequency and ferocity, though mercifully no one had been killed or seriously injured. 

That night, his dark shadow raged through the skies as a ball of burning fury, blazing gouts of fire into the night sky, hot enough to extinguish the stars but not quite close enough to send the rooftops to spiralling cinders. 

You charged out with the other warriors, but when they halted at the boundaries of the expanding village, you gritted your teeth and ventured further up the mountain towards his domain. 

“Come on!” you yelled, perhaps half a mile up into the swaying pine trees. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of one puny little human!”

The hiss and rush of wind as his mighty wings eased him down from the inky sky above made you close your eyes and turn your away, but you blinked and tightened your grip on the sword. 

“Why are you so greedy?” his deep, rumbling voice asked, drenched in pain and tight-throated with obvious grief. “Why can’t you leave me alone!”

You took half a step back. “What?”

“You reach further and further out of your little cluster of houses, you shoot arrows at me, you send warriors to roust me from my home - you take and take and take! Why won’t you just leave me alone?”

The tip of your mighty blade hit the dust as you lowered the weapon and stared in confusion at the bronze-scaled dragon as he landed on the wide path in front of you. Ruby eyes flashed in the darkness and his nostrils glowed with nascent fire. 

“Wait,” you breathed. “Wait…”

“Just. Leave. Me. Alone.” A huge spike-studded mace of a tail lashed back and forth behind powerful, taloned limbs, and he opened his maw, tongue flitting out to taste the air between you. “All of you.” And in a rasping voice he added, “That’s all I ask.”

“And if we leave you in peace,” you said, “You’ll stop burning our houses down?”

A rumbling growl that shook the needles from the pine trees blasted through the air as he raised his noble head high and opened his jaw. “Isn’t that what any creature would ask? To be left in peace? Yes! I will leave your pathetic little thatched haystack-houses alone if you stop bothering me night and day!”

You had to admire him then, this ancient being of fire and adamant, impervious to weapons and yet somehow vulnerable to the advances of humans. “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll talk to the elders. I’ll see what I can do.”

“I’ll talk to you,” he said quietly, setting his clawed hand down on the earth as if to steady himself again, grounding himself. “If you come back, I’ll talk with you.”

You nodded and turned away, as intrigued by him as you were relieved to be alive still. 

A week later, you found yourself trudging up the overgrown path to his domain, unarmed, and extremely nervous.