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Terror, or Ruminations On Dragons
People in these days speak of terror often. They speak of flames and death and suffocation and men with axes and machine guns, they speak of cold creeping cancer, of minds turned against themselves, of that ever present danger of loss.
It is an old, tired terror. It is a terror less of the thing and more of that which promises to follow—the constant litany of but I am too young to die.
That is not what terror used to be. Terror used to be long, sinuous muscle, arched back and arched neck and arched wings, covered in scales the size of small plates. Terror used to wise, angry eyes and poisonous breath and long, fearsome fangs.
Terror used to be real, used to reach back to the hindbrain and wring tears from the bravest of men, forcing heroes to their knees out of sheer ancestral horror, overwhelmed by what stood before them.
This is terror: unbridled, untamed, and undimmed by ages past.
This is the dragon.
It is an old, tired terror. It is a terror less of the thing and more of that which promises to follow—the constant litany of but I am too young to die.
That is not what terror used to be. Terror used to be long, sinuous muscle, arched back and arched neck and arched wings, covered in scales the size of small plates. Terror used to wise, angry eyes and poisonous breath and long, fearsome fangs.
Terror used to be real, used to reach back to the hindbrain and wring tears from the bravest of men, forcing heroes to their knees out of sheer ancestral horror, overwhelmed by what stood before them.
This is terror: unbridled, untamed, and undimmed by ages past.
This is the dragon.
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