Smoke tickled the back of his throat even before he could see the fire. Hot, licking flames painted the night sky over Godville in an eerie red glow. Shouting, sirens wailing, a horse cart passed him sharply enough to make him jump and stumble into a nearby wall.
“Norman! Are you okay?” They made a weird picture, the gangly, teenaged girl trying to steady the hulking mountain of a young man.
“I’m fine,” he grunted, shaking off her tiny hands. The bricks were still wet from recent rain – it was an odd time for a fire, in the middle of this dank, warm season. Then it hit him – the fire was close to his house. His mother had only just returned from the hospital, she was in no shape to leave her room.
“Dari, I think I have to go,” he barely paid attention to his words, just shouldered his purchases started running towards the screams. Or rather, he hobbled down the street at the speed of a tranquilized turtle. An elderly couple passed him by with concerned looks.
“Leave the bags!” Dariole shouted. “You dumb lump, I can store them for you!”
“Goddammit,” he turned to shout, “No time, tell your father I’ll stop by tomorrow for more!” Goodbye, monthly income, he thought and dropped two hundred-pound bags of flour into the dirt. Directly into a puddle. He couldn’t help wincing at the loss. At least, he thought, he’d be able to save that 50 pound bucket of lard.
“Good luck!” his best friend shouted at his back as he started sprinting. The shortest way led him through the worst part of town – through dark alleys, over the fence to the dumpster, across the docks. At one point, he swung his bucket to clobber of a couple of suspicious shadows asking him for money in a rather impolite way. Nobody had ever accused Norman of being the sharpest utensil in the kitchen – he liked to think of himself as a (heavy) rolling-pin – but what he was missing in terms of intelligence he easily made up for with brawn and speed.
He took the corner to Barley Street a little too fast, slipped in the mud and stumbled for a dangerous moment as the weight of his lard bucket almost pulled him into traffic. When he found his balance and lifted his gaze, his heart skipped a beat. It wasn’t the neighboring houses that were aflame, as he had suspected – the bakery itself was burning to a cinder.
“Mother!” he roared and stormed blindly across the street, shouldering villagers and a skittish horse out of his way. “Father!”
“Norman!” a short, fat figure coughed. Norman craned his head to look for his father, before he saw the blackened little gnome right in front of him emptying a bucket of water into the fire. He was one out of a dozen of soot-covered helpers whose efforts seemed to barely have any effect at all. People seemed too intimidated and fearful to make a difference. Norman had seen fires before and knew to fear them, but this reaction hit him as odd.
“Father,” Norman shouted and grabbed the black-faced baker by the shoulders. This close to the fire his skin was burning up with heat. “Are you okay? Where is Mom?”
“It was too late,” the baker rasped between coughs. “The fi-fi-fire had already swallowed up the upper floors… the staircase was destroyed… and the beast-”
“We’re not leaving her!” Norman cut him off, but his voice sounded desperate even to his own ears. “I have to go in! Hold this!” he pushed the lard at his stunned father and turned around to survey the damage.
Most of the upper floor was completely engulfed in what appeared to be a single, large ball of fire, but the shutters of the bedroom window were tightly closed and seemed undamaged. She still had a chance, if only he made it up there in time.
“You’re not listening, son,” his father grabbed his shirt and tried unsuccessfully to pull him away from the flames. “The beast… it’s still back there…”
“The what?” Norman mumbled distractedly.
“The-” a metallic roar cut off the little man, and a shadow landed with a splintering noise on the neighbor’s house, sending shingles crashing to the street. A scream of anguish went up somewhere behind Norman (“I only just reroofed that!”) as wings flapped and flames shot up in the resulting gust. Against the angry red sky, metallic scales outlined a fifteen-feet-long monster. Silver eyes turned to gaze at the villagers, an image of carefully controlled power and grace.
“What in the name-” Norman breathed. The beast suddenly shuddered, heaved, then disgorged a ball of flaming snot that slowly crawled down the roof tiles and dropped into the alley. A sickly burp followed the spectacle, before the overgrown lizard scampered off to hide in an alley.
“A Grayscaled Dragon,” his father’s voice was shaking. “It’s a young one, but deadly nonetheless.”
“Mom only just destroyed a nest of them,” Norman said, slowly connecting the dots before him.
“It seems like she missed out on killing junior,” his father said and clung to the bucket of fat like a lifeline. “And I keep telling her to pay attention when cleaning up behind herself… Heroes will be the death of us, son. Scrap that, they already are. We’re all as good as dead!”
“It doesn’t matter, now, I need a ladder!” Norman shouted. The dragon didn’t seem interested in getting too close to the fire, and he was planning to go directly in – it seemed safe to ignore the monster for now. He was still trying to work out a plan, when he saw movement atop the roof of the bakery.
“Helene!” his father shouted. And indeed, it was her, crawling out of the window and onto the long pole that held the bakery’s sign, holding something that looked suspiciously like a table leg.
“For the Almighty, that dragon is going down!” she roared. She dropped to swing from the pole like a monkey, forth and back, gaining momentum. She let go to fly through the air in a graceful arc towards the roof the dragon had appeared on – only to hit the wall below it. She crumpled and fell like a broken puppet.
“Mother!” Norman shouted and ran towards the scene of the accident. He skittered across the wet ground, landed on his knees next to her twisted form. “No, no, no,” he whispered, over and over, pressing his ear to her chest to listen for a heartbeat. Silence was his confirmation. He felt numbness flowing into his body as he cradled her, carefully.
From the alley, a rotten smell came over him. He lifted his face, his vision blurred and head weirdly light. Right in front of him, he saw those silver eyes. A gagging sound, a dark, red glow. Norman knew what was to come.
He barely remembered picking up the table leg his mother had dropped, when he found himself beating the monster black and blue. The dragon whimpered and cringed, tried to escape.
“You have killed my mother, prepare to die!” Norman roared and with a mighty blow he struck the Grayscaled Dragon down.
“I will see you, again,” the monster shrieked and dissolved into ashes.
Norman stood, panting, gazing at nothing. He knew that behind him, his mother was still dead. The bakery was gone.