Dying, Agatte the Aggressive mused, twirling her axe between her fingers, is a difficult act to time.
On the one hand, it would be eternally disappointing to join the Feast of the Fallen Warriors only to discover that, had she waited a few more days, months or years, she could have died single-handedly facing an entire army of invading gremlins, or on a perilous quest to rid the Kingdom of some cursed pestilence.
This brought to mind one of Agatte's late friends, Bjeorvic the Brawny, who had died heroically, saving his one true love from a vicious bear with two heads- or had it been his two true loves from just the one bear? Agatte couldn't remember, and nor could anyone else. The details of Bjeorvic's death had been forgotten when, a week later, a whole pack of the bear-beasts came down from the mountain and decimated the valley he had once protected. Almost all of the valley-dwellers were killed. They had been abandoned by their hero and every act of bravery that Bjeorvic had committed during life was overshadowed in the minds of the survivors by his untimely death. Although Bjeorvic survived still in living memory, he had already been forgotten by the bards and minstrels.
Agatte was terrified of being forgotten.
However, greater still than that fear was another, one that had almost come to pass for Agatte's childhood hero, Dakrot the Deadly. He was named deadly for a reason: whoever the foe, however great their strength and powers, after a fight with Dakrot he would be unscathed, and they would be dead.
Invincible and proud of it, Dakrot the Deadly left it too long. He outlived every other hero of his generation; many of them died by his hands. With no worthy opponents left, he faced the terrifying prospect of dying of old age and sickness, in comfort and surrounded by loved ones. Desperate to avoid this fate, he settled for being killed in an epic battle... with the warthog who was devouring the local farmers' crops. The songs were almost mocking, making less of his arch-nemesis than of his arthritis.
Agatte shuddered at the thought of his gory, glory-less end, and her resolve strengthened. One couldn't live forever, and if death didn't come today it would come soon enough, or else to her deathbed. She looked down from her perch in the cliffs at the children she would die for. They were a pathetic lot, sickly and malnourished from months of their family flocks being sent down as appeasement. It hadn’t worked. Now the parents had done the unthinkable: tied their children to stakes and left them as a sacrifice; one last desperate attempt to sate an insatiable greed and save themselves.
For slithering towards them was a dragon.
Agatte could see its fire-glands expanding in its throat; any second now, fire would stream out of its jaws and burn the children until they were nothing but char for it to eat. She knew that if she acted now, strung her bow and aimed and fired a decent shot within the next few moments, she could take out the fire-glands. Then the fire would drain out of the dragon along with its life. She would live, the children would live. But where was the fun (where was the glory) in that?
Shooting an opponent to kill as one hid in the shadows was hardly honourable. Agatte pictured the fight as it should play out: just as the dragon opened its jaws, she would run out from behind the boulder, wielding her axe and screaming some fitting last battle cry. The dragon would turn, furious and confused. For a second, it would stand before her, its jaws open and its throat perfectly vulnerable. Then it would shoot its flames just as she threw her axe and the weapons would fly through the air, arcing with perfect symmetry, before each hit its target and sent them to the ground. She would be a pile of ashes; it would be a heap of blood and scales; a whole generation of heroes would be inspired.
The dragon's lungs swelled. With one last swing of her axe, Agatte leapt to her feet.
"Tonight, wyrm, I shall feast upon you in the company of the heroes and the gods!"
And I was a wee bit proud of her death...
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