Dragon World

Dragon World is all about dragons. There are books, games, and movies, on dragons. This world will talk about them all. people can send in pictures or story on dragons. Please do.

Created By HopeDragon

The Bride of the Lindorm King

In Sweden, centuries ago, the queen lay in her bedchamber about to give birth to twins - the fulfilment of many years of empty longing for the children she had seemed destined never to conceive. She smiled as she recalled how she had consulted a soothsayer, who had assured her that in less than a year she would be granted two handsome sons, provided that she ate two fresh onions as soon as she returned to the palace.

Although this advice had seemed quite bizarre, the queen had been so aroused by the chance it offered her that she had rushed away, ignoring the voice of the soothsayer calling after her. Arriving back home, the queen had ordered two crisp onions to be brought to her at once.

The queen was so excited by the promise the onions held that she ate the first one without stopping even to peel the skin from it. Not surprisingly, it tasted disgusting and so, in spite of her enthusiasm, she spend time carefully peeling the second one, stripping away every layer of skin before eating it. Nine months had passed since then, and now, precisely as foretold by the soothsayer, her greatly desired sons were about to be born.

Outside the royal bedchamber, the courtiers and the palace staff were eagerly awaiting the official announcement of the birth of the new princes. Suddenly, an ear-splitting scream echoed within the chamber. But it was not the lusty cry of a newborn baby; it was, instead, a shriek of horror, a wail that sprang from the throat of the royal midwife when she set eyes upon the queen's first child. It was a male - but it was not human.

The queen had given birth to a lindorm, a hideous, snakelike dragon, whose wingless body thrashed upon the marble floor in scaly coils, and from whose shoulders sprang a pair of powerful limbs with taloned feet. So repulsed by the creature that she was unable even to whisper, let alone scream, the queen leaned down, took the young lindorm in her hands and hurled it through the window into the dense forest surrounding the palace. Weakened from the exertion, the queen sank back upon the bed and gave birth again, this time to a perfect healthy, fresh-faced boy, with golden hair and sparkling blue eyes.

Years passed, and the boy became a youthful prince in search of a bride, but what he found was his brother, the lindorm. The prince was riding around the edge of the vast forest encompassing the palace when, without warning, a huge head emerged from a thorny bush directly in front of him. Rearing up until its green-scaled body resembled a towering tree, the lindorm gazed down at the youth with unblinking amber eyes that penetrated his innermost thoughts. And as the prince stared back, mesmerized and motionless, he heard its voice assuring him with cold, reptilian detachment and certainty that he would never find a wife until he, the elder brother, had obtained the true love of a willing bride.

Accordingly, over the next few months a succession of village maidens was given to the lindorm in the hope of overcoming this barrier to the young prince's quest for a bride. Needless to say, none of the maidens came willingly, however, and so none was accepted by the monster. The situation seemed irredeemable, until the next maiden selected to be the bride of the lindorm had the good fortune to encounter the same soothsayer whom the queen had consulted so many years before. After listening while the maiden spoke of her impending plight, the soothsayer whispered into her ear a few words that swiftly replaced her sadness with a smile of delight.

That night, the maiden was presented to the lindorm, who gruffly told her to take off her dresses, of which she seemed to be wearing a surprising number. She agreed to do this, but only after extracting from the lindorm the promise that for every dress she took off, it would shed a layer of skin. This it did, until only one remained, and until the maiden was clothed in just a single simple garment

Despite remembering the soothsayer's words, it was not without nervousness that she removed this final gown and stood naked before the great dragon. The lindorm moved toward her, and the maiden tensed - fearing, yet also desiring, what was to come, for if the soothsayer had spoken truthfully there would be great happiness and great love ahead. And so she stood erect and motionless as the serpentine monster leisurely, almost tenderly, enveloped her body in its scaly coils. She had expected them to feel cold and slimy, but was pleasantly surprised by their warmth and softness when they embraced and caressed her. Even so, she felt a flicker of terror rising within her and desire to flee. Then the words of the soothsayer came back into her mind, calming her, and she relaxed again.

Gazing about, she noticed that the lindorm's last layer of skin, so thin as to be almost translucent, was starting to peel away, folding back upon itself like a cluster of withered leaves. At the same time, a strange green mist manifested itself, enveloping the lindorm, until she was aware of its presence only by the embrace of its sinuous body. Gradually the mist dispersed and revealed that she was no longer wrapped within the serpentine coils of a lindorm, but held in the firm arms of the most handsome man she had ever seen.

The soothsayer had indeed spoken truthfully. By following her instructions, the maiden had dispelled the enchantment that had incarcerated him within the body of a lindorm, and here was the elder prince, heir to the throne, for whom she would certainly be a willing bride.

The joyful marriage took place without delay, and after the old queen had given her blessing to the newlyweds, now the king and queen, she felt a light tap on her shoulder. It was the sootsayer, who revealed the information the queen had not stayed to hear all those years ago - to be sure to peel both onions before eating them.

Childe Wynde

The castle of Bamburgh, where lived the kings of Northumberland, of an austere appearance, was perched on a granite headland at the end of a vast strand, a small village nested against its sides. During a certain time, these already lugubrious places were transformed into a source of pain and desolation. That occurred with the second marriage of a sovereign which lived at this time.

This king was widowed and an extremely old man, and he had two children. His son, Childe Wynde, waging war far way when they celebrated the new weddings. Her daughter, the young and charming Margaret, made good greeting to her future mother-in-law.

The new lady of the manor, of a cold beauty and haughty ways, was also, said people, of a cruel nature. At the time of the banquet, her distant attitude caused the surprise of the courtiers. When the songs succeeded the drinkings, the general favour went to Margaret, and comparisons were established between her and the married, unfavorable to the last one.

The night came, whereas everyone rested in the castle, the queen put herself at work. Weighed down by the good expensive meat and the generous wine, the king whirred. She threaded in the court lit by the moon and traced on the ground mysterious symbols by murmuring incantations.

A little later, Margaret woke up, with an odd taste in the mouth, the limbs strangely heavy. A terrible hunger tortured her. Something shone in the dim light. It was a clawed paw, covered with shinning scales which shone under the moon. The young girl had a shiver of horror because the paw made a jump in her direction. She pushed a raucous cry which did not have anything human and rolled to the bottom of her bed. Then the large tail, with which she was equipped from now on, was agitated furiously, crashing in to pieces in it passage all the furniture of the room. At the end, the dragon newly born, exhausted because of so many emotions, collapsed on the ground and fell asleep.

The following day, in the brigth morning, the castle fills of cries and lamentations. Pushed by the hunger, the dragon which Margare was now became had slipped to the bottom of the stairways and had penetrated in the court, where arrived the odor of a herd of sheep feeding in the vicinity. Descending the hill, it had precipitated and made devastations. At satisfied present, it was held rolled up around a rocky outcrop called Spindlestone Heugh to enjoy the tepidity of the morning sun.

People were terrified. They took counsel from wizards; they denounced the criminal action of the new queen and indicated the means of breaking enchantement. 'If you want to see Margaret taking again his real appearance and the queen to receive a right punishment, send someone seek Childe Wynde beyond the seas', advised the wizards.

Thus this was made, although the king, decreased by the age, had refused to believe the wickedness of his wife. The dragon remained, it presence frightening and mephitic, but it ceased devastating the herds in exchange of a daily ration of milk. It is all they could do, because nobody knew how to extract the sould of Margaret to his prison of scales.

Overseas, the news came in Childe Wynde. He brings together his companions and set sail towards England, on board a ship out of wood of sorb, well-known for its resistance to the powers of evil. But an adversary caused by the capacity magic of the queen awaited the warriors. When they were in the sight of the crenelated ramparts of the castle, an terrifying spectacle was offered to their eyes. A whole band of sprites danced on the peak of the waves, formless shades almost invisible if were not for their dazzling teeth and their blazing eyes. They made circle, such as bats, around the mainmast but the skittle of sapwood fills its goal and they could not damage the ship. At the end, exhausted, the sprites regained the trough of the waves and, tossed like bung, saw the ship gain the shore.

But the queen, alone in her room, she was conceiving other magic spells. The dragon unrolled its rings and slipped towards the strand, feeling reluctant to oppose to the vessel of which it recognized the flags, but unable to resist its impulse. It thrown itself to water and, with powerful beats of it's tail, went ahead of the ship. It gave face against prow. There was a great cracking and the oarsman fell from their banks. Two times, Childe Wynde and its crew began again to sail and twice still the dragon made blocade. At the end, Childe Wynde managed to gain without encumbers a small split rather far away from the castle. He approached on a pebble beach and jumped to ground with his archers. Suddenly, a company of gulls spouts out close to the dunes and a thick fog wrapped the men. A scaly muzzle bored the fog, and they saw shining an eye of the size and the color of a lemon, covered with a heavy twinkling eyelid.

Childe Wynde holds up his sword, ignoring that this monstrous body was used as prison to her sister, and his companions tightened their arc. Then the dragon opened the mouth and pushed a great cry. Within the tumult, Childe Wynde distinctly heard the voice of Margaret who indicated him the way on how to saves her.

The knight made move back his men, shelter his sword and, kneeling in front of the animal of which the breath burned his cheeks and his eyes, twice he kissed the poisonous scales very close to the hooks. The sharp blades lacerated his mouth, but he gave the final kiss and the dragon started to decay. Its glance darkened and its body fades like a dead leaft. There remained soon only the yellow envelope and emptied which, after, disappeared. Instead, holdwas held thin naked girl, the smooth and soft skin like the one of a new-born baby. It was Margaret. Childe Wynde hastened to protect her from the marine breeze by covering her with his coat. Then, accompanied by the men-at-arms, the brother and the sister moved to the castle.

The joy was quite complete when they arrived, but the young man wanted to finish his task. He went in the room of the queen witch, whose magic capacities had disappeared as soon as the sapwood skittle had touched the strand. He found her packed on herself in a corner of the room. Her eyes shone of fear when she saw him taking out of his pocket a branch of the same sorb which had been used for the built of the ship, and she was packed even more still without uttering a sound. Then the rod touched her and she pushed a long howl which was completed in a raucous croaking. The queen had lost her human appearance and instead of her was standing, tiny and very wrinkled, a toad.

Childe Wynde moved back, seized of dislike, then he started to laughing. Like escaping the mockery, the toad leaps out of the room, tumble down awkwardly the stairway of the keep and went to take refuge in some hole of the wet cave. They never see her again. Only a weak painful croaking spouted out sometimes from the underground galleries.

Tannin and the Prophet Daniel

Many, many years ago, several centuries before the birth of Christ, in the sumptuous and pagan Babylon, there lived a young exile from Jerusalem named Daniel. The King of the Babylonians, Nebuchadnezzar, held the young man in high esteem because of his wisdom and he often invited him to his table. Daniel knew how to interpret dreams and his prophecies were always fulfilled, which is why Nebuchadnezzar felt obliged to ask his advice. However, the prophet, who came from the tribe of Judah, was not able to convince the powerful monarch that the stone and metal idols which the Babylonians worshipped were false.

At that time, in the city of Babylon, there lived a dragon called Tannin who was worshipped as a god.

Tannin, who had made a pact of friendship and goodwill with the Babylonians, lived in the temple of Bel, where there were priests and servants to take care of his needs and where the same Nebuchadnezzar often visited him, for he was an ancient and wise dragon.

One day, when Daniel had demonstrated to the Babylonian monarch the falsity of the god Bel, Nebuchadnezzar asked him angrily:

'And why don't you worship the dragon god? You cannot deny that the dragon is alive. He is not made of stone or metal like the other gods in this land.'

'He is alive but he is not a god, for he can die and gods do not die', replied the prophet.

'He has been alive since the time when my father and his father were young, and even long before. He has lived in the temple for countless generations of men, and there is nobody who remembers when he was born. He eats and drinks and speaks with wisdom, and he is very knowledgeable. I do not imagine or believe that he will ever die. He is without a doubt a god', retorted Nebuchadnezzar.

Daniel then wanted to demonstrate to the King that the dragon could die and was therefore no different from other creatures. He made cakes of pitch and sheep's fat and wool, and gave them to the poor, trusting Tannin, who, accustomed to being given food by men, did not suspect anything and ate them.

The poisoned cakes soon began to work and the dragon died in two days. Thus the king of the Babylonians was convinced that Tannin was mortal, and he lost his wise dragon god forever.

A Stay at the Waters Kingdom

Through the vineyards and the olive groves of the South of France, at the foot of the proud castles of the lords of Provence and along the villages with the tiled roofs of their vassal, ran the Rhône whose majestic course could not, it seemed, conceal a dragon. And, however, in its depths, close to the small town of Beaucaire where the curve of the river is directed towards the sea, was hidden the cave of Drac.

The monster expert in sorcery, Drac liked the human flesh and enjoyed to hunt the mortals. Sometimes, he left the river to go to Beaucaire where, on the place of the market, he wandered, invisible to the eyes of humans, in the shade of the plane trees in the middle of the fish baskets and the fruit and vegetable inventories. Cold, with a pale glance, the dragon observed the women chattering with the merchants and, from a swift claw, sharp-edged, removed a child whom his parents had, for a moment, neglected to supervise.

Sometimes, for the simple pleasure, Drac attracted the humans in its river and trap them. Thus one day this is what he was doing, and with a strange aim. Here exactly what occurred:

By beautiful afternoon of summer, under a burning sun bathing the city and the fields, a young woman went at the edge of the river to wash there the swathes of her new-born baby. While rubbing her linen vigorously, she threw a distracted glance on gleaming water, and saw floating on the surface, not far from bank, a cup engraved with gold in which shone a pearl.

The young woman did not see the trap. Without taking time to think, she tightened the arm to seize the object but the cup scintillating at the sunray deviated out of her range. Again, she leaned very far ahead, stretched and, as one could envisage it, lost balance abruptly.

As she falls in water, an invisible claw seizes her wrist. The young woman tried in vain to get released. The irresistible grasp dragged her downwards. Right before she sank, whereas she felt her skirt fill up water, she had a last vision of the ground with the scattered linen drying on grass and her crying baby, then the Rhône engulfed her.

She returned to her senses in a crystal cave. Beyond the translucent walls, several long algae undulated, as rocked by the breeze. Fishs slipped by among grasses. Close to her was posed the gold cup containing the pearl which she had wanted to seize. Then she saw her kidnapper. Enormous, the dragon with the shining scales contemplated her, lying close to the cup.

Fascinated by his emerald glance, she tried to rise and felt her memories of her life of the surface to be erased: her child, her husband, her house of Beaucaire, the fields, the silver olive-trees all around the sunny city, all this faded and grew blurred, like the memories of dreams. She did not hear nothing more in her head except the words of the dragon whose voice had resonances of a gong. She could only subdue to the will of the monster.

Drac had taken her because she was young and robust, and because she nursed herself her baby. The dragon needed the milk of a mortal to nourish his own young, a fragile freshly hatched creature. Thus, taken with the snares of a magic spell, the young woman became the slave of Drac and... the nurse of a dragon.

In the dim green light of her crystal prison, the days passed, monotonous, for the prisoner rocked by the movements the water, bewitched by the dragon, she lived in a kind of trance, nursing the young of Drac and looking after him with all the tenderness of a mother. She slept when the dragon gave her the command and absorbed food he presented to her. Through the opalescent walls of the cave, she observed the movements of the river and its inhabitants; the striped of green and gold pike, the sinuous eel, the trout as fast as the thunder had become to her as familiar as her formerly neighbors of Beaucaire. In the watery world which surrounded her, the rocks and the algae had become the fields and the wood of her abolished past.

The visions came to her without her knowledge of the evil spells of the dragon. Every evening, on the command of Drac, she anointed the eyes of the young with a balsam intended to give him the piercing vision of a dragon and, each time the nurse rub her eyes, she impregnated them with traces of the ointment and thus received a piece of the magical capacity of the creature.

Seven years passed. The young of the dragon became large and strong, and the day came where Drac did not need anymore the services of his captive. However, since she had nourished his offspring, He did not kill her and, after having called on her the charms of forget and sleep, he brought her back to the fresh air.

When she awake on bank of the river not far from her home, the young woman felt disorientated. She preserved the confused memory of a burning sun day, the white and wet linen spread out in grass and of the merry laughter of her baby who played beside her. But now she was alone, the evening fell, the lights of the city were lit up one after another. She hesitated one moment then moved towards the city, and regained her house.

The door was opened for the freshness of the evening; she crosses the threshold. Two familiar faces turned toward her, those of a bearded man and a young boy who make her remember her husband in his youth. They were disfigured each other for a moment. Then, under the eyes of the astonished child, the man pushed a cry, sprang and took her in his arms. Her husband, who had believed her drowned and had cried her for seven years, overpowered her with questions, but she was unable to answer, having no memory of the universe of the dragon. The young boy, her son, remained mute in front of this stranger in rags whose silence worried him.

But the love of the man for his wife was so deep and his joy so sharp for this reunion that the child soon adopted the unknown stranger. Her neighbors accepted her in the same way although her seven years absence remained for all a complete mystery. She dreamed of dragons, she often said and her entourage listened to it with indulgence. Slowly, she took again her peaceful existence of the old days, being occupied with the domestic tasks, taking care of the father and the son, working in the fields accompanied by the other villagers.

The life had thus followed its course, serene and without troubles, but, as she went one day on the market place, suddenly, among the fish and vegetable salesmen, she saw appear Drac. The shining scales, he dominated crowd, his enormous head almost at the level of the roofs. His green eyes shone of a charming glare but all the busy merchants and the variegated crowd of the barges were not aware of him. The monster was visible only for the young woman. When she fetch a cry, he threw on her a penetrating glance.

'You see me, mortal?' a voice asked in her head.

'I see you, dragon', she answered and at the same moment she remembered the seven lost years.

She remained motionless when a claw of the dragon dropped on her and covered her left eye.

'You still see me?' asked the dragon. She answered yes. The claw posed on her right eye and, from the other, she distinguished nothing more than the crowd and the inventories from the market. Docile, she says to Drac that she did not see him any more. At the same moment, a fulgurating pain was irradiated in her head. From his claw, the dragon had torn off this eye that can saw him.

During many years, the woman lived, one-eyed, re-telling without rest the story of the dragon. The inhabitants believed her insane and refused to take account of the warnings which she persisted to gives them. Thus, every year, of the children continued to disappear on the market place and nobody, never, knew why.

Introduction to Dragons

Everybody knows what a dragon is: an enormous, fierce, bloodthirsty creature appearing in fairy tales and legends as an accessory whose main function is to set off the bravery of knight challenging him. The dragon is an obscure, mysterious character, described in broad terms, and is little more than foil to enhance the hero's valor.

Dragon is a legendary beast in the folklore of many European and Asian cultures. Legends describe dragons as large, lizardlike creatures that breathe fire and have a long, scaly tail. In Europe, dragons are traditionally portrayed as ferocious beasts that represent the evils fought by human beings. But in Asia, especially in China and Japan, the animals are generally considered friendly creatures that ensure good luck and wealth.

According to some medieval legends, dragons lived in wild, remote regions of the world. The dragons guarded treasures in their dens, and a person who killed one supposedly gained its wealth. The English epic hero Beowulf died in a fight with a treasure-guarding dragon.

In China, the traditional New Year's Day parade includes a group of people who wind through the street wearing a large dragon costume. The dragon's image, according to an ancient Chinese belief, prevents evil spirits from spoiling the new year. Another traditional Chinese belief is that certain dragons have the power to control the rainfall needed for each year's harvest.

However the dragon is something else. He is admirable, intelligent and educated creature, who leads a most interesting life. He has some fascinating characteristics in addition to those occasional glimpses we are given through fairy tail and legends.

In the world of fantastic animals, the dragon is unique. No other creature has appeared in such a rich variety of forms. It is as though there was once a whole family of different dragon species that really existed, before they mysteriously became extinct. Indeed, as recently as the seventeenth century, scholars wrote of dragons as though they were scientific facts, their anatomy and natural history being recorded in painstaking detail.

The naturalist Edward Topsell, for instance, writing in 1608, considered them to be reptilian and closely related to serpents: "There are divers sorts of dragons, distinguished partly by countries, partly by their quantity and magnitude, and partly by the different form of their external parts." Personifications of malevolence of beneficence, paganism or purity, death and devastation, life and fertility, good or evil. All these varied, contradictory concepts are embodied and embedded within that single magical word.

The dragon has always been slandered and misjudged, persecuted and hounded by man, simply because they are different. Like so many other living beings, he has experienced death and persecution in the name of so-called superiority of civilized man.

Perhaps, in the future, man will learn with the death of a single animal or plant species an irreplaceable asset - something more precious than all the wealth in the world - is lost. Only then will the Earth continue to be a brilliant blue jewel in the universe, for in its heart will be locked the priceless treasure of the diversity of the species, and man will have recognized his duty to cherish every single one.