CHAPTER ONE Forest Creatures Back when the world was long ago and far away deep in the Black Forest a new dragon was born The new dragon was known as Grisha although his parents parents in the strange and mysterious ways of grown-ups everywhere had named him Benevolentia Gaudium The grandness of Benevolentia Gaudium meaning kindness and joy was far too grand for daily use but his parents liked the way it sounded They had waited fifty years for his arrival and were naturally thrilled with their son Normally it took thirty or so years for a new dragon to arrive in the world but the special ones took an extra twenty years No one knew why the world of magic selected particular dragons to be special but the signs were always clear One of those signs was the fifty years of waiting The more obvious signs almost always had to do with an unusual appearance
So after waiting fifty long years Grisha’s parents were baffled by his ordinary looks The baby dragon had gold eyes violet was the most common eye color for dragons but there was nothing special about gold and his scales were shades of green brown and orange There was no fuchsia no blue nor any red on him anywhere There was not even the splash of black along the neck that the very best warriors always had His mother a National Roaring Champion and his father a well-known Sword Warrior and Fire Breather couldn’t understand why they had waited so long for such an ordinary-looking dragon But they knew that sometimes magic made an occasional occasional wrong turn Either their baby dragon was a perfectly normal one or his particular talent would have nothing to do with his appearance Grisha’s mother shrugged and his father went back to work on the battlefields of men In a way it was a relief for now they would not have to hire one of the older more experienced dragons to teach Grisha how to manage any extraordinary powers Grisha was born in the year 1803 which turned out to be the last year that any dragon special or otherwise was born There is much debate about why dragons stopped being born and no one knows the exact reason Perhaps it is simply that in the years following Grisha’s 6
birth the steam engine was invented railways were constructed constructed and light bulbs became a fixture in homes and on streets As the world of men built new and extraordinary things the world of magic began to decline No creature lives beyond its own world and a dragon is nothing if not a creature from the world of magic But back in 1803 the year of our dragon’s birth magic was still as common as electricity is today Dragons flying horses and poisonous rabbits roamed Europe’s famous forests in large numbers and were not considered by men or the other woodland creatures as anything strange or even wondrous Instead the dragons flying horses and poisonous rabbits were accepted as natural parts of the forest much like the trees And if the creatures of magic were obliged to perform various jobs and tasks in the world of men it just meant that sometimes they were obliged to leave the forest Flying horses were used when someone was too ill to send for a doctor or when a message could not be trusted to a servant Poisonous rabbits who save for a small black dot on the back of each ear looked exactly like ordinary ones served as both spies and assassins Dragons were created solely for battle Even more than swords guns or cannons dragons helped to sway 7
