What follows is a non-canon character interview with Myn the dragon. The interview takes place at some point several decades after the events of The Battle of Verril. As such it contains SPOILERS, not just for the events of The Book of Deacon and Jade, but books that have not yet been written and my not be written for years. I repeat this MAY SPOIL FUTURE BOOKS. You should know from the question if it is going to spoil the future, but it is a minefield, so beware. Also, until those books are written, nothing here is necessarily set in stone. Also, I did this interview a bit differently than the others, framing it as a short story rather than a straight up interview. I hope you like it. Enjoy!
Image courtesy of CatseaTheDevil
A dragon, her scales a radiant red and deep amber, was lounging on a mound of gold twice as large as she. The creature was the picture of contentment, her elegant gold eyes turned to four young dragons, each just a fraction of her size, scampering and wrestling about on the gold. They scrambled around and over her legs, climbing her back and nestling beneath her wings. Around her was a clean, dry cave. The light of a rising sun filtered through the yawning mouth of the cave, bathing its interior and reflecting from the coins and goblets of the hoard to speckle the walls with points of light.
There was a sound at the mouth of the cave, footsteps. She pivoted her head from her brood and looked with interest to the mouth of the cave. There was an old man there, his hair thin and white around the edges and his scalp bare across the dome of his head. He wore a blindfold and carried with him a scroll and quill.
The baby dragons reacted to the visitor with mixed reactions, some baring their teeth in threat, others scampering for cover behind their mother. The adult dragon merely observed the visitor, wary but unthreatened by his arrival.
“Hello Myn. Do you remember me?” spoke the visitor.
Myn tipped her head, eyes analyzing the man.
“I do…” she answered, her voice smooth and soothing, soft and feminine yet unmistakably powerful, as though it was gentle only because great care had been taken to render it so. “But I do not remember from where…”
“I suspect it will come to you in time. My name is Oriech, and we have met before, though not under the best circumstances. I hope you don’t mind, but I have some questions for you.” He stepped forward, prompting the smallest of the dragons, a green and yellow scamp, to charge forward in challenge.
Myn scooped her tail around the posturing little one, uttering a soft, cooing sound in her throat and depositing him atop her haunches. “Questions? For what purpose?”
“You may not realize, but the tale of you and your friends has drawn the interest of many, and of those many, there are curious minds who wonder after the events not yet recorded. Would you care to answer?”
“Sit. Ask, and we shall see.”
Oriech took a seat on the ground and carefully prepared the scroll.
“Are you blind, sir?” Myn asked respectfully.
“I am.”
“Then how do you intend to write, and how did you find your way to me through the mountains?”
He grinned. “Still the curious one. I promise answers for you just as soon as we are through. Is that acceptable?”
“I suppose.”
“Then let me begin with Myranda. What do you think of her?”
“What do I think of her?” Myn asked, as though the question was absurd. “She belongs to me. And I belong to her. She is everything. All that I have done I have done for her. To make her proud, to keep her safe. And I know that she has done so much for me.”
“When did you learn that you felt this way?”
“I still remember my first moments. She was the first living scent to fill my nose. Hers was the first touch to brush my scales. She was laying there on the floor of my cave. I was cold and she was warm. I laid atop her to share her warmth. When she awoke, she held me. She fed me. I knew that she was there for me, and I decided I would be there for her.”
“But she was hurt, and she was not a dragon like you. Dragons are just as likely to be greeted by their first meal as by their caretaker. Why didn’t you make a meal of her?”
“I was not hungry yet,” she said with a shrug. “I suppose I needed companionship more than a meal. My family was already gone. But also there was something more. A light I suppose. Not the sort you can see. The sort you can feel. She was special.”
“She was indeed. You say you lost your family. A terrible tragedy. Did you know anything about them? Have you learned much about your past?”
“I have prowled the mountains of my birth for some time. I have smelled scents that remind me of my own. I know that those far older than I still make their home there. Perhaps someday I shall find them, learn from them. But we dragons live long. There will be much time for that.”
“Indeed… Was Myranda the only one in the cave that day, the day you found her?” he asked.
“No… No there was one other. He… I don’t know what name to use. I never needed a name for him. Like Myranda, he was simply mine, and I was his. He was the teacher. I learned to hunt from him. I learned to stalk. I learned to fight. I remember that Myranda called him Leo, then Lain.”
“He was not a dragon either, and yet you accepted him. Why?”
“It was his eyes. His heart. His soul. He too had the light, though not so pure. And he was wise. A hunter knows a hunter. I felt that he would teach me, and that I had much to learn. All that I feel for Myranda I feel for him as well.”
“Were you content to just follow Myranda and Lain wherever they went? Do you totally accept what Myranda chooses to do? Would you have done some things differently than she did?”
Myn huffed a breath that was close to a laugh. “If I had my way in the beginning, Myranda and Lain and I would have curled up in a cave, safe and warm, forever. Maybe some hunting, maybe some exploring, but always together. I did not like that she was always going places that were dangerous. And she was always going near water.” Myn shuddered. “I do not like water.”
“You’ve fought beside many others in your time. What do you think of them? Deacon, for example,” Oriech asked.
“Deacon…” she said, her voice with a breath more hiss to it. Her eyes narrowed and drifted aside, her tail slicing through the air a bit. After a moment her expression softened and she turned back to Oriech. “He belongs to Myranda. I suppose he belongs to me as well. But I do not belong to him. And Myranda may say that she does, but I say she does not belong to him either. She belongs to me. I do not like that I must share her with him. In the beginning I very much did not like it. I wished Myranda had not let him get so close. But now… If I must share her, I am glad it is with him.”
“You didn’t like Ether very much either.”
Her eyes narrowed again, claws raking softly at the gold. “Ether. Ether wanted to make me share Lain. No, she wanted to take Lain from me. But Lain did not belong to her. No one belongs to her. And she belongs to no one. She was cruel, and she did foolish things while claiming to be wise.” Her expression softened slightly. “But now… Now I do not hate her so much. Maybe because Lain is gone.”
“So would you say the uneasy truce has become something of an understanding?”
“Not an understanding. I respect her power, but more so I pity her.”
“Pity her? Why?”
“Because she belongs to no one, and no one belongs to her. She has nothing. And everyone knows it but her.”
“What do you think about Ivy? And what did you think in the beginning?”
She grinned. “Ivy was easy to like. She belongs to me too. I had to share Myranda with her in the beginning, but I did not mind so much. She was soft, and warm. And she liked to give me potatoes. And she smelled very much like Lain.”
“How did you learn to talk?”
“How does anyone learn to talk? I listened. I listened to Myranda mostly, and Deacon as well. Ivy wanted very much for me to learn. She was always very excited when I learned a new word.” She grinned. “I remember, I learned her name and she was so happy.”
“Did it take long to learn to speak?”
“Not long for a dragon. Most things are not long for a dragon. But maybe long for a human. I do not know, precisely. Kenvard was a kingdom again before I learned to speak, but it had not been for long.”
“There is one thing in your life, or perhaps ‘lives’ is more appropriate, that many have wondered about. Your rebirth. The day that Myranda lost you.”
Myn closed her eyes and lowered her head. “That was a very bad day…”
“What do you remember?”
“Not much. I remember Myranda was falling, and I caught her. I was trying to land. I was smaller then, and she was too heavy to carry. Something caught me, tore my wing. I fell. Into the ice, into the water. It was so cold. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move. And then it wasn’t cold anymore. There was darkness… and then there was light. I remembered feeling peace, but also I felt other things. There were figures in the light. Watching me. Whispering. Judging. They were trying to decide something. Something about me. … And you were there. It is there that I remember you from.”
“Indeed I was. When matters of the chosen arise I am often asked to be on hand. I am the hand of fate, after all.”
Myn’s wings flared a bit. “You were one of the ones who decided what came next then.” She lowered her head, coming nose to nose with the blind man. “I was not happy about what came next,” she rumbled. “Myranda was there. I couldn’t see her, but I felt that she was there. She came for me. She wanted me to follow her. She led me away from the figures, but whatever it was they were deciding, they made up their minds, and they needed me to stay. You needed me to stay. They pulled me away from Myranda… and then it became so bright. I remember first there was warmth, then… power. It tingled, fizzled inside me. Filled me to bursting. When it left me I was cold again, but I also felt that there was light inside me. The same light that burned inside Myranda and the others.”
“Did you understand what was happening to you? That you were being Chosen? That you had to die so that you could be reborn by the will of the gods?”
“I didn’t know what it was to be Chosen, but I knew that I was more like the others than I had been. I knew I had the mark. I was happy to share it with Myranda and Lain.”
“What happened next?”
“I was flying through the air when I woke, carried by those dark things, the dragoyles. They seemed smaller than they should be, but I was weak. I could not pull away. They took me to a place with many cages, and soon I met a creature who… If Myranda and Lain and the other Chosen had a light, these creatures had a darkness. The D’Karon. The one named Demont seemed pleased by me. I was large now. Nearly as large as I am today. Something in the power I felt after the figures in the light pulled me away must have done it, helped me to grow. Made me more than I was. But he wanted me to be larger. Stronger. And he wanted me to do as he said. I would not. So he… changed me. He hammered a loop of steel onto my head. He poured dark potions and uttered dark words… and I changed. I grew. And I grew angry. He could not control me. I would not do as he said, but the anger was all he wanted. He wanted me to hurt things. To fight them. To kill them. And I did. Every day, large and small, I slashed and charred and stomped and crushed whatever they put before me. I couldn’t think. The metal burned me.
“Then one day they wanted me to crush something so small. Something that was already so broken. But the smell… how could I forget that wonderful scent. The first I had ever smelled. It was Myranda. She healed me and we escaped.”
“When she restored you from their treachery, you were still much larger than you were. How did you cope with that?”
“I did not mind. With size came power. I could not curl up atop Myranda anymore, but she could curl up atop me. The change didn’t matter to her, and it didn’t matter to me. We were a family again.”
“And now your family has grown.”
“Yes… Four wonderful hatchlings. Windsor, Thorn, Roka, and little Halfax,” she said, licking the smallest lightly. “I came to the mountains to lay them, and to raise them. The young… I do not regret how I was raised, but I think maybe for my children I want them to know their own kind.”
“How did you meet their father, your mate?”
“He was a dragon from the south. We went there many times after the war ended. There are dragons there with riders. Something like Myranda and I. The riders belong to the dragons, the dragons belong to the riders. But it is not the same. The dragons and riders have rules, must behave certain ways. Not always the way they want to.” She grinned. “And they have strange names. They called him… what was the full name? Mikkalla and Shaal’s Terrible Green Gristle. Such a strange name.”
“The sort of name a breeder would give.”
“I suppose. His rider had a different name for him. Garr. That is what I call him now. He is away. Hunting. He will be back soon. You should be gone by then. He is very protective of the hatchlings.”
“He must be quite a dragon to pique your interest after all you’ve seen.”
“He is brave and strong. He fights well, and is more intelligent than many know. We had adventures together. He helped us. We helped him. We grew close. We became each other’s.”
“Touching. Tell me, do you still fly? Does Myranda fly with you?”
“I visit her often, and she visits me. We fly whenever we can.”
“Where is your favorite place to go flying?”
“I like the edges of places. The places where one thing becomes another. I like to fly along the mountains where they turn to snow, or where they turn to forest. And the sea. I like to fly where I can see the waves lap against the shore. And I like to fly near to the clouds, so with a swoop I can be above, looking at the stars, and another swoop I am below, looking down at the roads and the fires. Garr likes to fly over the desert, but I do not. It is all the same, so large, so boring. Give me the edges. He can take the middle.”
“Have you ever thought of going back to Entwell?”
“I would very much like to. Solomon is there. He was the first dragon I knew. He taught me so much of what it was to be a dragon. He would be proud of what I have become. He was proud of what Myranda had done for me, even before he taught me the things Myranda couldn’t.”
“What sort of things did he teach you?”
“There are things… It is hard to explain if you are not a dragon. There are right and wrong ways to breathe fire. Ways to make it hotter, to blast it further. Ways to make it more precise. And there are ways to see, too. More than other creatures do. And to hear, and to smell. He helped me learn to fly. There are many things only a dragon can teach.”
“Do you know that Deacon believes he can never return to Entwell?”
“He believes he has done some crime, some terrible thing. He says they will not allow him to return.” She raised her head somewhat. “He is very intelligent. He has spent his life learning, but sometimes I think he is a fool as well. He has done so much. He has helped to save this world. I believe they will forgive him. I do not know that they ever truly did not forgive him.”
“If he asked you to, would you take him there? Through the mountains, or perhaps over them?”
“The cave of the beast… I do not know that I would want go there again. But if Myranda needed me to, or Deacon, then perhaps. But it floods. And I do not like water.” She said. “The winds above it are treacherous, tricky. I could make it, but I do not know if a passenger could. Of course, Myranda and Deacon are both strong, they are wizards. I believe they could, and I would gladly help them. I would speak to Solomon, and the strong wizard who fed me, Azriel. I would tell them the things Deacon did. He belongs to me, after all. If he wishes to return home, I should help him do it. But if they wish, I will gladly stay with them in Kenvard. It is our home too.”
“I suppose that answers all of my questions, save one. Though it is a rather odd one.”
“I have answered all. Why not one more?”
“Do you know Spyro?”
“The name is not familiar.”
“He is a small purple dragon of some renown in other worlds.”
“I know a small purple dragon. A female hatchling further up the mountain. But her name is Gleed.”
“Nevermind then. A silly question. Thank you for your time, Myn. I’m sure your answers are of great interest to a great many.”
“You are welcome.”
“Would you like me to answer any of your questions now?”
“Perhaps another time. For now I shall tend to more important matters. Travel safely,” Myn said. She stood, sending cascades of gold to the ground. “Come, little ones. Perhaps today is the day you fly…”
Well, that’s that. I hope it was satisfying. I know a lot of these questions have been burning the minds of readers for some time. I was really hesitant to have Myn speak at all, but it seemed unfair not to.
If you’ve got any other questions for any other characters, the poll is always open.
Thanks for reading!