The Dragonoid Chronicles

One Page Summary - First Draft

About

A work of fiction

Publication date: 2022-02-21

Copyright ©2022. All Rights Reserved.

Part of an ongoing series: The Dragonoid Chronicles

Story

Bentlor had finally had enough of the tyrannical society in which he lived. It was painful to admit such a thing, because it was not the society in which he had grown up. Back then, we mocked and overthrew tyrants across the Sphere. We failed to imagine that they would infiltrate us at the very foundations of our culture, undermining us from within. They played the long game, seeing how they could not topple our military prowess. Within a few short decades, the exotic Dragonoids had finally overthrown everything we held dear in yesteryear. Most had lovingly welcomed their new masters with open arms, worshiping them; even mocked or exterminated anyone who did not. That was before the Dragonoids themselves used the might of their monopoly on violence, self-described as the Dragic Empire, against the few holdouts.

Under the constant surveillance of this Dragic Empire, ruled with an iron fist by the cunningly charming, yet vampiric Dragonoids, Bentlor intends to attempt a life-threatening escape with his family and closest friend. Trusted friends, family, desperately desired for him to succeed. "But how?", they asked. "The Dragonoids have mastered our verbal and body language, they can smell our emotions, intuit our intentions. They rarely miscalculate! We must endure...".

What finally tipped them over the edge? In the aftermath of a nearly-successful coup, the Dragonoids unleashed wrath on the imperial subjects. For those who survived the battle of the coup? Devoured by a horde of Draglets, the young of the Empire. Before that fate though, they made the survivors watch their own children, wives and parents get devoured. And Darkness Below, if they smelled sympathy in your sweat, you were devoured too, only more slowly. After a few short days of this, there was no more sympathy to be smelled in public. Everyone's fear turned them into slaves; now the Dragonoids smelled a singular overwhelming emotion: adoration. One whiff of anything else, and you were assaulted. Bentlor and his family refused to worship these creatures; Darkness, they were in on the coup itself, at least in the planning stages! They had to stay underground.

Only, they have nowhere to hide; the creatures know all. A few sly family members learned to feign adoration, and they attended to their lives as normal, or at least what passed for normal now. This gave Bentlor time to think. Time to plan. Time to build. A machine, that can take them away? To another era of the Sphere?

Will the escape plan succeed? There were many variables at play: parts, time, experimentation, traitors, cowards ... and a lurking unknown: would their bodies be able to survive the dissolution and re-atomization of the Sphere transversal mechanism?

Or will the Dragonoids discover them, condemning them to a fate worse than death, reserved only for the most heinous of crimes: escape. Puzzlingly, they regarded this act as even more treasonous than a coup. Some suspected it was because they feared the truth of their politics escaping to the rest of the Sphere, and having to fight yet another war so soon after the so-called Great War of De-Humaning. That name was, of course, kept highly classified. Publicly, the war was referred to as The Awakening, inasmuch as they awoke to the purportedly genocidal intentions to the rest of the Sphere, held by none other than the humans. Bentlor suspected that "The Awakening" was simply a projection of the plans of the Dragonoids themselves. The satisfaction they got from the few times they had delivered the penalty for escape made that clear to anyone with functioning eyes. Does anyone but Bentlor and his companions even still have functioning eyes?

The penalty for failure is high: de-blooding by ravenous Dragonoid elders. The Dragonoids were a vampiric race, and lived for millenia. Although able to survive on the blood of any living creature, it was humans they craved above all. They couldn't reveal that to the wider Sphere until their machinations were complete; else, they would be annihilated by the other inhabitants. "De-blooding" was the only depiction imaginable in Umese, the human tongue, for these Dragonoids had quite the appetite for blood and sadism, enough to make the old vampires of human lore look tame ...