With ash in mouth humanity bowed…

As the war between humans and dragons began, fire and death was about to fill the lands. While indiscriminate, dragons would burn with horrifying precision every human settlement. People tried any and every weapon at hand to fight off the giant beasts. As the first day ended, a hundred villages were burnt. to the ground. As the next day dawned, the first a hundred villages surrendered to the bid of the dragons. As the second day went on, more settlements burned, more settlements surrendered. Those that burned, were most long forgotten. Those that survived, knew their shame…

Yet that shame, with time, it dissipated. The privilege of seeing the sun another day, as they woke up and basked in its rays, felt like a blessing after all the death and destruction. And for the brief moment humans fought shoulder to shoulder and side by side, their own peace felt like a missed opportunity. As the years passed, the new generation had all but forgotten about their parents’ shame as they grew. They also forgot about the wrath of the dragons. Time had passed, and those that forgot about the shame had children of their own. Those children slowly grew to despise the dragons. Their grandfathers had lands, houses, connections to the dragons. They? They were promised that with humility and hard work above all, they’ll live happy, fulfilled lives. Yet while food was plenty at the mines, the hours were long. Shelters were compact to fit as many workers as possible, while more and more were forced to move towards the industrial settlements that humans needed to build in order to survive. The requirements were drastic, the amount of gold, gems and precious stones needed every month would fluctuate not on the reality in the mine, but on the whims of the dragons.

With times, the conditions only got worse for those that could not mine as much as they did before. Whether the mines were emptied, or it was too dangerous to dig to reach a new vein of gold, the dragons could not care less. While dragons would share in their spoils, they needed places to store all the wealth. Constructions in the mountains, and from rocks were build to acomodate both dragons and their wealth. Those that were not built underground or in mountains, were built as big as the mountains themselves. Much like mice in the house of the man, humans were puny and their paths were few and dangerously small to pass through the constructions in order to reach the dragons inside the giant constructions. 

Thus the first humans directly obeying and working for the dragons directly appeared only to work and live within those man-made constructions. The dragons liked the idea so much, they destroyed all housing in all the human settlements. All wealth they had gathered, all memories and history that they had gathered and remained from before the dragon’s wrath, gone, in one afternoon.

Everyone will get their fair chance. You will all have your chance to own your own plots of land and build upon them the houses you desire. But it will all be based on your merits. The fruits of your labor. The harder you work, the more you will be able to build. The more you prove your worth, the more you will earn. I expect that we will see no one unworthy. You have the chance to pull yourselves up by your own bootstraps. We will build something beautiful, worthy of the castles you’ve built us. As long as we approve of it and as long as you provide us with the quotas for those of us who hold the share of the gold, everyone will thrive as the wealth will spill over to everyone, was the speech dragons spread across the world, before taking flight and sleeping on their piles of gold in their giant castles and mountain lairs.

Part III will arrive soon…