The Lone Tamer And the Flightless Dragon

The Great War against the elves and mankind was finally put to a stop about two hundred years ago.

With mankind achieving a triumphant victory over the elven people, the latter chose to retreat far away back into their realms.

Mankind winning over them was thought to be impossible as the elves tamed chimeras to aid them in the Great War.

They had left the others of their kind who were in the dungeons and prisons of man. Watched eagerly by wardens without fail. The slightest of unnecessary movement or even idle banter inside these confining prison cells would end up in severe beating.

After a century of enslavement, time has gradually healed the wounds of wartime as newer generations were born and placed in higher positions.

But the stigma of being an elf in the Kingdom of Vanheim was not something one could easily shake off.

Grim Fenris knew all of these because his grandfather always told him stories about how life was back when elves were not seen as 'free' back in the day.

Not that they were fully free from the clutches of being humanity's enemies from a devastating war long ago.

Grim had also been laying in his bed the whole day.

He desperately tried to remember all the stories his grandfather told him before he passed away a week ago.

It was already past noon. The young elf jolted up from his bed, realizing he was late for work.

He heard a loud knock from his door.

"Oi! Open up, you pointy-eared freeloader!"

Grim rolled his eyes in annoyance.

He walked up to the door to open the door, the person outside of it still banging hard on it.

As his hands turned the knob around, the man knocking turned out to be Gustav. The head of the workers back at the mining camp.

He was a balding forty-year-old man. Significantly shorter than Grim. Gustav had to look up to meet Grim's eyeline.

"Do you really expect us to pay you without even going to work?"

"I'm sorry about that, Mr. Gustav. It won't happen again. I just overslept, that's all."

Grim replied.

The middle-aged man turned around and said something under his breath after clicking his tongue.

"Tch. It's a good thing your grandfather died. One less mouth to feed in this town."

His comments were heard by the thirteen-year-old Grim.

Gustav heard footsteps dashing towards him, just as he was about to turn around, Grim had smacked him right in the face.

Grim towered over the man as he fell down.

"Weren't you taught not to disrespect the dead?"

Gustav quickly attempted to get back up but stumbled on his feet.

"Y-You're in deep trouble! Damn pointy-eared devil broke my freaking nose!"

The man said as he ran back from where he came from while wiping the blood oozing out of his nose.

Grim looked at his swollen knuckles.

"Well, I guess that's it for me."

The young elf quickly went back inside his modest home and packed his belongings.

There was absolutely no way he was about to talk his way out of breaking a human's nose, specially someone with as much influence as Gustav.

Grim packed his bags with only the essentials, he could not afford the let the extra weight slow him down.

Just as he was about to walk through the font door outside, he noticed his grandfather's hand drawn portrait of himself.

A melancholic smile escaped his lips.

Grim took the frame and placed it neatly into his bag.

His cerulean eyes peered through the windows and he could see swarms of men marching towards him.

Grim knew that it was time to bail out of this place.

He and his late grandfather were living in a small mining town.

The rations given out by the government were cut in half as the other half was given to the elven population of each town, this had greatly sparked the hate that some people felt towards the elves.

Jobs were also harder to come by as the workplaces evenly employed the workforce. Dividing it between fifty percent to be humans and the other fifty to be of the elvish kin.

Grim Fenris looked around his surroundings and could only see one area where he could lose his pursuers, the forest.

A thick fog covered the forest, but this did not faze him.

He kept running towards it, embracing the fog and the lush, green trees standing tall over him.

The boy looked back as he saw silhouettes of people chasing him. Even people whom he thought did not harbor any anger towards the elves, he saw their faces.

Eyebrows curled and mouths opened whilst screaming for him.

They were out for his blood.

Realization and pondering came afterwards, Grim understood that some of them were only ever nice to him because it was mandated by the law to treat humans and elves with the same respect.

This town was the first place Grim ever knew.

After he was born, both of his parents left Grim in the care of his grandfather.

He was left by them without even knowing why.

Not that it made Grim hate them or anything, there was no loathing and resentment pestering inside Grim's heart for his parents.

He just wanted to know why. That was all.

As athletic as Grim was, even he felt out of breath after running for that long.

Sweat began to drip down from his temple down to the muddy ground below.

That was when the ultimate sign of misfortune hit him.

Grim looked up above and had only noticed it now.

It was starting to pour.

"Damn. I've got to find shelter fast."

He thought to himself.

Grim darted around the forest and saw a cave nearby.

Hastily, he ran towards it in an attempt to take shelter for the meantime.

Just until the rain passes by.

The young elf opened his bag and took out a box of matches.

He gathered whatever was in his bag and some wood from outside to make a bonfire.

From his peripheral vision, he saw glowing blue eyes in the dark.

"W-Who's there!?"

Grim picked up a stick from the bonfire, the tip still burning.

A loud roar shook the entire cave system up.

Grim was shaking on his feet.

"W-What the hell is that?!"

He asked.

Perhaps it was due to his instincts, maybe his luck that he was able to sense it.

Whatever the thing hiding in the dark corner of the cave was, he could sense it moving towards him. And it was massive.

Grim hugged the walls on the side of the cave, hoping to dodge whatever this creature was which was trying to target him.

It was only for a mere split second, but he could see its head first.

Its mouth was open, revealing hundreds of razor-sharp teeth, ready to gobble him up if he had stayed in the way.

Next thig he noticed was its body. This thing had scales.

Judging from the chimera's appearance and the stories that his grandfather used to tell him, there was no doubt about it, this was a dragon.

The black scales and dozens of horns on top of its head only affirmed his theory. A couple of small baby dragons also flew right behind it. There were not newly hatched ones, but they were young.

Grim could do nothing else but to stare in awe.

Whatever he saw that day in the cave was both terrifying and amazing, according to him.

Luckily, it had flown straight into the exit, only missing his body by a few inches.

"Good thing I haven't been eaten yet, right?"

He said to himself.

The dragon flew upwards into the pouring rain and roared once more.

Grim could swear that he heard the townspeople's shrieks and panic from outside the cave.

"I-Is that a dragon?!"

"W-Why is a creature like that this close to our town?!"

"W-What should we do, Gustav?"

"Forget about the boy! Inform the guards immediately that we have spotted a dragon in the vicinity. It seems the elves have come back for war once again!"

The crowd of people fell back just as quickly as they arrived.

A dragon being sighted was far more important to them than an elven boy going rogue after punching someone.

Grim panted.

He was doing his best to catch his own breath.

After all, he had almost died from that encounter.

"I-I can't believe it…"

Grim was still in shock.

He sat for a few minutes, processing just what happened.

"M-Mama?"

He heard a young child's voice call out for his mother in the dark corner of the cave, from where the dragon had come from.

"First, I get chased out of my house, next I almost get gobbled up by a dragon, what's next? A ghost?"

Grim sighed.

The cries kept getting louder and louder.

He realized that this was not just a trick played by his ears.

Grim kept walking towards the source of the voice.

He shone the light in front of it.

It was a baby dragon. It had looked exactly like the ones flying behind the huge one earlier.

"Why didn't you go with them?"

Grim asked the dragon. Carefully tiptoeing his steps around it.

"I-I got left…behind?"

A sad expression was etched on the youngling's face.

"It sure does seem that way."

"…"

"Wait, you can talk?!"

Grim exclaimed.