Part 6 – The Colonel’s Quest: Taming Wild Dragons

During the new events, those in charge often look to hold on to what is familiar. This is shown when a small child is scared and hugs one of their parents. Never both mind. They have favourites. Deal with being second. Chances are you will be their first one day. If not, second place still gets a medal. Unless you play a game of ‘5 Towers’, then there is one winner and one loser. Or on those rare occasions no winner. But no one likes it when a player does that on purpose so doesn’t happen. Well, not that often.

But this also happens when anyone grows old. Dwarfs seek comfort with stone. Goblins seek comfort with playing tricks on friend. Elves, probably do something odd with flowers and family. But those who make decisions, they seek what they know. Those in command of lots, worry they will make a mistake, so, they stick to what they did last time.

This, is how 4 days after the Great Expedition returned from their mighty, technically second, arrival from the beyond.

For starters, the group of wild dragons had to be named. The final conclusion was a flock . There was a large debate about what to call a group of dragons. A murder seemed difficult to get past the locals, an army seemed to challenging to the status quo, a caravan gave the impression they would transport too much and although a cloud appeared to work for some, it felt too soft by the Colonel.

It was the lawn, of the very secluded, walled garden that the King liked to stroll around when he wanted some quiet time. But as the dragons could breathe fire, and might cause embarrassment for training if it went wrong. A walled space was thought  best, and this one didn’t have lots of soldiers and flammable material nearby apart from a few canes holding up a few rose beds and a small shed.

With the space found, training had to wait a little longer for some form of netting to be added on top. There was no attempt at making it fire proof, the Great Expedition broke the banks of many wilful donors. To ask again would cause economic trouble for some parts of the Kingdom. But an attempt to look to keeping them penned in had to be made and with the right training, anything would be possible.

The Colonel looked at the flock and despite all his ideas for what to do, and considering what Gerald had told him. Nothing seemed to work for the first few days, except feeding them. That definitely made them go quiet for a while. Also the midday sun seemed to keep be on their backs happily. Not that they were a rumbustious crowd of wild dragons. But the motivation to complete set training, target practice, along with other training exercises that had been set up for them up to speed. All attempts failed. Consistently failed. But failed.

So considering the options, he knew of on team in the army who knew how to training a unruly group of misfits. Then once they failed to make an impact, with more than one of the soldiers crying after 3 days of not only being ignored but having his uniform singed after attempting to pick up and throw one of the wild dragons. The Colonel could only think of one person to start with.

Gerald.

Not just Gerald. He also brought along the animal trainers for the kingdom. They spent their time training animals, some seemed to do anything if you had food. Completely forget what they have been taught if food was not visible, or at the very minimum hinted at. But they knew what they had to do to get the food morsels.

Following a successful start, in that no one got hurt, a plan was formed and a dragon moved in a somewhat positive physical direction. Rolling over was declared not to have counted very early on. With enough options one would generally do it in the way it was commanded to at some point. The Colonel left a bewildered and confused Gerald with the animal training team setting up ramps and things to jump over. This was not the same set up as he had at home and he missed his pet and family with each new box being unopened.

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Following positive reports coming across his desk each day for an entire moon cycle, the Colonel returned to see what had become of his flock of wild dragons. As he walked down The Princes’ way, crossed through Heroes Arch and finally wandered down the roads of the morning market by the palace. He entered the Walled Garden. In time, what he saw will be described as a flock of dragons flying from post to post, tracking targets running across the ground and with a bolt of fire, hitting a moving target before landing calmly on its mark. How the trainers moved among the dragons, giving orders with no fear of being burned alive.

The reports had indeed been positive. They did, with much surprise, move in formation. It was true that they could set fire to things on command and then eat their prey. Moving targets were tracked and eaten in a display that would make a small child hold on to their favourite parent in fear that that fire would come in their direction and the protective powers of their favourite would keep them safe.

Unlike the imagination of a child, the Colonel saw something else.

The dragons moved in formation behind a leader when that leader held food in their hands and gave a command word. When there was no food, bellies saw sun.

When a rat ran through the garden, the dragons could track, fly even, and hit the living thing with fire. Then sit, eat, and be calmly lying about.

The trainers did move around with a no fear attitude of being burnt. But this was only when they were on the other wide of the low wall, far away from the dragons.

Still, having dragons waddle over to a trainer on command. Sit in front of them and look at the food. Then eat the snack. Was better than just attacking the training team and moving on to roam the city in a mass of fire chaos eating all that they find.

Not quite the new weapon, but as the Colonel felt a familiarity to what he was seeing, and the animal sat by his foot that had dutifully followed him from his own office.