How to Ride a Dragon in 8 Easy Steps
success guaranteed!
Step 1. With a harpoon and a jar of vinegar, on mule or on horseback, ride into the Great Divide. It takes an average of three days to spot your first rust deer, so bring plenty of food and a warm tent.
Once you have the rust deer in your sights, aim with your harpoon for the vitals. Only pull the trigger if you’re confident in the shot. It is crucial that you do not miss.
Field dress the rust deer. Under its lungs and on top of its heart will be the cœur d’or. Remove and place in the jar of vinegar. If the cœur was damaged by the harpoon, pickle all the chunks you can recover, even if they include other parts of the deer.
Step 2. Return to the Land of the Living. To the North, the best exit is Ebinlark, near the Thousand-Tear Meadow. In the Southern Divide, any of the Duke-maintained entrances are suitable.
Step 3. Find a Shrine to Hirktos. No reliable maps of their locations exist, due to the nature of the deity, but shrines can be reliably found in:
Birch groves
Mountain springs
Cave entrances
Place the jar on the shrine, and begin to pray. You should sing until your voice gives out three times, letting yourself recover between bouts. What you sing doesn’t matter. Success has been reported with showtunes, rap, and polka. The important variables in your choice are confidence and enthusiasm.
Step 4. After the third prayer, begin paying attention to the world around you. A dragon is hard to miss. Birds stop singing, as before a great rain, and the wind rises by 20 MPH or more, sometimes snapping trees. Though supple trees like birches usually withstand this trial, it’s best to leave the grove until the dragon lands.
As the dragon approaches, its wings will eclipse the sun, and the air will cool as the light falls. Your mount will be frightened, but don’t let it bolt. So long as it is with you, the dragon won’t eat it.
Step 5. When the dragon lands, walk with her to the Shrine to Hirktos, and pour the vinegar jar into the offering bowl. Try not to be afraid. You, who have killed the rust deer, have nothing to fear. After all, not even a dragon can overcome its fearsome tendrils, nor open a jar.
Once she has eaten the cœur (and, in all probability, drank the vinegar), she will lower her wings and allow you to mount. Tie up your old mount or let it free, according to your preference.
Step 6. You are a small thing on a dragon’s back. Though she’ll try not to drop you, there’s only so much she can do, and she might not notice if you fall. If you wish, you may wear a harness, affixed to a rope looped around the dragon’s neck, but, should you fall, you’re likely to die from the jolt at the end of your tether, or from the cold. Many riders forego this step, and live to tell the tale.
Harness or no, the best seat is the soft place between her shoulder blades and below the neck plate. You will know it by its warmth. Like many other dinosaurs, dragons are warm-blooded, though insulated admirably by the large scale plates covering most of their body. Your saddle is the only chink in that armor. Here, her skin is thin, venting body heat as necessary to maintain homeostasis.
She may be understandably emotional about you touching this place. To avoid upsetting her, move towards it slowly, speaking reassuringly all the while. Once settled, speak the Incantation of the Dragon, just as you learned it in school, while replacing “Jerusalem” for your preferred destination. Then her wings will begin to beat.
All the muscles will move under her skin like waves in a great sea, cradling you one moment and retreating the next. Sometimes, the retreat feels like falling. Don’t panic: the change comes purely from the effort of moving, and is not evidence that you’ve lost your balance. For the best stability, move with her, laying flat on your stomach when her muscles contract and sitting up when they expand.
Step 7. As the dragon gains altitude, a strange feeling will grow. Below you, rivers flow and blue whales leap: cities sleep, and they all dance away, away. Below you, the entire world turns, previously obscured by your own two feet. Now that you’re severed from the Earth, you can see how quickly it turns, how nothing in existence is ever still.
Once she reaches coasting altitude, she will rarely flap her wings. Caught by the Worldcurrent, she may remain aloft for many hours, the wind filling her wings like the ground catches your falling feet. The difference, of course, is that you can’t see the way the wind flows.
Rest assured – she can. The way she joyfully drinks the air, how she undulates back and forth to catch the strongest currents, and the redoubled beat of her heart when strong crosswinds hit will convince you of this. How delighted she must be, with the wind tickling her wings!
Not even the air around you is still. It ebbs like the world’s great oceans, flows like the mightiest rivers, and only the beast under you is solid. Despite the roaring wind around you, so long as your head is below hers, you’ll feel only the wind’s gentlest tickle. Her armored head cuts through the Worldcurrent like a mast, shielding you both.
By the time you can see the rim of the horizon – a purple-gold arc where the atmosphere bleeds into space – the effect of all this will leave you woozy. It doesn’t help that the oxygen is so thin here. It doesn’t help that flight has a special kind of motion sickness, the sort you have no idea you’re susceptible to until you’re vomiting.
The stars dangling in the sky spin. Even the moon seems to be rocketing away into outer space. Everything you see tries to escape so fast that only light can keep up with it. All except the dragon, her wings no longer flapping, steadfast in her quest. Her power comes from having her own fixed place in the sky, where she may always return. While the rest of the Universe moves around her, she alone is still.
This is the great speed you harnessed. This is how Hirktos answered your prayers, and what you needed from the rust deer, and why you left the Land of the Living. It’s the power sit at the center of a Universe that never rests, and be absolutely still.
Step 8: Hold on for dear life.
