Welcome to Havenfield!

Welcome to Havenfield! A land with fields of sunflowers, stunning sunsets, beautiful shops, and a friendly community! Go try the sunflower hike. Or perhaps the bubblegum lavender flavor at Mrs. Tibbledee’s ice cream parlor. Maybe even take a nap in one of our famous forest mud baths!

But before you venture off into a land of endless fun, there is one tiny detail I should mention.

The dragon.

Yes, that’s still here.

Yes, it’s been ten years, and we still haven’t gotten rid of it.

And, yes, the dragon does occasionally eat people, but don’t worry, it hasn’t happened in a while. Well, a month anyway. Sam was the last, and he died very quickly, so no harm done. Speaking of Sam, the Museum of Havenfield has a memorial statue in front in honor of those who have passed–why don’t you check it out?

Oh, wait. The dragon burned that to the ground last year. Unfortunate.

But don’t get back in your car yet! There is still hope; it can be found in Jory Jenson. At the moment, he might not seem like much to brag about; not many people are impressed by short kids who don’t make it into dragon clubs. But just wait: Jory will turn out to be Havenfield's brightest hope.

Little Jory has wanted to be a member of the Dragon Extermination and Containment Order or the DECO since he was eight years old. The minute Jory turned eighteen, he begged his parents to let him leave the mud bath business, Mud Buds, they ran as a family early and then dashed to the town hall (which has lots of amazing history if you’d like to schedule a tour!) Jory wrote his name on the growing list of 18-year-olds-or-older trying out for Dragon Slaying.

A week later, all the hopefuls gathered at the DECO Base–a decrepit building in much need of repair. Since the DECO had yet to accomplish…well, anything, the government would not permit them any grants.

“Hey, Jellybean!” some kid fueled by dreams of dragon slaying and a 40 ounce of caffeine called to Jory as he made his way across the lobby. “The daycare’s down that way.”

Jory bristled and spun on his heel to face the heckler. Of course, it was Smith. Another eighteen-year-old tryout who had come up with lots of fun names for Jory over the years. Jitterbug Jory. Junk Jory. Jelly-leg Jory. While we don’t usually advertise our less flattering aspects (for example, the Dragon), Smith is quite the staple in town. Being 6’5” and just over 270 pounds, Smith has quite a reputation as a wrestler and a less-advertised reputation as a bully. And, though he’d never admit it, Smith was mostly just jealous of the large burn scar above Jory’s left eye. In Havenfield, burn scars are about the coolest thing. Ever. Period. Even if you did get it when you were eight, no one seems to completely remember how.

“Why?” Jory called back. “Want me to hold your hand and walk you over?”

Smith’s face went red. “What’d you say to me, tiny?”

“I prefer ‘fun-sized’.” Jory heard someone call his name, most likely a DECO member wanting to conduct his tryout, and so he turned back to Smith, giving him a dazzling smile. “Well, this has been fun, but I’ve got dragons to kill.”

The Jory of three weeks later, after many examinations and interviews, had considerably less bravado. It could have been the endless ridicule at the hands of Smith, who had seemed outraged that little Jory would dare to even try out. But, more likely, it was the rejection letter resting in his right hand. He was sitting in a sunflower field, licking one of Mrs. Tibbledee’s chocolate graham cracker ice cream cones (another must-try if you have time), and imagining that the dark, unnamable feeling in his gut was a tiny dragon that was trying to burn out his heart.

Jory felt–secretly, if Smith ever heard that he felt this way, he would pound him so far into the ground they wouldn’t even need to bury him–that he was the DECO’s best hope. It was no secret that the Dragon Slayers were not exactly heroic. When the Dragon did appear, they were usually too late to do anything but help firemen put out the fires and clean debris.

Jory traced the burn on his forehead (a nervous tic) as he walked down the path through the sunflower field, which, coincidentally, has a haunted attraction during October–if you’d be interested. Jory tried to distract himself and the angry dragon in his stomach by coming up with new names for himself.

Jorik? Joryiander. Sir Jorithith of Havenfield? None of those seemed quite right. And Jory supposed it didn’t really matter since he didn’t appear to be joining in on Dragon raids anytime soon.

Once Jory entered the busy downtown area, leaving the beautiful fields behind, he immediately noticed something was off. There was a strange mixture of fear and excitement in the air, and it didn’t take Jory long to find out why.

“...the Dragon…”

“...did you hear…”

“...its scales…”

“...all red…”

“...red scales…”

“...reproducing…”

Jory nearly choked on his ice cream, and he got that familiar burning feeling that he was never able to put a word to. The dragon inside him was squeezing his heart so hard that Jory thought he might pass out.

Listening some more, Jory learned that the Dragon had been spotted flying who-knows-where after doing who-knows-what, three hours earlier by a very startled group of Girl Scouts who had been selling cookies at the park.

As though Jory needed further clarification (which he did not, Jory knew more about dragons than most other eighteen-year-olds put together), Smith, who had the almost supernatural ability to locate Jory when he was feeling most vulnerable, sidled up to him and said: “Oi, Jory, hear that? The scary dragon’s scales have gone red.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

“The ole’ demon’s reproducing.”

“I appreciate your concern for the state of my hearing, but I’m far from deaf.”

Smith grinned and crossed his arms. Jory was annoyed to see that Smith had actually had his acceptance from the DECO tattooed onto his arm. “Means we finally know how old the thing is.”

A dragon could only start to make more of its demon-spawn once it reached adulthood, about ten years. Jory strained to match Smith’s smug grin. "So now, when you get burned to death, you’ll have the pleasure of knowing a ten-year-old did you in. Congrats.”

“Jealous?” Smith asked, a smirk on his face.

“Uh-huh. Thoughts of a fiery demise always bring me bouts of envy. Get lost, Smith.” For once, Smith listened, but only because he had found another DECO-reject to gloat over.

Jory half-watched him go as he mulled over the situation. Jory was slightly upset with himself for not seeing it earlier. The dragon hadn’t made any big appearances since Sam (you know, the guy we mentioned at the beginning who was unfortunately eaten), which had been over a month ago. It wasn’t like the Dragon to stay in the shadows like that, unless of course, it was reproducing. This new information could be seen as a good thing or a very, very, very bad thing. You see, dragons must hatch their eggs in mud, which creates a predictable way to find the dragon. On the downside, more dragons are never exactly a plus. And, for Jory, it could only be seen as a bad thing. Another evidence of his cowardice. But I’ll explain that later.

An egg took four weeks to hatch, so the DECO would have to get started quickly; they were already behind. Jory was sure the DECO was working on locating all the mud sites in Havenfield and then sending DECO members to guard them (at least he hoped they could scavenge up dragon slayers with enough competence to complete the tasks), but Jory had done that months ago. Years ago, really. And he didn’t need to guard all of them. He was fairly certain there was only one that needed to be guarded. But he was just tiny, jellybean, jitterbug, junk Jory, and no one would believe him even if he was only claiming that the sky was blue.

Jory arrived at the family business, Mud Buds, a mere fifteen minutes later (he might not be the best fighter in Havenfield, but he was fast), puffing for breath. There was a wooden cabin and a gated area behind it where all the mud baths were. Jory rushed over to the empty cabin and threw open the door; the little bell dinged.

He hurried behind the desk and into the office behind it before booting up their ancient computer. As it whirred and rumbled to life, Jory imagined the smug expressions he could use when he was the one to pinpoint the Dragon. He had a reliable hunch that the dragon would be planting its eggs right here, at Mud Buds.

He scrolled through the computer's database until he found the security camera footage. It was mind-numbingly boring to watch uninhabited mud baths (except for a few brave squirrels) bubble, but Jory pushed through. Nearly asleep, Jory spotted it. Two weeks earlier, on a warm Friday at 12:09 am, the motion sensor light turned on. Jory leaned in so that his nose was almost touching the screen. There was a sense of anticipation in the air so strong it almost resembled humidity. If the dragon appeared on the screen, he, Jitterbug, Jellybean, Jory Jenson, would be right, and the DECO would have to let him join, and he would be able to fight the dragon, and the little dragon inside him would finally loosen its vise-like grip on his heart.

A sudden blast of flame on the screen startled Jory so badly that he fell off the chair (a good reason not to watch videos with your face pressed up against the screen).

“Yes!” Jory yelped, his voice somewhat garbled due to the overwhelming wave of relief that was coursing through him. The dragon, which was very red indeed, had visited Mud Buds two weeks ago. Dragons tended to stake out certain muddy spots and use them, well, forever, so it was possible–no, probable- that the dragon would be back in another two weeks to lay another egg or perhaps check on the first one. Jory downloaded the surveillance video onto a flash drive and rushed out to tell the DECO of his discovery.

Jory was running out of the cabin when an unpleasant thought struck him. The DECO would have no choice but to believe him when they saw the video, but suppose they refused to watch the video. It wasn’t like he, Jory Jensen, 5’2” and a failed Dragon Slayer, was a very credible source, and with the likes of Smith walking around, rippling with muscles and exclaiming Jory’s idiocy, there was a very real chance this would be dismissed as a prank or perhaps some form of revenge plot.

Jory skidded to a halt and looked through the chain link fence to the mud baths beyond as an incredibly stupid idea came to him. Really, Jory should try his luck, but how much more convincing would it be if he had the dragon egg with him? Lots more, he thought. Quite a lot more.

Jory quickly grabbed a net before slowly sidling up to one of the five mud baths. All the mud baths, which are the size of the average hot tub, were bubbling cheerily–as if they didn’t contain the spawn of an evil creature that had eaten or injured close to fifty people in its ten years of life.

In the video, it looked like the Dragon had laid its egg in one of the pools on the far left, so Jory focused his efforts there. Jory quickly began pushing the net (which was usually used for fishing out dead animals or trash) into the depths of the bath and searching around. After he was sure no egg was in it, Jory moved to the other one; the dragon inside him was shrieking in excitement. He was going to find it, and he was going to show the DECO, and finally, this awful dragon inside, this guilt, would go away.

“Ah-HA!” Jory called as his net pulled up a large egg, twice the size of a basketball, and a trillion times as dangerous. He gingerly picked up the egg, which was smooth and dark gray in color with jagged red lines. It looked like the eggs Jory had researched online when they were midway through their incubation period, two weeks. Jory smiled contentedly. Sure, walking through town with a dragon egg would be rather hard to explain, but the plan was working. Get the egg, tell DECO, kill the Dragon, kill the Guilt.

Which…did not explain why the mud bath on the other side was bubbling furiously, as if it were somehow heating up. There were also the strange gray shards that had begun to float at the surface of the mud. And, hadn’t the last attack been a month ago? That would be four weeks.

Oh, dear, Jory thought, gently resting the egg in his arms on the ground at his feet before facing this new atrocity.

A monster, albeit a small one, burst from the surface of the mud, caked in muck but blasting the air with its somewhat pitiful jets of flame. Most people do not feel a sense of Deja vu in this kind of situation, but Jory did so strongly that it almost knocked him off his feet (although that could have something to do with the shock of confronting the aforementioned miniature devil).

Jory instinctively traced the burn scar on his face from ten years ago, when he had been standing right here on a night much like this, watching a different tiny dragon furiously bat its wings in order to stay above the surface. Jory thought about that night a lot, every time the dragon in his stomach started to act up, reminding him that he was just Jitterbug, Jellybean, Junk Jory.

Jory shook himself as the present-day and very real dragon finally spotted Jory and started to fly its way over. Slowly. The mud made it difficult.

Is this it, Jory thought dimly. Is this all it ever was? When he had been eight, it had seemed so much bigger. Scarier. That was the precise moment it let loose a jet of flame that nearly gave Jory another scar.

Jory grabbed the net he had been using to fish out the egg in both hands until his knuckles turned white and crept forward. The dragon rounded on him, all skinny gray limbs and red, beady eyes. It looked quite a bit like its mother. Jory remembered standing here ten years ago as the Dragon hatched from its shell and burned his forehead. He remembered running away and watching that little dragon fly away and he remembered telling his parents who laughed and didn’t believe him (he was just Jellybean Jory, what did he know?) and watching on the news as people disappeared week after week and he remembered the little dragon forming in his gut as he knew that this–all of this–was all his fault.

“HI-YAAA!” Jory yelled.

He slammed the net down on the little dragon and sent it skittering across the leaves. The dragon did not enjoy that. It let out a loud squawk. And, now not coated in mud due to its mild beating, flew much faster over to Jory. It let loose a short jet of flame that missed Jory by about six feet. Jory, trying to hide the quaking in his knees, raised the net once again and then stood there awkwardly as he waited for the dragon to make its way over. Once it was finally within reach, he slammed the net down again.

“SCREEEEEEEE!” The dragon howled, and yet another burst of flame escaped its jaw. The net caught on fire.

Jory brought the net up and down on the dragon again, and the dragon in his chest roared its approval.

The dragon soared up into the air (well, six feet into the air, anyway) and eyed Jory with a murderous glare. But Jory wasn’t scared. He had used up all his fear that day ten years ago when he ran away. He might not be able to undo the damage he had done, but he could try.

Jory swung the net like a baseball bat, and the dragon slammed into the side of the cabin. It shrieked the whole way and let out great, long bursts of flame. The cabin was starting to catch on fire, but Jory raced forward anyway.

He stood above the dragon and swung the net up and down and up and down until the net and the dragon were beyond repair.

“HOLY CRAP!” A voice gasped from beyond the fence. Jory tried to see who it was through the smoke, and he wasn’t all that surprised to see Smith. Really, Smith had a gift for finding him at the most unhelpful times. What Jory couldn’t know was that Smith had been standing there for a couple of minutes, frozen in fear (very much like eight-year-old Jory had), unable to do anything but stare.

And so, as if trying to redeem himself for his lapse in bravery (remind you of anyone?), Smith did something genuinely good. He called the DECO, who managed to put out the fire and contain the egg and dragon remains. Smith even told the residents of Havenfield an inspiring tale of a boy called Dragon Slayer Jory who had, surrounded by flames, killed a dragon and vowed to kill another.

So welcome, dear visitor, to Havenfield. Home to sunflower fields, mud baths, ice cream, one dragon slayer, and soon, no dragons.

The end.