Chapter Text
Jimin’s boots creak as he shifts his weight on the tree branch, leaves rustling. He’s nestled in the last tree before a sheer cliff face rises out of the forest, too steep to climb. Water trickles somewhere below him, disappearing in the rocks. And he waits.
A whistle splits through the birdcall, high and pure before it begins to trill unevenly. The signal from the other party herding their target towards him: arriving. From the West.
He hears it breaking through the underbrush before he can see any movement, then the ferns below him sway as if in a breeze, twigs and leaves cracking as his target runs into the clearing. It’s panting, blood and dirt smeared over its exposed arms, clothing torn at the hems and sullied with blood and dirt. It comes to a screeching halt when it sees the rocks before it, panting hard. Jimin knows he shouldn’t hesitate, that his luck in hunting diminishes with every breath he allows himself before he strikes, but more and more lately he’s had to stop and look at them. The dragons he hunts.
This dragon is in its human form, and it’s a child. Jimin’s gloves creak like his boots as he grips the handle of his dagger, feeling leaden and frozen. He has done this a thousand times before; the moment the dragon realises it’s trapped, he leaps down and strikes them dead. One swing across the neck and one short drop. He’s repeated the movements over and over. He is more than competent at it, but this time he can’t make himself move.
The dragon is nothing more than a ratty-haired child, yet they received word that it was terrorising the local village, stealing animals and razing crops and plaguing them all with a terrible illness, stealing all of their health. That's what dragons do. They move in and absorb all the health and vitality of a region, like locusts but unseen, camouflaged perfectly to look like humans except for their eyes. A different type of demon.
This isn’t the first time Jimin has had to hunt a child dragon, but today he exhales shakily where he’s curled up on a branch and still doesn’t move. The child’s eyes scan the rock face desperately, hands shifting and twitching as if it’s imagining climbing it, but after a second it stops as the hopelessness sets in. It always does. All creatures know when they’re cornered.
But then something else happens. The dragon’s eyes continue to flit around, and Jimin has given it far too much time to try and escape, he should be done by now, and those vibrant green, inhuman eyes finally land on him up in the tree. The dragon sees him and immediately releases a broken wail. A dragon distress call. Help me, the dragon is begging, tears cutting tracks through his muddy and bloodied cheeks. Jimin’s skin prickles, hairs standing on end as his hand grasping the knife begins to shake, unable to move. The dragon makes the noise again and again, staring at him desperately, help me help me help me help me—
You’re a dragon too why aren’t you helping me—
Jimin’s father whistles a signal to him again, buried somewhere in the forest further away. Where are you?
The tension holding Jimin back snaps, and he throws himself down from his perch, hurtling towards the dragon. Those green eyes are still looking at him, and he thinks the child may be smiling with relief. Jimin delivers the fatal cut before it even notices he’s holding a blade.
Usually the adrenaline keeps Jimin from seeing the aftermath, and lately he’s tried not to look, but when he hears the sickening sound of the small body crumpling, he thinks he’s going to throw up. The sound of trickling water is louder down here and all Jimin can think of is that it’s the blood dripping out of the dragon. He stabs his knife into the dirt, down to the hilt, to clean it of the smell of blood and then rips it back out, whistling to his father and brother that the job is done. The dragon is dead. The child is dead.
“Took you long enough,” his father says to him as he emerges from the brush. “Why?”
Jimin is not allowed to lie to his father, nor make excuses. “I’m sorry,” he says instead. He’s not allowed to call him ‘father’, either. Park Jungwoo tsks but steps past him to put the body in a sac so that they can transport it back to the man who ordered the hunt and demand payment. Jimin always carries the kills.
When Jihyun hands him the bag, Jimin keeps seeing the outline of a child in it and he can’t make himself look. He wishes it had been a man the size of a house, then he probably wouldn’t be so affected. He slings the sack over his shoulder and struggles not to stagger at how light it is. With every step it knocks against his back, slowly becoming wet and warm with blood, and the sound of it rings in Jimin’s ears with the echo of the distress call.
He shouldn’t feel guilty. He doesn’t feel guilty. Dragons are another creature of this land that plague humans, and it is an honourable and proud job to hunt them in the name of preserving and protecting humanity. His family has been doing it for a thousand years. When dragons are not leeching the vitality out of the land they are beasts that hunt and devour humans. This one was a child that would grow up to become a monster one day. He and his family nipped it in the bud.
Killing dragons keeps people safe.
The walk out of the forest is long, and at the edge there are two horses waiting for them. Jimin continues to walk behind as his father and brother mount theirs—it’s his job to watch for danger on the ground and to carry the dragon. The horses would spook at the feeling and smell of blood. They must travel through two villages on their journey home, and Jimin covers his head with a bamboo hat. Jihyun always points to the sac Jimin carries and makes the people cheer, and Jimin would rather they see him as a servant rather than inspect him too closely.
This village is no different. There’s a great clamour and celebration as the two horses pass through. The people press gifts of food and fruit into the other men’s hands, and pat the sac on Jimin’s back, shouting things like good riddance and even worse things that make Jimin feel ill, but like always they eventually pass through and keep going.
It’s not until after nightfall that they return to the Dragon-Park estate, so named after the King two-hundred years ago bestowed the title upon his great-great-great-whatever-grandfather, as the strongest dragon hunter in the kingdom and country. The title hasn’t been dropped since, and his father signs every contract with the stamp that says Dragon-Park, carved from a dragon’s tooth the very day their ancestors were given the title. Neither the name nor stamp have degraded, and Dragon-Park Jungwoo, his father, ferociously upholds the legacy.
It's a shame his eldest son, the true heir, is a disgrace to everything they stand for.
Jimin tries not to think too much about it, but the older he gets the harder it is to ignore.
The guards take the body and take it to where another servant will clean it and present it to the man who called the hunt. Like most of them, the body is sold to physicians and scientists studying the dragon body, to be dissected and prodded at, stripped of expensive parts. Dragon teeth and bones go for a high price, the blades never break and last an exceptionally long time, and teeth can be carved into things like stamps or jewellery that are almost indestructible. Dragon skin is exceedingly tough, so much that Jimin has to use a lot of force to break it with a steel knife, which is why he generally uses a dragon-bone blade. Dragon flight bladders can be huge and store huge amounts of airs for sea divers to use as they collect shellfish, or can even keep someone from drowning from how buoyant they are, if need be. Dragon organs can be crushed into powder and used in medicine, the skin is resistant to fire, the eyes can be made into jelly that can restore a blind man’s vision. And so on.
Hunts always follow the same formula—provided it is a private hunt, the man who pays them is allowed to stay in one of the houses on his father’s land while Jimin, his brother and his father go out and complete the deed. Then he pays them for their service and the ‘carcass’ itself. His father will host a banquet for them, seating Jihyun beside him and Jimin at the opposite end of the room, so they can talk.
Jimin is escorted by two guards to his own house on his father’s property, not far from the Eastern wall. He knows he is lucky and that his father is exceptionally wealthy; one time they hunted a dragon that had killed a family that lived in a house barely as big as the entryway to his house. Since birth it has belonged to him, and Jimin has lived in it since he was very young. He has no servants, unlike his father and brother, but when he enters, a maid has filled the bath with warm water for him while he was absent.
Compared to the dragons he hunts, Jimin lives like a king. He knows that.
Jimin eases himself into the warm water and stares up at the ceiling above him. He knows the water will become rosy with the dragon’s blood that seeped through his clothes onto his back so he tries not to look. He only has a few minutes before the smell becomes nauseating.
This will be his life forever. Jimin lightly ripples the water with his hands and to his ears it sounds just like that trickle of water back where he killed the child dragon.
He will live like this forever.
The smell of blood becomes sickly soon after and he hauls himself out of the water, furiously wiping himself down to try and shift the smell before it sticks to him, even though he already knows he will smell the blood on him for days, just from carrying the body home. His father is particular about which scents and oils his family uses so Jimin tries his best to slather it over his back as best he can. The floral and jasmine notes are strong, probably unpleasant even for the other two members of his family, but Jimin doesn’t care. Anything to cover the smell of blood and death on him.
He dresses in his formal main house clothes and is escorted to the main house (where his father resides) to sit through the banquet. Jimin’s table has already been set with food which he imagines may look insulting to their guest, but everyone else knows it’s so that no servant has to approach him while he is present. This time there are three guests; the magistrate of the region they hunted the dragon in, and two local officials. They sit tall and are dressed neatly, the vibrant purple of the magistrate’s robes feeling out of place in the dark room.
Dragon-Park Jungwoo wears black and bronze clothes, the colour of his family. Jihyun wears a little less bronze than black and Jimin has no bronze fabric at all.
Jimin is used to sitting through these banquets, he has done it since he was a boy and Jihyun was too young and childish to attend. He has always sat in this seat, with his food cold and waiting for him. He does not speak and does not make eye contact, only listens. The guests only ever address his father, the host of the meal, and whoever he deems fit to include in the conversation, whether that be Jihyun or someone else. They talk about the state, politics, farming, whether their subjects can meet the increased taxes—all things that sound so nonchalant when they say it, like they are not talking of lives. Then again, perhaps these men have never taken anything’s life, not even slaughtered a pig to eat it for dinner. As Jihyun gets older, a young man at this point, he sometimes steps in alongside their father, but never Jimin. On the off chance Jimin has been addressed out of curiosity, it has never gone well.
“And this is your eldest son, is it not?” the magistrate asks tonight, studying Jimin. He can feel his eyes on him, scrutinising him, but Jimin keeps his gaze fixed to the table, blankly raising some braised meat to his mouth. “You keep your successor closely guarded, eh, Dragon-Park Jungwoo?”
Jimin swallows the piece of meat whole, too shocked to even chew. It sits heavy and choking in his throat but he won’t submit himself to the shame of having to clear it with a cough. An icy silence settles over the room, even the guards stationed just behind Jimin at the door shuffle uneasily.
“Oh, come now, the boy can speak. He’s old enough to be married by now.”
Jimin swallows hard but the lump in his throat doesn’t budge. Most guests would take the hint, shy away from the frigid atmosphere, but this man is bold.
“What is your name, boy?” the man asks, and Jimin can sense that he’s turned fully towards him, all of his attention focused solely on Jimin. His hand shakes where it holds the chopsticks, too hesitant to put them down on the table, while his other hand is white-knuckled in a fist to try and quell the trembling. The air is so tense he’s scared to breathe. The food in this throat won’t let him speak anyway, he’s making a fool of himself. Sweat beads on the back of his neck as he slowly raises his eyes, sees the official’s knees beneath the table, and then further up, where the beads of his hat dangle just above the wood, his hand holding a serving of alcohol—
Jimin’s father slams his hand down on the table, startling Jimin into staring back down at his food. “That is not my son,” he says venomously, and Jimin can feel his voice coming towards him. “Do not speak to it.”
It, Jimin thinks, losing his appetite. This, also, is something that has been said to him before, but never in front of an outsider. Somehow it stings much more.
Jimin glances up from where he keeps his head bowed and sees the official visibly shaken by his father’s outburst, but trying to play it off. All political types are the same. He recovers quickly and turns to Jihyun, who he has now no doubt correctly identified as the true successor and ‘eldest’ son of Dragon-Park Jungwoo, and starts conversation.
The rest of the meal is torture as Jimin has no desire to eat. Finally the guests are drunk enough that his father suggests they move on to a different room where they can drink more freely, and Jimin is dismissed. He can hear the guards muttering between themselves as they follow him back to his house, ensuring he steps through the door and that he closes it after himself, trapped inside. Everything is adding up at once and JiImin feels like he might be drowning. The bath has been emptied while he was away but he swears he can still hear the gentle shifting of water, trickling of a stream or blood as he hears that distress call and all he can smell is the blood cloying his nose. He rips off his clothes and furiously slathers more scented oil over every part of his skin but the smell doesn’t leave, doesn’t even get masked, and the vial is empty even as he tries to rub it on the skin beneath his nose so at least he can’t smell anything but jasmine.
It doesn’t work. The smell of blood sticks to him like a curse. When his bare feet squeak against the wooden floor he hears that piercing distress call again and he covers his ears to try and listen to the rushing of his own blood but it’s still there, it’s always still fucking there—
It. His father called him an it.
He can’t breathe too loudly in case the guards hear and suspect him of something so he climbs into bed and buries himself beneath the blanket as if that will stifle the noise as he struggles to breathe. This is going to be his life forever. He will be an it in his father’s eyes, an embarrassment in his brother’s, killing dragons and stinking of blood.
It wasn’t easier when his mother was alive, but he remembers moments where she would comfort him, stroke his hair and call him her darling son, until she looked at him too closely and got choked up and had to look away. Not a thing. My boy, my boy. That’s what she used to tell him. After Jihyun was born perfect and human Jimin barely ever saw her again. And then she was gone.
“Not a thing,” Jimin tells himself, as if it makes any difference. He holds his head in his hands and breathes wetly against the sheets. Cold fabric. No one has lit the hearth and he can’t bear to get up and do it either. This house is so cold all the time. “Not a thing.”
He rubs his eyes roughly and the burning afterimages form the shape of a dragon’s face, twisted and marked with fear. A dragon. An it.
Just like Jimin.
His breath shudders out of him and it sounds too much like crying, which frightens him. He can’t cry. He doesn’t even know what his father will do if he finds out Jimin cries. He tugs at his hair until his scalp burns and then lets go, breathing in. He’s not a thing, he’s not an it—he’s not like them, not like those dragons. Jimin uses his strength for good. Holds up his family’s legacy. He uses his strength to fight back at all the violence those dragons bring.
“Not a thing,” he whispers, but it feels pathetic, like a whimper. Like if he says it soft enough the ghost of someone else will agree with him, but no one will.
When Jimin was born, his father almost killed him. He came out of the womb looking exactly like a human son except when he opened his eyes they looked like a dragon’s. Fate can be beyond cruel. His mother came from another family of dragon hunters and was almost put to death for Jimin being born until the monk present at the birth to assign Jimin’s name reminded his parents of the legend. The legend that says any human who saves a dragon’s life is reborn as a dragon in the next, even to human parents. That no, his mother did not ‘mate’ a dragon to sully her husband’s legacy, to take down the Dragon-Parks in an act of war. That it was Fate.
The legend that absolved his mother of guilt and his father of responsibility. Jimin was trained from birth to be the Dragon-Parks greatest weapon, his only use as a dragon being to kill other dragons. That perhaps, in time, he could earn the right to be alive.
This is going to be his life forever, Jimin thinks to himself. Deep down he knows that if his father purges the country of dragons, he will set his son before the King and execute him himself, just to be known as the man who cleansed the land of beasts. That even his own son was not exempt.
“Not a thing,” Jimin tells himself again, but he just says it. There’s no real point in believing it.
When Jimin was born, his mother told him he had amber eyes. That all it took was one look to identify that he was wrong, that human babies don’t look like him. As he grew up and his eyes naturally darkened like any growing baby, they became a dark hazel. Still significantly lighter in colour than the rest of his family, but not obviously dragon. Not like most of the other dragons he’s hunted that have intense, non-human eyes, with obvious slitted pupils and sometimes, sharp teeth.
There was a phase when Jimin was young that he was able to stick his hand into the hearth by replacing the skin with scales that did not burn, and one day he showed his brother, thinking it was an amazing trick, but Jihyun told their father and Jimin understood very clearly that he was never to do anything like that again. During adolescence he would wake up with patches of black scales instead of rashes and acne like his brother, all of which he desperately hid but was not always able to.
When he was younger he often had dreams of flying, parting icy clouds beneath him and staring down at the world below, only to jerk awake in a panic in case he had somehow shifted in his sleep. For months as a child he could barely sleep because he was scared he would wake up as a full dragon instead, and his father would kill him. The rule is very clear: Jimin must never, ever shift.
The day after the awful banquet, Jimin must return to training. Dragon hunters must train every day and never forget to hone their skills, or one day they will dodge too slowly and end up dead. Every day at dawn Jimin puts himself on the training field with his father, his brother, his uncles and two cousins, the two sons of his Aunt and the one child son of his third uncle, now dead. Jimin has never seen them outside of training. Before they were born Jimin sparred with his father’s youngest brother, Dragon-Park Jungshik, before he went off on a hunting trip and died. Now Jimin spars with Junghoon, the second-eldest Dragon-Park with two sons.
He is never permitted to spar with Jihyun or his father, so he fights the spare. And even then, he is forbidden from winning.
Junghoon fights with a true longsword and Jimin fights with a wooden sword. Not that the huge blade is something Junghoon uses against dragons, far too bulky for hunting and metal is untrustworthy, but he is passionate about the art of swordplay and trains with Jimin for it. Jimin is not technically allowed to win any match, but the gap in expertise between them is so large that sometimes Jimin can’t help it.
Junghoon is a good fighter. Occasionally he will participate in tournaments and win, as he has the same familiar Dragon-Park ferocity as his brother, but Jimin has the most experience hunting dragons out of all of them. It’s him that’s sent to the front, poised to deal the killing blow. Jimin knows how quick he has to be to escape harm—he was not always this fast, and if he weren’t a dragon himself he would be dead by now. Junghoon is no match for him, but the shame of defeating his brother or father would be too much, so Jimin must settle.
Truly, training is the only part of the day he doesn’t detest. There is a relaxing element to the movement, of focusing entirely on the sparring, the back and forth. Finer thoughts don’t exist, and as his heart rate climbs and his breathing fastens and the fight draws on, Junghoon sometimes trying a new interesting move, he feels engaged. He enjoys it.
But then Junghoon gets tired and Jimin doesn’t. His moves become desperate and sloppy, and after ten openings Jimin parries too strongly and the sword flies out of his uncle’s sweaty grip, and all the elation of fighting drains out of Jimin with dread.
“I’m sorry—” Jimin starts, but it’s no use.
He lost himself, for a second there. He got too caught up and forgot his place. Guards grab him by the arms and he drops the wooden stick they call a sword, biting his tongue.
“What happened, brother?” his father asks, and Jimin inhales roughly. It’s not usually his father who steps up to punish him, usually Junghoon just does it on the spot. But today his father is livid, and Junghoon massages his empty palm.
“He disarmed me,” Junghoon says, and Jimin hates how all his cousins stop to watch. It hasn’t happened for a while now, Jimin winning. He’s not usually so desperate to lose himself, to try and find joy in something. Jungwoo pinches the bridge of his nose as he sighs angrily, and then barely turns back to Jimin before backhanding him across the cheek.
“You live here because of the good graces, the mercy, of this family,” his father seethes, and Jimin stares at the ground, cheek throbbing. He doesn’t dare raise his head, nor would his father want him to. They hate to see his eyes, he knows they all do. Even his mother hated having to look at them. “And yet you dare show such disrespect against one of your hosts.”
In some ways, Junghoon is worse than his brother. Dragon-Park Jungwoo is intense and violent, trained from birth to slaughter beasts, the only things helping him survive being rage and fear. Junghoon is sharp and quick-tongued, more suited to the political aspects of dragon hunter families.
“This dragon has been trained well,” he starts, and Jimin squeezes his eyes shut. He hates that Junghoon calls him this dragon instead of this person, even if they all refuse to use his name. Junghoon never lets him forget the divide between them. “And has an innate cleverness in battle. He could be capable of a lot more.”
It could be a compliment, if Jimin was anyone else. If Jihyun were told these things, it would no doubt be with a pat on the back or the top of the head, but Junghoon knows it makes him seem like more of a threat, and his brother does not tolerate threats, especially in his own house.
His father favours his backhand so he strikes Jimin on the same cheek, so strongly all of Jimin’s weight is thrown into one of the guards, who staggers where he holds him.
“Do you remember your place?” his father yells, and it’s only because he’s so loud that Jimin can hear him above the throbbing in his face. Stars still linger in the vision of one eye, blurring his vision. “Or must I remind you?”
“I remember,” Jimin whispers, squeezing his eyes shut. “I’m sorry.”
“Do you?” Jungwoo growls, roughly grabbing Jimin’s face. His thumb digs into the struck cheek, tender and already swelling, and Jimin hisses with pain, his eyes squinting. He knows he must never look at his father in the eye, but his instincts fight him to open his eyes, see what he’s doing, as he feels the coarse breath on his face and he hears him shuffling. “Do you remember your place?”
A knife bites into the delicate skin just under his chin, and Jimin swallows hard. “Yes, my lord. I remember. I misstepped before. I’m sorry.”
Jimin hasn’t called Jungwoo ‘father’ since he was a child, and he learned the lesson well enough then. Dragon-Park Jungwoo cannot and will not tolerate being called father by a dragon, no matter how respectfully.
“If you forget again,” his father threatens, jutting the knife a little rougher into his chin, “it will be the last thing you do. You’re only alive because I think you’re useful to the cause. Your death still benefits me."
Jimin breathes roughly through his nose. “Of course, my lord.”
“Take it away,” Jungwoo says to the guards, shoving Jimin back. Finally he dares open his eyes, staring at the ground. One eye is already squinting from how quickly his cheek becomes inflamed. He can see his uncle’s and father’s feet facing each other, but barely hears what they’re saying as his breath echoes in his own ears, guards all but carrying him away.
This will be his life forever.
Every day of his life, when he is outside of his quarters, he is accompanied by two guards. They change regularly, so Jimin never has any concept of who they are and even if he did, they are instructed never to look him in the eye. Twice a week Jimin would be expected to work on his archery. Every morning was drilling with Junghoon or another cousin, if they were being punished. Except for the post-hunt banquet, Jimin ate alone. In the evenings Jimin was permitted to train alone, provided the guard supervised him. This gave the household servants enough time to deliver his evening meal and prepare a bath, if they were brave enough. Tiring himself out before bed is the only way to get himself to sleep these days, swinging his sword until it turns dark, and he has to blindly trust his body not to misstep and fall on his own blade. He’s done it before, back when he was a teenager, and he still feels humiliated when he remembers it.
Jimin’s sole purpose is to be skilled enough to kill dragons. The air is biting and cold now that he’s no longer moving, sweaty and breathless, and he feels frozen solid. If he doesn’t kill dragons, if he doesn’tand do it well, why is he alive? Why does his father let him live?
There is no bath drawn up and waiting for him, and Jimin doesn’t feel like eating when he returns, dragging a blanket over his head and listenings to the wordless murmur of the guards outside his door.
This is his life.
Until he dies.
Word comes into the Dragon-Park household of one of the emperor’s sons seeking a dragon that stole from him. Dragons hoard items, usually gold or precious gems, and it seems this one snuck into the eight prince’s palace and stole something from him. The guards managed to wound it and the messenger presents the bloodied cloth to Jimin’s father in a ceremonious wooden box.
Jungwoo raises the cloth and examines the patch of blood clinging to the hem, before tossing it aside to where Jimin stands.
“He will get the scent,” his father says, and Jimin feels a ridiculous relief at not being called an it to an outsider this time.
Jimin has tracked dragons before, his nose far keener than a hunting dog’s, when it comes to dragons, but this time when he gathers the fine fabric in his hands his gut rolls and all he can smell is that bloody scent that never leaves his own skin, much less the dragon’s scent on the rag.
“Hurry up,” his father snaps, the messenger waiting eagerly beside him, and a guard shoves Jimin’s shoulder. His stomach rolls again and he thinks he might throw up, but under the prickling glare of his father Jimin raises the cloth to his nose. The smell is intensely metallic, even just a stain carries the scent of distress, beneath that the notes of the individual dragon. An intense smell of greenery and bitingly fresh air.
He discards the fabric back on the table and nods.
“We leave immediately,” Dragon-Park Jungwoo says to the messenger, who bows and then hurries back out the door, running home to his master. At least he has the dignity of getting to say his name, Jimin remarks to himself.
He isn’t often permitted to ride a horse but on a hunt like this where time is of the essence, Jimin is allowed to have a mount. They start from the Imperial palace, and he gallops it down the path, catching the scent where it has landed on leaves, blown there by the wind. The breeze is mild and hasn’t scattered it, but it still takes a day of riding just for the smell to become intense, for Jimin to feel close.
He isn’t trusted to ride ahead in the dark so they make camp for the night, Jungwoo and Jihyun talking lowly, Jimin’s weapons sitting at their feet. Jihyun catches the rabbit and Jimin bleeds and skins it, the messy job always being his, and after Jihyun finishes cooking it Jimin is permitted a leg and some of the supplies they brought from home.
The hunt resumes before dawn, and the dragon has moved away but they slow down in the cold nights, cold-blooded like a lizard. They have to ditch the horses at the edge of a forest and Jimin leads them further in. Here there is still blood on the ground, pungent and cloying, that same smell of distress in the air. Brush and leaves the dragon has touched carry its more unique scent that Jimin can correctly identify it as the same dragon.
His father and brother step back as they get closer, going to block off the dragon from two other directions so all it can do is continue the uphill climb that has it struggling so much. Jimin knows it must be seeking higher ground so it can take to the air and fly home, but the state of its wounds make it seem like that might be too difficult for it.
He almost doesn’t see it as he approaches, its green scales the exact same colour as the foliage around them, but when it shifts and the skin writhes between the leaves, Jimin pauses.
This might be the largest dragon he’s ever seen. Twice the size of a horse, serpentine and long, its stomach round and bulging with its flight bladder inflated to keep it light enough to move. One of its legs has been almost severed through and hangs limply, bleeding heavily. It hasn’t noticed Jimin yet, and he knows he has to use that to his advantage, strike it unawares, because a dragon in its true form is a formidable opponent and if Jimin is injured, he won’t be treated by anyone but himself unless he is prepared to suffer the humiliation of being held down by guards so a physician can tend to him.
He already knows he isn’t prepared to deal with that. He draws his sword quietly and sinks under the nearest fern, clutching the hilt. His hands are sweaty, the dragon’s distress rubbing off on him and making him tense and anxious, but he shouldn’t be. This is what he does. He draws his sword and he makes one cut beneath the chin, bleeds the dragon like a pig. Then they will drag this beast back before the eighth prince and he will pay his father handsomely, and Jimin will go back to his house and sit in the water and try not to scrub his skin off to remove the smell of death.
His hand is unsteady today, of all days, approaching the most imposing dragon he’s faced thus far. He knows he can win against it, but his sword feels so heavy today, and as he catches the dragon’s face where it looks over its shoulder, he can’t breathe. Those intensely green eyes scan the area, no doubt picking up on Jimin’s scent or perhaps that of his family, and Jimin sees the fear in those eyes so plainly. Fear of death.
Fear of what Jimin brings.
There’s a smattering of bird calls and his father whistles out, blending in with them. Are you done?
He can’t afford to hesitate. His arm shakes but he grasps the sword more strongly approaching closer. He’s at the dragon’s tail tip—he knows if he was too afraid, there’s a vital vein in the tail he could cut through and let the dragon bleed out in a couple of hours. But that’s a messy kill, and messy kills are not worth as much money. His father’s reputation does not allow for messy kills, especially before a prince.
Jimin hears Jihyun step on a twig, no matter how far away he must be, so loud and clear the dragon tenses, throwing its head up and furiously scenting the air. It’s too late now.
Jimin rises to his feet and the dragon spins around to look at him, one leg raised and limp, and for a second Jimin smells the change in its scent, distress wavering, spiking with what Jimin might call hope. This is the cruellest part of it all, he thinks to himself, sword heavy and arm numb. That dragons think he’s there to save them.
It only takes a few seconds for the dragon to notice the sword in his hand and the crest on his headband before it growls ferociously, so strong Jimin feels it hitting him in the chest, foliage flattening around them as if pushed by a gust of wind. Out of instinct he raises his sword before him, and that only enrages it further. Dragons have up to sixty teeth in their mouth, and this one exposes all of them to him as a warning. It’s weakened, Jimin and it both know it has no real chance of fighting back, backing up and curling protectively around its injured leg. He doesn’t know when it last ate, but it’s been bleeding out for a day. Maybe if it were in perfect form, Jimin would struggle to kill it. But this is no fight. This is Jimin slaughtering a beast.
The sword is so heavy in his hands, and he can barely breathe through the heavy distress and fear in the air.
He doesn’t want to do this.
The dragon looks rabid with fear, snapping and growling, inching away from Jimin as best it can. His father, on his more merciful days, would say to put it out of its misery. Yet all he wants to do is run away, leave the dragon and his responsibilities as part of the Dragon-Park family, if he can even call himself that, and never turn back. He’s never even let the thought linger in his mind, but staring at this dragon, there’s nothing he wants to do more than lower the blade.
Another whistle: what are you doing?
But he can’t. His body is better trained than his mind and won’t let him point the blade away from the danger in front of him, won’t let him forget what he’s meant to do. What he has to do. What he will do. His father is waiting and this dragon has to die.
Jimin hates saying sorry, but he hopes he can project his apology to this dragon as best he can. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—
Someone bursts through the underbrush, and Jimin tenses, initially expecting it to be Jihyun but instead it’s a young man with black hair and frightening blue eyes, so intense and blue Jimin feels like he’s looking through ice. His pupils are slitted. Another dragon.
He stands before the green dragon and spreads his arms as if to protect it, and Jimin is frozen. He watches as the new dragon heaves with breath, the surprise on his face fading to rage as he takes in Jimin’s presence. He snarls, canines sharp like a dog’s, eyes flicking between the crest and Jimin’s face.
“How can you do this?” he screams, and Jimin has never heard a dragon’s voice before, so shocked he’s frozen solid. A vein bulges on the new dragon’s neck with anger, and he takes a few steps closer to Jimin, arms down and instead gesturing to Jimin furiously. “How can you do this to us? How can you do this to our kin—to your kin?”
Jimin’s father whistles again, he can hear it, but he can’t make sense of what the message is as the dragon stalks even closer towards him, fear replaced by anger, and Jimin lowers his sword on instinct as he comes closer, as to not cut him. His heart pounds in his ears as the dragon is close enough to touch, eyes violently blue, face twisted with rage. Underneath it all, he’s young. Probably the same age as Jihyun, dirt smeared on one cheek and a mole beneath his lower lip.
He reaches out as if to grab Jimin, to throttle him, and Jimin barely registers his hand dropping the sword before people erupt from the bushes behind him, and the dragon startles and looks beyond them. To where Jihyun and Dragon-Park Jungwoo are no doubt behind him.
The dragon glances between the three of them, putting the pieces together and realising he stands no chance alone against the three of them, so he snarls viciously, close enough for his spittle to hit Jimin in the face, and then steps back.
He’s glaring at Jimin as he transforms into the biggest dragon Jimin’s ever seen, easily twice the size of the green one behind him. He’s never even known dragons to become that large except in legends, enormous and white like ice, grabbing the green dragon around the middle with his back foot like a hawk and then launching into the sky with it, carrying it to safety.
And then the dream breaks.
“What were you doing?” his father hisses, slamming Jimin into the nearest tree. He grips Jimin’s collar and slams him back against it a few times, even though Jimin feels woozy for reasons he doesn’t understand. “You let it escape! You let two escape!”
This time he grabs Jimin’s hair with one hand and slams his head back into the tree behind him, enough that Jimin sees the leaves above them shaking with the force of it. “Why are you alive if not for this job? And you failed it!”
His sword is lying in the dirt at Jihyun’s feet, and Jimin barely remembers dropping it.
“A commission from a prince,” Jungwoo seethes, ripping his dagger free and slicing it through the Dragon-Park headband Jimin wears, slicing a neat line through the skin of his forehead and scalp as he does. It stings but not as much as reality setting back in with every one of his father’s words. “Do you understand the disgrace you just brought me? Fucking good for nothing beast!”
Jungwoo steps back to pace angrily, and Jimin just stands there, blinking blood out of his eyes. This hunt may have been the most crucial of his father’s life. There’s no telling how much rage he is filled with. Unless they expect Jimin to chase the dragons in the air, find their lair and kill them then, the hunt is lost.
And it’s all Jimin’s fault.
He can’t atone for this. There’s no way for him to restore the face his father just lost before the prince—before the King, no less, and whatever trust they placed in him is gone.
“Bind him,” Jungwoo says to Jihyun, and his brother steps forward with rope and yanks Jimin’s wrists forward to tie them.
Oh.
“The prince will have his dragon,” his father says, picking up the sword Jimin dropped with disgust. “We can fix this, Jihyun. The dragon has lost its use. No use letting our dog bite us a second time.”
This time when Jimin marches back to his father’s estate behind the horses, his hands are bound with rope and Jihyun holds the other end, and villagers celebrate him marching to his death.
It begins to rain when they arrive home, and Jimin is kept on his leash in the downpour while his father orders servants to prepare Jimin’s chambers for a bath. He will not present his son for beheading at the prince’s command dirty. It’s late, and while his guards are largely sheltered from the downpour by their hats and clothing, Jimin is soaked to the bone.
It feels stupid, now, that he ever woke up dreading this life day after day. He’s run out of them. It’s ridiculous that he let himself forget that he was only alive as long as his life had purpose, and he has failed it now.
A servant rushes out the door of Jimin’s house and bows rapidly to the guards before rushing through the rain to shelter. Now a prisoner of the Dragon-Parks, Jimin is no longer afforded the luxuries he used to have. He will be watched, his every waking moment, four walls no longer an acceptable cage. The guards haul him through his own door, and Jimin braces himself to be stripped and washed against his will, but instead the guards halt before the hearth, where one man is sitting.
Jihyun.
“We were never brothers,” Jihyun says to the room, and Jimin supposes he must be saying it to him, but Jihyun is far above him and would never have to look at him to speak to him. “Maybe we came from the same womb, but we were never brothers. You understand that, don’t you, Jimin?”
This, of all things, makes Jimin finally shiver. His name is never used by anyone, ever. He hasn’t heard it said aloud since his mother left, not counting the times he’s said it to himself in the dark to try and feel like he exists. Jihyun doesn’t use honorifics but why would he, when Jihyun is the heir to the Dragon-Park legacy, and Jimin is nothing more than a hunting servant?
He doubts Jihyun wants to hear his voice so he stays quiet, and eventually his younger brother sighs and stands. Still facing away from him and examining something in his hands, he says, “wash him.”
This part, Jimin was prepared for. The guards are not servants, but they couldn’t convince a chamber maid to do this task. They strip Jimin and shove him into the scalding water, two men picking up rags to rough at his skin, paw at his hair and bodily shove his face underwater to wet.
“Wait,” Jihyun cuts them off, and the guards freeze, both of them still gripping Jimin’s shoulders like he’s any significant threat to them naked and submerged in a bathtub. “Cut his hair.”
“Yes, my lord,” stutters out a guard, and Jimin hears the sound of a metal item changing hands, before he’s roughly pulled back by his hair. They twist it to tighten it and Jimin struggles to keep his mouth clamped shut, in case he does something irrational as start laughing. His hair. They think Jimin’s pride will be wounded by his hair being cut? Or is this more for his father’s sake, he doesn’t understand. No other dragon execution he’s been privy to has included this step, but then again, this one is happening before a prince.
His scalp prickles and pulls as they continue to tighten the cord of hair at the base of his neck, and then with nothing more than a pleasant metallic noise of blades sliding together does it cease completely, and he falls forward. Wet strands of hair slip into his vision, neatly cut at the ends.
“Use the new batch of oils, the prince prefers their scent,” Jihyun tells the guards-turned-servants. “Clothes have been left out and his bedding has been changed. Make sure he doesn’t try his luck.”
Jihyun can mimic their father’s voice so closely, it’s unnerving.
“When you are reborn in your next life, Jimin,” Jihyun starts, “don’t be a dragon.”
Jimin’s never had enough slack on his leash to be angry but all at once he can’t hold it back, shaking with the force of it. “I’ll do my best.”
Jihyun is different to their father; Jungwoo is passionate and explosive at all times, but Jihyun has a lot of Junghoon’s cruel wit. He never loses his composure unless extremely pressed. A hand fists in his wet hair and Jimin’s head is yanked back, water sloshing. It’s humiliating, but somehow that only makes Jimin angrier.
“Your only purpose in life was to serve my father. Our father, if you so insist. Fine. He has spent his whole life serving his father’s legacy and you were meant to do the same, as his son.” The word bites against Jimin’s ear, and he shudders with a sickening mixture of emotions he doesn’t understand. “And when he died you were meant to serve me. But you weren’t strong enough, were you? Not fit to be a Dragon-Park, dragon or not.”
He releases Jimin’s hair without a push, and Jimin hears his feet scuff against the ground. Jimin breathes heavily, staring into the dark water of the bath, so angry he feels like the water is boiling around him. He couldn’t articulate it if he tried, the need to roar and burn something.
By morning he will be dead. He should be despairing, afraid, but he can’t even think about it. If they gave him the knife he might end the nightmare then and then, he’s so angry. Raging and frozen stiff, he can only listen to Jihyun’s neat steps out of the room, and then the sliding of the door.
It’s not like Jihyun to leave before the job has ended, and as Jimin is hauled out of the bath he sees why; silently, his father has slipped in and is watching the entire thing with disgust. Jimin’s skin is slapped before the oil is applied to better absorb it, swaddled in clothing he wants to rip apart. And his father just watches it all, unmoved and with a furrowed brow.
Finally Jimin’s wash is over, and he is pushed to his knees before his father. His wrists are unbound but even he knows, for all the anger trapped in him, he would never dare attack Dragon-Park Jungwoo.
“When you were born,” Jungwoo begins, voice low, “it was the most shameful day of my life.”
Jimin’s hands clench in fists so tightly his knuckles turn white. He knows this. Of course he knows this.
“I spent every day since then working myself to the bone, so that you would bring pride to this family,” Jungwoo continues, voice venomous. “Every day. You have no idea how much your life has cost me. My ancestors—your ancestors worked until death to keep the status of this family. I should have known better. Dragons are not sons.”
“You have never claimed me as your son,” Jimin whispers, shoulders trembling. Never in his life has he talked back to his father, and even now, at the very end of it, he can’t force himself to shout it in his face, return all the vitriol and rage and frustration. Instead it comes out so soft and lost in his own ragged breathing that he doubts his father even hears.
Of course he does.
“You dare speak back to me—” Jungwoo shouts, gripping the collar of Jimin’s shirt and hauling him up, but Jimin only shuts his eyes on instinct for a moment, instead peeling them open and staring back at his father. “Look away! You look away from me right now!”
Doesn’t he want to look at Jimin? Doesn’t he want to see him for what he truly is, the filthy beast he’s kept in this house for more than twenty years?
“Insolent—beast!” Jungwoo hisses, and this close Jimin can see him ageing, see the wrinkles around his eyes and between his eyebrows, where his skin is older. “Bind him!”
A blindfold is wrapped around Jimin’s head by a guard and the noise that comes out of him is an instinct he’s never had before, messy and low and dragon, he doesn’t realise he’s growled until his father chokes around the throat to cut the noise off.
“I thought I could at least produce a tool for Jihyun with you, but I was wrong. You were a liability that should have been eliminated at birth. Look at what you’ve done to us. Disgraced us before a prince. If you’re no use to us alive, perhaps you will be of use by being dead.”
Jimin sucks in a breath as soon as he’s released, coughing and gasping. His father has always remarked to Jihyun on how pathetic it is, when people fight to remain alive, fight to breathe, and it’s all he can hear as his father’s footsteps recede.
He half thinks he’ll be given the privacy to pull a blanket over his head and pretend it’s any other night, but instead his wrists are bound with rope and he is made to kneel in the centre of the room, beside the hearth, and wait. When dawn comes he will be ushered out the door and into the courtyard, where no doubt a sword is being sharpened and someone is practising their beheading swing. The prince will be seated at one end, and Jimin will be left in the centre, as he is now.
And then he will be dead.
It’s almost a relief, now that he sits blindly in the dark. He can hear the guards shuffling beside him, bored of standing but too well trained to stop being alert around a dragon. After dawn, he will be gone. It will be over. His life will not be like this forever because it will end.
The moments in blind silence stretch into hours, it feels like. The dark is syrupy and empty as he lets his mind wander. He wonders where that white dragon came from, how it managed to come to the green dragon’s aid—why he had come to the dragon’s aid. Dragons are solitary and violent beasts that will kill each other in disputes for territories, just like a dog or a tiger. Why bother coming to its aid?
Jimin knows dragons are masters of mimicry which allows them to blend in perfectly to human societies, but they are no different to a trained bird. The phrases they say are merely learned and repeated.
And yet.
How can you do this to your kin?
It didn’t sound like a parrot repeating its master’s voice. Jimin remembers his anger so clearly, rage and despair all at once, so vivid and real. But maybe the reason Jimin thinks of him is far more pathetic.
He called them kin.
And as he stormed forward to hit Jimin, all he remembers is wanting to be touched by him so badly. Surely hate cannot be mimicked, surely that was true and genuine anger, and yet even a dragon’s worst nightmare is still included as one of their own.
In the darkness a terrible thought seeds in the back of Jimin’s mind. A guard yawns beside him and his armour clinks together, and Jimin is keenly aware that his father must have left all of Jimin’s weapons displayed on the table for the prince to inspect tomorrow morning before Jimin is marched to his death. That aside from these guards, everyone is inside and trying to prepare for tomorrow. Distracted.
He could escape.
He could flee and run towards the mountains. For many years his father has been theorising the dragons have settled somewhere in the eastern mountain ranges, where the land is so sheer and steep it's all but a plateau above cliffs, almost impossible to reach except for a skilled climber. The last perfect sanctuary for dragons, forced into close proximity because no other land is safe.
All that stands between him and freedom except for certain death are two guards. His father will be busy entertaining the prince, having a banquet with Jihyun and drinking and gaining the prince’s forgiveness for the hunt gone sour. The servants are busy. The guards are busy guarding the perimeter and the prince’s accommodation. All Jimin has to do is get past these two guards, and then he is free to escape into the night and never return.
He knows the dragons will likely kill him. He has single handedly decimated their numbers in his life working with his father, but he will be killed here regardless. And that white dragon could be there too.
It’s a terrible fantasy to have. He can’t stop planning it, now that he’s indulging in the idea. It would be so easy to steal a horse from the stable, to run back into the villages until the fields end and the forest begins again, and to disappear into it. His father will be able to track his footprints but Jimin can move fast, faster than he can be followed. The eastern mountains are the border to their neighbouring kingdom who is not friendly. A Dragon-Park setting foot there would be enough to agitate war preparations. Jimin just has to make it there first.
The guards have a longsword as part of the Dragon-Park uniform, and Jimin doubts they find the need to carry an extra knife while working, but he won’t disregard the possibility. His hands are bound before him, and he can remove the blindfold if he is quick, but the movement will alert them. The strongest guard always stands to Jimin’s dominant side, so if he yanks his hands suddenly he may dislodge the rope from his hand.
Jimin wracks his brain for a solution to free himself from the rope once it’s no longer held by the guard, but he can’t. Unless he can reach the table of weapons first and begin cutting through the rope, but it is thick and coarse and will take him a long time to saw through, much longer than any opening he may have with the quick trick.
All at once he hears the chittering of bird calls. It can’t be approaching dawn already, that’s impossible. He hasn’t lost the last hours of his life like that.
He barely even registers making the choice: that he’d rather run away than face execution, because he yanks the rope out of the guard’s rip violently.
Jimin knows he’s succeeded because the guard cries out, and Jimin lurches, gathering as much rope as he can before the guards can snatch it back, and rips off the blindfold with his muddled hands. The guards are drawing the swords and Jimin balks, wrapping the length of rope around one arm as best he can. This guard won’t be willing to kill him. He wouldn’t dare take that honour away from the prince, from his father. Jimin has a chance here.
The first swing of his sword is weak, like Jimin expected, and he catches it on the rope. He’s walking back towards the weapons but the other guard is sharp and cuts him off, sword drawn.
This is bad. Jimin never imagined he’d make it this far, and all he has is the rope gathered in his arms. His wrists are still bound together, and fear begins to set in as Jimin realises how trapped he is. Failure isn’t an option. The instant he resisted, an easy, quick beheading was no longer his method of death.
The guard hesitates for a second, but Jimin can’t take advantage of it because he has no possible moves. The weapons are blocked by the other guard who refuses to engage unless Jimin bests the other. His only choice is to somehow beat him with his hands tied. The rope could be a good weapon if he could free his hands, but he can’t—
Unless.
The guard raises the sword high above his head—perfect sword form, his arms are braced and the muscles engaged perfectly, the blade straight and high—and then brings it down on Jimin.
The form is perfect. The angle is straight.
Jimin drops the rest of the rope and catches the blade between his palms.
His technique isn’t great. He missed the mark just so on one side and the heel of his hand has been sliced through but the guard is still shocked, trying to shake the sword free but Jimin wraps his fingers around the blade and then pulls, palms biting and bleeding but he yanks the guard out of his stance and stumbling towards him, close enough for Jimin to steel his grip on the sword and kick him square in the chest.
The guard hits one of the pillars that surround the hearth and crumples. The other guard is already advancing so Jimin moves as fast as he can, wedging the hilt of the sword under his foot and sawing the rope between his hands against the blade. He can hear it crunching and cutting through, and he makes it maybe halfway through a strand before the other guard is on him with a shout.
Jimin inhales sharply, dropping under his sideways swing but not dodging the subsequent move fast enough. It cuts him on the shoulder, biting through the underclothes he’s been given. The smell of his own blood fills his nose, and he sees white, frantically backing away. The other guard is scared, his form messy and quick, trying to cut Jimin any way he can. He could kill him by accident at this rate.
Maybe Jimin should hope for that.
His back hits the wall, and the guard yells, raising the sword in a killing blow. On the floor behind him, the first guard’s sword is abandoned on the ground, as well as the end of Jimin’s rope.
Jimin dives between his legs, grabbing the other end of the rope and pulling. The guard, who was already shifting forward with the swing, loses his balance as one leg is pulled out from under him and Jimin watches in horror as he falls on his own sword.
There’s no time to examine too closely. With any luck the guard will come away with nothing more than a nasty scar over his face. Instead Jimin grabs the sword as the first guard watches, still slumped against the pillar with no weapon, watching Jimin with true, genuine fear.
He thinks Jimin will kill him.
Logically, he knows he should. If his father were in his place, he would not allow hesitation.
But he doesn’t have time. Jimin grabs the sword and slides one hand underneath it, the blood coating his skin making it slippery, and pins the blade against the ground with one foot and begins scraping the rope binding his hands against it desperately. If the other guard isn’t dead he could be back on his feet any second, or worse, the first guard could run out and sound the alarm that Jimin is escaping. Jimin just has to be unbound and on his way before that happens.
His father oversaw his binding, so he has to stand there trying to cut through the rope for at least a minute before enough strands have been cut enough for the knots to come loose, and Jimin shakes his hands free, surveying the room. The other guard is lying in a pool of his own blood at the wall, and the first guard is shaking.
Jimin imagines he must look quite nightmarish; his hands are covered in blood, one sleeve almost soaked through from the cut on his shoulder. Slowly he raises a single finger to his lips, the smell of his own blood so strong he feels like it blinds him, metallic and foul, and the guard nods rapidly.
He’s lying, as soon as Jimin’s out of sight he’ll be rushing to the first living human, but Jimin doesn’t care. He goes to the weapons table and straps on as many of his weapons as he can carry, even going so far as to grab an unstrung bow and a quiver of arrows. He rushes into some overclothes against the biting chill of the night and hides a few more small knives in the folds of fabric.
The guard is still watching him. The smell of blood is being replaced by the smell of death, and he no doubt senses it too, even if his sense of smell isn’t as keen.
Jimin turns his back on him and runs.
The courtyard is deserted, even as Jimin slinks against the shadow of the wall to escape the prying eyes of any archers stationed atop it. He’s tempted to see if he can get away with a horse; certainly it would make travelling much easier, but a horse is easy to track. The Dragon-Parks status and finery extend to all things; people will understand he’s stolen a wealthy family’s horse.
Any other dragon would simply transform and take off into the sky.
Jimin couldn’t do it even if he tried.
It’s not worth the risk of horseback. Slowly he creeps in the shadows until the front gate is visible. Now with his weapons and free hands, two guards is a quick job, but it’s also a scent trail for any dogs they put on him. Slowly Jimin creeps closer, eyes fixed on their backs, searching for any wall he can climb over instead and eventually reaching the conclusion that it won’t be possible, and he’ll have to incapacitate these two.
A shrill bell ring sounds in the distance, and a moment later is accompanied by a booming drum that echoes over the estate. The guard has alerted the rest of the house.
The two gate guardsmen turn around at the noise, searching for the source, and Jimin doesn’t bother hiding this time. They see him, nothing more than a dark figure inside the wall they’re guarding, and know to attack.
His father went through a phase where he would recite ballads and epics to his guests at banquets. Always something about the trial of a man restoring his family’s pride by hunting down unkillable dragons, or an ancient warrior killing a dragon god to bring peace to the region. There was always some sentiment that dragons and humans are forever mortal enemies, that one cannot live unless the other is dead.
The two guards rush him and Jimin can only do what he’s been trained his whole life to do: one quick cut beneath the chin, to bleed them like a pig.
Humans kill dragons. Dragons kill humans.
The smell of blood on his hands changes as the human blood sprays onto his skin. For some reason he didn’t think it would hurt quite as badly as the smell of dragon blood, but his stomach rolls and his eyes burn and he realises it’s just as bad after all.
There’s nothing uglier than surviving so Jimin stomps his boots a few times in the pool of blood to try and cloak his own scent from the dogs that will no doubt he set on him by dawn, and takes off into the night.