text: “Back foul beast! Your time is done!” The knight yelled, unsheathing his sword and facing the blade towards the dragon before him. The fire breathing reptile loomed over the armoured hero, its eyes staring into his with a fiery malice strong enough to scare off a lesser man. Suddenly, in a last ditched effort to scare off its foe, the beast unleashed an ear splitting roar almost loud enough to shake the earth itself, but this did nothing to deter the knight. “ENOUGH!” He yelled back at the dragon, “You have terrorised this land far too long, burning down villages, slaying innocent people and then stealing their valuables!” As he said this, the knight raised his trusty blade above his head, arching his arm backwards into a throwing position. He carefully studied the dragon, analysing its massive body for a point of weakness. While the creatures’s back was covered in rows of hardened scales, its underbelly was considerably softer in comparison, a perfect spot for a fatal blow. “Now you shall pay the price for your villainy!” The hero exclaimed. As the dragon let out another roar, the knight flung his blade through the air towards the creature, directly towards its heart. In one swift motion, the sword hit the dragon’s chest... And the lights went out. Suddenly, a thunderous applause could be heard from the people in the surrounding arena, as the story of the knight and the dragon came to a close. In the darkness, the dragon was hurried out of the stage still in her chains, while the other actors hurried back on. As the lights came back on, the man acting out the part of the knight walked over to pick up the painted, wooden sword, putting it back in its sheath. Now standing in the centre of the stage, he and his fellow actors linked hands and bowed for the adoring crowd, as roses were thrown at their feet from all directions. As the crowd roared with delight, the dragon was goaded backstage by a pair of burly men holding massive bull hooks. With these weapons, the men forced her massive body into a cramped cage which. Despite its enormity, the metallic prison was barely big enough to allow her to fit inside, and even then the rather short height of the cage forced her to crouch down uncomfortably for hours on end. “Get in there you stupid beast!” One of the men yelled as the dragon momentarily hesitated to enter her cage. Without hesitation, the man swiftly swung his hook into the sensitive membrane of her folded wing with enough to punch a new hole, and she immediately crawled into her disproportionately small cage. Had she been a wild dragon, she would have burned her captors to cinders along with the surrounding circus and flown as far away from this wretched place as she could, unfortunately, her chances of retaliation had long since passed her by, as the fear of the bull hooks was engraved in her mind from a young age. In order to further prevent the possibility of an attack, the circus handlers punctured the specialised organ at the back of her throat that normally allows a dragon to breathe fire, and the constant beatings left her wings too tattered to allow her to take flight. As the dragon lay down against the cold, metallic bars of her cage, the other man with the bull hook walked over to her head, carrying a large, wooden bucket filled to the brim with fish. “Eat up.” The man said apathetically, as the old, slimy fish were poured onto the cold, metal flooring of the cage. The dragon glumly sniffed her food before eating it, now numb to the smell of dead, decaying fish as they were the only thing her captors would feed her. In the wild, her kin would feed on the variety of massive reptiles and mammals that roamed their ancestral home, bringing them down with the combined efforts of their strength and firepower. But in here, the fish could barely keep her fed, resulting in a body that was dangerously underweight for an animal of her size. The dragon was not the only beast in the circus, the cages surrounding hers were filled with dozens of miserable beasts, whose chances of freedom were just as dim as her own. In the cage across from the dragon, tightly chained up and separated by specially thickened iron bars, a unicorn tried its best to stay sane in the hell it was trapped in. Growling and swaying back and forth, the large ungulate tried desperately to distract itself from its ever increasing insanity. It’s thick, grey hide had been painted a glossy white colour, which simulated the illusion of short, white fur, while the long, yellow hairs glued to its neck and tail were added to make the beast appear more elegant. While the long, spiralling horn attached to its head looked impressive impressive, this was merely a ruse created by yellow paint, glue and wood in order to disguise the pitiful black stump that was all that remained of the beast’s original horn. Hanging from the ceiling, a small cage contained a pair of phoenixes, whose brilliant, fiery feathers grew dimmer by the day. Their faces and legs were covered in scars, while sparse patches of bare skin were visible in between their feathers, a result of the birds fighting for what little space there was. All around them, a menagerie of once fantastical birds, reptiles, and mammals were miserably stuffed into cages awaiting the fleeting moments a day when they would finally be let out. The old griffin with a pair of fake wings sneakily attached too his back, the lonely manticore longing to rejoin his mate, the timid qilin trying desperately to hide behind the steel bars of her cage. The dragon looked at them all with the same hopeless look that they all gave her in turn. With a pitiful yawn, the dragon curled her head under her wings and drifted off to sleep, her only true escape from the miserable world she found herself in. Unfortunately, she knew that once awake, she would be forced back into this reality with no hope of a bright future. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is my first post on this subreddit, any criticism is welcome.