Posted on October 14th, 2026.

Why the dragon never leaves us

Ask someone to name a fantasy creature and you will usually hear the same answer. Dragons show up in the first stories humanity ever told, and they are still turning up on bestseller lists, in movie franchises, and in the novels readers pass along to friends. A creature that old should feel worn out by now. Instead, it keeps feeling new.

So why does the dragon endure? The answer says a lot about storytelling itself, and it is worth exploring before you meet the latest dragon story to land on our shelf.

The oldest monsters were dragons

Dragons predate almost everything else in fantasy. Mesopotamian myth gives us Tiamat, a primordial dragon-goddess whose body becomes the world itself. Chinese legends honour benevolent dragon kings who control the rain. Norse tales warn of the great serpent coiled around the world. European folklore warns travellers off the fire-breathing hoard-guardians of the dark.

Here is what is fascinating: those traditions did not copy from each other. Cultures on different continents, with little or no contact, arrived at the same creature. Something about the dragon seems stitched into the human imagination.

Three reasons the dragon endures

So what is doing the work? A few things, and they show up in almost every dragon story ever told.

A dragon is power you can picture

Writers love dragons because they are the physical form of overwhelming force. A dragon is the storm, the fire, the army, the problem that cannot be reasoned with. Readers do not need a paragraph of explanation. Show the wings blotting out the sun and everyone understands the stakes instantly.

That visual shorthand is why dragons anchor so many epic fantasy adventure books. They raise the stakes without slowing the story down.

A dragon is a mirror

The second reason is stranger. A dragon in a story is never really about the dragon. It is about whatever the story needs it to be.

Greed, in the tales where a dragon sits on stolen gold. Nature's fury, in the tales where it burns the countryside. Wisdom, in the traditions where dragons advise kings instead of eating them. Even modern young adult fantasy, where a dragon might bond with a rider instead of devouring one, is using the creature to say something about trust and growing up. The dragon is a mirror, and every era holds it up to see something different in it.

A dragon is a test for the hero

The third reason is the one that matters most to us: dragons are the ultimate test. Saint George needed his dragon. Beowulf needed his. The hero who can face something that enormous and come back with their soul intact is a hero worth following.

Which brings up an interesting question. What happens when the dragon is not the thing outside the hero waiting to be defeated? What happens when it is already inside?

That question is where Vassals begins

In Vassals: Return of the Striders, the dragon is not a distant threat on the horizon. Taylor Prince, a high school sophomore, is carrying one inside him.

From the outside, Taylor looks like a troubled teen. He is highly intelligent but growing increasingly belligerent and contradictory. He has girlfriend issues, conflicts with several upperclassmen, and a history test he is not prepared to take. He is also grieving his twin brother Tyrone, killed in a drive-by shooting, in a family that has not fully recovered. And there may be a very good reason his anger management class is not going as well as hoped: he has been possessed by a dragon.

Old world definitions shatter against new world realizations as the realms of the Dragons, the Seraphi, and the Fae collide with the realm of humans. This is the Return of the Striders.

It is the dragon-as-mirror idea taken somewhere new: a creature of myth sharing the headspace of a grieving teenager, both of them trying to figure out what they have become. If you have ever wondered why dragons still reign in our imaginations, this is a story that answers by showing what happens when a dragon stops being a monster in the distance and starts being a roommate.

Keep exploring

If Taylor's story sounds like your kind of ride, you can find Vassals: Return of the Striders on our site, along with the rest of the catalogue, from the Shadow Guardians Saga to our science fiction and inclusive hero line-up. Happy reading!