have dragons for sons? I don’t know, but the dragons definitely shared their dad’s winning personality. They would attack anything that moved, and they loved feasting on human flesh. If you managed to collect the dragons’ teeth—which fell out all the time, kind of like sharks’ teeth—you could plant the teeth in the ground and grow yourself some spartoi, or skeleton warriors.
Good luck getting the teeth, though. The dragons never slept. They spit poison. They had excellent hearing. And they hated it when mortals came around, looking for souvenirs and not even spending any money in the Sacred Grove gift shop.
Eventually, both of the dragons got killed, which was sad for…well, pretty much no one except Ares.
The beastie in central Greece got taken out first. This guy named Cadmus was wandering around, leading a bunch of settlers to found a new city. The Oracle at Delphi had told him to follow this certain cow, and when the cow fell down from exhaustion, that was the best place to build his city.
I dunno. Would you follow a dude who was following a cow? Apparently Cadmus’s peeps didn’t mind. They hung with Cadmus until his special cow fell down, and everybody cheered.
“This is the spot!” Cadmus said. “Let’s start building! Oh, and how about we kill the cow and sacrifice it to the gods?”
At that point, the cow probably wished it had kept walking, but too late!
The settlers went to work. After a few hours, Cadmus and his builders got hot and thirsty.
“I need a drink!” one of the guys said. “Did you bring an ice chest or anything?”
Cadmus frowned. He knew he should’ve brought an ice chest. And they hadn’t seen a convenience store in miles. He scanned the horizon until he spotted a thick grove of oak trees in the distance.
“Trees need lots of water,” he said. “There has to be a river or a spring over there.” He pointed to some of his guys. “You five go into those woods with some buckets and bring us back some water. And if you see, like, a KFC or something, that would be good too.”
As you can guess, the woods were the sacred grove of Ares.
There was a spring, all right. It bubbled up inside a cave right in the middle of the grove, feeding a nice pool of fresh water that also happened to be the dragon’s drinking source.
The five guys went into the grove with their buckets.
They found the cave.
“What are all these pointy white things on the ground?” one of them asked.
“Arrowheads?” another guessed.
“Nah, they look like dragon teeth,” said a third.
They all laughed nervously. No such thing as dragons, right?
Then the dragon burst out of the cave and ate them.
Only, one of guys escaped, probably because the dragon was too full to chase after him.
The guy stumbled back to the worksite, screaming in horror: “DRAGON! BIG! EATS PEOPLE!”
As the settlers gathered ’round, Cadmus calmed the survivor down enough to get the full story. Then Cadmus grabbed his trusty spear. “No dragon is going to eat my workers.”
At the back of the crowd, a priest cleared his throat. “Um, sir? This grove sounds very much like a sacred place of Ares. If you kill the war god’s dragon—”
“I have to kill it!” Cadmus said. “The cow told me to build a city here, and I can’t have a dragon living next door! Would you deny the wisdom of the dead cow, old man?”
“Oh…no. No, sir.” The priest decided to shut up.
Cadmus marched into the grove with his spear, and because he was such a boss, he walked straight up to the dragon (who was really too full to put up a good fight) and drove his spear straight through its head.
Instantly, a bright light shimmered next to Cadmus, and the goddess Athena appeared.
“Well done, Cadmus!” said the goddess. “You have killed the dragon of Ares!”
Cadmus blinked. “So…I’m not in trouble?”
“Oh, you’re in terrible trouble!” Athena said cheerfully. “Some day, Ares will have his revenge. But for now you’re under my protection. I need you to found a great city called Thebes.”
“At the place where the cow fell down? Because the Oracle was pretty specific.”
“Yes, yes, that’s fine. But first things first. You’ll need some good fighters to defend your new city. Take the teeth of this dragon and sow them into the ground like seeds. Water them with a little blood and watch what happens!”
Athena disappeared.
Cadmus wasn’t sure he should be stealing the dragon’s dental work, especially if