hile the incident between the Prophet Daniel and the dragon Toracht was scarcely noted by draconian scholars of the time, the race of man told and retold the tale of their meeting throughout all the lands.  As generations passed Toracht, and dragons in general, came to be regarded as fearsome and violent brutes as opposed to the peaceful beings they actually were.  After many ages had passed dragons came to be the most feared of all the creatures of the Earth.  Therefore the Andromeda Incident, or an incident very much like it, was inevitable.

n the waters of the sea which Man calls Red a certain dragon carrying the name of Cetus made his home.  When he first came to his dwelling place, the people of the land beside the Red Sea, called Ethiopia, grew very afraid of this new neighbor and grew worried that he might begin to raid their farms and villages as the dragon which Daniel had slain had been wont to do.  It so happened that just prior to Cetus’s taking up residence in that region the Queen of that land, Cassiopia, had proclaimed herself to be more beautiful than the Nereids, the daughters of the ocean god that the people worshiped.  The people believed that the dragon was sent by the ocean god to punish their boastful queen.  An oracle was consulted by the people and it was foretold that only by sacrificing the Princess Andromeda, Cassiopia’s daughter, would the dragon be kept from laying waste to the land and its people.  Althought Queen Cassiopia and King Cepheus were greatly saddened by what they had to do, the young girl was duly taken to a cliff overlooking the sea and chained there.

pon seeing the girl thusly imprisoned, Cetus’s heart was moved to pity and he arose from his home and went forth to unchain the unfortunate maid.  But Andromeda’s plight had also caught the attention of another, the human hero Perseus.  Seeing that a dread dragon was advancing on the poor girl, Perseus flew with his magical sandals toward Cetus and drew his sword for the attack.  Cetus, caught very much off guard, nearly fell to Perseus’s first blow.  Marshalling his strength, he fought valiantly for his life.  The battle raged from the rising of the sun to the setting of the same and finally, his strength nearly at an end, Perseus withdrew from a bag the severed head of the woman Medusa, a hag that he had recently slain.  Cetus was sorely shocked at both the ugliness of the head and the brutality of Perseus that he went stiff with repulsion and it did seem that he had turned to stone.  Perseus perceiving his enemy vanquished, unchained Andromeda and married her.  Cetus, overcoming his horror, decided that further pursuit of the matter was pointless and returned to his home.  This incident, however, solidified the beastliness of dragons in the eyes of man and ignited the Great War and the Southern Massacres as seen in the next Chapter.