by Eva Brandt
Despite her words, she wasn't any happier about this development than we were. She might have tried to hide it, but the deepening crimson hue of her scales gave her away, as did the incipient blaze lighting up her chest.
Things didn't get any better when the group of wyverns actually reached us. Our neighbors seemed to have had the same idea as our parents, as three males and two females had teamed up to form the hunting group that was interrupting our mission. All of them were dragonets, like my cousins and me.
Normally, the presence of the females might have lowered tensions, but today, we were all too aware of what was at stake and too on the edge to obey the regular niceties. "Your presence here isn't necessary," Walter said without preamble. "Return to your home."
"Why am I not surprised a firedrake would say that?" one of the wyvern females asked, puffs of green smoke escaping her nostrils. She looked a little familiar, and I suspected I might have spotted her during the Fafnir incident. "It's a good thing we got here when we did, Kerryn. Otherwise, who knows what might have happened."
"Maybe we should have come sooner, Nuala," the largest male, now identified as Kerryn, replied. The only one in the group who was completely black-scaled, he was roughly my size, which meant we were also around the same age. Unlike his female friend, though, he was a complete stranger to me. That wasn't so surprising since I hadn't gotten the chance to know too many dragons the day of the Fafnir chase before I'd almost gotten eaten by the great wyrm. The sole exception was Raijin no Kurapati, and that meeting had gone very poorly indeed.
It hadn't been that big of a loss. Kerryn was about as likable as Raijin had been. "Listen, firedrake," he told me, spitting out the name of my species like an insult, "the demon hunt is affecting our territory as well. We have just as much right to be here as you do."
A small voice at the back of my mind pointed out that he wasn't exactly wrong. We were very close to the border between Land der Drachen and Talamh na Dragain, and this territory had been disputed for generations by our two clans. In the end, we'd decided on a sort of in-between situation. No one actually lived here, but we were all allowed to fly in the area. If by any chance, a wyvern and a firedrake happened to run into one another here, they were to give each other a wide berth and avoid conflict.
That wasn't a possibility now, when we had a target that we all wanted to attack. The demons were not far from here. I could actually catch a glimpse of the group we were supposed to be fighting a little further away. However, cooperation became an impossibility when Kerryn added, "Besides, we all know firedrakes don't do very well in battles with demons. You're just as likely to blow up an ally as you are to slay a foe."
My father had said something similar right before we'd left. Our elemental magic could be volatile when it came into contact with certain types of skills or environments. However, the advice I could accept and embrace from him was insulting when it came from Kerryn's mouth.
"You say that like it's a bad thing," I drawled. "Then again, what can you expect from a wyvern? I'm honestly still surprised they let you have a territory of your own."
I regretted saying that as soon as I finished the sentence. It was not my place to question the decisions of the elders, and if the wyverns had not had strong clans, they wouldn't have been so important in the history of our nation. Unfortunately, the words were already out, and I refused to take them back.
Kerryn's eyes flared with green fire, and for a few seconds, it looked like he was about to lunge at me. He might have done just that, except for the fact that the demons had decided they'd allowed us to bicker long enough and attacked us themselves.
The group rushed toward us like a flock of massive malevolent birds. I couldn't identify the exact type of demon we were dealing with, although ironically, some of their characteristics, like their wings and skull shapes, reminded me a little of dragons. I decided it didn't matter and focused on eliminating the threat, turning to the method my mother had recommended, evisceration.
It might be too dangerous to use my elemental powers here, especially considering the presence of the wyverns, but claws and fangs would work. As an added bonus, getting up close and personal with the demons would help me take out some of my aggression on the intruders, instead of fellow dragons who, while irritating, weren't actually my enemies.
My cousins and I met the demons half-way, and I made a grab for the first creature. At this point I noticed that, despite the fact that the intruders were flying, their wings felt strange and unyielding in my grip, as if they were made out of stone, not flesh. The wing of the gargoyle I had caught crumbled in my claw when I exerted pressure, and the demon cried out. Another one rushed at me, presumably in an attempt to assist his friend.
"Gargoyles!" Kerryn shouted. "Be careful! Don't let them touch you directly."
The words drew the demons' attention to Kerryn, even if he and the other wyverns were behind me and my cousins. The new information was apparently important enough that it made our reluctant allies more of a threat. The gargoyles tried to sneak past me and make a beeline for the wyverns. The sheer impertinence would've had me attack the demons even if they hadn't encroached upon the sacred borders of Terra Dracones.
"Oh, no, you don't," I snarled, flying in their path and blocking their way. "You have me to deal with right now."
"We're not afraid of you, firedrake," one of the larger gargoyles rumbled at me. "We will fight if you so wish it, but be warned that you will lose."
He was smaller than me, but he was fast, his stony body not hindering his ability to fly in the slightest. Worse still, my girth made me an easy target for his abilities, and while I dodged his first attacks, he did eventually succeed in taking hold of my tail. An insidious black flame emerged from his clawed hands, and seconds later, a sudden weight seemed to fall on top of me. I jerked, flapping my wings in a panic as I attempted to keep myself aloft despite the unexpected burden. My flailing form ended up striking the gargoyle who had attacked me and the blow sent him flying into another group of demons. A cloud of dust and debris erupted all around us at the impact, and I surmised this meant some of the gargoyles must have received significant damage.
My unexpected success would have pleased me more had the enchantment the demon had cast not continued to hinder me. He had turned a significant portion of my tail into stone, and my whole balance was thrown off. This was not good. I had gotten lucky when I'd accidentally struck the gargoyle, but if more of his friends decided to target me, I might be in trouble.
I had no choice but to use my elemental abilities. Otherwise, this would end up more of a disaster than it already was.
If I'd been older, I might have managed to heat up my tail from the inside and maybe tried to crack the stone that way. Then again, I wasn't sure if that meant I'd lose my tail entirely, and I didn't want to risk it. My only experience with petrifying abilities was the basilisks' attack on Fafnir, and that had been both very different and a long time ago. Mindful of the dangers, I let my power naturally gather and form in my lungs. It took only a couple of seconds, but it was long enough for a gargoyle to reach the wyverns and grab Kerryn's wing.
One of the disadvantages of being a wyvern was that they didn't have frontal limbs, so they could only protect themselves using their hind legs or their tails. There were other types of dragons who suffered from this problem, and their biology always compensated for it in some way. In the wyverns' case, it was the poison breath that helped them make up for the lack. If someone approached a wyvern in an attempt to take advantage of the hole in said dragon's defenses, nine times out of ten, the wyvern would use the toxic fumes to repel the unwise attacker.
It was exactly what Kerryn did, and I realized what was about to happen much too late. A cloud of green erupted from Kerryn's snout at the same time as I directed my own fire breath at the demons.
We must have been closer to one another than I'd thought because the explosion that followed struck everyone in the area with the fury and poten
cy of a hurricane. I had enough presence of mind to try to shield myself with my wing, but it didn't do much good. Pain erupted over me, and I fell from the sky, hitting the rocky ground a few hundred feet away from our battle.
Since the damage was elemental in nature and based in part on my own fire magic, I wasn't rendered unconscious, but it was a close call. As I struggled to get up, the cloud of dust that had been blocking my vision cleared slightly, and I caught a glimpse of a dark form lying not far from me. It was Kerryn. He must have fallen as well after our abilities had clashed. Like me, he was already getting up, shaking his head as if he was trying to push back the dizziness the blast must have induced.
I left him to it and hobbled away from the small crater I'd created in my fall. I was still concerned about my tail since it could have easily crumbled when I'd made contact with the ground at high speed. As it turned out, I needn't have worried. The unnatural weight that had been dragging me down had disappeared, but not because my tail had suffered an unfortunate fate. Instead, it had returned to its previous state, the stone the gargoyle had created nowhere to be seen.
I tentatively swayed the appendage back and forth, making sure it was working properly. For the most part, it was, although some side-effects lingered. I felt cold, and pinpricks of pain surged through me as my elemental abilities chased away the last remnants of the demonic magic. It would likely take me a while to recover completely.
With the corner of my eye, I could see Kerryn flexing his wing, and I surmised he had a similar problem. I wanted to say something. It felt as if I should. We'd offended each other, but for good or ill, we'd fought side by side, against the same foe. Apologizing would be admitting fault, though, and that wouldn't work. My father would rather start a war with Kerryn's clan than apologize to one of its members.
Besides, part of this whole fiasco could've been avoided if the wyverns had just told us the demons were gargoyles. Granted, we hadn't spoken for too long before the gargoyles had attacked us, but even so, Kerryn and his team had had ample time to say, "Hey, idiot, maybe you should try to keep your distance from those demons. They can turn you to stone if they touch you."
Before I could figure out a way to express my discontent, our respective companions joined us, providing a much-needed distraction and breaking the silence. My cousins landed a few feet away from me, looking a little bruised, but for the most part, unharmed.
"Are you all right, Emmerich?" Talea asked, her voice high-pitched and her scales glowing.
"Fine. Or I will be. It's nothing I can't handle. Where are the demons?"
My question drew a snort from the female wyvern Kerryn had called Nuala. "That stunt you pulled killed them all. Are you stupid? What could have possessed you to use your fire breath in such a way?"
She wasn't looking at us and had instead padded to Kerryn's side, eyeing him from head to toe and checking him over for injuries. Her understandable concern did nothing to assuage my irritation. I'd resorted to using my fire magic because I'd had no other choice and the alternative would've had me lose a limb. It wasn't fair of the wyverns to blame me for that, especially not when they'd failed to warn us about the gargoyles' abilities before the battle had actually started.
"Emmerich was just defending himself," Talea snarled as if echoing my thoughts. "This is hardly his fault. It wouldn't have been necessary had you not kept information from us."
"Also, if you wyverns hadn't used your poison breath, my fire magic wouldn't have been a problem," I added.
"Are you blind as well as idiotic?" one of the other wyvern males asked. "There are still fumes here due to the proximity of the mountain."
He didn't acknowledge their part of the blame in the fiasco, or their failure to give us the relevant details regarding the opponent we had been fighting. I sneered at him, and a small gust of flame escaped my nostrils. "The mountain fumes aren't strong enough here to cause such a blast. Besides, it doesn't really matter. The demons are dead, and that's a win for us." There was no point in fighting about the accidental explosion when it had brought about a victory for Terra Dracones.
Kerryn did not agree. "That may well be, but with the gargoyles gone, so is all the information we could have extracted from them on their intentions."
If he had considered interrogating the demons at any point during our battle, I would eat my own tail. Our job wasn't to take demons alive so we could ask them questions later. All we had to do was hunt the intruders down and kill them. Anything more complicated was for teams of older dragons.
"Nice try, but you're better off playing those games with other wyverns. If you really wanted to capture the demons, you should have warned us about their abilities beforehand. In any case, I'm not going to apologize for doing what needs to be done. We have a duty to Terra Dracones and because of that, we will defeat any opponent that comes our way."
"Are you suggesting that we have failed in our duty toward our land?" Kerryn hissed. "Once again, you go too far, firedrake."
I hadn't actually meant that at all, but backing out was not my style, so I extended my wings in a display that pointed out my superiority. "And if I am? What are you going to do about it, wyvern?"
Kerryn snarled at me and attempted to mimic my stance. He couldn't quite manage it since he was still favoring his wing, and that just made him angrier. His eyes started to glow again, even more fiercely than before, and I could've sworn that any moment now, he would lunge at me and try to rip my throat out with his fangs.
This time it was one of the other wyverns who intervened, keeping the conflict from escalating. Nuala stepped in front of Kerryn, blocking his path and preventing him from attacking me. "Let's just go," she said. "We still need to finish our patrol. We did what we came here to do. The firedrakes aren't worth our attention."
Judging by the way she was looking at his wing, she was probably wary of the damage Kerryn had received during the battle with the gargoyle. The demon's magic must've hurt him more than it had hurt me. I didn't envy him for taking the blow in his wing. My tail still hurt, but I wasn't concerned about my ability to fly. He hadn't been so lucky. The small part of me that acknowledged that we would've been much worse off without the wyverns hoped Kerryn's wing would recover. I might not like him, but I had no desire to see him wyrmed.
Fortunately, Kerryn wasn't panicking, nor did he display any signs I'd seen before in grounded dragons. Instead, he started to protest, still glowering at me and wanting to go against Nuala's advice. "But, Nuala, we can't just—"
"Nuala is right, cousin," the female who had yet to mention her name cut him off. "We're needed elsewhere. Come."
Kerryn said nothing. When he met my gaze, I could tell he was still furious. In the end, he must have realized that his cousin was right because he let his wings drop and nodded. "You have a point. We've wasted enough time here."
Satisfied, the wyvern females launched themselves in the air, and the males—including Kerryn—followed. He could still fly, although a little more slowly than the others. My cousins and I watched them go, making no attempt to reignite the argument.
I really should have known better than to believe any male dragon would let things slide so easily. Kerryn was already hovering a few hundred feet above us when he turned around and said, "For what it's worth, firedrake, we assumed that even your kind would have some knowledge of the abilities of gargoyles. Apparently, we overestimated your skills. Your arrogance is only rivaled by your stupidity."
The rest of the wyverns laughed, and together, the group flew away. They were too far now for us to reach them before they entered their own territory, but Walter still let out an infuriated roar and threw another bolt of fire toward them. He missed, and fortunately, the blast didn't hit any nearby accumulation of gas either. The wyverns disappeared in the distance without further incident, leaving us fuming over Kerryn's parting words.
"What cowards," Karol snapped. "They ran away knowing we couldn't follow them into Talamh na Dragain."
; "He knew he didn't have a choice in actual combat with us, so he took advantage of our position to have the last word." The damn wyvern might have been honest about what he'd said, but that didn't make it any less irritating.
"We'll have plenty of time to fight them another day," Talea said in a chastising tone. "It's back to your parents' lair now, Emmerich. Don't think I can't tell you're still in pain. You need to have someone look at your tail. Ton Daímon magic is not to be trifled with."
It grated on me to have to abandon the mission so quickly, but Talea was right. The blow I'd received might have been less serious than the one Kerryn had taken, but the gods only knew what side-effects it could have. I'd heard all kinds of rumors about demons being able to possess other types of beings, and while I wasn't sure gargoyles had such skills, we couldn't take any chances. We hadn't known about the petrifying ability either.
As we started to head back, I memorized the name of the wyvern who had dared to make a mockery of me and my cousins. I would find him again soon, and I'd put him in his place. Kerryn would soon learn that it had been a bad idea to mess with the Adalberd clan.
Chapter Three
Adult Males
Kerryn
A century later
"It's all right, my darling. You are perfectly capable of winning this battle. There is no doubt in my mind that you are the strongest male in Terra Dracones."
I shot my mother an unimpressed look, wishing she were anywhere but here. It wasn't that I didn't appreciate the support, but her treating me like I was still only a hatchling didn't fill me with much confidence regarding my ability to defeat my opponents.
"Thank you, Mother," I replied nevertheless. "Are all the competitors here already?"
"Not just yet, dear, although that dreadful firedrake has arrived. Your father has already gotten into a fight with Isebrand."
Her chest puffed up with pride at the words, her tail swaying back and forth as she spoke of her male's accomplishment. I could not blame her for it. My father liked Emmerich's father about as much as I liked Emmerich himself—which was to say, not at all. It would not have been the first time the two of them assaulted one another. Wyverns and firedrakes didn't mix, and not just because our magical abilities were fundamentally incompatible.