Hoard

He stormed out through the front corridor, gratuitously scraping his claws against the Timestone. It was so much nicer now that it was clean. In that moment, he hated it.

Vanimax burst out onto the landing and paused, flaring his wings and swiveling his neck about in momentary uncertainty. Not that there was anything out here to confuse him, but… He just had no idea what to do next.

He could just leave—actually leave. He was old enough; it was probably about time anyway. Just take off, pick a direction and keep going until something worth settling into caught his eye. North, perhaps; he could go all the way to the other end of the Evervales and find a lair. With Atraximos gone, it was likely the others wouldn’t even bother to contest his claim as long as it wasn’t too close.

But if he did that, if he actually left…

His eyes fell on the two ghosts standing guard at either side of the entrance to his home.

Snarling, he lunged forward, lashing out with a claw at the Phantom Legionary stationed to the left of the door.

It evaded him without effort, dissolving into mist and then re-forming right where it had been. Still at attention. Seemingly ignoring him.

In pure frustration, he exhaled a blast of fire at the specter. It didn’t bother reacting to that at all; a second later it was standing untouched in a large scorch mark.

“Oi oi oi! Leave ‘em alone, y’big bully, they’re not bothering you.” Vadaralshi came bounding out of the door, energetic as always, and to Vanimax’s utter fury actually spoke to the ghosts. “Sorry, guys, he’s just… Well, you’ve met him. When a lad’s at a certain age, you know how it is.”

Vanimax hissed at her. She didn’t even have the decency to snarl back, just grinning.

“Don’t take it out on me, either, I won’t stand there and ignore it like a ghost. What the hells was today’s entire production about, Vanimax? You’re cruising to end up like Atraximos did if you keep finding all the worst possible strings to pull.”

“You just leave me be! I’m in no mood for any of your nonsense today, Vadaralshi.”

“Ah, yes, your life is so hard,” she said solemnly. “You have so many problems that you didn’t create all by yourself for no discernible reason.”

He roared in fury and snapped at her throat. Vadaralshi whipped her neck in an adroit move that both evaded the bite and then headbutted his nose on the rebound, sending him reeling backward. Snarling, Vanimax planted his rear claws against the Timestone balustrade behind him and beat both wings at her furiously, creating a gust that caught her own spread wings and shoved her backward.

She parried his next two bites with swipes of her foreclaws, and then when he retreated a few steps, spun around to swipe at him with her tail. Vanimax hopped nimbly over it—which she had apparently anticipated, as she redirected the movement halfway through, whipping her tail upward to slap him hard right on his exposed underbelly.

He was sent wheeling backward, toppled fully over the balustrade, and tumbled down the mountain with a humiliating lack of dignity. Humiliating and enraging.

Vanimax caught himself mid-slide, shoving himself off the side of the mountain and spreading his wings to turn his tumble into a glide. Beating them furiously, he shot back upward, exhaling a blast of fire across the landing—

She wasn’t there. Vadaralshi had already moved, now clinging to the stone face of the mountain peak above the Timesteel doorway, and launched herself bodily at him from above.

The impact sent them both into a graceless tumble. The pair spun into space, roaring and clawing at each other as they plummeted toward the forest below. By the time they separated, with a mutual thrash of all eight talons pushing them apart, both of them grazed the treetops as they swerved to glide away from each other.

Vanimax beat his wings furiously, shooting upward to regain altitude and visibility. Knowing his patterns by now, Vadaralshi had zipped away in a nearly horizontal flight to put maximum distance between them. But he was faster than she in the air—always had been, even if not by a lot.

He arced down at her, exhaling a long blast of fire just in advance of her course. She banked abruptly, evading the burst by a hair, then beat her wings and shot upward and back—right at him. Not even turning around to attack properly, simply propelling herself back-first in his direction in an attempted bodyslam. Vanimax was forced to break off his exhalation and try to veer away, only for her to pivot in mid-air, taking advantage of his momentary confusion to come at him with all claws again.

They engaged in the air, roaring, slashing, and snapping, then parted. He sprayed another blast of fire at her, but as usual she preferred to attack physically, swooping to intercept him and sending them in another clawing tumble through the sky before they were forced to disengage and part to regain altitude.

And then the same, again and again, while below them the forest burned.

“Wow. Look at ‘em go at it!”

Mirette was the only one fascinated enough to stand fully upright to watch the spectacle, at least until Hans physically seized her by the legs and pulled her down into the shelter of the boulders behind which the rest of the party was hunching. That cost her a few moments of the show, until she regained her feet and peeked over the rocks with more circumspection alongside her comrades.

The dragons were still dueling in the air above Dragonvale. Swooping in wide arcs, during which the red one sprayed bursts of fire half the time, while the slightly smaller green just kept charging right at him to engage with claw and fang. Roaring filled the sky, echoing off the surrounding mountains, accompanied by the periodic bone-shaking impacts as they came together again and again. They’d snap and snarl in midair for a few seconds before swooping around to try again—or, sometimes, clawing so fiercely they got caught in a tangle and fell almost to the tree level before pushing apart and gliding away to recover their altitude before trying again.

By now the forest in the valley was burning in three places—at least, three big enough to catch and begin to spread.

“Anybody actually seen them light into each other like this?” Mirette asked, eyes still fixed on the show. “I don’t have any context for what I’m seeing. Is this…a playful scuffle, a murder attempt? Somewhere in between?”

“It’s a good reason for us to get the hells out of here, is what!” Nimeirda hissed.

“The dragons haven’t fought each other in public for a long time, that I’m aware of,” Hans murmured. “There’ll be more thorough records back at the Guild.”

“And…which ones are these?” Mirette asked.

He shook his head. “The red-and-black one is hostile, he’s marked firmly as ‘avoid.’ You really should know that, boss, it’s a standard warning for every guild in the Vales. He’s not aggressive like his papa but doesn’t like being approached. The green one is…um, Vana… Vonda…” He shook his head again with an irritated expression. “Well, it’ll be written down in the Guild records. She used to sometimes talk to people, but not for decades.”

“Vadawashy,” Miisha corrected, patting him on the back. Hans sighed in annoyance, ignoring her.

“Friendly?”

“Not for years. Decades, like I said. The green and blue ones just fly away if people get close; the red one’ll sometimes spit fire at you first.”

“Job’s cooked, boss,” Nimeirda said tersely, gesturing down at the forest spread out below them, which was now burning hard enough in multiple places that the roar of the conflagration was beginning to compete with the dragons’ noise. They were high enough that the sharp mountain winds were still stealing the heat, but that might change any time now. “Can’t very well suppress bandits in that. Also…this is gonna cull them better than we ever could.” She sighed, scowling. “That was a nice waste of two weeks of hiking.”

“Aw, wook on the bwight side,” Miisha cooed, now patting her shoulder. “You need the exewcise!”

The elf jerked away from her. “Make one more crack about my weight, kitty, see what happens.”

“Button it,” Mirette ordered. “Nim’s right, bandit suppression is officially off the menu. But, we can still break even on this—maybe even pull out ahead. We’re gonna stay put and observe until the dragons stop doing anything interesting. The Guild’s standard rate for intel on dragon movements will cover our expenses. And I’ve got a feeling this isn’t the only out-of-character thing they’ve done lately—remember how that red one came tearing through here just a bit ago? Hans, you’re sure you didn’t get a good look at what he was carrying?”

“Couldn’t even be certain he was carrying something, from that angle,” the scout replied, shaking his head. “He had one arm tucked up against his body. Could’ve just been hurt.”

“Except he’s using that awm now,” Miisha objected.

Mirette nodded. “Suggests to me he snatched something—something valuable, that someone will miss. If our report adds context to an ongoing investigation, you know what that’ll mean.”

All three of her party members nodded, and hunkered down to watch the dragons in silence while the forest fire spread out before them. Not that they were blind to the danger, but they were professional adventurers after all, and this was the one thing that motivated them more than the call to adventure itself: the prospect of bonuses.

It wasn’t long at all before he’d had enough.

Not that fighting wasn’t fun; that was why they’d done so much of it over the years. Sometimes for hours at a stretch. It was a great way to get the blood up, to clear the mind, work off the inevitable stress that came from living in Atraximos’s shadow.

But there was the other side of it: that she was just better. They were both holding back, of course, neither really wanting to do the other permanent injury. But even though she’d never admitted it, Vanimax was certain Vadaralshi was holding back more. She was just too adroit, too precise. Scrapping with her always left him with the lingering impression that if she really wanted, she could kill him.

Mostly, that was just…how things were. No point in taking it personally; he lived under the wings of multiple dragons for whom he was no match. At least with Pheneraxa around he wasn’t the bottom-tier fighter in this family. Now, though… Right now, it was really driving home exactly all the thoughts he didn’t want to think. The feelings he didn’t know how to deal with.

Vanimax wheeled away from her, pumping his wings to propel himself across the valley. Oh…quite a lot of it was on fire. His father would—

Wait. No, he didn’t have to worry about that, and never would again. It was going to take a lot more time to get used to.

He selected a suitable ridge and settled onto it. Harder than necessary; his impact left claw-craters in the ancient stone, quite a few shards breaking free to tumble down the slope into the valley below.

Vadaralshi approached, too, at a more sedate pace. She beat her wings to soften her approach, and he wasn’t sure whether it was a pointed contrast to his own landing or just signaling that she wasn’t diving in to attack. Well, whatever. She settled lightly on the ridge a short distance away, and Vanimax deliberately refused to think about all the subtle ways in which she liked to deliver mockery.

“Feel better?” she asked.

“No,” he snapped. Then turned his head to stare across the valley, at the distant Timesteel doorway to their home. “…a little.”

“Good. Seriously, though, Max. What in every unnamed hell were you thinking?”

He heaved a deep sigh and lowered himself to settle on the flattest section of the ridge that was nearby. Scowling moodily down at the burning forest, he said nothing.

“A princess? Really? I mean, not that it isn’t iconic and all. Very literary, I’m sure you made Pheneraxa’s whole week. But what the hells were you even gonna do with a princess?”

“What one does with a captive human!” he snarled, raising his head to glare down the length of his nose at her. “What they’re good for! As a dragon should. Just as our mothers are apparently going to do with their new pet. Anyway.” He turned his head away, scowling. “I…didn’t actually know she was a princess until Pheneraxa said so. Someone important, certainly, maybe a duchess or something. She was at this big ceremony, up on the central part with a bunch of… She was pretty, and clearly significant. That was all.”

“Oh, so you crashed a ceremony,” Vadaralshi commented, rolling her eyes. “That’s gonna make some waves. The mortals will be good and riled for a while. Thanks for that.”

“Oh, please, what exactly are they going to do?”

“You know we don’t have the old bastard here to scare them off anymore. The whole idea was to make it as long as possible before they figure that out and start getting uppity. I wonder how much of our very little remaining peace and quiet you just toasted?”

“We never needed him!” Vanimax slammed his tail into the mountain face for emphasis. “You and I are far from nothing—even Pheneraxa is still a dragon! And our mothers are capable of fending off any attack.”

“You know who doesn’t think that? Our mothers. That kind of naive arrogance is what gets dragons killed, no matter how powerful they are. Hmm, if only there was some recent and incredibly vivid example of that which happened right in front of our noses…”

He snorted, turning away from her.

“Also,” Vadaralshi added more quietly, “don’t forget I actually know you. You, Vanimax, do not have it in you to do to a mortal woman what some dragons have been known to. I frankly doubt you’d be able to rile yourself up enough even to try, and that’s good because if you somehow did, you’d take one look at her face right afterward and hate yourself for the rest of your eternal existence.”

Vanimax hunched his neck, slumping over the ridge like a gargoyle to glare down at the burning forest.

“So…seriously, what did you think was gonna happen? I’m not Pheneraxa, I know you aren’t actually stupid. You surely knew Kaln wouldn’t allow you to keep a victim like that, and you were aware for an incontrovertible fact that Izayaroa would never tolerate it—and probably claw your ass into shreds for trying. Hells, you came home and announced it to the whole family! What’s the big idea, Max, are you just trying to make someone kill you? I think she came close!”

He refused to answer.

“Vanimax,” Vadaralshi said insistently, and the sudden realization in her tone made him physically cringe. “Did you do this for attention?”

“That’s right, laugh it up!” he snarled, rounding on her and flaring his wings aggressively. “Let’s hear all your little jabs! I’m sure this’ll be your masterpiece. Really take your time and make it all properly snippy!”

“Bro.” She switched to High Nourid, a language nowadays associated with scholarship and venerable history—which they favored in some conversations because its rigid tiers of formality enabled a level of vulgar familiarity for which no modern language had a counterpart. “You shitting me right now? There’s nothing wrong with loving and respecting your mother, or valuing the time you spend with her. I do with mine. Or resenting somebody for hogging her attention. I know our father would’ve sneered at it, but consider: our father was a ludicrous dickhead.”

In spite of himself and everything, Vanimax had to smile, barely managing to repress a snort of amusement.

“And the whole world is better off now that he’s gone out in a dissipating puff of his own stubbornness, starting with us,” she continued. “Look, man, I’m sympathetic—in fact I’ll tend to agree that Izayaroa has been a bit out of line, monopolizing Kaln’s time to the point it’s gonna start annoying the other two, not to mention neglecting you. Not that I would say that to her, she’d tear my wings off. But you? You should have. That conversation is not any less necessary now, and it’s just gonna be that much worse now that you’ve meticulously planned and executed your stratagem to piss her off in the maximum way possible.”

“I just don’t… I don’t know what anything is anymore,” he said quietly. It was exactly the kind of statement he’d have delivered in a roar just minutes ago; he could still feel the frustration and confusion clawing at him from inside, but now… He was more tired than angry. “Life wasn’t exactly great before, but…I knew how to live that way. What am I supposed to do—to think about this whole situation? This…this sniveling, smirking mortal who they all insist on treating like he’s some kind of—”

“Okay, you’re not wrong to feel off-kilter about the huge change in our situation, we all do, but I gotta stop you there, brother. You’ll only come to grief trying to make Kaln the villain in this. He’s actually a good dude. I’m taking it slow with him, but I really think you should try making friends.”

Vanimax hissed at her. Vadaralshi rolled her eyes and then flopped over on her side, sliding down the inner edge of the ridge until she came to rest against the mountain face.

“Give him a chance, Max. As mortals go… I think this one has a lot of the exact traits this family needs. Look how happy he makes your mother. And Emmy. And my mother, though she mostly just confuses him, which by the way is the most hilarious thing I’ve ever seen.”

“I’m supposed to respect some human because he knows how to schmooze?”

“He’s a people person. Good at communicating and dealing with personal and interpersonal issues. Not saying the guy is perfect, even by mortal standards, I’m just saying… Things change. Life’s a battle; you gotta flow with the blows or they’ll break you. We’re stuck with a silly little godling where our evil asshole father used to be, and there are upsides to this. I just think it’d be better to lean into the benefits than try to make it all as bad as possible.”

He heaved a sigh, staring out over the burning valley.

“You can’t tell what they’re talking about?”

Hans lowered his spyglass. “I can barely read lips on those long faces, and I don’t even know what language they’re using. Nothing intelligible, sorry boss.”

“Can’t be helped.” Mirette patted his shoulder. “At least we know now that was what passes for a friendly little scuffle.”

All of them flinched down as both dragons took flight, winging back across the burning valley. They banked widely, riding the updrafts from the fire below, but sailed right back to their lair without any more detours.

“I dunno about fwiendwy or wittwe,” said Miisha, “but it wasn’t fow sewious, at weast. My bwothew and I used to fight wike that.”

“Like that?” Nimeirda raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, just wike that. My bwothew awso bweathes fiwe.”

“All right,” Mirette decided, standing up. “We’re pulling out, Foxes. I want as many tracks between us and this mess as possible before we have to camp. Back to Boisverd, with all haste. In fact… As soon as we hit the border station, I’m gonna shell out for a carriage back to the city. This intel will be worth more the fresher it is. Something is up with these dragons.”

Vadaralshi went first, trotting down the entry corridor with her neck highly arched, looking pleased with herself. Vanimax didn’t take that personally; that was just something she liked to do.

He found himself hesitating at the entrance. The two ghosts were still there. Was it the same two, or… How could you even tell?

“I…about…” He paused, shaking his head. “In the interest of…”

Vanimax broke off, staring at them. They stared back, at attention; he couldn’t be sure they even knew he was there. With a snort, he stalked between them, through the doorway.

Seconds later, he had come to a halt, pivoted fully, and poked his head out.

“…sorry.”

Then he was off, stomping back into the lair to deal with whatever was about to happen next. It didn’t promise to be anything good.