Chapter Text
Tommy woke up before the sun was up to Clementine crawling through the window in her shrunken form. All dragons had an ability that was unique to them or their bloodline; Kaida, Drista's dragon, could mesmerize people—or, well, that was the friendlier way to say it. Mind-control was probably more accurate. His mother's dragon, Azrail, was a bit secretive and mostly chided him for doing stupid things, but Tommy had a feeling he could do something related to killing things. Not that he was going to ask. Azrail kind of scared him, and he only saw the massive purple and black creature about once a week when he stopped by the dragon cave. Clementine could shift into a miniature version of a dragon, about the size of a five-month hatchling.
"Five more minutes," he grumbled, and then huffed when Clementine made herself known by stepping one of her hind legs directly into his gut. "Ow."
Your mom said we needed to leave by seven in the morning.
"It's like two!"
It's four. Get up. Let's do warm-ups.
Tommy groaned but rolled over, Clementine squeaking as he threw his sheets over her head. She poked her small watermelon-sized head and threw him a baleful eye. Tommy ignored her as he peered into the amber mirror, taking a second to scrub his teeth with baking soda and water before throwing on a fresh tunic and pants and pulling on his boots.
He grabbed an apple from the bowl in the middle of the kitchen and picked up his breastplate and knife sheaths, taking a moment to make sure the one he was using wasn't covered in orc blood before cutting the apple offering half to Clementine, who was fiercely attached to his back, her claws digging into his shoulders. Once, that might've bothered him, but he'd long gotten used to her weight—no thanks to his mother, who had made him wear a backpack with rocks on hikes for seven months straight. Clementine delicately sniffed the apple before eating it in one gulp.
He heard a scuffling behind him, and looked over his shoulder to see Drista stumbling through the doorway, her hair a rats' nest and the shadows beneath her eyes prominent. Tommy raised an eyebrow at her, and she ignored him.
"Mornin', Clem," she said as she opened the cabinet and took out the coffee grounds.
"What am I, chopped liver?" he grumbled.
Good morning, Drista. Why are you awake?
"Kristin wants me to work backup in case you need a quick getaway," Drista said, filling the kettle with water and striking a match to light the stove. There was a small silence as Drista tapped her foot and waited for the water to boil.
You don't need to be up this early for that.
"I thought we'd run the course together for warm-ups," Drista said as she added the coffee grounds and hot water to the cafeteria, going up on her tippy toes to press down on the knob. She glared at Tommy, who was holding back a snicker. "Not a word."
"Short."
"Shut up," she snarled.
"You'd be a lot scarier if your hair didn't look like a bird made a nest in it two summers ago," Tommy pointed out.
Drista held his gaze, poured herself a steaming—and he meant steaming, because he was half-sure it was still boiling—and chugged it down in one gulp.
Tommy swallowed. Clementine snickered.
"So," she said conversationally, walking over to the bench where Tommy had picked up her own gear and throwing on her own, using a bit of leather to tie back her rats' nest. "You think you're ready?"
"To steal a book from a prince's tower?" Tommy snorted, standing up and batting at Clementine when she tried to chew his hair. "Not likely."
"I don't understand why Kristin is so weird about the royals," Drista said after a moment of glancing around to make sure the woman wasn't hovering randomly in a dark corner. "She gets all defensive, but not like she hates them. Not like—well. You know."
Tommy dipped his head. "I do." Drista gave a watery grin as she propped open the door. "Aren't you going to eat breakfast?"
"Well, we've run out of cranberry bagels from that one bagel stand in the flower square in the Antarctic Empire's capital..." Drista said, trailing off meaningfully.
Tommy glared at her. "Fine. I'll get you some." Drista gave a small victorious cheer. "But I'm dropping them if I get chased."
Where's Kaida?
"Sleeping," Drista replied, tapping the side of her head. "I checked."
She doesn't want to say goodbye? Clementine sounded a bit sad.
Drista snorted. "You know how she likes her beauty sleep." Her face softened. "She told me to tell you to bite some orcs if you come across them, though."
Fair enough.
Tommy loped towards the trees, Drista following wordlessly on his heels until they reached the path that started the training course. Clementine was a constant on his back, her wings spread out for balance. Thank goodness his mother had caught on and had put tiny leather patches onto his shirts where Clementine's claws went so that she didn't tear as many shirts as she'd used to.
"Ready?" Tommy asked her.
Drista laughed. "When am I ever?"
Tommy was going through a cooldown in the yard when his mother stepped through the door, carrying the pack he usually traveled with. Drista was lying on a rock; her eyes shut as she mentally argued something with Kaida. He could tell because she was losing, her face molded into a bit of a frown. Clementine was curled sleepily next to the blonde-haired girl, but she looked up when his mother stepped through the door, her hazel eyes blinking with interest.
"Remember—"
"I know, mother," he grumbled, taking the backpack from her. "You've gone through this fifteen times." It wasn't really a backpack—the line of leather usually pressed against his back was gone because it was explicitly meant for Clementine to hide in. That's why he went on the most city-based missions—he could sneak his dragon in just in case, though he'd never needed to reveal her. "I know about the traps and the tripwire outside the window, and I'll make sure the weather is cloudy enough, and it's a new moon tonight, so—" he cut himself off with a small huff of exasperation.
His mother's eyes crinkled in the corners. "I meant remember Drista's cranberry bagels from that one bagel stand in the flower square in the Antarctic Empire's capital."
"Yes!" Drista cheered.
Tommy rolled his eyes as Clementine left the spot on the rock that the newly rising sun was warming, yawning sleepily. He put on the backpack, checking the straps and making sure it wouldn't come off. The release strap was working properly, and all his knives were countered. Drista tossed him a deep blue cloak; the standard in the Antarctic Empire, and he caught it, swinging it over his shoulders.
"Clementine," his mother said. "Make sure to land before the watchtowers can spot you. It'll be snowing there, and your scales are red."
Of course.
"You're not nearly this polite to me," Tommy grumbled, throwing a thumbs-up at Drista, who, despite the fact she wasn't looking at him, returned the gesture in a smooth motion. He'd learned not to question it.
Respect is earned.
Tommy flipped Clementine off, and her response was to blink back into her regular-sized two-year-old self, sneezing.
Changing itches, his dragon complained miserably, and Tommy reached up a hand, scratching at the scales between her mouth and eye that she always said was too itchy. She leaned into him with a small rumble.
His mother cleared her throat. "I believe that's because I believe you're about to start molting," she said slowly, and then sighed. "I wish I knew for sure."
Nobody mentioned asking Azrail. Everyone knew how touchy he was about his amnesia.
"That's why we're getting the book!" Tommy proclaimed, swinging himself up onto Clementine's back, and grateful he'd trained himself to not use a saddle, otherwise it'd be a pain to transfer and carry one every time Clementine changed forms between what Drista had named 'bagel-sized Clem' and 'one hundred bagel-sized Clem'.
Mini-Clementine was about the size of a two-year-old golden retriever dog, but Tommy wasn't about to press Drista on her bagel-related issues.
His mother eyed them. "Be safe, Tommy," she said, a note of panic rising in her voice. "Don't let them catch you."
He bit back the or what that sat on the tip of his tongue, because Drista didn't deserve his mother's ire whenever he asked about her past before the Dragon Pits. She liked to pretend they'd been vigilantes hiding in the forest for their whole lives, and Drista was pretty content to pretend that Dream didn't exist and that she wasn't related to the most dangerous illegal warlord on the continent. His mother had not kept Drista's bloodline from her, but had sat down and told her that it did not define her, and that if she wished, she could mother her too.
Drista had declined, and still did, but she of all people stood so fiercely against Dream that it was truly a surprise the sun did not stop rising and setting so she could take him down.
Tommy was biologically his mother's son, but every time he asked about his father his mother would shut up for hours and give him a watery icy glare whenever he tried to talk. Clearly, there was a past there, but when he tried to prod Azrail, his mother's dragon had told him to get out of the cave so fiercely he'd been afraid that a rockslide had been about to happen. He knew that his mother had been captured by Dream when she'd been pregnant and had come across Drista before making her escape from the Dragon Pits, wherever that wretched place was, with two newborns held tightly to her and a wounded dragon at her back.
He was fifteen years old. He might've been playing in the streets with a different family. He wouldn't know how to wield a dagger—his mother said he and Drista were too young to use a full-sized sword and that they should use their size and speed to their advantage—or how to parkour between buildings in the slipperiest of sleet, or how to ride on the back of a dragon with nothing but his trust in her.
Clementine quickly made her way above the clouds—what little there were, anyway—Tommy keeping a tight grip on the spike in front of him as the wind buffered against his face and made him blink rapidly. She leveled out, wheeling towards the northern mountain ranges, where they would land on the opposite side and make their way down the slopes towards the nearest village to buy a horse. Tommy let go of the spike and curled his cloak tighter around him, shivering. They were high enough in the sky to be mistaken for a high-flying bird, though if Clementine had been any larger they probably could've been spotted. It was thankful that both she and Tommy were so young, though both of them loathed to admit that.
They avoided the watchtowers easily enough. Not many people were dragon riders, and of those that were, none of them were as young as, Clementine and Kaida. The guards would be looking for larger flying creatures.
It was snowing on the other side of the mountain range, and Tommy was glad when he reached into his pocket and found the gloves his mother had probably stuck in there, because she was prepared for anything and he probably would've stubbornly refused had she tried to hand it to him directly.
"Thanks, mother," he whispered, as he pulled them on and flexed his fingers.
Did you forget your warm clothes again?
"No," he snapped. Then he was glad that he was, at least, wearing a long-sleeved tunic and long pants, as well as boots. "Just gloves."
Clementine snorted in his mind as she started her steeper-than-necessary descent, causing Tommy to yelp and clutch her warm body tighter. She landed with a small thump in the snow, having spiraled down into a snowy taiga outside of one of the border villages. Tommy grumbled as he gingerly slid off her, and she blew hot air into his hair before promptly changing into bagel-sized Clem—he would not call her that! She wasn't even bagel-sized!—and sniffing at his pack, which he opened and she crawled in, curling up in the soft padded interior. Due to the lack of material between the back and his back, he could feel her shifting around before she finally got comfortable and lay down.
"Remember not to move," he told her.
I'm not a moron.
Tommy rolled his eyes and double-checked to make sure her tail wasn't hanging out or anything before starting his way towards the village. He got a few stares—he was a fifteen-year-old boy that had come walking out of the woods—but since he was wearing normal clothing and he didn't think he had any smudges on his face, he slowly blended into the crowds of people that were coming into and out of the Antarctic Empire on whatever journey they were taking.
They can't see me, right?
No, he sent back, and Clementine gave a satisfied rumble. He purchased a mediocre horse from the stables with nine gold, though he could probably have haggled the stable boy down to seven if he'd really felt like it.
From there, Tommy rode towards the capital.
Riding a horse was a bit different than riding a dragon, but he couldn't take Clementine because the closer they got to the Antarctic Empire, the closer that the guards watched the skies.
Apparently, Clementine had heard that thought, because she said, I'm a better mount. Tommy ignored her.
Somewhere, Drista was getting ready to back him up, her plan being to circle the city from three leagues in the night, which was where Tommy would strike. That was also when the guards watched the skies the closest, so nobody could go up or come down—but Tommy would be in place before sundown, and would be out of the city by sunrise.
Hopefully.
The capital rose in the distance, a glittering city of gold and ice, and Tommy got off his horse as soon as the line to the gate began to get crowded, leading the mare towards the back of it. The guards let him in with a barely-looked-over glance at his paperwork and didn't even bother checking his bag or in his cloak like they were doing for the adults. He'd done this a few dozen times, after all, and they never did.
Nobody suspected the fifteen-year-old boy with a story that he was going to meet his grandmother in the city away from his parents. His paperwork wasn't even technically forged. It just hadn't ever been correct in the first place.
Tommy sold the mare for eleven gold coins—and maybe there was a bit of wide-eyed stuttering to go along with the story, and maybe Clementine snorted at his fake-ass story about having the horse for eight years and absolutely needing a present for his meemaw, but that was beside the point, because he'd made a profit.
He was walking down the street just as the sun was starting its descent when he sighed and pushed his way through the door of the bagel shop in the square of the Antarctic Empire.
The lady who owned it, a brown-haired woman approximately Tommy's height, was roughly ten minutes from closing, by Tommy's estimation, when he stepped in. She turned to him when the bell jingled, probably opening her mouth to tell him that she was sorry, and that the store was closed, when she recognized him and brightened, completely changing her inflection and sentence. "Tommy!"
Why wouldn't he tell her his real name? The wanted posters for him and Drista made him in his mid-twenties, and had both dragons nearly a dozen years older than they actually were. It's not like it had his real name on it. Or even the correct description.
"Hey, Puffy," he said, grinning sheepishly.
Bagels? Do I smell bagels?
No. Shut up.
Puffy smiled warmly at him. "I take it you're here for your monthly visit for your bagels for your sister?"
"Of course I am," he sighed, not even lying. "She hounds me for them every time I come to the capital."
"Well, I'll keep her in mind," Puffy said as she reached into the shelf to pull out a bag. "I'll have to meet your sister one day."
She looks too much like Dream to enter the capital, Tommy wanted to say, but bit back his tongue and didn't. It was true enough. She might've been young, but it didn't stop her from having blonde hair and brilliant green eyes, as well as a scowl that could rival the stars. Nobody would accuse her of being Dream's sister—of course not; for all they knew, Dream didn't even have a sister—but she'd still get looks and glances when it would be safer for her face to not be remembered.
"She'll steal all your bagels," he said instead.
Puffy laughed, not having noticed his silent debate. "She keeps my cranberry demand at an all-time high," she said, handing the bag to Tommy, who took it and dropped four silver pieces on the counter wordlessly. Puffy smiled and him and pushed one of the pieces back towards him before gathering the rest of them and putting them into her belt pouch.
"Did the prices become cheaper?" Tommy asked wearily, glancing around. As much as he loathed to admit it to Drista, he liked bagels too—though perhaps not to the same degree she did—but Puffy didn't look like she was coming down on such a hard time that she needed to reduce the prices.
"You're my favorite customer," Puffy replied.
Tommy glared at her. "I don't need your charity."
She rolled her eyes. "It's not charity, duckling." Tommy scowled, and she reached over the counter to ruffle at his blonde hair. "I'm being a nice person. Are people not nice to you?"
"People are nice to me all the time," Tommy griped, which wasn't exactly true because he didn't really have any friends except for Drista and his mother, which was sort of sad. "Because I'm epic," he added. "And cool. And the biggest man alive."
Puffy smiled at him, and Tommy could've sworn there was a tiny amount of sadness that flitted across her eyes. "Oh, duckling," she sighed. "You don't need a reason for people being nice to you."
"Some people are just assholes," Tommy said.
Puffy inclined her head. "Fair enough. Although I do wish it wasn't so."
He gave a week grin. "We're only human, innit?"
"Well, we are," Puffy said. "The dragon riders, though... they're something else."
Uh oh, Clementine hissed into his head. She's onto us.
Tommy forced himself to keep a straight face like he did when his mother accused him of taking the last cookie. He had, of course, taken the last cookie, but over the years he'd gotten far better at lying. "Oh?" he asked, and winced at the higher pitch his voice had somehow ascertained. "Is that so?"
You sound like an idiot.
Shut up, he hissed back.
"They've seen it all," Puffy said, waving a hand. "They've lived hundreds of years, even the younger ones like Prince Wilbur and Prince Technoblade. "They're not going to act like you and me." Her eyes shifted to the side like she was considering a memory. "They're always different, in the end."
Tommy looked at her and realized he was going to outlive her. He was a dragon rider, like Drista and like his mother, and so he would be blessed—or perhaps doomed—with a long life. Perhaps over a thousand years, if he didn't get killed in his vigilante life.
"Old people suck," he managed to say. "My mom's pretty old," he added, like an afterthought.
Puffy laughed. "Of course she is," she said. "Well, I definitely should be closing, now. I have to get home."
"Do you have any family?" Tommy asked her.
Puffy flinched; a full-body thing that made Tommy severely regret asking such an invasive question. "I..." she said. "I used to have three children."
"What happened?"
Tommy! That's impolite! She's going to ban you from the store!
Puffy heaved out a small sigh, weary. She looked a hundred years older. "They were killed by dragon riders," she said slowly. "Not the good ones, obviously."
"I'm...sorry," he said.
You better be, you asshole.
Puffy tilted her head. "It's okay," she said finally. "It was over a dozen years ago, anyway."
That's not enough, Tommy wanted to say, because his mother was still scared of something that had happened far before he was born, but something kept his tongue glued between his lips, and it certainly wasn't Clementine's muttered whispers about him being slow and stupid and horribly tactless.
He fled the shop as soon as he could and pretended he couldn't see Puffy crying.
There were fewer people on the streets as the sun started to set, and Tommy paused against a wall and closed his eyes, reaching out his mind to Kaida.
Kaida? You there?
No answer, which meant she was either dead or she was too far away. He was going to have to go with the latter. Nothing could take Kaida and Drista down short of another dragon, and if they'd been apprehended by the royals he'd probably know. There'd be a lot of profanity.
You're a real discourteous idiot, you know that, Tommy?
Yeah, yeah , he grumbled back to his dragon, who dug her claws into his shoulder, causing him to yelp. "Ow! What the fuck?!"
A passerby gave him a weird look.
Tommy cleared his throat. "This stick got in my way."
Both of them looked down at the snow-sprinkled ground. There wasn't a stick for a hundred yards.
"Maybe stay off the crack, kid," the passerby suggested, before leaving.
Maybe you should start taking drugs, Clementine suggested. It might make you a better liar.
Tommy gritted his teeth. Shut up.
It was actually incredibly easy to sneak into the castle gardens and hide in the sewers directly at the base of the youngest prince's tower. Easier than it should have been. No rider enjoyed being separated from their dragon across large distances, and since the attackers of the Antarctic Empire were primarily dragon riders, the guards never thought to look for a kid creeping through the bushes.
Ew, it smells down here, Clementine complained, as Tommy held his breath and closed the grate.
"Deal with it," he whispered. "We'll be in here for three hours."
Gross. Yuck. I wish I was never born.
"You weren't born. We were bonded."
Can I be bonded to someone else, please?
Tommy rolled his eyes and squatted against the wall, ignoring the questionable piles of sludge and things he didn't really want to identify. He tucked his face into a corner of his cloak—he'd tied the bottom corners of it around his waist so it didn't drag in the sewage—because Clementine was right, it smelled positively terrible down here. Thank God it wasn't summer, otherwise, the heat would've made it unbearable.
He jolted awake when a voice spoke into his mind.
Tommy?
Kaida! Tommy and Clementine said at the same time.
Don't shout at me, Kaida replied. We're in position above the clouds. The stars are dim tonight. Holler if you need help.
Yes ma'am.
There was a silence.
Drista wants to know if you got —
Yes! he snapped back. Yes, I got the cranberry bagels from that one bagel stand in the flower square in the Antarctic Empire's capital! Who cared if it was a store now? It'd been a stand a few years ago, when Puffy had been just starting out, and she'd never rebranded.
She says thank you, Kaida relayed, her voice flat.
Tommy rolled his eyes and reached up a gloved hand to the grate, grimacing in disgust as something slimy and wet got onto the cloth. No matter what his mother said, he was definitely throwing them out. Nothing could get the smell of sewage out of his clothes. He had experience with that. This was far from the first time he'd crouched in a sewer.
Which was kind of sad, come to think of it.
Tommy put the grate back over the sewer and sniffed his arm, recoiling from the horrific smell.
Yeah, you do smell bad. You could make zombies run from you.
Shut up, he snapped. Clementine let out a small chuffing sound that he could barely hear over the cold wind.
He took a step back and stared at the tower, rubbing his gross-gloved hands together. "Let's fucking do this."
The guards were facing towards the outside. None of them bothered to look inwards. If Tommy was actually a good person, he probably should've mentioned it to whoever the head of security was.
But he was here to steal a book from a prince so that his dragon wouldn't grow up with stunted wings. So. He wasn't really a good person.
Somewhere high above, Kaida and Drista were flying in circles, waiting for his shout.
He climbed the tower with relative ease using a grappling hook and his upper body strength. It didn't really hurt that he was small—though he would never admit that, of course—and light. Clementine griped about him slipping the entire way up, prepared to use the inner release lever to cut the backpack away, but he was a professional and made it just fine.
Luckily for him, Prince Wilbur had left the tower open.
Unluckily for him, said prince was asleep on the desk, snoring into his arm, his gold-edged glasses askew on his face and a candle burning low far too close to his hair for it to be fire-safe.
Tommy squinted, glancing around the dimly lit room for the book. It didn't take him that long to spot it, of course, because it was bound in golden shedded dragon scales from some ancient beast and reflected in the candlelight. It was easily two inches thick, and titled A Guide To Growing Wings and all Dragon Things.
He clutched the book to his chest and was just making his way back towards the window when Prince Wilbur stirred, his head jerking up and immediately zeroing in on Tommy. "Dad?"
Tommy was quite literally at a loss for words.
Clementine, however, was not. KAIDA! she screamed.
The prince jammed the glasses on his face and quickly realized that fifteen-year-old Tommy was definitely not the emperor, although, in fairness, they did share the same blue eyes and blonde hair. "What the fuck—" he said, whipping out a knife from one of his pockets.
"I just need the book," Tommy said, not wanting to stab a royal and quite possibly die. That would be nice, thanks. "I—I don't want anything to do with you, but I need the book."
The prince frowned at him as he looked at the book in his hands. "Why do you need a book on dragons?"
He's stalling! Clementine cried out. He's a dragon rider! He's probably awakened everyone!
Tommy cursed and ran towards the window. Why hadn't he thought of that? Of course the first thing the prince would do was warn everyone.
He stumbled back from the window when a massive claw latched onto it, a dragon sticking her head through the window, her golden eyes glittering.
Tommy swallowed. She had bronze-gold scales and was smaller than Azrail, though far larger than Clementine and Kaida.
What have we here? Lyric, Prince Wilbur's dragon, purred into his mind. An assassin?
"I'm not an assassin!" he yelped, turning around to keep a wary eye on the prince, who was standing near the door, a sword procured from god-knows-where. "I'm just here for the fucking book!"
Kaida, anytime now.
Lyric tilted her head, which had to be the size of his entire body. Why do you want a book on dragons, child? she hissed. To better defeat them, hmm? Tommy opened his mouth to answer, but couldn't find the words, and her gold pupils narrowed. Speak.
His mother had once explained Lyric's ability. It was different from Kaida's in the sense that it wasn't exactly mind-control—Kaida could make you do things, but Lyric could command you to spill your secrets.
Tommy didn't get the chance to follow the order, though, because Clementine struck first, the miniaturized dragon popping out of the backpack in one smooth motion, one of her front claws resting on his shoulder and the other on the top of his head as she raised her scarlet head back, flaring her wings wide.
Stay away from him!
Lyric reared back, her golden eyes widening, and Tommy thought he heard the prince gasp from behind him.
It was then that Kaida struck from above, having barreled down at full speed at a near perpendicular dive.
The green dragon might've been smaller, but Lyric was apparently reeling from seeing Clementine and had gotten caught by surprise. Kaida barreled into Lyric from above, ripping her from the window sill in a screech of power and victory.
Go, Tommy! he heard her yell.
The door burst open behind him, and Tommy caught a flash of pink hair and wide eyes as they looked towards the small dragon on his head before he was sprinting towards the now-clear window.
"Wait—"
He jumped out the window.
