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His name was El Nido del Demonio.
At least, that was how it would be translated. In his own language, he was named for his home, his volcano; but to the neighboring humans, the volcano was named for him—"The Demon's Nest." So translated from Titanus rodan caws to Homo sapiens words, although his species was Rodan, his name was El Nido del Demonio. But "Nido" will suffice.
Nido and his volcano were a single entity. His body filled his volcano as much as his volcano filled his body. All of his kind hatched like him—incubated in seething calderas, rising into the sky like an eruption—and all were named for their volcanoes.
So he had been told, anyway. The little one who was constantly renewed like the moon—hatching small and soft and defenseless, returning to her egg, hatching again with thin fragile wings, dying, and hatching again—she had been the one to tell him the name he and his volcano shared. She'd transmitting the sound of his unique caw as a silent thought. (She hadn't been incubated in her island's volcano—it was long dead, she said—but she told him the name for it anyway, so he'd have something to call her: Infant.) Without Infant's help, he might still not know he and his volcano had a name.
No one else would have been able to tell him. He'd been born alone. He had never seen another of his own kind alive.
But Nido had seen the eggs of some of his kind, yet to be born—and some that had dried out into stone, their cradles cooling before the eggs could hatch. He'd found the bones of his kind, buried under igneous rock. He knew without being told that, someday, when he made eggs, he should bury them in volcanoes with many bones in the sides—it meant they were fertile cradles.
He knew eventually he would see another of his own kind. Unless every volcano in the world grew cold and hard, someday someone else would hatch. Nido wondered at times what they would look like when they hatched. Of course, smaller than him at first—but what then? Would they look identical to him? When he looked at the other people of the world, most of those of the same kind as each other looked so similar he had a hard time telling them apart. But then, he'd also seen pairs that looked so different he hadn't known they were the same until he'd been told and shown the similarities. Would his kind be like that?
What were the things that Nido thought marked him as what he was? Wings without arms. Horns. Clawed feet. Molten stone coating his body and hardening into armor. A way of flying like no one else, tearing the world below him asunder. When he met a person like that, he would know he'd found another of his kind.
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So when he pursued a flock of unusually large and irritating birds into a hurricane, and found someone at the heart of it he'd never seen before—winged without arms, three splendidly horned heads, clawed feet, molten gold hardened into armor, and a way of flying that tore storms down from the very sky—he thought to himself that, although he would have preferred obsidian to gold, and it wasn't quite what he'd expected, he could work with this. Gold was nice, too.
Then he'd attacked.
Nido couldn't explain why he attacked him, in the same way he couldn't explain why he knew that he should place his eggs in volcanoes with many bones. The instinct coursed through him, the need to fight as hot as the magma in his veins: claws forward, diving in to grapple. He'd fought plenty of times before, but never one of his kind. This was a different fight, although he wasn't sure how.
He'd figure it out as he went. He always did when he was following the things that he knew but hadn't been taught. He'd do what felt correct, and by the end he'd have made sense of it—
A couple minutes later, floating in the ocean, the salt water hissing on the flames at the edges of his wings, staring in a daze up at the clouds dumping rain on him—he couldn't say he'd made any sense of it.
But he knew he liked it.
And he knew he wanted to do it again.
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(Somewhere nearby, Infant's friend picked a fight with the golden one, something bright exploded, and a lot of fish died. Nido just sort of stared at the clouds. It was none of his business.)
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Nido had been issuing the golden one a challenge, he realized. Belatedly. He'd wanted to see how the golden other fought. He'd wanted to impress the golden one, and to see whether the golden one impressed him.
He only figured this out when he heard the golden one's eerie scream carrying over the ocean, and inexplicably panicked.
His instincts kicked in under the panic: Nido had been impressed, but the golden one hadn't decided whether he was impressed, and was issuing a return challenge: this panic, this command to be afraid, to be furious, to run, to trample, to destroy anything that might possibly look like a threat. The panic came into his head the same way that Infant's messages did, directly inserted without his will. As much as he wanted to roar in fear and anger, to flee from everything in every direction, to blow away anything that threatened to get anywhere near him for fear that it might tear him apart—he knew, somehow knew, that his kind issued each other terrifying challenges to test their courage. The golden one must want to see if he could be brave in the face of a fearsome foe and overcome his panic-rage.
He'd be brave.
While, unknown to Nido, people all over the world woke up, heard the same scream, gave in to the rage-terror, and began to rampage, driven by instinct he did everything in his power to resist it.
He tore at the panic, flailing and sinking under the water, rising back up spluttering, shaking his head. He slapped at the chopping waves a couple of times before he managed to get his wings under him. He wanted to run away—which way was away?—any way, as long as it was away—and his heart pumped faster in fear and every raindrop felt like the brush of a fang threatening to stab through his stony armor. But instead, he fought to turn toward home.
The wind displaced by his flight caused the ocean below to part in deep gashes and crash back together behind him. By the time he reached his volcano, he'd outraced his panic.
The golden one was waiting on Nido's volcano—why was he there? Had he had faith that Nido would meet his challenge? Only one of his three heads spared Nido a glance as he approached. The golden one was certainly making quite a show of playing aloof, for someone sitting on the nest of the guy he'd just grappled with.
The storm over the ocean had followed the golden one inland, and the first drops of chilly rain stung Nido’s wings. He landed at the base of his volcano, and wondered what to do now. They had fought, and they'd both met each other's challenges; what was the next step?
Even though they'd both impressed each other, the golden one had obviously proven to be the stronger fighter. And so, therefore, the golden one would take the lead.
Nido spread his wings, dipped his head, stretched out his neck; it said, I turn my spines and beak and claws away from you. It said, if you want to climb behind me, to bite my shoulders and the back of my neck where my stone skin is thickest, you may. It said, you’ve won me over, and I'll follow you anywhere. He had bowed to yield in a fight before; but he had never been taught to say the rest, and yet he knew that that was what he was saying.
The golden one looked directly at him, now, all three heads focused on him. Nido couldn't read his gazes—couldn't tell what he was thinking.
But then, he'd never met one of his own kind before.
He'd figure it out as he went.