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In the midst of a herd of frightened cattle, a sleek black dragon stopped reaching for her next meal; the sound of clumsy dragon wings surprising her enough to cause her to look to the sky in time to see a rapidly growing red spot.
She couldn’t help but let out an irritated rumble when she realized that was indeed a full grown dragon coming towards her, flapping their wings like a loud and clumsy fledgling.
With no small amount of suspicion, she took a few steps back, just in time for the ruby dragon to slam into the ground with enough force that she almost could feel the pain that must be jolting through his legs. Ignoring or somehow not feeling the pain, he pivoted and immediately launched towards her, claws first, in the dumbest attack move she’d ever seen used against another dragon.
With a grace honed by hundreds of years of battle, she silently slipped under his outreached claws before cracking her tail like a whip and catching the juvenile in the face with the brunt of her muscle.
If he was a decent fighter, his youth might’ve been an advantage. Afterall, she was old enough to be his great grandmother and all the training in the world would eventually be made useless by old age.Yet what she lacked in youth, she seemingly more than made up for in her experience fighting another dragon.
And it didn’t hurt that she towered over him so much so that she would have to crane her neck to look them in the eye.
The tail slap seemed to disorient him much more than anticipated, allowing her to roll and pin him under her larger body. He tried to thrash a bit but she wasn’t in the mood to play fairly, leading to her biting down on the skin of his neck and essentially scruffing him.
Abusing this weakness in a fight when she was a fledgling would have caused a massive uproar but at this point, she doubted she could even find a third dragon to observe the offense. And after seeing how empty the world seemed without her kinfolk, she wasn’t entirely interested in killing one of the few of them left. It was a mercy more than an insult.
This didn’t stop his ranting and roaring.
She had been able to ignore his whining amidst the fight but now that he was pinned and helpless, he only seemed to get louder and more bold.
-why you would want him because he is the best Stanley but you cannot have him! He is my Stanley! My brother! My-
She clamped her claws around his snout to shut him up.
“What is a Stanley and how is it your brother? She rumbled cooly, unwilling to let him go just so she could .
Despite still being held to the ground, he seemed to preen at her interest in a treasure from his hoard. “A Stanley is the bestest person in the whole world.”
“ That explains nothing, brat ,” she growled as she carefully poked around his body trying to find what a Stanley was and why it was so valuable that he had gone out of his way to start a fight to defend it. All she found was a few sores where he had improperly removed his shed and a strange number of claws on each hand.
“Stanley is mine-”
She hissed and let go of his scruff, replacing the paralysis with pain and she pressed hard against his wing, forcing it out of its natural position and causing him to whine with the pain.
“Are you a particularly large hatchling? Because otherwise I would not know how you survived long enough to reach maturity. Between your graceless flying and your pitiful fighting, I’m guessing you’re not a true dragon.”
She had no interest in the awkward silence that followed, hissing wordlessly into his ear.
“Cursed!” The red dragon yelped, finally answering.
“Pathetic,” she huffed.
Another time she might’ve given him the grace not to roll her eyes when he whined, “I am not.” But she was already tired of dealing with him.
“What. Is. A. Stanley?” She hissed at him, punctuating each word with a relatively gentle smack to the face.
Instead of continuing to pin him, she pulled back all the way, giving him room to scramble to his feet and shake the dirt off. From how close he was holding his tail, he seemed to also be trying to shake off intense embarrassment as well.
“Well, since you are so uncultured, I will explain.” he huffed before launching into a history that had apparently started over thirty years ago. Oh joy.
She would have to chase down some cattle so she could treat this as dinner and a show but hopefully this be entertaining enough until she had to go back to her hoard.
—
“-second rune all on his own!” Six (as he insisted on being called) chirped, going as far as to excitedly turn in a full circle.
“Impressive.”
He reared back, roaring, “The most impressive!” not caring about his volume as they had long ago scared away nearly every living creature in a mile or ten.
Not that there were very many living creatures left.
Her hunger had overrun her patience rather early in the story so she had at least convinced Six to corral some of the cattle together and have a barbeque. They had a decent pile left, roasted to perfection by her low, sustained fire and a patience he obviously did not have.
Six had just started feasting, not a care in the world that he looked like a messy toddler with blood running down his chin and stray foliage getting picked up by the drying fluid.
It almost reminded her of her own hatchlings and the nostalgia ached fiercely.
“Well, Six, I am very glad for your urge to bring that automaton with you. From what my elders told me, it was already hard enough for a brand new sorcerer to develop their magic even when they had access to others for help.”
Six crooned, physically preening at the acknowledgement. “Yes! See? I take the best care of my Stanley, even when I wasn’t trying to take care of him.”
“Except for the ten years he was struggling to survive and you didn’t make the slightest amount of effort to even get in contact.”
Six immediately snapped back to an aggressive pose, uncarring that she hadn't even gotten off the ground from where she was lounging.
“Am I wrong?” She rumbled, trying to encourage him to keep their argument from becoming physical.
He huffed, dropping to the ground like a grumpy barn cat.
“Humans don’t appreciate their treasure like they should. I was a bad human but now I’m a good dragon that will take the best care of my Stanley.”
Before she could respond, Six’s head shot straight up scanning the forest. “ Horse ,” he reported.
Of course it was. If it was carrying a knight or prince or whatever trying to slay her to earn a reward, she was just going to cremate them both. It’s not like she was hungry anymore and if they had any precious metals on them, she would be able to just pick the melted slag out of the mess.
Rather than bother to get up, she rolled over to get a better look at her new annoyance but instead of the shine of a polished knight or a showy royal, she watched as a rather average man quickly rushed to Six’s side.
“Do you realize how fucking long it took me to find you?!” The man shouted with all the confidence of a man not talking to a dragon.
Six seemed unphased by the noise, too distracted by how excited he was to see the little human. As soon as he got off the horse, he was being carefully snatched up by Six’s claws and cradled against the dragon’s snout.
“My Stanley!”
She almost laughed at the absurdity of this plain looking man being such an important treasure to a dragon but was surprised as she watched him quickly draw a rune in the air, blasting his brother in the face with a playful golden gust of wind.
The little human struggled a bit more physically but it was obvious his irritation was quickly abetting now that he had found his brother. It was cute, like a couple of hatchlings squabbling over a copper coin.
As quickly as she dared, she stood and padded closer. Six seemed completely uninterested in her now that he had verbally established his claim (another sign of a clueless hatchling). But his Stanley quickly caught sight of her and she could feel the threatening hum of unrestrained magic as he started gesturing frantically at her, shouting something she couldn’t quite make out.
Using Six’s ignorance as her advantage, she lunged for the other Dragon’s neck again, reigniting the paralyzing nerve she had used a hundred of times with her own brood.
Quickly, to not allow Stanley to fall very far, she quickly cupped her claws under him, gently transferring Stanley to her hold despite his angry (and oh-so small) shouts about being manhandled.
“Nest time for now. You will know when your hoard is threatened.” she rumbled despite still having her mouth on Six’s neck.
“What?” Six hissed.
Turned to begin to drag him slowly in the direction of the temporary nest she had built in preparation of napping after her meal. It was incredibly awkward compared to how once upon a time, she could just pick up her hatchlings entirely in her mouth when transferring them between spaces.
Now she was stuck walking two steps, dragging Six a few feet across the grass and repeating the whole process again. She couldn’t even use all four legs to walk as she was still carrying Stanley.
“Stop this! What are you doing?!” Six tried to roar, struggling weakly and nearly smacking Stanley out of her hand.
“Hatchling dragon, hatchling sorcerer. Need mother. My Stanley, my Six.”
Six just made a half confused noise that she ignored in favor of the shouts coming from her cupped hand.
She was a little disappointed as she realized, based on his swearing up a storm and repeated blasts of cold and fowl smelling air, that Stanley most likely did not understand draconic and didn’t know that she was helping them.
Pity. If she could at least explain, he would at least relax and bit and stop wasting his magic on an opponent who wasn’t even trying to hurt him.
In the time she had fallen silent, the two of them had turned their ire towards each other despite the communication block.
“And since when could you be dragged around like a cat?! That’s the dumbest weakness ever!” The little human screeched.
“Not if only maternal dragons can use the right kind of pressure points.”
“Whatever excuse you just gave, is not good enough!”
“Fledglings, you are fleglings, both of you.”