Dragons Of A Brood

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Winter's Moon,
Sun in the Great Sow,
Year 204,
Kreon's Era

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The peaks of Mons Sterne were coal-black against the rich ultramarine hues of the newborn night. Their craggy tips touched the heavens like extended talons, eager to feel the patterns woven into them by the stars.

The constellations of the Great Sow and her Twin Piglets watched over the mountain temple and over the hundreds of dragons who had gathered at its foot to celebrate the rise of the Winter Moon, the last full moon of winter that heralded spring. Tourists and believers alike flocked to Thalassus during the annual Winter's Moon Festival to see the Thalassine cloud dragon sculptors turning the land into a celebration of the season of snow.

The cool breeze from the valleys below Mons Sterne ruffled the yellow yolk scruff covering the dragon hatchling's neck. His sigh condensed into a cloud as it left his muzzle, his remained eyes fixed on the moving figure at the base of the gentle slope he was sitting on.

"Oh come on, Mae," he called down, "you're going to get us caught at this rate. We need to get back before the moon rises and the float procession begins. We have to make it back today and I mean it."

"Maybe you should try climbing uphill with a broken wing, you rotten egg," came the retort from downhill.

"Nobody climbs with their wings, you gecko, stop whining. Yesterday's slope was way steeper than this one!"

"Who are you calling a gecko, you slimy newt?! You smell like pond scum and look like a salamander."

The hatchling's right eye twitched.

"Real rich coming from someone who screams like a soaked harvest mouse each time he sees his own shadow-"

"Shut up, Hess," hissed the second hatchling with a flail of his broken left-wing as he pulled himself onto the slope's top with his sibling's help.

"-and then soils his nesting straw."

"This is exactly why nobody wants to be friends with you," Mae snapped as he steadied himself against his brother and flapped his right-wing for support.

"Did I lie?" Hess asked.

"I hate you."

"I hate you too. Now do you want to see the biggest float in procession or not? That's the secret shortcut to the workshop right there. If you want to come see it, hurry up."

The shortcut in question was a little hole dug into the side of the mountain near the slope, by an industrious rodent that led into a tunnel. The rocky tunnel was a tight squeeze and it took them much grunting and shoving to wriggle their way to freedom. Mae squealed as he tumbled out of the end of the tunnel, his fall broken by his brother's soft body. Hess growled and shook him off unceremoniously.

"Ow," he mumbled as Hess helped him onto his feet.

"You can 'ow' all you want later, now shush."

The hatchlings were careful to walk in the shadows cast by the tall stone statues of dragons and dragones lining the two sides of the rocky corridor within the mountain's heart. Folk heroes, rulers, commanders, conquerors, saints, hermits, scholars, artisans and visionaries from bygone eras were poised on their seats facing each other, locked in an eternal conversation unperceptible to mortal ears.

The statues cast stern looks at the hatchlings as they progressed forward. They watched the temple workers heave and carry gigantic ice blocks they had made from the lakes downhill for the artisans to sculpt.

The blast of cold air blew the strands of his yolk scruff away from his eyes when he entered the artisan workshop. The sculptors worked prayers on their lips as their skilled talons scraped and morphed their materials into the images they had in their minds. Snow flaked off the blocks and collected in heaps on the stone floor as they carved gardens, rivers, caverns, mountains, animals and even stunning likelinesses of dragonfolk out of the shapeless lumps. The air around him held the fragrance of wet soil and cloud magic.

"I think that dragon's sculpting Father!" Mae whispered as the hatchlings slunk past an artisan making a herd of reindeer being herded by a bearded human.

Hess followed his brother's line of sight to the grand procession float that had caught Mae's eye.

The chief artisan kept exchanging nervous glances at the dragon statue in its centre and the parchment between his talons while his assistants scraped and polished the flowers carpeting the statue's base. He mumbled something under his breath and summoned a dragon cleric who had been admiring the nearby floats with a polite whistle. Mae pushed Hess into the pile of snow gathered near the float and laid low.

"I think the muzzle is wrong again, the image looks nothing like him," he said showing her the parchment. From their vantage point, the brothers could make out the bare outlines of a portrait made with rough strokes of octopus ink on the beige reed parchment.

Hess looked up at the statue and squinted.

"It's too thin," he agreed. "Father looks like an alligator with that snout."

"You'd think the chief'd be very good at what he does, right?" Mae whispered back. The hatchlings masked their soft chuckles in the whispers and sounds of the busy workshop and sank deeper into the snow heap.

The cleric's fair, striped tail swayed from side to side as the chief voiced his concerns about the statue's accuracy.

"I'm sure the entourage would be willing to help us without drawing much attention," she said after a brief silence.

The chief artist lowered his head. "What are we to do about the guards if we wish to see him? The security is impenetrable."

"Nothing," stated the cleric with a smile curling the edges of her leathery lips. "Your request is just, celebrated master, we have no reason to be denied the sight of his visage. I shall inquire and see what corrections need to be made without compromising his safety or the details of this float. Quersis be with you."

A thought surfaced in Hess's mind as the cleric strode past them, a vestige of a desire he had long suppressed. It stung within his heaving chest and lifted a lump into his throat.

Father was here. He was right here.

Mae crooned as he rubbed his face against Hess's body and neck as he stiffened. Hess nuzzled Mae, assuring him that the cold snow hadn't gotten the better of him yet.

"Hess, can we please go see Father?" Mae asked with a familiar gleam in his eyes. "I'm bored of the floats, can we follow the cleric and see Father instead? I'll walk faster so that we can get back on time."

Hess's slit-shaped irises widened into diamonds and he agreed with a nod.

There was no hesitation from either of them to sprint after the cleric. Though they were careful to stay in the shadows, the screeches from their slips did turn a few heads in their direction. Neither of them cared as they breached the exit of the workshop and tailed the cleric as she walked down the stone corridor.

Father was somewhere within one of the many stone guest chambers of the mountain temple. The architects who had carved the temple into the mountain's core had made a thousand little chambers to house visitors, and finding Father in such an immense labyrinth of rooms would have been impossible on their own.

As the cleric unwittingly led the two hatchlings down the deepest, most guarded corridors of the mountain temple, blood rushed to Hess's head and heated his muzzle. His sinuses throbbed with the rhythm of his excited heart. He caught Mae's tail wagging as for the first time in twenty years their father's scent pervaded the air.

Father hadn't visited them in a long time, having been barred from visiting Thalassus at all by a direct order from the Imperial Cabinet of Ministers. Father hadn't liked that order very much when he had heard of it, Hess remembered and had nearly uprooted a redwood tree in his anger.

Hess briefly remembered having promised Father that he wouldn't run off on his adventures without telling Mother or his older siblings. His head dipped ever so slightly as the sounds of conversation coming from the guest chambers hit his ears.

Father would understand, wouldn't he? He knows how much I hate being holed up all day, he thought, weaving assurance after assurance into his shaking steps.

The hatchlings peered into each of the stone chambers they passed. They could see the fire-breathers of their kind igniting each bough of wood dripping with resins and fragrant oils and letting the soft golden glow spill out of the empty rooms.

Finally, the cleric slowed before a chamber guarded by a pair of fierce Imperial guards, their scarred hides mottled with the grey, brown and black hues of their mountainous surroundings. Hess felt a chill creeping up his spine as the guards' pointed horns and sharpened head spines glinted in the light of the burning boughs mounted on the corridors. When they opened their maws to question the cleric on the purpose of her visit, their serrated fangs glistened.

"Mae," whispered Hess, "Do we have to?"

His brother had his gaze adamantly fixed on the cleric's swaying tail. The guards had theirs curled up into a trained and well-practised muteness, unlike the cleric's anxious appendage.

Minutes passed before the guards decided to exchange looks and accept the cleric's request with a sway of their tails. When the two guards pushed open the stone door covering the entrance, peals of familiar laughter drifted outside. Hess felt the laughter drawing him in like a siren's song as his limbs carried him forward and away from the safety of the shadows between chambers.

One guard's nostrils flared as a cold wind wafted in through the ventilation holes drilled into the mountain's sides. It cleared the thick fragrance of the burning resins masking their senses, allowing them to catch a whiff of the faint scents of the hatchlings. Their heads snapped in the direction of the duo with lightning speed, the pupils of their eyes contracting into narrow slits.

The hatchlings cowered as they moved back, the growls radiating from the depths of the guards' throats liquifying their resolve. Hess felt the stone underneath him dissolving into slippery sand as the heavy talons of the guards slammed against the floor with each step, sending vibrations he felt in his bones.

"Who's there?" thundered one of the giants while obstructing the path to the room with half-open wings. The hatchlings froze in place. As their breaths grew slower and deeper; Hess could hear his own scared heart beating its wings against the membranes within his ears.

The maw that grabbed him by his scruff was too quick for his eyes to follow.

It lifted him into the air, spreading searing pain down his back as it held him and extracting a sharp squeal from his mouth. He thrashed in the guard's mouth as the dragon dropped him at his feet and held him down. Hess cried and yelped when the guard's shiny black talons caged him, the palm of their hand forming a muscular roof that didn't let him breathe. Through his leaking eyes, he saw the second guard capture Mae with a cruel tug of his left wing.

"Please, let him go, let him go!" he screamed, his little talons slipping against the rock below the guard's palm and letting out shrill screeches as they slipped. "His left wing's broken! Please, he's innocent, he didn't do anything, please!"

"Who are you and what are you doing so close to the Imperator's secret chambers?" asked the guard holding him hostage. His breath stank of exquisite plum wines and whale meat as it choked the hatchling.

"We got lost," Hess said, keeping his eyes fixed on Mae trapped underneath the second guard's hand. "Our mother's an artisan at the workshop. We came looking for her, we're-we're hungry."

"A terrible lie, is it not, youngling?" said the guard, baring his fangs at a whimpering Hess as he flipped him, belly upwards, and lowered his head to face him. The talons descended once again.

"They train assassins so young in the Northwest isles these days, Pelagius," he began, addressing his companion.

"Thalassine and Clymenosian assassins train hatchlings as small as seventy years, like these two little lizards, to kill their local regent's enemies. Barely out of their eggshells, smelling of yolk fluid, unable to chew, unable to fly, with their egg teeth and yolk scruff still unshed- young hatchlings, Pelagius, goddess forsaken babies."

The weight on his chest was making the world around him spin. Hess stared at the ceiling, unable to feel anything but the crushing weight of the adult's palm. His little chest heaved, but each breath felt painful and useless.

A tear slipped from the corner of his eye.

"My name. My name is is Hesperion Aleunor the other hatchling's my brother Maestral, the Imperator is my our father can we see him, can we see him?" he begged the guard towering over him.

The guard laughed.

"Oddly that's exactly what our last guest claiming to be an Aleunor had said. He had oleander wine in his gourd pouches instead of your clan's plum wine. He could have killed the Imperator with a single lick from his wine cup."

Hess heard a gargle rising from the depths of the guard's throat. He realised with a shiver that the cloud dragon was readying his breath organ for a blast of ice to finish his prey.

"My apologies, hatchlings," said the guard, "but we are not that easy to fool."