The Gathering

・✦・
Waning gibbous,
Sun in the Northern Serpent,
Year 404,
Kreon's Era
・✦・

The pet had thrown herself off the summit's edge when no one was watching. There was a bizzare beauty to her lifeless body as it lay spread eagled on a scarlet patch of snow. The human bystanders claimed that she was last heard screaming obscenities at her Nivalior master. Hesperion had to question six pets one after the other to collect and piece together the whole story. She was going blind, numb and deaf, screaming about invisible ants crawling across her skin and crying out in pain before dying by her own accord.

"Poor thing," said the Nivalior master as he flipped the body over with his talon. The humans had flocked to Hesperion's front legs the moment they had heard the dragon speak their tongue, which made walking difficult for him. Hess leaned towards her body and sniffed her clothes and patchy, balding hair.

"You gave her mercury, Lord Nivalior?" he asked in disbelief as the scent of the mineral hit his nose.

How could someone not know something so basic about their pets?

Dragons often chewed cinnabar to clean their stomachs whenever they had indigestion, but to humans, mercury was a death sentence.

Hess looked around at the humans crowding near him and wondered if they knew what was being fed to them with love. Their eyes, a spectrum of anxious blues, greens and browns, stood awaiting his words.

"She wasn't eating enough," explained the master while stroking the human's swollen face with a talon. His voice broke into a whisper towards the end of his sentence. "What was I supposed to do?"

"Mercury," Hesperion started in measured tones, knowing that the humans weren't the only ones paying attention to him, "is extremely toxic to humans and so is lead, arsenic and any mineral that glows in the dark. It kills them slowly and painfully, bit by bit and I suspect you've been feeding this one a lot of cinnabar."

"Oh, I did...I did not know that, good Quersis," said the dragon, his neck spines erecting and dropping, the anxious energy of his waving tail stiffening into shock. "This is terrible. She was a favourite in our clan, calm, sweet and well-behaved. I wonder what the children would think; the hatchlings were quite fond of her."

Hesperion drew her eyelids shut with gentle licks. Her scent was fading from her slowly, turning into that of death's. 

"What was her name, Lord Nivalior?"

"We called her Clay-eyes."

"Not the one given by you," Hess said looking into the Nivalior heir's steel grey eyes. He thought he saw a glimpse of sympathy for the departed human and hoped that it would help the girl's body be buried with her traditional human rites instead of ending up as someone's evening snack.

"What was name the humans called her with?"

A voice spoke up from near his legs.

"Her name was Misari, sire," said a human male as he rocked the toddler playing with his beard. "She was a streamstress from Milanth."

Hesperion didn't know what a streamstress was but the place sounded familiar. His tail tip rose as he racked his brain for information. He ignored the stunned looks of the Nivalior heir near him. "Milanth is the island with the twin volcanoes, is it not?"

"Yes sire, she was sold off to the Empire by her father to pay his debts to the Milanthian State."

Hess never really understood how humans assigned value to those of their kind— the cost of a human was arbitrary at the pet markets in Clymenos. He wondered why they even bothered selling their own at times for bits of gold ore. Then again humans loved over-complicating the simplest of things with unnecessary social biases and rules.

"Were you sold with her, little ape?" he asked the man. The human did the head movement that meant no.

"No, we hail from Beval near Milanth and we had volunteered to come here, sire. To serve dragonkind is to serve Allmother Querin. Our brethren from Milanth sadly do not share our views and she was less than pleased to be here."

Querin, Hess recognised, was what a certain group of humans living in the Far West called First Light Quersis outside the archipelago, but he had no idea where in the Far West Milanth or Beval were.

The dragon hoped he'd spread his wings over a human urban sprawl outside the archipelago one day, and see their metropolises, cities, architectural marvels and quaint countrysides. He also wished to see the rivers, lakes, the volcanic mineral baths, the mountain ranges and canyons his humans had told him so much about. 

The Nivalior Heir interrupted his train of thoughts with a polite cough. "It's marvelous that you can talk to the apes, Lord Aleunor. It had never occured to me that the chittering was so complex."

"It's a shame that pet owners don't pick it up fast enough," Hesperion replied with a sideward wave of his tail. "Quick learners, they vocalise quite well- a few of my humans have managed to speak dragon tongue."

"That's astounding," said the Nivalior heir, but his excitement remained confined to his syrinx.

Hesperion wished that he knew the Nivalior clan well enough to wager a guess as to who this dragon was and how he was related to Dianthe. Perhaps he should've asked Dianthe about her clansfolk beforehand.

Dragons usually traced their clan ancestry along the maternal lines with the clan Matriarchs being the head. Though social norms dictated it, it was the usually Matriarch's eldest son or mate who held the power while the Matriarch played mother bird to the clan's latest brood.

The Aleunor Clan had nine living members including his Matriarch mother Mitharin, his spinster aunt, his six siblings and himself. Pruina would have been the next Matriarch had she not eloped, and the crown now grew on his other sister Argyrar's head much to her annoyance.

Hess knew that the Caelior clan had Matriarch Livia, two of her siblings and seven or eight children. And that was without counting her mongrel children.

The only thing he knew about the Nivaliors was that the clan had nearly died out when its last Matriarch had died of scale rot after hatching five sons. The sons had to change their hatchlings' clan loyalties from the maternal clan to theirs. The Nivalior-Caelior relations had been sour ever since, Hesperion would have to address that if needed at this meeting.

"My clan is expecting my presence," Hess said with a flap of his wings as was expected of him while excusing himself, making the dragon look up from the human's body. "Pleasant flight, Lord Nivalior."

"Thank you for your help, Lord Aleunor, Quersis be with you. We shall be more careful with the others," murmured the dragon, flapping his own.

Hess noticed the unhealed gashes on the Nivalior heir's wing membranes similar to Rybon's. He counted several Nivaliors sporting the same and wondered if the seas had grown crueler to their children.

The paths leading to the flat mountain summit were narrow sharp bridges connecting one peak to another. The individual scents of the dragons gathered at the summit had coalesced into one giant cloud that announced their presence to others. As he entered the central space, his stomach twisted itself into knots like a tropical python strangling its prey.

Surrounding him sat a council of twelve elder dragons lounging on rocks and breath-sculpted ledges of ice, behind whom sat the rest of their clans. The elders were the behemoths of their species, having grown to enormous proportions over time and half a wingspan taller than most young male dragons of their clans. They wore their scarred hides and broken horns with pride, their glazed grey eyes watched him with apprehension as he walked towards the centre. The air was sweltering with their power.

Hess exhaled and surveyed his surroundings. Livia Caelior sat to his right with her siblings and hatchlings, chewing on a sundried strip of what smelled like walrus meat.

Endymion Nivalior who was effectively the Clan Patriarch and his son, Valerius sat to his left jesting with Endymion's brothers. Judging from the leftovers of their last meal, the smaller meetings had adjourned for snacking on the local fauna.

Before him sat his mother Mitharin Aleunor talking to his Aunt Cerah along with the rest of the Aleunor clan. Hess knew that he hadn't visited them in a long time and hoped that his mother wouldn't bring it up.

"Quersis shines on you, Clan Aleunor," he greeted them with a dip of his head and a flap of his wings.

The Aleunor Matriarch nodded and the two spread their wings, welcoming the dragon to approach them. Mitharin Aleunor had time claim the silver of her hair and replace it with the dark greys of raw hematite. Almost all of her offsprings had inherited her icy blue eyes, whose slit like pupils contracted as her son approached her.

"Shame on you for wearing that ridiculous braid to an event like this, Hess," she whispered as she extended a leathery arm towards her son's mane. Hess blocked its approach with his horns and pushed them away slowly. Mitharin hissed, making Cerah laugh.

"Now, now Mitharin, I hear that's all the rage in the Capitol," said Cerah as she shook the blood out of her mane and held down the neck of the dead moose. Behind her, his distant cousins and relatives ate their scraps in silence.

"The Capitol's madness can remain there. You think that they would take his concerns seriously? His hide's barely hardened, and he still smells of yolk water. I should be the one talking," said Mitharin. Hess did have his doubts, after all, he was to convince the elders who had watched new mountains rise and rivers change their courses in their lifetimes to go to war with a powerful clan.

"Mother, trust me, they will listen," he said as he craned in to lick his mother's face. Mitharin sighed and nuzzled him, gathering him under her cover of her wings.

"My evening star is all skin and bones, his mane scales are so brittle," she said as she rubbed her muzzle against his and licked his face, "if you only took care of yourself like I had."

Hess crooned and remained still as the rest of the clan let out amused trills and whistles. As embarrassing as it was to have your mother treat you like a hatchling before a dignified crowd, it was considered extremely disrespectful to refuse a Matriarch's grooming.

He looked at his Aunt over his mother's shoulder and asked, "Was it you who had suggested that match with Ianara to the Head Cleric?"

"Yes and what about it?" asked Cerah, cocking her head. Hess immediately dropped his spines and lowered his muzzle. If Gleyssier's plan had to work, the Aleunors had to stay together.

"I'm not ready to have a mate and raise hatchlings, Aunt Cerah, not anytime soon."

"That's exactly what your brother had said when he was matched with Dianthe. Two hundred eighty is age enough to start having chicks of your own, little bird."

Says the spinster at five hundred, Hess thought.

But he wasn't here to fight his aunt. That could wait till he had an alliance within the comfort of his talons. He took a deep breath, erected his mane scales and flared his nostrils. His tail eased into an elegant poise.

Hesperion needed answers and promises.

"Mother, what must I address so that we leave this mountain as allies against Clan Hellebor, besides the Imperatrix and the prisoners in the Iron Maw?"

The eyes that had seen seven hundred sunrises on earth shone like the chips of ice on which rested her claws on.

"You know more than you think you do. The Aleunors have forgotten your dead siblings, my evening star. The Caeliors forget the daughters mated against their wills and left to rot in the wilderness with their unclaimed broods. Remind the Nivaliors of the seas that suffer and of the feasts Carnelia hosts at the expense of their sickly hatchlings. Remind the clans of a war the Hellebors had waged during a drought, of the sons and daughters who died in vain. Speak your mind."

Hess briefly wondered why Gleyssier didn't ask their mother to talk the elders into an alliance. Her words would have sufficed, coming from all those years of suffering, polished in the riverbeds of her anguish and humiliation.

Was Gleyssier setting him up for failure? He wasn't sure.

His mother's eyes darted to his flicking tail.

"You're afraid, love," she said, extending a hand to stroke his muzzle and jaw.

"Perhaps."

"They've forgotten, these lumbering beasts that you fear so much, hatchling. Their teeth and claws have gone blunt, rotting in their sockets as they grow soft, fat, blind, barren and... insipid with each passing solstice. What you fear is nothing but the lingering scent of an era long gone."

"They still have power, Mother, can't you taste it in the air?"

"Yes and it's fading, hatchling," said the dragoness. "It won't be long before a very familiar personal scent flavours the air."

Hess pressed his forehead against his mother's. The ivory of their horns clinked against each other as he licked her face. The elders were stirring from their midday naps.

"It's time, Mother, Aunt Cerah, pray for me."

Cerah flexed her right hand before her chest as if she were twisting an imaginary, heart-sized orb held within the clasp of her talons. The sign was an ancient blessing calling on Quersis for guidance. Hess bowed his head.

Mitharin crooned and nuzzled his neck.

"Imespes, watch over his breath and word," she whispered, threading her fingers through his mane.

He looked over at Cerah for help as his mother threatened to pull him into a hug again. His aunt whistled.

"Enough, Mitharin, he is not a hatchling. Treat him like a full grown dragon."

"My hatchlings are my hatchlings till I become the land, dear sister," Mitharin hissed.

Serah hissed back. "Not to the clan elders. Do not undermine him by coddling him like a newly hatched before the others."

As the noon sun hit its peak in the sky, an elder of the Caelior clan flapped and spread her wings, casting a large shadow across the centre of the gathering. Her roar tamed the buzz of the crowd into a hushed murmur. She made a clicking sound and dropped her wings.

"Let us begin," she said, her eyes burning holes into the back of Hesperion's skull.