Heirs To The Throne

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

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Death smelled of frozen smoke and plum wine. It danced in the white wisps rising from the guard's nostrils to the tune of the magic bubbling within his breath organ.

Hess shut his eyes and whimpered a fading prayer as the pressure upon his chest rose, hoping that the gods could hear better in their temples.

A force slammed into the dragon above and the weight of the palm was lifted off his chest. Roars, screams and snarls of two warring dragon voices clashed with each other. Hess coughed and spluttered as he lifted his head to get a better look, but his vision was obscured by dust the tussle had kicked up. Their steps shook the walls of their rock corridor, bringing down rains of sand and gravel. He looked behind him and saw that the other guard had shielded Mae by wrapping him within the coils of his tail

"Hatchling, come here," he called to Hess as he cradled Mae and tried to pull him out of the way.

"Nika-" gasped the guard as his opponent clamped down on his throat. The strangled word was Nikator meaning victor. The dust cleared and the guard slumped to the floor, retching for air.

Hess didn't dare lift his eyes past the level of the approaching feet that alternated with each other, left, right and left. A maw picked him up by his scruff and gently lifted him, the dragon's exhalations rekindling the warmth of his yolk scruff. Hess chirped as the floor beneath him shifted and a semi-conscious Mae was picked up from the other guard's tail. His surroundings blended into a blur of golden light and greyish stone. He and Mae found themselves being lowered into a nest lined by large, fluffy bolls of white fibres from the silk cotton trees and cotton plants.

He wriggled his way closer to Mae and whispered to him, "Are you alright?"

"I am," he whispered back, waking up from the trance and fluttering his right wing to steady his broken left wing. "That was close. Gleyssier's going to kill you if he finds out."

"He's going to- I think they woke up half the mountain with that fight."

Mae chirped when a muzzle toppled him onto his side and began licking him clean. The tongue was warm and gentle while nursing them and Hess felt his worries melt away with each stroke when it was his turn. The dragon, their father licked them till they were as clean as they had been on the day they had hatched and then nuzzled the hatchlings' little snouts and bodies. His limbs and tail had encircled their makeshift nest, forming a safe barrier between them and the rest of his stunned entourage.

"Someone has been up to some mischief, haven't they?" he asked as Mae managed to latch onto his father's lower jaw with his pudgy hands. The hatchlings looked ridiculously tiny against their father's body, looking like seeds when compared to the pome of their father. The nervous whispers of his imperial entourage were drowned under their chirps and croon.

The Imperator lifted Mae's broken wing with a single talon and regarded it. His cyan eyes narrowed into a glare as it fell limp when he let it go.

"I fell on it while trying to fly, Father," Mae explained. "The healer said that it'd need a week's rest to work again."

"Is that why you two were found so far away from the basal caverns of Mons Sterne?" he asked, his eyes softening and acquiring an amused sparkle in them.

"We wouldn't have come if Gleyssier had just listened. We said that wanted to see the floats and Gleyssier said that he was busy. He's always busy when we want something," Hess said, tucking his chin into his scruff in a sulk. He noticed his father trying to hold in a chuckle while trying to maintain his composure and progress into giving him a lecture.

"Hesperion, dearest, what did we promise to each other the last time we had met?"

"That I wouldn't run off without telling Gleyssier, but Fath-"

The Imperator licked his child's head a few times before continuing.

"Your poor mother and brother must be worried sick. It is not very nice to make them fret. You can explore as far and wide as your wings could take you when you are older, little one, but right now you must stay close to Mother and Gleyssier."

He couldn't meet his father's eyes. He knew that had it not been for Father's intervention, he wouldn't have survived the confrontation with the guard. A voice within his head reminded him that had it been the Imperatrix instead of the Imperator, the guard would've had his way.

The Imperator sensed the hatchling's discomfort and nuzzled him, driving away the feeling of dread and fear that had resurfaced.

"Well, I suppose it can't be helped. We'll go see the floats together- I haven't had enough time with my darlings anyway."

"Your Imperial Highness," said a demure male voice to their right. The fire dragon attendant bowed his head and continued, "A cleric awaits your favour."

"Ah yes, thank you, Artos," said Father, turning his attention to the cleric. "Madam Cleric, what brings you here?"

While the dragon bowed and presented her case before the Imperator, his hatchlings looked around his chamber. Unarguably it was several times larger and opulent than the chambers their family was allotted at the foot of Mons Sterne. Hess peered over his father's tail to get a better look at the heavily decorated walls of the Imperial chamber.

He wondered what kind of berry juice the painters had drunk while doing the walls. Several of the creatures looked like mixtures of other animals- deers with heads of bears and tails of birds, lion-maned walruses and humans with the tails of fishes. Most others were recognisable renditions of dragonfolk, wyverns, serpents and lizards dancing in joy and receiving gifts from the rolling clouds and constellations in the sky.

Hess cocked his head when one of the murals caught his eye and pulled himself onto his father's tail for a better look. In the centre of the wall was a dragon in purple with a hundred wings, wearing a sunburst crown and floating inside an eight-spoked sun disc. A dragon pair stood on a mountain at the bottom of the wall, reaching out to her and receiving what looked like a sapling from her. The string of words beneath the odd being and the dragon couple was a chant in the encrypted language of their ancient scriptures and epics.

He did what he usually did when faced with arcane, encrypted chants like the one on the wall- he memorised the parts he could make sense of by repeating them in his head. He would put them to good use later that night by using them to scare Mae into thinking that he was summoning monsters. The thought of Mae's high-pitched screams on seeing what he had in mind for him put a happy sway in his tail.

The cleric's discussion was interrupted by the arrival of an air dragon messenger. She stopped before the two new Imperial guards assigned at the door and stated her purpose while panting.

"Milord," she informed with a quick bow. "Her Imperial Majesty has arrived at the temple and is on her way to the chamber. Her scouts will be here soon."

Silence prevailed for some time. The Imperator looked at the messenger and then at his two hatchlings. His tail wound tighter around the nest for a split moment. Looking over his shoulder, he summoned one of the Imperial guards who had been watching over the guard he had attacked. This one was a tall dragon with a broken horn and a scar on her upper jaw.

"Cassia, escort my children to their mother at the mountain's base safely. The Imperatrix must not see them anywhere near this chamber. Do not return once your task is accomplished- you may retire for the day and return tomorrow. May I entrust my hatchlings to your maw?"

The dragon nodded, bowed deeply and said, "Yes, Nikator, as you wish."

The Imperator licked the hatchlings' heads and muzzles once last time.

"Take care of yourselves, all of you," he said, his voice deeper than before with disappointment as the Imperial guard picked them up one by one. Behind them, Hess watched the fire dragons of the attendants purging the room of their scents by burning the cotton padding. The Imperator's eyes were quick to glaze over from the black smoke and soot rising from it.

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"And does that mean you can run off as you please, Hess?"

Gleyssier covered the entirety of his stone chamber in five steps as he paced around. He was a fledgeling half his father's size at a hundred-and-sixty-years, eager to leave his mother's side and find a new home of his own.

"No," Hess mumbled, his head hung low and eyes fixed on his older brother's talons. He could hear his mother talking to the Imperial guard who had escorted them to their cave at the mountain's foot in the adjacent chamber. Mae had pretended to be fast asleep when they had arrived to excuse himself from having to listen to Gleyssier.

That no-good traitor, Hess thought, leaving me all alone to hear Gley's livid preaching. Nobody falls asleep that fast. I'll get him when I go back, the little pretender.

Livid was an understatement— the fledgeling was nearing combustion from all the pent up anger.

"Do you have any idea what could have happened to the two of you while you were off adventuring? This temple is crawling with assassins sponsored by nobles, both local and foreign tonight and the heavens have mercy if the Imperatrix herself is out for Aleunor blood. How can I protect you from them if you are out of my reach? No one, no one would've batted an eyelid had they found your cold, dead bodies."

Gleyssier paused to take a deep breath and turned to face him.

"I am tired of having to keep an eye on you all the time, Hess, would it hurt you to make protecting you easier for me?"

"Well, I never asked to be protected by you!" Hess stated flatly.

The lash from his older brother's tail struck him across his muzzle, extracting a howl of pain from the hatchling.

"And I wouldn't have bothered if it weren't for Mother," Gleyssier snapped back.

Hess hissed at him in vain as he strode off, unable to talk and blinking back the tears welling in his eyes.

The walk back to the chamber he and Mae were nesting in was long and miserable. He saw that white muzzle had turned a bright red from the lash in his reflection in the drinking pool. It throbbed through the night, robbing him of a good night's sleep and making him crankier than he already was. Mae on the other end snored blissfully in his nest, his snout tucked comfily under his tail. He growled at his brother and decided to take his anger out in a rather unorthodox way.

Mae woke up to the sound of his brother sitting on his haunches in the middle of the chamber and chanting something.

"Keep it down, will you?" he muttered while peering through half-open eyelids. Hess simply initiated the second phase of his devious plan. The sound of his chanting grew louder and faster and he repeated the summon he had memorised off the Imperator's chamber walls till his jaws hurt. Mae's voice interrupted him now and then with a feeble call of his name.

"Hess? What are you doing? You're scaring me."

Mae had by then tried to bring to the very primitive runes drawn with charcoal on the floor to its artist's attention. Hess didn't budge and kept chanting, enunciating each word with more aggression than before. Mae's incessant prodding with his tail or talons didn't faze him.

"Hess?"

Now, Hess thought.

Mae screamed at the top of his lungs when he saw Hess' face and bolted for the safety of his nest. He trembled as he covered his head with his healthy wing and peeked at his brother.

The hatchling wasn't done yet. Hess had painted his hide with the charcoal and ash falling from the burning wooden torches mounted on the walls. He was quite satisfied with the result of looking like a reanimated hatchling skeleton. He lumbered closer to Mae, emitting guttural cries and rasps, rolling his eyes to the back of his head and showing only their whites to his brother.

Maestral looked so terrified of him that Hess thought that he had done a wonderful job.

That was until Mae tackled him to the ground with a cry of "Hess, behind you!"