Dragon Breath

"There's a strange scent coming out of this forest." Narpheia said.

Gravuss looked doubtfully at his companion. She was quite a beautiful dragon, despite her growing gauntness and sagging eyes. Sunlight penetrated her leathery wings in undulating patterns of dancing shadows across her scales, accentuating their unique colors of gold and green. In another life, perhaps Gravuss would have taken her for his mate, but life in its current state held little value in such things.

"I smell nothing," Gravuss replied, "Other than dung and leaves, same as the last four days."

"I don't think you can. The scent is...familiar, yet altogether foreign. I think magic might be involved."

"Magic?" Gravuss repeated, and glanced around hastily, suddenly feeling exposed out in the open sky. Dragons had not been immune to magic in over 500 years. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. But like I said, it's strange, different from anything I've picked up before."

Gravuss growled, a low rumble shaking the surrounding air like thunder. He hated walking through forests, preferring open areas like plains or mountain peaks. "Very well then, let's find a place to land."

Before long, they found a small clearing to land in; a good thing, despite Gravuss' misgivings concerning forests. He needed sleep, was perhaps more tired than he had ever been, and he ached all over. The reality of his growing weakness disheartened him. Less than a hundred years ago, dragons soared the skies for hours and never tired, but that seemed like a lifetime ago.

"Is this thing close by?" He wondered, looking around warily. If only he had a clue what he was supposed to be looking for.

"Yes, just ahead, maybe only a few dozen wings away." Narpheia said, beginning to quiver excitedly. "I've never smelled anything like this, Gravuss."

"You already said that." Excitement? Gravuss mused. When was the last time one of us experienced that? Years, maybe. Perhaps since the first of them began to sicken and die.

"Be careful." He warned, but as always, she barely acknowledged his words with a nod.

Soon after entering the forest proper, the trees thinned considerably, opening to a small clearing just large enough for them to squeeze in together if they tucked their wings firmly to their sides. A vague itch on his back made him look around uneasily, but he quickly forgot his discomfort once he spotted the source of Narpheia's excitement.

In the center of the clearing, a blackened mound of earth rose slightly above yellowed grass and the surrounding dead leaves, a stark contrast to the greenery inside the rest of the area. On top of the mound sat a hume hatchling, no more than three summers old, as though waiting for them. It was unconcerned by their presence, and only continued to look at them with calm detachment as they drew nearer.

Gravuss snorted in disgust, his curiosity draining away like water through claws. "Bahumat's black flame, you've never scented a hume before?"

Narpheia, however, shook more than before. Her nostrils widened to the size of small boulders. "If you could swap your nose with mine, you would not act so supercilious, Gravuss. There is something very special about this hume."

"There is nothing special about humes. They don't even make good snacks, especially when they're young."

"Don't be such an unobservant scatterbrain, Gravuss!" Narpheia snapped. "You wouldn't need a Scenter's nose if you only used your eyes for once!"

Gravuss blinked in surprise and moved his head closer, fixing the hume in one eye. It did not so much as flinch, but maybe hume hatchlings didn't frighten easily. Dark, curly hair framed a round face with light green eyes and pale brown skin, and no animal hides covered the exposed bits like the other humes wore. Beyond that. . .

"I don't see --" he began.

"Bahumat's wings shelter me from fools! Look at the mound, Gravuss! See those crystalline patterns around the edges? No normal fire caused that."

Gravuss frowned. Surely, he misunderstood. "Are you implying magic caused that?"

Narpheia nodded matter of factly. "Just so."

"But hume's can't use magic!" He sputtered. "Did you hit your snout on something?"

"So, you're a Scenter now, Gravuss? Or do you now doubt my ability? I tell you, there is magic mixed in with this hume's scent, enough to fill a lake with, or may my wings be cut off and given to the cowardly gods."

Gravuss blinked, a little taken aback. "Never in our oldest telling has there been mention of a hume with the ability to wield magic. Now you say this hume hatchling can?"

Narpheia shook her head, and the little hume laughed, holding out its claws in small clutching motions as if to grab one of her scales. "I don't know, Gravuss. Perhaps this is a question for the elders."

"Perhaps." Gravuss said, but he hesitated. What if this thing was somehow dangerous? That didn't seem possible, given its size, but who knew what damage even a tiny hume might cause with the use of magic?

As if reading his mind, Narpheia said, "There is no need to take it all the way to the mountain home. We'll only fly as far as Talon Peak. One of us will stay with the hume while the other goes to bring the elders."

Gravuss nodded. "Very well. We cannot leave such a thing here in any case. A hume this strange may be an omen." A good one, I hope. He began to lower his head, intending to snatch the hume up in his jaws, but Narpheia swung her head in his way. He looked at her questioningly.

"You wanted me to eat this hatchling. I think it'll be safer with me."

Gravuss snorted and rolled his eyes. "Come then, we need to backtrack out of this mess before we can take flight."

#

The journey back home proved far more taxing than even the sickness should have accounted for. Narpheia insisted on stopping every other hour to allow the hume to crawl around and walk, claiming the hatchling needed exercise, but Gravuss read the tiredness written plain on Narpheia's face. The drooping way her eyes moved, the sagging of her cheekbones, and how she no longer sniffed at the air all suggested extreme exhaustion. She shouldn't be having such a hard time carrying something so small, but every time he offered to take a turn, she refused.

On the evening of the fifth day, Gravuss sat on his haunches, chewing on an elk he had killed and carried off earlier that day. The elk had been full-grown but still young, a tasty find putting Gravuss in a rare, good mood. Hunting still gave him pleasure sometimes, one of the few things that still did.

The evening air was chilly, having grown steadily cooler as their travels took them further north. Gravuss enjoyed the change, feeling more and more like coming home, but he also worried about the hume, who only had its thin flesh to protect itself from the coming snows. No good would come from bringing the elders a dead or dying specimen.

They sat on a flat stretch of short grass next to a river, where they drank their fill of water and Narpheia feasted on fish. She had since laid down and contented herself in watching the hume eat the fish she had painstakingly shredded with teeth and talons.

Gravuss cleaned a blood-soaked claw with his tongue and nodded to the hume. "Why do you insist on carrying the hatchling alone? I can tell it burdens you."

Narpheia rolled a single eye toward him before turning her attention back to the hume, who held a piece of fish in each small talon less claw. How humes managed to defend themselves, Gravuss couldn't guess. After a long pause, she said, "At first, I admit, I only wanted to annoy you. But now. . ." She hesitated. "Now I sense a bond growing between us."

Gravuss frowned but didn't immediately say anything. A bond? It's only a hume, not a dragon hatchling. But that made sense in a way. Narpheia grew more protective of the hatchling with every passing day. "Is it using magic on you?"

Narpheia shook her head. "I don't know. I only know I must keep this hatchling safe, at least until the elders can tell us what to do."

Gravuss stared at the small hume for a while, unable to think of what to say. He wanted to give her some expression of hope, but one needed to have hope to offer any, and Gravuss felt less and less of anything anymore.

"I wish our kind could still make fire, the hatchling could use a bit of warmth, I think."

Gravuss snorted. "As well wish for the sun, Narpheia." He echoed her sentiment though. Dragons had lost the ability long before his birth, almost eight hundred years ago. He tried to imagine what breathing fire would be like but gave up on the idea without much effort.

Suddenly, the wind shifted to the northeast, bringing a new scent to his nostrils; old, ancient oils, rich, fertile soil, young, vibrant life, full of vitality, and something else. Mixed in was the sickly-sweet scent of recently burnt wood, like a tree struck by lightning. The scent put him on high alert.

He sprang up on his feet in a flash, but no faster than Narpheia, who stood and wrapped a wing around the hume hatchling. Together they faced southwest, toward the direction from which they had come.

"Something powerful approaches." Narpheia said.

"I don't need your ability to pick up on that. What is it?"

"I don't know but be on your guard."

A figure moved toward them, appearing to walk on two legs like a hume, but as it drew nearer, Gravuss realized it did not walk at all, but glided, its feet floating just above the grass like a wraith.

"Narpheia, be ready to take the hume and fly away if I give the word."

"Gravuss, I don't think --"

"No, Narpheia! For once don't argue with me and do as I say!"

She growled but kept her silence. The figure came within a few wings of them and stopped. It stood head and shoulders taller than a hume, but mostly looked like one of them. Stark white hair flowed around an angular face seemingly carved from ancient rock, and its eyes were a cold blue, like a frozen winter lake. White fibrous material rippled and waved on its own, providing cover for all but its feet.

"Hello." It said, or rather, seemed to say. Gravuss heard the words clearly in his mind, but the creature's mouth did not move. "I am called Cyball."

Gravuss' eyes widened. Beside him, Narpheia hissed. They knew the name, from some of the oldest tales spoken by the elders, the ones telling of ancient wars between dragons and gods. Back when dragons stood as the god's equals in strength. Cyball was god of earth and air, and one of the most powerful.

Other than Bahamut, none of the dragons had seen one of the gods in over half a millennium. Gravuss had been little more than a hatchling himself the last time he had spoken to one. A god standing here now. . . Well, that couldn't be good.

#

Narpheia struggled to remain calm. She didn't know what a god was doing here, but she didn't doubt its prodigious proclamation. The scent of power, acrid, hot, and heavy, emanating from the being made her think of a summer thunderstorm. Despite her earlier protest only moments before, she wanted to take the hume hatchling in her mouth and go, but she also didn't want to leave Gravuss behind.

"Gravuss." She said. "Whatever claims this thing makes, it is no mere mortal being. Be careful."

Gravuss snorted and shook his head, looking shaken. "You claim to be Cyball? God and enemy to all dragons?"

The being's face did not change, but a voice spoke in their heads once more, "I do not make claims, Dreki, I am Cyball. You need not be afraid. I only came to ask what you intend to do with that child."

Narpheia's sense of discomfort increased. "Dreki", not, "dragon", a name used by dragons and gods alike thousands of years ago. Cyball was certainly talking about the hume hatchling, but Narpheia held no intention of letting the god take her charge. "What business is that of yours?"

The god turned its eyes on her, and a cold shiver ran throughout her body, as if those eyes contained pools filled with glaciers. "I have a vested interest in the child, but that is of little concern. You have stolen something of mine, and I am trying to determine if I want it returned to me."

"Stolen?" Gravuss growled. "This hatchling was left alone in a forest far from here."

"Yes, and how do you think a child not yet old enough to carry a spear arrived there? His people left this child for me as a gift. I was still deciding how to best make use of it when you two showed up and stole my present. That is unseemly, even for a Dreki."

The tone in her head and the god's expression had not changed, but Narpheia thought she sensed mockery in its words.

"Our business is our own." Gravuss said, and half spread his wings threateningly. "Unless you mean to share your interests with us, we are leaving. Do not follow."

If Gravuss words intimidated the god, it didn't show. "There is no need to flee," -- again that sense of mockery -- "I will be only too happy to leave you. I only require your oath the child will be brought to no harm."

Gravuss' growl deepened to a low rumble. Narpheia tried to get his attention, to warn him to be mindful of his words, but he paid her no heed. "I am under no obligation to make promises to you, god of worms. Leave now, before you are forced to."

The god's claws, previously locked together at its chest, released their hold on each other and dropped to its side. "Then you leave me no choice but to reclaim my property, for I cannot risk any harm to it."

"Narpheia," Gravuss said, spreading his wings wide, "Take the hume and go now."

"Gravuss, no, wait!" Narpheia screamed, but he was already moving. Within two strides he leaped into the air, taking flight for a moment before folding his wings and streaking toward the god like a falling meteor, his jaws unhinged and wide, ready to finish it in one swift bite.

The god took an unhurried step backward and raised one of its claws, stretched it out flat and waited. When Gravuss closed within touching distance, a terrible thunderclap split the evening air, drowning out all other sounds. The scent of burnt wood increased tenfold, and a flash of brilliant white light illuminated from its claw as though the god had given birth to a star.

Narpheia sensed, more than heard, Gravuss' mingled roar of anger and pain. She scooped up the hatchling in her jaw, but before she took off, looked up to see the god walking toward her, its claw now pointed toward her. She tensed, waiting for a blow that didn't come.

Gravuss lay on the ground close by, not dead but wounded. Smoke rose from his red and green scales in small drifts of curling gray tendrils, twisting upward until disappearing in the cool night air. Pain filled his eyes, but also fierce determination that made her heart proud. With a great heave, he lunged sideways and snapped his head forward, closing his jaws around the god's leg and piercing it with a fang.

Cyball stumbled forward but did not cry out. It only looked at the protruding fang in silent amusement. Bending down, it took hold of the fang from the underside of its leg and twisted. Gravuss roared in pain again as his fang snapped, but the god withdrew it as though pulling out an insignificant twig. The hole left behind contained no blood and healed within seconds, as though it never existed.

Cyball shook its head and again spoke in their minds. "I forgot how resilient Bahumat made your kind." Its eyes shifted briefly to the hatchling and back again so quickly Narpheia almost missed it. "Not as resilient as you were in the past though, eh?"

With a flick of its wrist, the god sent Gravuss flying away, as though the dragon were little more than a fly. Then the god splayed out both its claws, and ropes of light leaped toward Gravuss, wrapping themselves around his forearms, legs, chest, and tail. Cyball flexed its arms, and yanked Gravuss back to the ground with a force strong enough to cause the earth to rumble, then lifted and threw him once more, this time toward Narpheia.

Narpheia almost screamed but remembered the hatchling in her mouth and swallowed it down. Gravuss hit the ground with a bone-jarring crack, bounced, rolled, hit the ground again, and came shuddering to a halt within a mere wing of her. Blood seeped from many wounds along his side and neck, yet he still lived, and he looked at her with desperate, pleading, yellow eyes.

"Narpheia. Please, before it's too late."

"It's already too late, Dreki." The god intoned. "The sooner you realize that the better off you will be. Now, let the child out of your mouth and you may go and enjoy the rest of your days, short as they may be."

"Gaaabuus!"

The god blinked in surprise and took a step backward, but it wasn't Narpheia who spoke, but the hatchling in her mouth. The hume hadn't spoken a word to either of them in all their time together. Its voice, high-pitched and somber, made Narpheia ache to hear.

"Gaaabuus!" The hume cried out again, but she dared not let it go to him. Trembling, she took a step backward, then another. She could still get away, she must. To stay meant death for both her and the hatchling, she couldn't lose another. She took another step, watching helplessly as Gravuss closed his eyes.

"You cannot leave." The god said, and again his claw came forward. Narpheia tried to jump, there came another flash of bright light, then hot, searing pain, agony like nothing she ever felt, and then darkness.

#

When Narpheia opened her eyes again, the world appeared distorted, as if looking at the sky under murky waters. As her vision cleared, she became aware of great, growing aches and pains. She felt as though marrow bled from her bones. She tried getting to her feet, but the pain caused her vision to darken, so intense she almost blacked out again.

After a few moments, her vision cleared. She saw the hatchling walking on wobbly legs and realized her jaw would no longer close. She didn't remember when that happened.

"It didn't have to come to this, you know." Cyball's voice echoed painfully in her head, like something huge swatting the brain around inside her skull. "None of this, I mean. Blame your creator if you need to lay blame on someone. Bahamut forced our hand. If not for him, your kind may have lived on for thousands of years."

Narpheia groaned weakly as a wave of dizziness passed through her. What was Cyball talking about? Ahead of her, the hume walked shakily toward Gravuss, who appeared to have stopped breathing.

"He should have made you submissive, but that wouldn't have proven his point."

What point? Submit? To whom, the gods? I'll die first. Shuttering, Narpheia dug her talons into the ground and pulled with all her strength. She moved -- barely -- toward the hatchling, who continued to close the distance to Gravuss, its little tongue pushed out between its mouth in concentration as it wobbled ever forward.

"Bahumat gave you all skin that absorbs magic, so none of us could touch you." The god's voice began to rise in anger. "Then on top of this blasphemous act, he gives you the ability to create one of the few substances capable of harming us. Can you imagine the audacity? A creation with the ability to defy its very creators? Insufferable!"

The hatchling was nearly within reach now. She needed to distract Cyball. "Why are you telling me all this? What does this have to do with the hatchling?"

Cyball ignored the question. "My brother, Thiyr, came up with the simple but elegant solution. He created creatures in many ways exactly opposite to that of yours. Weak, small, pathetically short-lived, vulnerable to every illness, every predator, every act of nature threatening its survival. A species that would have to struggle for the right to exist."

With her remaining strength, Narpheia crawled the rest of the way to the hatchling, reached out with a talon and gently tried to pull the hume to her. Then a rope of light wrapped around her forearm and jerked it backward. She heard the bone snap before the hot, nauseating pain hit, and roared.

"Thiyr," Cyball continued casually, "created them with incomplete souls. Incomplete, I mean, until the moment of their birth. For when they take their first breath, they pull in a minute amount of magic from the world around them. Nothing major of course, nothing your kind would notice. Just a tiny insignificant bit is all they need to continue breathing. Unlike your kind, however, who can only produce one or two broods in a century, these creatures can produce hundreds during the same time. Give that a few thousand years, and you end up with a massively collective sponge, all unknowingly siphoning the magic from their surroundings like parasites."

Narpheia groaned and shook. She thought she understood now, at least a little. Not about Bahamut's part, but the dragon's loss of fire, their growing sense of weakness, the increase of explainable deaths, the inability to fly for longer distances, the soreness in their flesh and bones, everything wrong with dragon's today had been planned millennia ago.

She looked at the hatchling and wondered for the first time if she'd been wrong not to allow Gravuss to eat it after all. But no, she always listened to her inner voice, and it never steered her wrong. The little hume was just an innocent pawn, and...

"You... lie!" Narpheia spat through ragged breaths. "This... hatchling is... not as you say... It is more like... like us."

Cyball shrugged. "Indeed, but I did not lie. The Dreki do not lie to worms, for they have nothing to fear from them, as I have none from you. This child, this. . .hatchling, as you called it, is an anomaly. Unlike his brothers and sisters, he draws more magic with every breath. Anomalies are interesting phenomenon to observe. If he ever learns to use the magic he draws, well, that's a concern for another day.

Narpheia remembered the crystalline ashes in the clearing where they found the hatchling and understood something important: Cyball did not yet know the hatchling could in fact use magic. She looked up to see it -- him? -- reach Gravuss and run its --his-- tiny claws over a rather severe looking wound deep in his neck. His little claw glowed; something was happening.

Cyball followed her gaze and for the first time, its face lost its impassiveness. The god took a step forward and reached out toward the hume as if in warning. "What are you doing child? Stop that now!"

Gravuss' eyes snapped open, and the world exploded in a fiery haze.

#

For a while, Gravuss floated in darkness. He understood he wasn't asleep, yet he couldn't be awake, either. He existed somewhere in between, a place, he understood, standing on the verge of the spirit lands. Gravuss would not be able to cross until his earthly body died, so he waited patiently, and hoped he had done enough to allow Narpheia to get away with the hume.

Gradually, he became aware of the darkness receding, but his spirit remained wholly attached. Puzzled, he waited, unworried but curious. The darkness receded faster, and faster still, until it seemed as if the darkness was being pulled from his awareness like some giant blanket. In moments, the light filled everything, and he opened his eyes.

With a roar sounding stronger to his ears than it had in years, Gravuss rolled over and snapped his neck forward with a speed making his earlier attack seem unbelievably slow in comparison. He caught Cyball off guard this time, and Gravuss' head plowed full force into the god's chest, lifting it off its feet and sending it spinning into the water.

The god slowed and stopped, then erupted forward with a force causing the water beneath it to implode on itself and spread out in a rough, circular shape, similar to a bowl. The surrounding air sizzled and whined as if on fire and in pain, as Cyball prepared to release another powerful attack.

But the hatchling gave Gravuss something else too, something that made his belly pleasantly warm and left the outside world chillier than in his oldest dreams. He only had moments to bring it forth before the god struck him, but moments were all he needed.

Gravuss inhaled sharply and felt the air mix with the warm substance in his belly, and with a great roar he forced it out in one, long breath. It was no longer air, and no longer that substance, but combined had become something like molten flame, red, orange, and yellow.

The fire projected from his throat and hit Cyball in the chest with terrible force, halting the god's progress with a sound like a thousand snakes hissing all at once. The god bellowed as the liquid fire covered it from head to toe. Cyball fled back to the water and dove in, attempting to quench the flames, but they did not behave like ordinary fire. Like honey, the fire stuck to the god's skin and continued to burn. The water around Cyball boiled and spit as though alive and furious.

Finally, the god burst upward from the water, still screaming, and flew with all speed to the east. Gravuss watched it go until the inflamed god faded from view, like a meteor in the night sky.

Remembering Narpheia, Gravuss turned to see the hatchling begin to heal her too. She sat on the ground while the hume ran its tiny claw along her wing, but she wasn't paying any attention to it, her gaze focused only at him.

"I... saw you breathe fire, Gravuss, as though you were Bahumat himself. How did you do that?"

Gravuss shook his head. He could still sense the warmth in his belly and knew without a doubt he could do it again but did not yet understand the why of it. "I don't know Narpheia, the hume. . .fixed something broken within me. I... can’t explain it yet."

"It seems we have inadvertently stumbled upon hope."

"Yes, the first in over a century. I feel young, Narpheia, and stronger than I have in years. We must take this hume to the elders as soon as you are able."

Narpheia flexed an unbroken wing and stared at it in wonder. "I think I am ready now, Gravuss. I too am stronger than ever. What sort of miracle is this hume?"

"I don't know, but if you are good to travel, we should go."

"Alright, but Gravuss?"

He looked at her, trying to keep the eagerness from his voice, afraid she would hear it as impatience. "Yes, Narpheia?"

She stared at the hume for a long moment, then looked back at Gravuss with a determined eye. "This young hume may be the hope of all dragons. We must honor him with a name. From now on, let him be Elpis."