The Draconic Restoration

Kitala stood at the top of the cliff face, looking out over a forest of giant, squat trees. Her view of them was shaky at best, as it was all she could do to keep her legs from collapsing. A staccato beat was made by her knees knocking together. She barely registered this sound, nor the sound of the vulturas flying and shrieking overhead. The long, winged serpents knew what her presence here meant.

But she paid them no heed. The only sound dominating Kitala’s attention was a weak, mewling coming from the bundle in her arms. Tarik, with all the strength of a newborn, grasped at her chest, but his weak fingers could find no purchase. His skin was perfect, unmarred by the holes Kitala and each of her tribe mates had been born with; he was beautiful.

He was doomed.

From behind, a woman let out a frustrated sigh. “For Gragaulda’s sake, Kitala. It’s so cold that my draconi’s at risk of shriveling into a husk. Dispose of the empty and be done with it.” Rage rushed through Kitala at Demora’s words, though whether the emotion was hers or her draconi, Sigurd’s, she couldn’t know.

Regardless, Kitala thoughtlessly clenched her fists in anger, only pulled from the brink of her wrath by a weak cry emitted by Tarik. Kitala winced. It had been foolish of her to name him before verifying that he was infested. Without a draconi, he was as good as dead anyways. All the name did was make the loss more painful.

Kitala had known this to be a possibility. Fewer and fewer children were being born as hosts. The current theory was weak bloodlines, but Kitala’s had been strong, and the purging had done nothing to curtail the spread. Or lack of spread really.

As the next in line to be Clan chief, Kitala had been fully aware of the problem, and the strongest advocate for purging all children who showed signs of lack. The village could not afford to sustain those that would perish within days. Their sacrifice was crucial to survival.

That argument no longer held any sway for Kitala. Its veracity had been swept away in the tides of Tarik’s ocean-blue eyes. No world was worth living in if it meant living without this boy. Kitala turned to walk from the cliff face, unsure of anything in the world except that she had to keep her son alive.

Tragically, Kitala was so lost in her son’s face that she didn’t hear the slap of boots stomping toward her. Indeed, the young woman didn’t register anything was amiss until her father, the Interim-Chieftain, wrenched Tarik from her arms and flung him over the cliff side. The boy’s fall was applauded by the squawks of hungry vultura diving down to follow his descent.

“Father! How dare you do th-“

Her father, Lunor, fixed a wrathful glare upon his daughter, stopping her in her tracks. “How dare I? HOW DARE YOU?! You bring irreparable harm to the honor of our bloodline. It is bad enough that you birthed an empty, but your refusal to dispose of him has lessened us all in the eyes of your peers.”

As he spoke, Kitala looked to the two others witnessing the affair, Demora and an old woman named Hesiod. Demora’s lips were pursed in judgment, though Hesiod, the former clan chief, looked far more sympathetic. Despite that sympathy, at that moment Kitala felt nothing but darkness encroaching upon her soul. Tarik was surely dead, and with him gone, what reason had she to live?

Kitala’s world had ended.

***

Dragaur watched as his Thousandth slithered through the tall grass. Whilst his true body lounged high up in his mountaintop cave, Dragaur could see every strand of the lush, violet grass and feel as the razor-sharp edges tested each of his scales.

Well, not his scales. Not anymore.

It had been a millennium since Dragaur had been small enough to experience the thrill of hiding in the forest. At any moment, a wild ghornaut could leap from the trees and devour him. The four-legged beasts were so unnatural, they made Dragaur sick. What in the fires caused them to grow hair? Ludicrous.

Still, they weren’t as bad as the winged abominations flying above him. Vulturas. Disgusting. A perfectly good, draconian body, marred by those disgusting, leathery appendages. All because they couldn’t attract wind sprites.

In his actual body, the vermin would see him from miles away, but they would have no such luck today. While he would never admit it, Dragaur found himself deeply thankful for Kragaur’s advice that he split off a tiny piece of his tail during reproduction instead of the classic half. It was odd to think that Dragaur and Kragaur had once been part of the same whole. Perhaps, someday, this thousandth too would grow to contend with the likes of its greater halves.

Dragaur’s true body rumbled in amusement at the thought. It was incredibly unlikely. Survival was based as much on luck as it was on skill.

Seeking to prove this fact to the vulturas, who were been diving after some unseen prey, Dragaur lunged forward, writhing his body back and forth quickly enough to draw an air sprite beneath him. He was swiftly carried toward the flock and wasted no time in letting out a fearsome plume of fire.

His disdain for wings again proved to be righteous as the flimsy stretches of leather expanded and ripped apart under the intense heat. Their pathetic screeches of agony were like music to Dragaur, who dived down in pursuit of their prey. Vultura meat was bitter and tough, but they had decent taste in food. One of Dragaur’s greatest regrets over his increased size was the lack of variety in sustenance. He now subsisted almost entirely off the great sea beasts north of his mountain domain, but his thousandth was not so limited.

Angling his serpentine and aerodynamic body downward, Dragaur challenged gravity to a race and won. Near the base of the cliff, Dragaur spotted his prey, a small bundle of cloth making an enormous, if oddly musical, racket. While Dragaur did not care about the health of his food, the meat would be far easier to collect if not splattered upon the trees. So, he let out an extra burst of speed, zooming down to grasp the bundle with his talons mere inches from the ground. The indignant screeches of vulturas overhead made Dragaur push caution aside and fly through the thick trunked forest. Few of the trees were larger than ten feet in height, but all were at least 20 feet in circumference as if a giant hand above had pushed down on the trees and smooshed them into the squat plants that Dragaur now wove between.

Despite the cover provided by the thick boughs, angry shrieks signaled that vulturas were above him. Dragaur’s bodies turned a shade more violet than they had been a moment before, the draconic equivalent of a sneer. The vultura’s wings allowed them to go slightly faster than him, but at greatly increased effort. At challenges of endurance, Dragaur had thousands of years more experience than these flying pests.

Letting out a burst of flame behind him reduced Dragaur’s speed momentarily as the air carrying him was pushed away by the intense heat. However, once that heat dissipated, the air rushed back, pushing him forward in an unexpected way that confused a diving Vultura, and it crashed headfirst into a tree trunk instead.

A quick glance behind him showed Dragaur being pursued by at least a dozen more of the winged beasts. Whilst his smaller body allowed him to experience things he hadn’t in an age, on that list was being a dinner option. Careful not to lose focus from his flight through the thick trees, Dragaur searched his mind for the tactics he once employed. The memories were clouded by the fog of time, but they were still present.

In this case, Dragaur thought, turning dark green, fog was exactly what he needed. He got low to the forest floor, letting the tips of the grass brush against him as he coursed forward, letting out a long, deep breath of pure heat with only the slightest wisp of flame. His scorching breath spread across the damp floor and elicited a flood of steam. He repeated this several times until Dragaur had created a small but substantial cloud. Not only did it conceal his position, but it also created an updraft that leveraged the weakness of wings, forcing the fools high up into the air.

Dragaur continued creating more steam as he went, before doubling back and entering a different portion of the forest that had thicker foliage. It would be difficult for him to escape if a land predator found him, but the vultura had little hope of reaching them here.

Coiling up in a nook made of several overlapping tree branches, Dragaur was shocked by how tired he felt. It had been a long time since he had been truly stressed and fighting for his life. He found that he quite liked it, turning an even lighter shade of green. Pleased with his exploits and excited to feast on his hard-earned snack, Dragaur quickly wrenched the cloth off the bundle, which elicited a loud, musical wail.

Dragaur turned a shade of orange. A young defiler. The bitter taste in Dragaur’s mouth was made only slightly better by the fact that it hosted no traitors in its veins, as evidenced by the lack of any entry holes. If that hadn’t been the case, Dragaur would have tossed it aside immediately. He had no wish to relive the memories tied to any of the seven.

That said, it was unheard of for a defiler to survive without one of the traitors swimming through their veins. In a fit of idle curiosity, Dragaur set his hunger aside for the moment. He was curious to see how long the child would survive before being crushed by the sheer weight of the world. A part of him knew that that should have already happened, but defilers never did as they should, as evidenced by their existence.

Still, the death of his mother, a tragedy that played out long before Dragaur had emerged from his first half, played out in Dragaur’s mind. The memory passed down from half to half, so that they would never forget the hell brought upon them by the Defilers. The hell of watching as a once great species wasted away into burnt-out halves with no hope of restoration.

Dragaur doubted this offspring’s death would bring him any relief from this pain, but he didn’t mind finding out. So, he waited. The child soon quieted, falling into a restless sleep, which seemed an odd thing to do when being crushed by the weight of reality, but Dragaur wouldn’t begrudge the child its last few moments of peace.

He began to have his doubts after those “few moments” turned into a full rotation of the first moon, Raniel. The light was turning from a burnt orange towards the pale teal light of the third moon, Fulorinal. Dragaur sighed. It was almost night.

The longer Dragaur waited, the more he worried. Not only was this tiny body far more susceptible to predation, but it also wasn’t truly his. He had split a part of himself off into a new lifeform. The fact that the piece he split was so much smaller than himself allowed him a degree of control over its psyche for the first rotation or two of the second moon, Seboniol, but that time was running out.

Soon, this body’s own personality would come forth. One like Dragaur’s own, but slightly different. Though, Dragaur thought with a wince, it was the similarities that had been a problem in the past. Some traits were better left hidden.

With a grunt from his large body, a sound that could be heard for miles, Dragaur slithered the small body over to the child, who was beginning to stir. Dragaur had no idea how it had managed to survive in a world that had required its ancestors to steal strength from traitors to have any hope of life, but he wasn’t particularly inclined to allow it to commit further sacrilege. One of the few solaces of Dragaur’s increasingly miserable life was that, with the increasing rates of corruption present in every Draconic halving, the defilers were as doomed as the dragons were, if not more so. Dragaur planned to live for eons past the days the last defiler collapsed into the ash.

Only their extinction would allow him the peace of the grave.

And so, Dragaur unhinged his jaw and prepared to swallow the child whole. Of course, that was when the brat decided to open its eyes. It let out a loud, piercing, and melodious cry of fright. Dragaur chose to ignore it, but then the cursed thing began coughing. Violently. Aggressively, which made Dragaur turn a deep blue, confused by what was happening.

The child coughed for seemingly ever, continuing to perplex Dragaur, who moved closer and closer. Until, in a final great cough, the little monster spat up a light grey lump that splatted directly into Dragaur’s eye. The dragon, steeled as he was by thousands of years of trials and tribulations, was only slightly sick to his stomach at this turn of events. And he felt he handled it quite gracefully.

The child was mercifully silent, perhaps stunned by the roar that Dragaur let out. Though it was just as likely frightened stiff by the gout of flame he released. After a moment, the pair were both calm, and Dragaur flicked the grey lump off his face onto the tree branch. Then, he too was stunned.

Sitting in a pile of the child’s spit-up was a dragon. Tiny, barely formed, but a Dragon. Taking a deep whiff of its scent, Dragaur knew it to not be of any of the seven traitors, nor of the other 37 lines still creating halves. It was new. There were new dragons.

Dragaur barely resisted roaring in joy. The experience of meeting a new Draconi after so long was intoxicating, it had been ages since he had seen another draconi. His kind rarely strayed far from their territory.

After an interminable amount of time spent staring in awe at the tiny Draconi, too small to survive on its own, Dragaur began sniffing the child that released it. Now that he knew what to look for, there was the scent of others. Hundreds of new draconi, waiting to be birthed into this harsh but beautiful world.

Dragaur didn’t hold himself back this time and let loose a triumphant wail. A keening cry of victory and hope for all to hear. He lost himself in the moment, gently picking up the tiny draconi and placing it in the child’s palm. An exultant excitement flared within him as it burrowed into the child’s bones. It would live there, just like the traitors, growing and feasting on the defiler’s marrow whilst giving it strength and vitality in turn.

However, unlike the traitors, this draconi’s life would be it's own.

The cave Dragaur’s main body resided in began to flood, and it took him a moment to realize that he was crying boulder-sized tears. With a shake of his lime green scales, Dragaur launched himself out of his cavern and into the air, where he could sob freely.

Back in the forest, Dragaur felt a pulse at the back of his mind, the body’s true persona, screaming at him. Dragaur’s senses were dulled by joy, so he only noticed the pair of glowing yellow eyes right before the Golaunt leaped out of the shadows, razor-sharp claws glinting teal in the light of Fulorinal.

The growing persona of Dragaur’s tiny body screamed to flee in terror, but his greater presence pressed down upon the freshly made soul, crushing it beneath his weight and asserting his dominance. He would not leave this gift from the World Serpents to be nothing more than a midnight snack. No. Even if Dragaur had to sacrifice this new body, his mother’s reincarnation would survive.

Pushing his massive body to as much speed as he could manage, Dragaur attempted to buy time, coiling around the branch he was on, and spinning about it to bite at the Golaunt’s ankles. He wasn’t fast enough to dodge its counter swipe, and its razor-sharp talons ripped through his scales, sending them clattering to the forest floor.

Scurrying along the bottom of the branch, Dragaur fled, hoping to draw the Golaunt away. That’s when the defiler started crying, of course. Drawn to the melodic wailing, the Golaunt began to lose interest in Dragaur. That couldn’t be allowed. With a snarl, Dragaur leaped onto the Golaunt and clamped onto its neck. He had to resist gagging at the sensation of fur in his mouth, which made it easier for the Golaunt to shake him free.

Slapping onto the hardwood, Dragaur watched as the Golaunt’s mouth opened wide both horizontally and vertically and moved to devour him. A feeling of resigned sorrow washed through Dragaur’s tiny body, but he could not allow this to be the end. Had he allowed such feelings to reign, Dragaur would not have survived the centuries. With a tiny little roar, Dragaur lunged forward, diving straight down the Golaunt’s throat.

He could feel its powerful jaws dig into his bottom half and let out a torrent of scorching hot flames in response. Dragaur couldn’t decide which was more nauseating, the Golaunt’s screams of agony, or the smell of its stomach acids bursting aflame.

A short time later, Dragaur slithered out of the monster’s gullet, his new body covered in deep cuts that would leave permanent scars, no matter how large this body grew.

Overhead, the winds grew violent and aggressive, angered by the massive body they were forced to hold aloft. Looking up at his main body hovering overhead, Dragaur decided that this new one had earned itself a true name.

Italgaur.

The two of them turned lime green as Italgaur carried the child into Dragaur’s open talons.

This child was a treasure. Evidence of something grand.

Evidence that the world had not ended.

***

Yugor raced down the giant cavern, his odd legs barely managing to hold him aloft. Once he reached a level portion of the tunnel, he looked down at his body in frustration. Italgaur’s body was far more useful, with its long, sinuous muscle and thick, near unbreakable scales. Yugor kept waiting for the day that his tail would grow out and his legs pop off, but it never came. Dragaur insisted that that day would never come, but that was just pessimism.

However, that was a battle that he could fight another moon. During this rising, Yugor was on a deadline. To accent this, Dragaur let out another bone-shaking howl of agony, pushing Yugor into a sprint. The rumbling made Yugor stumble into one of the eerily smooth walls, scraped clean by Dragaur’s iron-strong scales. Pushing aside this further evidence of the weakness of legs, Yugor kept running until he reached Italgaur’s chambers.

As he leaped into the bone-white cavern, tastefully decorated with tree bark and animal bones at Yugor’s suggestion, he turned to see he had arrived none too soon. Flooding behind him was a thick torrent of sanguineous fluid, the byproduct of such a large halving. Ducking through the entryway, Yugor now saw why Italgaur went to such pains to make his chambers raised and separated from the main tunnels.

Coming into the central room, Yugor made eye contact with Italgaur, who was bone white, with yellow eyes. Yugor had never seen the little dragon so scared before. Of course, “little” was a relative term as the serpent-like creature towered 15 feet over Yugor. Still, compared to the multi-mile-long Dragaur, everything else seemed tiny.

Italgaur embodied this tininess particularly well on this day, curling tightly onto the whale bones he had chosen as central decoration.

“Y-Yugor! Is that sound what I think it is?” The dragon managed to stutter out. The poor thing was shaking so badly he could barely hold onto the ribcage above him.

Inside his own bones, Yugor felt a spasm of sympathy from Jiggly, a particularly vocal wyrmling growing within him. All his spawnlings felt an intense wave of fear at the biological battle occurring inside Dragaur right now. Halving was never a gentle process, a fact that was exponentially truer for a creature of Dragaur’s size.

Yugor’s pause gave Italgaur time to collect himself. “Yes, well, if the split is happening, then it is time for us to abscond.”

This comment hit Yugor like a ton of bricks. Leave his home? Leave Dragaur, the one who raised him?

Yugor’s face must have betrayed just how much he hated that concept because Italgaur slunk down from the rib cage to gently coil around the boy’s leg.

“My dear friend. I understand that this must be hard for you, but this place is no longer safe.”

Yugor’s frown deepened. “Not safe? Ridiculous. Dragaur will protect me.”

Italgaur sighed, his scales turning a light orange, Frustration. “Not when he is the one from whom you need protecting.”

Yugor let out a gasp reflexively. “No! That can’t be true! Dragaur is… is-” My father. Italgaur nodded, understanding the unsaid words.

“Dragaur holds a deep love for you, but you must understand, the halving is not merely physical. It is mental as well. When the split draconi is small like me, we tend to take on the general personality of our originator. But in a major split like this, the new form will take on the parts of Dragaur that he represses. The pieces he would prefer hidden in shadow shall come to light.”

Tears began to tickle at the corners of Yugor’s eyes, and he wiped them away furiously. “Are you… Are you saying that part of Dragaur hates me?”

Italgaur paused for a long moment. A long enough moment to bring Yugor to actual tears, the salty fluid streaming down his face unhindered. Belatedly, Italgaur rose and began licking Yugor’s face.

“He does not hate you… He hates all humans. Defilers. He… We were present for the murder and devouring of our mother. That is not something that you get past easily. But for you, we have set aside much of our hate, and found something wonderful to love.” Something to love. Yugor couldn’t allow Dragaur to lose that. Not again.

In an instant, Yugor’s expression changed to one of resolve. Nodding to Italgaur, he turned on his heels and marched back toward the tunnel. Behind him, Italgaur let a hiss of surprise.

“What are you doing? The exit is the other way!” Yugor kept walking, not bothering to respond.

The click clacks of Italgaur’s scales rippling across the stone floor echoed through the chamber as Italgaur rushed to block Yugor’s path.

“Yu, going that way is suicide. Just follow me, we’ll have a nice, safe-” Italgaur cut off, turning pale white as he made eye contact with Yugor. The idea of abandoning his friend, his father, was enraging to Yugor, who spoke with a husky rumble entirely out of place in the young child.

“If you think that I will abandon Dragaur and leave him to face his demons alone, you are sorely mistaken! Now, are you gonna help me traverse this muck, or do I have to swim?” He said with a regal tone whilst gesturing at the river of bodily waste flowing past the cavern entrance.

Italgaur sighed deeply. “I would follow you anywhere.” Then, casting a troubled glance at the filthy river, muttered “I knew washing my scales was a waste of time.”

An unbearable amount of time later, a now brown Italgaur slithered toward Dragaur’s main chamber. The going had become increasingly difficult as the muck became tumultuous and violent. Even if the muck weren’t akin to a storm at sea, the journey would have still been perilous as air sprites had become aggressive, the air scorching hot and waves of sound threatened to shatter the skulls of all who listened.

Despite all this, Yugor stood proudly atop Italgaur’s head, steely resolve thrumming from both him and the myriad of Draconi nesting in his veins. They all felt as he did: If he could not convince Dragaur, the draconi that had raised him for ten rotations, what hope had he of gaining the support of the other Draconi? Of course, if Yugor did not have this pragmatic excuse to fight for Dragaur’s love, he suspected that he still would, but that was a truth whose disclosure was unneeded.

A torrent of flame billowed from the cavern, but Yugor reacted swiftly, ordering Inkir, an ice wyrmling currently in his chest, to spew her icy breath, counteracting the flame’s heat. A subtle pain from his ribs told Yugor that Inkir had begun feasting on his marrow to replenish her strength. They didn’t have the stamina to last long against the likes of Dragaur or his new half. This was not a battle to be won through strength but instead with wit.

Yugor just had to hope that he could find some.

Drifting into the main chamber was like walking into a battlefield. In the center were two massive, serpent-like draconi coiled about one another. They were still connected by the very bottom of their tails, but that didn’t stop the pair from trying to kill each other. Scattered about the muck were giant scales and chunks of torn flesh.

“Is the halving always this violent?!” Yugor yelled out.

“Only rarely. When one of them has something to protect.” Italgaur replied. The words washed away the fear threatening to take hold of Yugor. This fight was his fault, which made stopping it his responsibility.

“Italgaur. Get to safety! I will finish this myself.” Yugor shouted, barely audible over the cacophony of Dragaur’s battle.

“Don’t be crazy! I’m not leaving you and you can’t do this alone!”

Crouching down, Yugor gently guided Italgaur’s head so that they made eye contact. “Don’t worry about me. I will be fine.” He stood up and pointed his hand to the ceiling right above Dragaur. “Besides, I’m not alone!”

With that, Yugor ordered Lotan, a rubber-mouthed Wyrmling, to let loose his extending tongue. The long and thin appendage launched out of Yugor’s palm and embedded itself in the stone ceiling. Just as swiftly, Yugor was tugged into the air, zipping past the carnage to end dangling just above eye level for the two split Draconi.

“Yugor! What are you doing here?! Italgaur assured me he would take you far away from this!” Dragaur yelled out, his voice muffled as it was clamped tightly around the neck of the newly formed Draconi.

The new draconi seemed unconcerned by this attack and let out a throaty chuckle. “Nonsense. This is perfect. Thank you for delivering yourself unto me, tiny defiler. My name is Bragaur. I urge you to scream it as I devour you. It shall make the taste ever sweeter!” Then Bragaur lunged for Yugor, heedless of Dragaur’s teeth ripping through his scales.

Yugor was too slow to react and found himself completely encased in the massive beast’s maw. He began sliding down the coarse tongue, but before his descent could gain momentum, Yugor pointed his hand downward and let out a gush of flame that propelled him up and out of Bragaur’s mouth.

“Stop this! I am sorry for what my ancestors did but are you truly willing to throw away the future of your species for it?!” Do you truly hate me that much?

Bragaur growled, blood dripping down his throat. “The power of the queen has always passed down to a half of they who devoured her. By feasting upon you, I shall bring birth back into the Draconic line!”

“It took thousands of rotations for that devouring to show results in the defilers! How do you know that it will be successful?!” Dragaur’s voice was still muffled and accented by a sickening gargle from the blood flowing between his teeth.

“There is only one way to know!” Bragaur snarled and prepared to lunge again, but shockingly, stilled at Yugor’s upraised hand. Tears streamed down the child’s face.

“What we stole from you was precious, and if you wish to take it back, I shall let you-”

“Yugor! NO!” Italgaur and Dragaur yelled out in unison. He ignored them.

“But if you can find it in yourself to forgive me, I shall restore the Draconi to their proper place in this world, and in so doing, scour all traces of the defilers from it.” Any who caused his loved ones such pain deserved to perish.

Bragaur’s crimson eyes glared appraisingly at Yugor for a long moment, before his scales turned from black to blackish green. Approval, if not joy.

“I can accept this. I shall be your shadow to Dragaur’s light, and together, we shall free our home from the invaders that have held it for too long. But when it is all over, I shall feast upon your flesh!” Yugor nodded. The words ripped at his heart but felt fair. He ignored the cries of despair from Italgaur and Dragaur.

Then, in a rush, Bragaur swept forward, ripping free of Dragaur, and grasped Yugor in a talon before racing out of the cavern into the open air. Staring down at the beautiful landscape beneath him, tears streamed unhindered down Yugor’s slim, slime-covered face.

Yugor had just begun creating a new world.