Zoirotia

Klepton watched the child stumble through the forest, nearly tripping over gnarled roots as they tottered over the forest floor. He kept pace with the toddler, sliding from trunk to trunk, listening intently for any hint of their parents or any other villagers coming after them as best he could in this tiny, bipedal form. But only the silence of the foliage muttered to him, the pines standing tall and dark as the sun was chased across the sky towards the horizon. Driven by the crawling darkness of night and his echoing whispers, leading the child deeper and deeper into the forest.

They had been wandering through the woods blindly for over an hour now, trapped in the haze of his ancient words and piercing voice. They would be held for a while longer, until their hunger and thirst grew too heavy to be suppressed by his mutterings. Long enough for them to reach the section of the forest he had trapped, far from the village and any chance of discovery of them.

His own hunger growled in his gut, reminding him of his enforced fast. It had been several days since he had eaten and holding on to his patience and form was becoming more trying and irritating. But he couldn’t alert the village to his presence. The feast would come once the ritual was done. Soon. So long as the child did not develop the senses of a fox in the next few minutes.

Twigs shifting as the child’s feet disturbed them, they drew nearer and nearer to the trap, slowing down as their mind left the alluring fog he had settled over them. Klepton felt the heat of flames licking the back of his throat, a growl purring as the child came closer. And, as their feet shuffled towards the trigger wire holding the trap taut, he moved, rushing silently towards them.

He shot his hand out to grab the back of their tunic and yank them away just as the net burst up from the ground, a storm of leaves and dirt erupting up with it. The child let out a scream at the sudden flurry of activity, squirming and flailing as Klepton held him back from the trap, waiting several seconds to listen for any hint of a human hearing their tantrum before he released them. The child nearly fell onto their face as they staggered away, turning and cowering once they were several steps away.

“You need to be more careful out here, hatchling,” he said, morphing his voice to be softer and more alluring to them to put them at ease. It was expected they would be more fearful and cowardly as a human. They had no power of their own beyond discovering the many uses stones and sticks had when you tied them together. “Many dangers lurk in these light depths for a young one such as you.”

Despite the flicker of confusion in their eyes at his words, he saw them relax noticeably, straightening slightly and peering more curiously at him. He kneeled before them, mimicking the interactions he had seen other humans do with their young, and held a hand out towards them. “Come, hatchling. Let us take you home to your parents. They would be morose if they could not say their farewells to you before you left.”

It took them a few moments, but eventually, his voice had worked into their mind and drawn them closer, guiding them one step after another forward until their tiny hand was placed into his. The minds of human young were far more malleable and weak compared to their elders, more receptive to his voice, even as unskilled as he was with his words. He gently pulled them closer, until he could wrap his arms around them and lift them up, awkwardly trying to copy the hold their mother had had on them. “There. Now let’s get you home before your parents start razing the forest looking for you. You’ll have plenty of time for that tomorrow, right?”

Klepton carried the child back through the forest, his long strides slashing the time it had taken for the child to reach his trap to a quarter of it. He murmured constantly, words unimportant compared to the sound snaking their way into the child’s ears and guiding them to a drowsiness. Making them sag against him as they drew closer to sleep, energy and attention leaving their body.

“Gotta keep you awake for your parents, eh little one?” Klepton unhooked his waterskin from his belt and held it carefully to the child’s lips, helping them drowsily take it in their hands and lift it up. As they drank from it, they made a face, the liquid within it clearly not being to their taste. He chuckled as he took the skin back and hooked it onto his belt once more. “I know. I remember it not tasting very good when I first drank from it. But it’ll keep you awake for a little bit longer, give you some energy to greet your parents with.”

By the time the village had come back into view, the sun was just submerged behind the distant mountains, its glow still lighting the sky while leaving the earth in shadows. Fires lit up the darkness coming upon the settlement, figures flitting between the gaps in the houses as they no doubt organized for a night search. A small pang resounded in Klepton’s chest as he remembered a similar panic gripping his own Haunt, when one of his broodmates had gone missing during a particularly fraught period of tension with another Haunt. It had been many years since he had seen them, and despite his younger eagerness to explore, it was high time he returned. They weren’t meant to be solitary beasts. Very few creatures in this world were.

Striding into the village with the child brought attention instantly upon him, for he was a foreigner at a time when one of their own was missing. They greeted him with suspicion, until they recognized the child he held in his arms. Then they wore relief and joy in their eyes, rushing forward and sending word to their parents to bring them back to their hatchling. Klepton relinquished the child after a brief, hopefully unnoticed, moment of refusal, letting the villagers take them and check him for any wounds or sickness.

They questioned him for quite some time as well, a blur of activity swarming around him as they asked where the child, a he apparently, had been, if there had been any danger, if there had been anyone else close by him. And he assured them that he had been the only one out there, that he had found the child deep in the woods, that they had been following a butterfly. Remarking that if the child had been gone long, then he might be quite hungry, his words guiding them silently to break off their interrogation and tend to the ‘boy’.

And then the parents arrived, fussing over the child and thanking him for bringing them home safely. He waved them away, an unease filling his gut. He did not like being connected to these people. It would not make the night go any better knowing who they were. Would not make it any easier. As soon, and as politely, as he could he detached himself from them, letting them wander back to their homes and celebrate their safe return.

He strode back into the forest, letting its darkness swallow him as he found his tree where he had been watching the village for days before. Climbing up into its canopy and setting down for his final vigil of the ritual, the skin and wings required for the midnight pyre already stashed into a nook of the tree. Letting the town settle and fade away into rest and sleep, time passing by and lulling them to security and relaxation.

Klepton waited long into the night, letting the cold wind breeze drift by, staved off only by the growing warmth in his gut. When the moon had reached its zenith above, and the last candles illuminating the windows and door frames had died away, he stirred, tasting the air and tuning his hearing to make his last check. Before slipping back down the tree and stalking over to his hatchlings home, his hatchlings gifts in hand.

Ghosting through the town in the lunar illuminated darkness made him reflective, more respectful of the peace around him then he expected. He wouldn’t back out now, but the act of doing this, despite his knowledge of it beforehand, seemed to change things. Made him curious about his own birth. Their origins.

He slunk up to the hatchlings home window, their small hovel sporting a singular room where they all slept. He laid a hand against the closed wooden shutters, dragging a finger along the gap between the two covers, until his eyes caught the beam of wood keeping it shut. Shivering as his warmth grew hotter in his gut and spreading to his arm and spine, he grew out a long claw from his finger, his hand growing, skin splitting and showing his scales under a thin film of blood and transparent flesh, to sport the claw.

The long, thin claw slipped between the shutter boards and snaked under the beam as his tail grew out and slid up beside his arm, growing thicker as muscle returned to the hidden limb. Ready for his slice up with his claw, not to cut through the beam but to simply knock it off its hooks, unblocking the boards and letting him rush in. And as he thrust the boards aside, leaping up onto the sill, his tail snapped down and caught the block before it could strike the ground while his hands grabbed the boards, preventing any thundering cacophony from waking the humans.

He moved quickly, hopping down to the floor and turning to close the shutters once more, setting the bar back in its place before dropping low and looking to the parents. Searching for any sign that they had been disturbed and woken by his entrance, quiet though it might have been. But there was none. They remained still on their bed, blanket drawn over their bodies. Peaceful.

Klepton slunk over to the hatchling’s cradle, silently laying out his ingredients beside it before reaching in and grabbing the child. The drink he had given them before still held them in its drowsy grip, keeping them asleep as he set them aside. Mumbling and shifting in their sleep as they curled into a ball on the floor.

He gave himself a moment to simply look at the child, feeling the itch of his draconic nature slipping through his human form, no longer able to be contained now that the moment was here. This was it. The final step. There would be no stepping back from this once he started. No second chance here if he butchered the ritual. If he had overlooked any detail or part of the plan.

He had come this far. He would see it through.

Klepton took the lizard skin he had gathered months before and laid it within the cradle, its large size meaning its edges hung over the sides of the cradle, even when it was snug to the cradles inside. He laid the bat wings at the bottom, opened his waterskin and quietly poured its contents over them to create a puddle within the cradle. And then returned the child to it, laying them on their back in the rusty-colored pool.

And then he stood, taking a breath as he allowed his claws to slide out from his fingers, limbs becoming more draconic, height bringing his head to brush against the ceiling. His tail curled around his legs, bone spikes sharp and jagged along its spine. Dragonfire crackled quietly in the back of his throat as he stepped towards the bed to collect the last essence required for the birth of his hatchling.

His hands snapped out, latching onto the parents heads and yanking them out of their bed, his tail whipping around and slashing through their throats, both silencing and opening them in one move. He whirled around and held their gouged throats over the cradle, blood now pouring over their child and providing them with the blocks required for their survival. The humans limbs began to flail and thrash about as they woke up, weakening as their life drained away in his grasp. Their choked gasps and rasps spraying droplets of blood from their lips.

When the child was nearly submerged in the pool of blood he had poured over them, Klepton crushed the humans head in his grasp and threw their bodies to the side, kneeling before the hatchling and throwing the edges of the lizard skin over them, pulling out nails to pin it closed to create a sack out of it. And then standing up and back, flames growing hotter as his body shifted ever further towards his true form, wings bursting from his back and flaring open, an agonizing itch and strain filling him as his body grew and stretched rapidly. Before he opened his maw and unleashed a withering, roaring stream of white dragonfire upon the hatchling, drowning the sack in fire.

The wooden floor of the hovel melted into cinders and liquid at the barrage of heat slamming into it, fire leaping from the floor to the walls as he bathed his hatchling with his breath. He shut his jaws as his body grew too heavy to bear standing on two legs, front talons biting into what was left of the floor as he returned to his draconic form in full, flaring his wings and tail out to smash apart the house. Wood shattered into dust and splinters at the force of his stretching, a roar splitting the peaceful night air as he rejoiced at finally returning to his true being, at achieving the greatest of successes. No more hiding. No more weakling.

He was a dragon. And he had brought forth another into this world. It was time it bear witness to its birth.

As the village woke and roused itself to action, he struck hard and fast, his flames cracking walls and baring flesh from bones while his tail and claws smashed and gored any who dared venture closer. The town burned in the night, glowing like the sun had set down upon the world, its blazing light staggering into the forest to share its blinding, searing blessing with the trees, welcoming another dragon to the world. Falling away before him into ash as they were destined to do, powerless and helpless as mere mortals.

None stood any chance to stop this. None were given a chance to try. By the time the sun had risen to witness the result of his rampage, nothing but black and white charred, ashen remains marked where life had once thrived. Where Klepton now reigned, larger than any mere house the humans could build, stronger than any beast alive, flames rivaled solely by the sun, scales tougher than steel.

He stood over the egg, no longer glowing, as it rattled and rolled around the carcass of its former house. Eyes trained on it while his ears remained trained on his surroundings, wary of anything coming upon them now. A pile of scorched corpses gathered from the remains of the villagers and the wildlife waiting for his hatchling to emerge and feast. His own appetite had been whetted during his slaughter, the haze of his release tamed by his indulgences.

Klepton watched the egg as a scraping began to sound out from within it, the hatchling beginning their escape from its confines. As the sun rose with the smoke, the hatchling slowly carved their way through the tough shell of the egg, the scraping becoming more insistent and focused as time passed. Until, as the acrid stench of smoke cleared away and the sun beat down on the remnants of the village, the first cracks appeared in the shell.

A flare of exhilaration blazed in his chest as he watched a piece of the egg bulge out, held to the rest of the shell by wet-strands of blood membranes that stretched with every push against the shell. Claws piercing through it to cut through them and allowing the hatchling to push the fragment further out. And then breaking through the resistance offered by the egg and poking their head through gap they had created, crowing at their escape from their birthing confines.

Releasing a roar alongside their triumphant crowing, Klepton lowered himself to the ground and laid his head down close to them, watching them finish extricating themself. Breaking the egg open bit by bit until they spilled out onto the ash-covered earth with a surprised squawk, eliciting an amused rumbling from Klepton as he watched them scramble back onto their talons. The hatchling shook itself, flaring out its small wings and rattling its loose collection of scales, a few flying off at the movement. It would take a few months for the changes to completely set in, but their fully formed body was a good sign.

The transition would act as a reset in many ways, their memories and concept of being human washed over with the inherent knowledge and instincts of a dragon. They would need to learn how to be a dragon before he could teach them how to shift back into their human form, to teach them the dangers and challenges of being two different creatures in one body. But for now, they only needed food and relief.

The hatchling, though, made no move towards the pile of food he had collected. They stared at him, frozen now that they were free and could take in their surroundings, a scent of fear drifting in the air from them. Klepton blew a hiss of steam from his nostrils over them, making them flinch at the sound and sight. Until the steam settled into their senses and brought some relaxation into them, innate knowledge letting them know that he was safe. That he was their father. Hopefully.

The hatchling hesitantly took a step towards him, then another, until they were mere whiskers from his snout. Only to purr and relax completely, pressing their head against him and dragging their body across his snout. Allowing him to relax at knowing they accepted him. He wasn’t sure he would have killed them if they had not accepted him. His Haunt would have killed him if he hadn’t.

With the understanding of his nature and presence, the hatchling turned their attention to the pile of food, leaping at it to begin tearing into the burnt flesh and feasting upon them. Allowing Klepton to begin viewing them as his offspring fully, without any distance as a precaution for any faults he had possibly introduced into them. Noting the lack of ridges and horns gracing their head, marking them as female. Her silver-blue scales and hide. Her violet eyes. Her twin-horned tail.

Watching them tear into the corpses with gusto, Klepton felt some peace and excitement at the journey they would undergo together now approaching, at adding to the great power and tradition of their Haunt. They would begin the journey home now, once she had had her fill, but first, she needed a name. He closed his eyes, letting his senses be swarmed by her presence and eating, trying to capture a name within it all to explain her. And then, finding it as she squawked, surprised at the belch of fire she released.

Zoirotia.