Chapter Text
Mama
Two siblings
Excitement day?
Alone
Alone in the dark, waiting
It’s not time to come out yet. No one around to guard me, no one to eat. Must wait.
Ah, there’s someone...
X
Riala lifted the crimson egg from the crevice, marveling at her discovery. She would know a dragon egg anywhere. Five times she’d hoped to join the Riders, holding an egg under the watchful gaze of an elf, but no joy.
Not yet, at least. Maybe...
With no signs of life, she tucked it into her pack and set off for home.
X
Spring came again, and the Riders’ envoy returned to Narda bearing a quartet of eggs. Riala held each one -grey, sunset orange, pale green, and a mottled brown- with the usual result: nothing. The Elven guardian did not seem overly perturbed as he gathered up the eggs to leave.
“Hold up.” Riala knew without asking that he was irritated at being kept from departure. “I found this.” She pulled out the red egg with a flourish and handed it to him.
He let out a startled exclamation as his fingers closed around it, then began to laugh. “It’s a wild egg. Where was it?”
“Tucked in a cave in the Spine. There were dead leaves all over it, must have been in there for a while. I don’t really know what to do with it, so...”
The elf looked between her and the egg for a moment, then handed it back to her. “It will hatch when it’s safe and there’s plenty of food. She can probably fend for herself after that, but maybe you could look after her for a while. It’s not being a Rider, but...”
Finally, Riala realized the elf had probably dealt with his own, repeated disappointment. She certainly wasn’t the only reject in the world.
X
It was the height of summer before the egg hatched.
One moment Riala was turning a spit so one of the many deer caught in the rut would cook evenly over the fire in Narda’s central courtyard. The next, there was a commotion in the tavern where she worked. The crimson dragon egg sat tucked in a corner in her bedroom above the dining room.
Correction: the egg now lay in pieces in that self-same corner, while the dragon within scampered around that self-same dining room. At least, so Riala assumed from the crashes, squawks of protest, and occasional shouts on the order of “Out! Shoo! Can someone-”
Feeling responsible, and rightly so, Riala handed her spit-turning duties to the nearest person and charged off. The inside of the dining room was complete and utter chaos. The dull-red dragon, no larger than a robin, fluttered around diving at people’s heads.
Acting on pure instinct, Riala sat on the floor in th e middle of the room and began to sing a lullaby, only half-remembered from so long ago. Evidently, it was enough. The red dragon settled on her lap, curled up, and began to purr like a cat. Riala carefully lifted her and carried her outside, to audible relief from the onlookers.
X
The humans treated her like their own child, or else a god, the difference between the two being a question of power and of who created whom in their own image. They brought her food, and showed her the place where they kept their grain. The stone building proved for her an excellent source of prey in the form of the small furred creatures the humans already wanted gone. She was, after all, a far better hunter than the less-small-yowling-rumbling furred creatures that sometimes tried to scare her off.
The friendly human, the first to offer her some emotion other than fear, who taught the others to accept her, gave her a name: Vervada. Stormcleaver.
She liked that.
X
All dragons grow at different speeds, but even Vervada’s slow and sporadic increases in size eventually took her beyond mice and human friendship. She left on a warm spring day to the good wishes of a town she’d once called home.
Now she was alone again.
X
Her awakening came later than she’d hoped, but then it was nothing Vervada could control. She’d been feeling odd for days on end, as if parts of her body had gone from unused to overworked overnight. Desires to which she’d not given particular thought suddenly overwhelmed all else.
For nearly a month, she lay on top of a mountain trying to make heads and tails of what she was feeling. Ultimately, it was a different sort of hunger that drove her to action.
The herd of mountain goats bounding around, disrupting her sleep, provided excellent hunting. On cathing the first one, she felt an inexorable force gathering within her, and shot a burst of red fire at the small and helpless animal.
That development gave her even more over which to puzzle. Somewhere in her memories, or rather the ones given to her by others, she knew what it was she needed.
X
The large white dragon arrived on a warm spring morning when Vervada was busy munching on a nicely roasted deer. Between her human-influenced childhood and her own flames, she preferred most of her food at least partly cooked.
This she explained to her new acquaintance, even as he taught her what exactly it was she wanted. He lacked a proper name; he had no need for one when the only other beings whose thoughts he valued were other dragons and could therefore name him with a cluster of thoughts.
Big-white-father-to-my-eggs.
He didn’t stay long. Both of them could feel the quartet of immature minds growing inside her before he left with a gift of prey and his good wishes. That was fine. She had what she needed from him.
X
The children came when she felt safe, in the cave where Vervada herself had been born so loing ago. Two, males, were colored white to match their father. Their sisters looked more like she would have guessed, the pale pink of sunrise.
She hoped they would hatch soon.
X
Vervada’s wishes granted themselves in their own time. Her eggs hatched as the young did everything, in pairs. The males came first, almost simultaneously, followed a week later by the females only a few hours apart.
She taught them to hunt and all she knew of the world. She loved that, having companions and flying in a thunder. But of course, the halcyon days of childhood could not last forever. Fire and hunger came in time, and the younglings left together on a fine summer day to seek their own mates in turn.
Alone again.
X
This time, there were two of them. Nestmates. Everyone had a friend except her.
One was black, one a dark brown, but they looked, felt, smelled so much alike. They didn’t bother to ask as to the resulting offspring. Then they were gone again, leaving her behind with six unborn offspring.
These were born and hatched much sooner than the others, though already perfectly formed. The nuances of dragon gestation were beyond Vervada’s ken, but she cared not.
Hatchlings!
It was as if this batch had been designed by someone with no imagination. One male and one female each of black, dark brown, and crimson. Pairs as usual.
They, too, grew as they should and left in time.
X
This time, her mate has a friend, too.
The tiny creature Iormungr keeps on his back has only four limbs, more akin to her prey than the dull blue dragon who seems absolutely terrified of her.
As well he should be.
But then she recognizes Riala, the human she’d once known, and accordingly, she decides not to eat her. It’s a different sort of hunger driving her today, anyway.
Vervada had gone to live in the Hadarac Desert by the time of the third nest. The mind of the male dragon felt strange, with more sounds than anything else to name the world around him. As for the human on his back...
Hello, Riala!
The three of them landed in a field, swapping memories. Hunting and motherhood, the stuff of life, from her, training and rules and words from the two of them. Useless constructs, those, but part of who her old and new friends were.
Quickly enough, the two dragons left Riala behind on the ground, her mind full of laughter.
X
When the two left, as they always did, they actually told her where they were going: that big island near where she’d hatched. Vervada made a note of that. While the desert was a wonderful place to dragon, she longed to explore the world. She would, she decided, visit Iormungr with their hatchlings.
X
By the time the eggs came, a surprisingly harsh winter had blown in. Vervada knew they would not hatch until the winds died down, the massive snowdrifts settled to the ground to melt in time and return to the air, her breath stopped freezing over her nostrils, the sun emerged again from the rarely-broken clouds, and above all, the prey emerged again from its winter-sleep.
That last problem was proving most troublesome. She’d gone longer without food, that was true, but never while pregnant. It wasn’t as if she could go somewhere better, either. Already, she’d felt the mind of one neighboring dragon fade abruptly to darkness after he ventured out into the blizzard.
So she kept to herself, lapping marrow from the bones of long-dead prey deep in the back of her cave. She would be fine, she knew. But she worried for the little ones. Their minds were faltering within her.
The day finally arrived, and it came as a relief that it would soon be over. A little less suffering in the world. If she could just get through it.
The birth was horribly long and painful. Hours crawled past uncounted as wave after wave of contractions rolled through her.
One undersized egg made its appearance, the shell a dull dark red that looked like lifeblood, but to her surprise she could feel its mind still, weak but steady. Maybe there was some hope. By then, the midnight snowfall had grown sufficiently heavy for lightning and thunder to crash through it every few seconds, turning night into day.
Another egg, now, in a slightly brighter red. Alive again. Maybe this would work out after all.
Quickly on the heels of that one, a pale blue egg arrived, but Vervada knew at once that it was dead. The shell was too thin, the egg itself too light. Whatever that youngling was supposed to be, it was long gone.
And the two that followed, in a dull off-white that reminded her of nothing so much as long-dead bone. From past experience, Vervada was certain that another blue egg was still forthcoming, but the pains had stopped. Well. She needed time to rest, anyway.
It took embarrassingly long for Vervada to realize that underneath all of the thunder, she could hear the beats of a dragon’s wings. She spent a moment wondering who was stupid or desperate enough to fly in the horrid storm.
Then they landed in her cave, and she realized it was Iormungr and Riala. She lacked the energy to greet them with more than a look.
Iormungr sniffed at the eggs, pride and grief showing in their turns. Then he licked her on the cheek. Love, now that she had the word for it, crashed through her, bringing with it something nearly as powerful.
Without bothering to consider it, Vervada pushed the magic into her womb, and the last egg came free into Riala’s waiting hands. The dull thrum of her daughter’s slumbering thoughts reassured Vervada that her struggles had ultimately been worth it.
Riala had lit a white werelight by then, and by its light the newest egg shone brilliant sapphire blue. Absolutely perfect.
X
As Riala told the story, they’d kept an eye on Vervada ever since their departure. Some magic words let them have a look at her whenever they wanted, which they often had. As soon as the eggs began to come, they’d set out as quickly as they could. The weather had made it difficult, and Vervada couldn’t blame them for that.
Once the weather broke, just for a day or two, Riala carried the three dead eggs out to a nice field, and there the two dragons made ashes of the tiny scraps that were supposed to be their children. No scavengers would feed on the tiny bodies.
X
Dragon and Rider asked Vervada to fly to the big-magic island with them and raise the eggs there, but she was, at heart, a wild dragon. She did, however, give them the blue egg.
Iormunger asked her if she was sure as Riala bundled their daughter into her saddlebags. Vervada poured her thoughts into his mind, leaving him to interpret. All of her other offspring had a twin, a partner. Except this one.
She would need a Rider.
X
The two red eggs were tucked safely away in- ...that place. The one that kept wriggling out of her grasp. No matter. The coming battle would be quite the adventure.
Riala, Iormungr, another pair named Saphira and Brom, and a few wild dragons, including big-ancestor-Belgabad, clustered together around one of the island’s many fire vents. Some fuzzy memory told them to draw attention away from-
From absolutely nowhere. All that mattered was right here, right now, and the fourteen angry dragons swooping down in a cacophony of wingbeats.
The battle blurred itself together on later recollection, all the events combining or inverting. Belgabad’s death stuck out, as one would expect. A pale pink’s Rider stabbed him through the eye, the task requiring the round-ears to physically crawl inside.
That one deserved the gore covering him. He would later die in the big- what under the sun was that light, anyway? That had killed Iormungr and Riala, too. Even his Eldunari was gone.
This, she sensed through her own, already tucked in one of the Wyrdfell’s backpacks. Her body had been lost in-
Ah, yes. She’d been trying to protect Saphira. The young dragon, barely old enough for fire, had been crouched over her unconscious rider. Vervada’s death, coming when a misshapen red bit her behind her head, had been accompanied by Belgabad’s crumpled, body crashing finally to the stony ground. Saphira had snatched Brom and made a break for a nearby building in some hope that he could shelter there. Then she’d...
Saphira had been trying to grab the egg that looked so much like her from where it had been tucked in a crevice. She was supposed to have been locked away safely -where?- with her siblings, but had simply gotten lost in the chaos.
And then the brown and the purple and the red had all gone after Saphira.
Vervada had drawn herself into her Eldunari at that, unwilling to look. Even so, she’d known when the final blast obliterated almost all life on Vroengard. The familiar inspiration swept over her at the last moment, allowing her to shield herself, her daughter, the other egg, and Brom from the blast.
After that, all was darkness.
X
Even as just an Eldunari, Vervada could feel strong arms wrapping around her. The relevant mind was walled off, but she knew it meant her no harm. Whoever it was, they’d taken her unhatched daughter as well, and that was enough for her to trust them.
X
Which had been a mistake.
The kind one lacked any authority to defend her from their leader. The other Eldunari soon went mad from their constant mind-rape and the leeching of their life-force. But Vervada held on. She had her daughter to protect, tucked away next to the egg destined to be her mate amongst a host of lesser treasures.
Then she was gone, in an instant, leaving behind the mate and the traitor.
And Vervada was... alone.