We did not sleep that night.
My mother pretended she did. She lay coiled in the cavern's heart, eyes shut, breath slow and even, her massive chest rising and falling with false steadiness. But I heard the lie in the small things – the subtle shift of her weight, the way her tail twitched once every few minutes, the faint scrape of claw against rock as she adjusted in a pattern that never fully settled.
Dragons slept deep when they truly slumbered. This was vigilance disguised.
I stayed near the cave mouth, staring out into the pale darkness. The horizon was glowed with smudged red beneath the distant clouds. Somewhere beyond the ridge, smoke was still rising. I could not see it clearly from here, not at night, but I could smell it on the wind.
Charred wood. Cooked fat. The sour, metallic sting of blood burning away.
My throat tightened. The hunger inside me stirred, craving and demanding. Not raging – not yet – but awake. Like a lion lifting its head at the sound prey. I hated that.
I hated that something in me listened.
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At dawn, my mother rose without ceremony and moved to the cave entrance. Frost clung to her scales and her horns glistened in the morning dew. She looked south for a long time as the sun slowly emerged to brighten the wastes.
"Do not go," she said at last.
The words were simple, but the meaning wasn't.
"I wasn't going to," I lied.
She turned her head slightly, one pale eye fixing on me. "You were."
I had no response that wasn't childish or honest. So I chose the third option: sarcasm. The lowest form of wit but the highest form of intelligence, some would say (Oscar Wilde).
"Well, now that you have told me not to, I feel very motivated to do it anyways."
Her nostrils flared. "That will get you killed."
Her tone wasn't sharp, it was concerned. It was quietly certain – the kind that came from witnessing the world do exactly what it always did.
"I need to know," I said, and this time my voice was real. "If they're burning… if it's people…"
My mother's gaze rifted back to the southward. "Knowing will not save them."
"Maybe not," I admitted. "But it will help me know what I am. Who I am. To me."
That made her still. For a moment, the cave went silent except for wind and distant ice cracking somewhere below the cliff. Then she exhaled.
"One pass," she said. "High. Far. You look, you return. You DO NOT engage."
I blinked. "You're letting me go?"
"I am choosing what kind of mother I am," she replied, voice low. "Just as you are deciding who you will be."
That hit me harder than expected. I bowed my head slightly – a gesture I had not realized was learned from her – and stepped out into the cold.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The sky was bleak.
The flight felt different than usual, as fear sat in my chest making the air feel heavier. The currents were more unpredictable and my wings beat harder than needed, a harsh rhythm that scattered snow when I passed the ridges below.
I climbed. High.
Higher than I'd ever flown before. The world became a map beneath me – white plains, jagged ridges, long frozen rivers like veins – as a I pushed further south until the wind hanged, carrying warmth laced with rot.
Then I saw it. A black smear across the snow. At first it looked a natural scar – exposed rock or a landslide – but as I angled closer, the details sharpened into a picture of devastation.
Houses. Wooden frames collapsed inward. Roofs caved in. And scattered shapes lay in the snow like broken dolls.
This was a village. Or what remained of one. Smoke still rose from two places, thin and resentful, curling into the gray sky like hands reaching for the heavens.
I circled wide, staying high and spotted movement among the structures.
Men. Not Dragons.
Humans.
Their small figures clad in furs and leather, running between ruins. Some carried bundles, some carried weapons – spears, bow, axes. Some carried bodies.
The sight twisted my stomach, not from hunger but recognition.
This was not a hunt that was humane and natural. This was an attack and… its aftermath. Paniced survivors desperately trying to salvage what they can from the ashes.
I should have turned back right then. That had been the agreement.
But my gaze snagged on the edge of the settlement, near a half-collapsed wall. Something glinted in the snow. A chain, no – a collar.
And beside it, something too big to be a dog and too small to be a dragon. A shape half-buried in drifted snow, wings folded wrong, scales dull and lifeless.
A drake.
Not a true dragon but kin. Lesser. Stil terrifying to men and still alive enough to twitch.
It had been brought down by spears protruding from its side. Its chest rose in shallow, failing breaths. Men were gathered around it, cautious as wolves around a wounded bear. One of them approached slowly with an axe raised.
I felt something shift in my chest. Not pity. Not kinship. Just… unease.
The drake was dying and the men were deciding whether to finish it off or flee. And I, hovering above like a silent wraith, was deciding what to do.
I heard mother's voice in my head. You look, you return.
My wings faltered for half a beat. Then my gaze moved again – to the center of the settlement, where a taller figure stood apart from the others, watching the ruins like he was memorizing them.
He wasn't dressed like the rest. His cloak was fine, trimmed with something that caught the light oddly. He held a bow – not the crude kind like the others were holding, but one of supreme craftsmanship.
And the air around him… The air around him felt wrong.
Not smoke-wrong. The type of wrong that touched something deep inside my genetic code. A fundamental disgust.
My throat tightened as the hunger inside me stirred again, sharp this time, as if scenting my greatest enemy.
The man lifted his head slowly. And looked directly at me.
Even from this height, I felt it – the moment where two enemies lock eyes and the world shifts into hyper focus.
He raised his bow slightly. Not as a greeting. As a warning. A threat.
I should have fled. Instead, I circled wider, angling so the sun – dull as it was – could catch my scales. Gold flashed through the clouds. A statement.
The man didn't flinch. He watched.
And then he spoke. I couldn't hear the words he said, but I felt them – a vibration in the air, a subtle pressure that brushed against my mind, like fingers testing a wound. Not serious. Not yet. But… interested.
I bared my teeth without meaning to. My body, traitorous, wanted to descend with fury and close the distance so I could tear him apart. Wanted to know what kind of creature dared to look upon me.
I forced myself to relax. One pass, I reminded myself. High. Far.
I turned away. And as I did, I heard screaming – real terror – from below.
Not battle cries. Fear.
I snapped my head back. The men had finally struck the drake. The axe came down and the creature convulsed on the snow. A raw, gurgling sound escaped that punched something ugly into my ribs.
The warriors scattered immediately afterwards, like they were afraid it would lash out or curse them as it died.
The fine-cloaked man did not move; he watched the drake breathe its last. Then, slowly, he turned and walked into the ruins with a renewed determination. As though re-affirming that the beast who burned down his home could be killed. Could be hunted.
My claws curled midair. I did not like him. Something intrinsic to my being utterly rejected whatever he was. And I did not like the part of me that wanted to go back and burn him to ashes in the snow just to prove I could.
I turned away for the final time, harder this time, and beat my wings with restrained will. I flew home.
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My mother met me on the ridge. She did not ask if I had obeyed. She asked a better question.
"What did you see?"
I landed, snow hissing from my heat, and for a moment I couldn't speak. My throat felt thick. My chest felt tight.
"A village," I finally responded. "Burned. Survivors. A drake – killed. And… a man."
Her eyes narrowed. "What kind of man?"
"The kind that felt wrong," I answered. "The kind that looked up and saw me. Like he could have ended me whenever he wanted."
My mother's tail tightened slightly, carving a grove in the snow. "Then it has begun," she said.
I swallowed.
"Begun what?" I asked again, because I hated that she kept saying it like the sentence was missing an ending.
She leaned closer, voice low enough that the snow, the air, and the rock didn't even echo.
"War," she said. "Death and Ruin and the Master. I believe the people of the land called him…
Morgoth."