Blood and Scales Read online

The world spun faster.

  Larger wave. Land. Shadowed water. Ice.

  What was happening? He tried to consider the meaning of the spinning images flashing by his eyes, but found he couldn’t concentrate.

  Massive wave. Land. Garnet wing. Ice. Wall of water towering above him, as though it were about to obliterate them both. Land—

  Without warning, Gravv found himself wrapped in a garnet wing with the wind keening, high and sharp, just beyond it. From the sound, he guessed they were flying much faster than he ever had on his own before.

  “Foolish, reckless wyrmlings!” Dam raged. “What in the names of all my ancestors were you thinking? Are you trying to kill each other?”

  The crimson wing around Gravv unfurled and he plummeted a short distance toward a sandy beach with pure, greenish waves coming in with perfect regularity.

  Spreading his own wings, he caught himself on the wind and rose back up to where his family hovered together.

  “It was his fault!” Bal shrieked immediately. “He blasted me with his fire out of nowhere and for no reason!”

  “Please, Dam. Sire. You’ve got to listen–“ Gravv began.

  “Look at yourselves,” Graayyy said, his voice a rumbling growl. Water streamed down his flank. Clearly, he hadn’t escaped the tidal wave. “And here, just before we left home I spent considerable time and energy making the case to your dam for how you were not wyrmlings anymore. That you were adult dragons who would comport themselves as such. From the drowned rats you appear, it would seem I was mistaken.”

  Gravv’s heart sank to his belly and the fight died in Bal’s eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Sire,” Gravv said. “I lost my temper and made a fool of myself.”

  “I’m sorry too, Sire,” Bal said. He flashed Gravv a wicked, toothy grimace, then added, “He just makes me so–“

  “Do not make excuses, wyrmling,” Graayyy said through clenched teeth.

  “You must always accept accountability for your actions,” Dauria said gravely. “Whether you feel another incited your actions is irrelevant. You, and you alone, are responsible for them. It is you who chooses how to respond to the things around you. Remember that the next time you think violence is called for.”

  “I’ll give you boys a hint,” Graayyy rumbled. “Violence is almost never the correct response. It should always be your last resort.”

  “Yes, Sire,” Gravv said.

  Bal only nodded.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Gravv’s sire and dam flew ahead of him and his brother once more. Their heads were bent together and their lips moved, but he couldn’t make out the words over the rush of oncoming wind.

  What are they talking about? It has to be something important! Why won’t they just say it out loud like decent dragons, so I can hear and be part of it?

  But they wouldn’t listen to him. They never told him what anything was about. And he’d learned his lesson about asking Bal long ago.

  Even now, his older brother seemed to have no desire to act together. Bal kept himself aloof, from both Gravv and their parents. Gravv had never understood why his brother would behave in such a manner.

  His blood boiled just thinking of it. What had he ever done to Bal, anyway?

  There’s nothing for it, Gravv thought. Nothing he ever did swayed his brother in the least. It seemed as though the larger dragon had some sort of grudge against him that he was entirely ignorant of.

  Ahead, Dauria closed her visible eye, her brow ridge furrowing.

  Oh, come on. The wind isn’t that bad.

  After a minute, she opened her eye again and said something to Graayyy.

  “I wish I could hear them,” Gravv grumbled, then glanced nervously toward Bal.

  Thankfully, his clutch-mate hadn’t heard him. Well, either that or he chose not to respond.

  So much the better.

  Dauria shook her head and the look on her face ramped up Gravv’s nervousness all over again. The way she scrunched her snout and arched her brow ridge, the slight widening of her eyes coupled with the intensity in her eyes. All of it pointed to her own anxiety about something. Her expression seemed worse than anxiety, though. Worse than worry.

  Try as he might, he could find no word to fit. Fear, much less terror, was not a word he associated with his parents.

  What’s going on? It has to have something to do with what we’re doing out here. Ancestors, I wish I knew what it was about!

  Ahead, his sire nodded to Dauria in his usual way, with near-infinite calm and reassurance. Even without seeing those liquid, golden eyes, Gravv felt his anxiety diminish and his worries fade.

  How does he do that?

  CHAPTER THREE

  After days of passing jungle-infested land to Gravv’s left, a new island took shape directly ahead and his parents picked up their speed.

  Gravv smiled. He couldn’t be certain of why they were here or what they would find. He couldn’t imagine how it was important or even where they actually were. But he did know it was their destination.

  “What are we doing here, Dam?” Bal asked. Gravv shivered at the echo of his thoughts.

  She turned back to face them. “Well, hopefully we’ll be visiting your uncle.”

  “Uncle?” Bal asked. He seemed more annoyed than curious.

  “Your dam’s brother,” Graayyy said.

  Gravv nodded. That made sense. Although they had only rarely heard about their estranged uncle, he could imagine plenty of circumstances which might prompt an unplanned visit.

  “Why?” Bal asked, ever the undiplomat.

  Dauria smiled. “Just to visit.”

  To visit?

  Bal glanced at Gravv with a raised brow ridge, as though to ask if he were buying it. Gravv shrugged and gave a small shake of his head. Why would they come all this way, with such secrecy and urgency, if they were only here to visit an uncle they had never met?

  Bal nodded and looked back to their dam. “Am I truly supposed to believe that? In the centuries since we broke from our eggs, not once have we come up here to visit Uncle Balhamuut. You don’t even like him.”

  Dauria’s lips curled in a snarl. “Oh, come now–“

  “Don’t lie to us, Dam,” Bal said, cutting her off. “We are not, contrary to recent behavioral evidence, wyrmlings.”

  Dauria huffed a sigh. “Oh, alright. Your sire and I need to speak with him. In private. And that is all I’m going to say on the matter. The less you know, the better.”

  “I can live with that,” Bal said. “Omission I can accept, just don’t lie to us.”

  Dauria scowled.

  Gravv couldn’t blame her. Bal’s disrespect climbed to new heights with this one. At the same time, though, he had to appreciate his brother for saying it. It needed to be said. Perhaps not in so blunt and rude a way, but it was too late to change that now. And it was better that he hadn’t been the one to say it, anyway.

  Let Bal be the villain. He puts it on me often enough, let him deal with it for a change.

  With the beach less than a league ahead, Graayyy slowed. “This bickering gets us nowhere.”

  Ponderously, as though he was intentionally drawing out the moment, he came to a full stop and turned to face Gravv and his brother. “Gravv, Bal, stay here at the beach. Play in the water or something.” He winked playfully, as though to add, like the wyrmlings you are. “Your dam and I will return when we can.”

  Dauria stopped a wingspan or two past Graayyy and turned, hovering, to face Gravv and his brother. “Be wary of any other dragons you see. Your sire and I have not been overstating the problematic relations between dragons for the last few centuries. Believe me when I say there are dragons out there who will kill you and steal your essence without so much as learning your name.”

  “Yes, Dam,” the two said together.

  Dauria nodded and turned away from them. She and Graayyy flew to the north, toward the single, towering spire of a
mountain in the distance.

  Gravv glided down toward the beach. He stopped above the water a few dozen wingspans out from the sandy beach and glanced back toward his brother.

  Bal hovered in the same place he’d been since they’d stopped, staring after the two larger wyrms. His intense gaze did not appear the least bit friendly.

  A show of solidarity to satisfy his stubborn rebelliousness, Gravv thought.

  Bal made a slow turn and glided down toward Gravv. “If it’s so dangerous here, why would they just leave us here?”

  Gravv opened his mouth to offer a sharp retort, but stopped. It was a good question. He closed his mouth and narrowed his eyes at his brother. “You know, brother, it disturbs me how often you actually have something intelligent to say… when you aren’t too busy being caustic and self-centered.”

  Bal offered a self-satisfied smile.

  Gravv shook his head in frustration. Why couldn’t his brother actually communicate like a normal dragon? “It seems to me,” he said slowly. “That they likely believe the danger we face on our own is better than witnessing whatever it is they are here to address with our uncle.”

  “That is precisely what worries me,” Bal said. “Sire has always said that the world of dragons is no place to live. That he doesn’t want to be part of it. Yet here we are. What do you suppose it means?”

  Gravv glanced down at the water beneath him. With his acute Dragonsight, he picked out dozens of moving shapes beneath the water. Creatures of myriad shapes and colors. His lips curled into a small smile.

  “It could mean you’re reading much too far into it,” Gravv said with a wink.

  Bal scoffed. “Yes, I’m sure that’s exactly it.”

  “In all seriousness, though,” Gravv continued as though he hadn’t noticed. “It is painfully obvious that something big is going on. Something they don’t want us to know about. And I’d bet my scales that Balhamuut is right at the center of it.”

  Bal nodded and graced Gravv with a rare, genuine smile.

  Gravv shrugged, stopped flapping his wings, and let himself plummet the final wingspan toward the water.

  It wasn’t that the conversation was unimportant, or even uninteresting. There simply was nothing else to add to it. As he saw it, they were at an impasse. No further information could be gleaned without a better source, and their parents weren’t likely to share anything more, even if they were here.

  And besides, since they had some free time and nothing to do with it, he may as well enjoy the deliciously warm water for a bit.

  He hit the clear blue water with a huge splash and sank straight down. The warmth of the water shocked him. He knew the water up here was warm. A veritable hot spring when compared with that of the oceans he had grown up with. But he never could have imagined the water here would be this warm. It was still the ocean, wasn’t it? How could ocean water be so warm, here or anywhere?

  As he dove deeper and deeper into the water, he marveled at the plethora of sea-life swimming around him. Small, shining, silver and gold-scaled fish darted around him. Tiny sea-horses zipped above him and large sea-turtles dropped beneath. Below, the depths shone with coral from bright orange to deep purple and shining crimson. Lower-still glittered other shapes composed of every shade imaginable of every hue perceivable by the highly sensitive draconic eye.

  “Incredible,” he breathed, the sound consumed by the flood of air bubbles escaping his mouth. He grinned in delight as he twisted and spun in complex patterns in the water.

  Without warning, pain erupted near the tip of his tail and he yelped, the sound coming out in another cloud of air bubbles which raced for the surface.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Gravv spun toward his tail to find a huge, pale-white fish with a dozen rows of razor-edged teeth embedded in the end of his tail.

  Eyes wide, Gravv shrieked in fury and another cloud of air bubbles raced for the surface. He kicked at the creature’s head with his hind legs and twisted to rake at the shark’s flank with his foreclaws. A cloud of crimson blood obscured the creature from his sight and he snapped at it, but only bit down on empty sea-water.

  The shark, which he estimated at more than two wingspans in length, yanked its head from side to side. The movement ripped the lacerations in his tail wider and spilled his scarlet-tinged, metallic blood into the water while pulling at the base of his tail with tremendous force.

  Agony throbbed up and down his spine.

  Gravv roared in pain-filled fury and millions of air bubbles flooded from his mouth. With a surge of adrenaline, he raked downward with his rear claws and slashed at the creature’s head, spilling more crimson blood into the water. He slashed at the shark’s flank again with his foreclaws and yet more blood clouded the sea around him.

  Embedding his claws in the creature, Gravv snaked forward and snapped at it. His teeth dug into the creature’s back and snapped its spine in twain.

  Yet somehow, it held on to his tail and kept feebly twisting and yanking on it.

  “By the ancestors,” he growled through clenched teeth. “What is this thing?”

  Twisting further, angling himself to reach the creature’s head with his foreclaws, he snapped a little higher on the creature’s spine. He raked at its face with his rear claws again and stabbed into the creature with his foreclaws on either side just beneath its head.

  The twisting and yanking ceased, lessening his pain somewhat, but its jaws remained locked on his tail.

  With a grim, satisfied smile, Gravv bit down on the creature’s spine just above his claws and the creature twitched. He thrust his claws through the gaping hole behind its head to split the jaws apart.

  Slowly, he began pulling the shark’s teeth away from his tail. After a slight movement, however, they wouldn’t move further. He pulled harder and the throbbing pain intensified to a raging inferno. His vision went dark around the edges and he stopped pulling.

  The blackness at the edges of his vision receded.

  With a silent curse, he chomped and pulled away flesh thrice more before severing the creature’s head from its body. He let the body sink to the depths and swam for the surface while he cradled the shark’s head around his shredded tail.

  It took only a few moments for his head to break the surface of the water, then a towering wave crashed over him and he tumbled back down again. The jostling of the creature’s teeth in his tail sent another jolt of agony shooting up his spine.

  I must be a lot farther from the beach than I thought.

  Gravv let himself float with the current for a few moments, then swam upward again.

  He glanced about when his head broke the surface again. The water churned from the impact of the last wave, but the next one was still some distance out. He turned away from it and found the beach. It was, he guessed, at least three or four leagues distant.

  How did that happen? he wondered. Could I truly have traveled so far? It was less than half a league when I dropped into the water.

  Still cradling the shark head around his tail, Gravv sped toward the beach as fast as he dared.

  Squinting, he scanned the coastline. Where was Bal? He scanned the coast again, looking to the skies as well, but there was no sign of his brother.

  What’s going on?

  Reaching the shallows, he stood and carefully raised his shredded tail above the water. His reddish-metallic blood dripped into the water and he looked closer at the shark head attached to his tail.

  The head was wide and pale. The grayish-white eyes looked as though they had always been devoid of color. The shark’s pearly teeth glistened in the small space between his garnet-flecked silvery tail and the colorless gums they grew from.

  And that would be the answer, he thought, noting the peculiar shapes of the teeth. They were almost perfectly triangular, thick at the center, lending strength, but razor-sharp at the edges. And serrated.

  No, not serrated. Not precisely, at least.


  The serrations angled backward, similar to a human arrowhead. The shape allowed for easy insertion, but their removal would rip out huge chunks of flesh. He judged them strong enough to rip out dragon flesh without difficulty.

  “Must make keeping their teeth clean a nightmare,” he said, but failed to force himself to laugh with the poor joke. “What to do, what to do.”

  Gravv took his first steps ever onto dry land not covered by ice. He found the experience less than he’d been expecting. True, the sensation of warm sand between his toes was quite wondrous, but overall it was a disappointment.

  Now dripping with both sea-water and blood, Gravv made his way up the beach, looking for any sign of Bal or his parents.

  He found neither.

  On his eighth step inland, he was yanked upward, the force ripping his tail lacerations still-wider.

  Gritting his teeth, he stared around wildly, the agony dulling his mind still-further. His gaze bounced from side to side, but nothing physical held him.

  Damn my inability to master even the simplest matters of the arcane, he thought in frustration.

  With his pulse thundering in his receptors and throbbing behind his eyes, Gravv tried to calm himself. Tried to soothe his panic as blood gushed from the wounds in his tail to stream down his body.

  Where is Bal? he shrieked silently.

  A wide circle of silver wyrms seemed to materialize from nowhere. Slowly, they approached and surrounded him. A short distance beyond the line of silvers a duller metallic-gray one hovered motionless in the air— is that a steel dragon? Didn’t they all die out? Dam always said they did. The group’s expressions were a strange mixture of hunger, annoyance, and rage.

  The dull-gray wyrm’s eyes roved up and down Gravv’s body in apparent curiosity. “What have we here?” he asked in a high, whining voice.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Gravv woke to pitch blackness and silence. He sensed he was in a large, open space.

  “Where am I?” he groaned softly and was immediately shushed by close to a dozen voices.

  “Where are we?” he tried again, granting his voice barely enough breath to create sound. “Why are we here? How did we get here?”