Dragon Chapter 3: Mother, Father (Patreon)

“Between us, there is no such thing as family affection.”

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Noah had often heard the saying: even a vicious tiger does not eat its own cubs.

Humans used that phrase to comfort themselves, to prove that even the most savage of beasts still held a trace of softness deep inside.

But red dragons were not tigers, much less human.

Much like “siblings,” the word “mother” was, to a red dragon, almost entirely meaningless.

Or rather, whatever meaning it did have was probably very different from how other ordinary races understood it.

Just as you generally could not see much in the way of morality or manners in such creatures, you likewise could not expect to find any love in them.

The word itself simply did not exist in the red dragons’ dictionary.

Red dragons believed it belonged to those weak races that needed warmth to hold their groups together, to those creatures that feared loneliness and still needed one another.

And they were not such beings.

If the Dragon God—the Mother of Chromatic Dragons, Tiamat—still remained, then red dragons might indeed, through teaching and compulsion, fulfill at least the barest degree of responsibility.

But that was not love. That was obedience, fear toward a higher existence.

And in this present age, with the restraints of the Dragon God gone, the number of abandoned dragon eggs had only grown greater and greater.

They no longer needed to bear that sort of responsibility. They could devote themselves fully to the selfishness they were born with.

That was the truest emotion of all.

Noah did not know whether he ought to feel fortunate that he was not one of those abandoned wild dragons.

That enormous beast appeared within his field of vision, its entire body covered, like his and Quen’s, in overlapping scales of red hues. Stifling firelight and waves of heat seeped constantly from its surface, warping the air into a shimmering halo.

Noah could clearly feel it—a profound blood connection.

His mother, Sasari.

A true adult female red dragon.

Compared to the word “family affection,” Noah was more inclined to call this feeling instinct.

It was something more primitive, more biological.

Like a resonance deep within the bloodline, an inborn recognition—like a hatchling bird curling up at the sight of its mother hawk, or a young beast freezing when it catches the scent of a predator.

Noah could feel the stiffness in his younger sister and the rest of his siblings as well: their fin membranes pressed tight against their necks, their tails hanging low, each doing their utmost to make themselves seem as inconspicuous as possible, exactly like him.

In front of an adult red dragon, any sort of flamboyant posture was nothing less than suicide.

Even dragon-mother’s behavior was very “red dragon.” From the very first moment of their meeting, she was already brutally taking stock of her offspring. When she picked them up and turned them over for inspection, it was almost as if she were checking a batch of merchandise.

In the end, Noah and Quen could not escape judgment.

Her gaze lingered on them far longer than it did on the other hatchlings.

“Hm? Twins?”

There was obvious confusion and shock in the mother dragon’s tone.

“By the Primordial Dragon above, can something like this really happen?!”

She opened her long narrow jaws and ran her forked tongue across Noah once.

Noah tensed.

If Quen and he were judged to be failures, children unfit to go on living, then dragon-mother would devour them without the slightest hesitation.

In fact, he had already noticed from her eyes that she seemed somewhat interested in doing exactly that.

“Hmph, whatever. Better leave this for Vulcan to judge himself.”

She extended a talon and shoved Noah forward.

From the inheritance of dragonkind, he knew that this fellow called “Vulcan” was his father.

But Noah did not consider that a good thing.

No matter what, red dragons did not raise children together.

For male dragons, that was something absolutely impossible.

Mating was momentary, laying eggs was the female dragon’s business, and hatching was a matter of chance.

So why was Sasari so intent on bringing him to meet the other dragon?

Surely it could not be to demand child support.

His pupils shifted slightly.

In the distance, scattered dragon-shaped shadows far larger than they were passed over platforms, some carrying cargo, others driving other creatures onward.

Those dragons were all different colors—red, blue, green, black, white, and more. They flashed in the firelight like moving jewels, like living flames.

This was a city so vast it defied imagination.

A city of dragons.

A city that belonged to dragons, and yet not one that every dragon could call himself the “master” of.

…

It took Noah and his siblings a long time to climb high enough.

Things began to appear on the rock walls on either side.

At first Noah thought they were naturally formed patterns, but later he realized they were marks—enormous, deep marks, like the repeated scratches left in stone by the claws of some colossal beast.

As they went farther, those marks gradually turned into designs. Lines outlined the shapes of dragons, but those dragons were strange—larger than any Noah had ever seen, with wingspans broad enough to blot out the sky.

“What’s that?”

Quen suddenly asked.

Following her gaze, Noah saw that in a hollow in the rock wall there was something dark red embedded there.

A scale.

But one far too large to be normal. Noah estimated that though it was incomplete, that scale was still as large as his entire body.

Their mother did not stop walking.

“A relic of the Dragon God,” she said. “There are many here. Your father collected them.”

Dragon God.

Noah rolled that term over in his mind.

There were fragments in his inherited memories concerning the Dragon God, but they were vague, like shadows seen through dense fog. The gods had fallen silent, and the Dragon God was no exception.

He glanced once more at the scale embedded in the wall.

It was glowing.

Very faintly, but unmistakably glowing. A dark-red halo pulsed from it, rising and falling like a heartbeat.

Quen saw it too.

Her slit pupils widened slightly, and a very faint instinctive gurgle came from her throat.

“Don’t even think about it.”

Without turning her head, their mother said, “That is not something you can touch.”

Quen immediately withdrew her gaze and pretended that nothing had happened.

“We’re here.”

Noah lifted his head.

At the end of this corridor stood a door.

Or rather, it would be more accurate to call it a single enormous, flawless piece of red jade set into the rock wall, at least several dozen meters high. The jade was translucent, and within it one could vaguely see red light flowing like the blood vessels of a living creature.

Their mother did not step forward.

“Go in,” she said.

Noah looked at her, then at the door.

“You’re not going in yourself?”

Their mother turned and looked at him.

There was a great deal in that one glance.

Hesitation, resistance, even immense fear.

But in the end, she only said:

“He didn’t summon me.”

Then she turned and left the way they had come.

Her footsteps gradually faded into the distance. The corridor was left with only the hatchlings and a red-jade door dozens of meters high.

“…So we’re just going in like this?”

one of the red dragons said quietly.

“What else would we do?” Noah asked in return.

The other red dragons froze for a moment, then saw him stride forward first.

Noah could feel their eyes on his back, but he did not care.

Hesitation would change nothing, and fear would not help either. If he had to go in, then he would simply go in.

“Hmph. What are you acting so proud for?”

Quen gritted her teeth and followed after him.

Noah flicked her a glance. All he could say was that a silly little sister was still a silly little sister—at a time like this, she still had the energy to compete with him.

Let her do as she liked.

Noah reached out a claw and touched the jade door.

Cold.

But in the next instant, that coldness became scorching heat. The light inside the red jade flared up abruptly, like surging magma.

Noah instinctively tried to pull his claw back, only to discover that the entire door had begun shrinking apart to both sides, as if flesh were being torn open, revealing a fissure in the middle.

A blast of hot air rushed at his face.

Noah narrowed his eyes, his nictitating membranes closing on instinct. Deep within the fissure he saw an enormous space, suffused with red light, its far end impossible to make out.

He stepped into the opening.

The space inside was even larger than he had imagined.

Its ceiling was almost invisible. All around were black rock walls formed from cooled lava, while the floor was made of great slabs of obsidian. Here and there ran fine cracks, and from within them shone a dim red light, like the veins of the earth—or perhaps the scars of the planet itself.

This was nothing less than a palace built in the depths of a volcano.

And at its center was a dragon.

Huge.

Sasari was already the sort of dragon that counted as massive. But compared to the one before them, she was like a hatchling standing before an adult dragon—and the disparity was even greater than that.

Its scales were not an ordinary red, but a deep, nearly black crimson, like magma hardened over ten thousand years, or iron soaked in blood and then burned dry.

There was a weight of time in that color, the shadow of death, something in it that could not be looked at directly.

A row of bony spines rose from its back, extending from the nape of its neck all the way to the tip of its tail, each one as long as Noah’s entire body.

Those spines were darker still, nearly pure black, their tips gleaming with a metallic luster in the red glow.

It lay there with its foreclaws crossed, its jaw resting atop them, as though it were sleeping.

But Noah knew it was watching.

Because its eyes were open.

What kind of eyes were they?

Noah found it difficult to describe.

Vertical pupils. Golden. A little like Quen’s eyes.

But compared to burning amber, they were more like the blazing sun itself.

Noah realized that he had stopped walking.

It was not that he did not want to go on. It was that his body had already ceased to obey him.

An immense rigidity had come over his muscles, every scale on his body tightening at once as though they meant to grind him apart.

Submit. Contract. Beg not to be noticed.

Beside him, he heard Quen draw a very faint, trembling breath.

Do not look directly! Do not defy! Do not even think!

Noah’s body lowered of its own accord, forelimbs bending, neck dropping, even his tail pressed flat against the floor.

His sister’s reaction was even more extreme. She almost collapsed at once, her whole body plastered to the ground, not daring even to raise her head, the tip of her tiny tail trembling slightly.

The other hatchlings adopted the same posture.

Out of the corner of his eye, Noah saw them—some crouched even lower, some had already shut their eyes, some were trembling faintly.

Before an ancient dragon, they were nothing. Not red dragons, not hatchlings, not any meaningful kind of life at all. Merely insignificant things that could be crushed at any moment.

And that dragon had done nothing more than lift its chin slightly and shift position.

Yet from that one motion alone, the air throughout the whole vast hall trembled. The cracks in the floor flickered a few times, and the heat rolled toward them like a rising tide.

Noah felt the little flame inside his own body shrink before that heat, like a candle flame in a gale, liable to go out at any moment.

“Come here.”

The voice reverberated through the great hall, making every inch of space hum.

No.

Noah heard the answer within his own heart.

It said no. It said stay away. It said run.

But he could not do that.

Refusal meant death.

After taking a deep breath, Noah stepped forward.

Quen followed him, just a little slower.

The dragon lowered its head.

Its head alone was as large as a house. When it bent down, Noah could make out every scale along its jaw, every scar, every jutting bony spine.

Those two golden eyes hung above them, gazing down.

Father.

The master of this city.

The World-Burner, an ancient red dragon, Dragon King.

(PS: Ancient dragons generally can no longer reproduce; there is a very special reason here.)

Noah did not know where those titles came from.

Whether they rose from inherited memory, or whether he had somehow read them from those eyes. But he knew they were all true. Every word was true. This dragon deserved every one of those titles, and more.

Vulcan seemed to have no interest in the other hatchlings, sweeping over them with only cold indifference.

Only when his gaze reached Noah and Quen did it linger.

“Twins.”

When he spoke, there was an extraordinarily subtle undertone in his voice.

“So such a thing can really happen.”

He stared at them for a long time.

But it was nothing like a father looking at his children.

Noah felt it was more like a collector examining a newly acquired piece, or perhaps a gambler studying the chips he had placed on the table.

Those eyes, brilliant as suns, passed over every scale on Noah’s body, every inch of muscle, as though they meant to dissect him.

Then the dragon’s gaze shifted to Quen.

A very faint, suppressed whimper escaped her throat.

“I didn’t expect to come across this sort of surprise.”

He withdrew his gaze and lowered himself again, his jaw once more resting on his foreclaws.

But father’s eyes did not fully close. He looked at the brother and sister with his eyes narrowed slightly.

It was an expression almost like a smile.

“Let them live,” he said.

“Why?”

Only then did Noah notice that there was actually another red dragon present in the hall.

That dragon’s presence had been completely overwhelmed by Vulcan’s.

“Because I want to see.”

He paused, then said, “Twins usually do not live long enough to hatch.”

Twins.

Dragons generally had siblings, hatching in a way somewhat similar to birds, but identical twins that actually survived to crawl out of the egg were exceedingly rare.

Living twins were not a good omen.

Unlike short-lived races such as humans, true dragons required an enormous amount of energy to hatch. A red dragon egg itself contained immense power and would ordinarily nurture a single, powerful individual, but it was not enough to support the formation of two consciousnesses.

Even though eggs could absorb energy from the outside while they were still unhatched, their real supply still came from the dragon egg itself. That was why identical-twin dragon eggs almost never hatched at all—both young dragons would consume themselves or die inside for lack of nourishment.

And even if they survived, twins still had many defects. Compared to normally born red dragons, their strength was incomplete.

Each side possessed only half.

Half the flame, half the strength, half the inheritance.

Ugly and weak.

Even their souls were like rag dolls that had been brutally torn apart and then hastily sewn back together.

Only when they were together could they wield enough power to contend with their other siblings.

And red dragons could not tolerate one another.

To make matters worse, there existed between twins a natural, irresistible pull.

Not an emotional one, but a survival instinct. Devour the other half, complete oneself, become a whole red dragon. That impulse only grew stronger with age, until one killed the other.

It was a dead end so obvious there was hardly any need to say it.