Dragon Chapter 7: Brother (2) (Patreon)

“B…Brother?”

That voice was extremely faint, squeezed out of the throat of that crimson little dragon, rough and breathy.

The younger sister who always spoke in the sharpest, most cutting tone had, in that single cry, revealed something soft—something she would never admit to in the future.

Noah suddenly felt a small sense of comfort. At the very least, she had called him “brother,” hadn’t she?

But he had no time to dwell on that now.

A red dragon’s senses were pushed to their absolute limit under extreme concentration.

He could feel with perfect clarity how the tips of his fangs first pierced the scales of his own kind, then the skin beneath, the sensation like puncturing some tough vegetal membrane.

The resistance that followed came from contracting muscle tissue—a layered substance full of tensile strength, yet one that rapidly gave way under the absolute force of his bite. As his fangs cut in, it let out a faint, crisp tearing sound, like the snapping of the finest strings.

Noah wrenched his jaws downward, tearing away a large chunk of flesh still clinging with blood vessels and skin.

That “dragon blood” slid down his throat as if a red-hot lump of charcoal had been thrown into a blazing fire.

“I think you’ll like this.”

he hissed.

Noah did not relax his muscles, and he spread his wings to their fullest.

He knew that although the scene looked gruesome, this kind of injury was really nothing to a dragon.

If nothing unexpected happened, the result would simply be that their brother would be utterly enraged.

“You’re asking to die.”

Gron now felt himself being rammed and provoked by a defective thing, something that should have been cowering in a corner scavenging scraps. Violence instantly flooded his slit pupils, and whatever mood he had for toying with them vanished.

He twisted his head and lunged forward like a beast reeking of blood.

The aura unique to a complete red dragon kept pressing down on Noah without pause.

But it only made Noah more jealous—jealous of that power he had never possessed, of that strong, complete, normal draconic presence that only an unbroken one of his kind could have.

That envy stripped away what little reason he still had.

Exhaling scorching breath, Noah relied on the beastlike combat instinct in his body and swung both claws, tearing and raking with those most primitive weapons, each strike carrying a sharp hiss through the air.

But as an underdeveloped red dragon, he was still not strong enough.

Noah was slammed viciously to the ground.

“Defects like you should never have been allowed to live.”

Gron’s fangs gouged into Noah’s scales, ripping through that natural armor.

“That’s not for you to decide.”

Noah blinked, and saw that crimson little dragon pounce as well.

Quen landed on Gron’s back. Her sharp claws no longer scratched clumsily; instead, they drove deep into the flesh of the beast beneath her, anchoring her there like iron hooks.

Her dense but exceptionally sharp little teeth sank savagely into his flesh. Scalding dragon blood, thick with the smell of sulfur, gushed out at once, splashing across her head and face.

The blood was astonishingly hot. Where it fell on her crimson scales, little wisps of steam rose up.

“Damn it.”

Gron let out a howl mixed equally with pain and rage, instinctively twisting his body in an attempt to throw off the “thing” hanging from his back.

“Are you dead!?”

Not dead.

Noah felt he had to seize this chance.

Gron’s lower jaw was right in front of him, lifted as he roared.

Noah aimed—and then slammed into it with all his might.

He felt as though his head had struck a red-hot anvil. The scales at his brow split apart one after another, warm liquid streaming down, and stars burst across his vision.

But he also heard another, more painful grunt.

The blow had smashed Gron’s jaw shut. He staggered, and for an instant his breathing went ragged.

Noah seized the moment to scramble back up.

Blood had smeared over his left eye, turning his vision into a blur of red. He had to slide his nictitating membrane across it to clear away the sticky blood. The fiery pain on the crown of his head left him unable to tell whose blood it even was.

“Come again!”

Blood was still running down, but Noah’s eyes burned so brightly they were frightening, like two flames set alight.

His claws tore downward along Gron’s face.

Another dull impact sounded out. Red scales rasped against one another with a shrill scraping noise. The vicious young dragons roared at one another, tore at one another.

Gron was in a state of wretchedness he had never experienced before.

He was breathing hard.

He was bleeding.

His shoulders, neck, back—wounds covered them all. Big and small, shallow and deep. Some had been left by Noah, some by Quen. Blood kept flowing down along his scales, dripping to the ground and spreading into a dark-red stain.

Gron stared at the two incomplete little dragons before him, his pupils contracting and widening.

He had originally thought he would win with ease. Even if he was facing two of his own kind the same age as him, they were twins after all.

Cripples. Misshapen mongrels.

But reality had slapped him hard across the face.

Though he held the advantage in strength and utterly dwarfed them in size, facing these two opponents who moved like shadows and coordinated flawlessly, he found himself with a suffocating sense of being unable to land a decisive blow.

His bites were always interrupted at exactly the right moment. His claw strikes often missed, or had to be turned aside into defense. Yet those two tiny vermin always managed to leave him with searing pain and fresh wounds.

They were indeed incomplete red dragons.

But what made them terrifying was their synchronicity.

At this moment, this pair of twins was like some monster sharing a single fighting instinct.

As if their broken souls, under the tension of violence, had been forced into the same rhythm.

“Get away from me, both of you!”

Gron roared furiously, his whole body bursting with astonishing brute force. His tail swept out with a shriek of displaced air, like a burning tree trunk.

Noah and Quen leapt aside in opposite directions at the same time.

“That one was pretty scary, don’t you think?”

“Scary?”

“It looked more like a worm wriggling.”

“That’s vicious.”

“Is it?”

Quen slowly licked the blood from the corner of her mouth, the crimson tip of her tongue sliding over her scales. “I think it’s pretty objective.”

“Shut up, both of you!”

Though Gron desperately wanted to tear apart those two venomous faces, he had no choice but to stop.

He panted heavily, his gaze flicking back and forth between the brother and sister.

If he kept fighting, he might still be able to crush them in the end through sheer strength and endurance.

But the question was: at what cost?

Under the watchful eyes of those not-entirely-friendly “brothers and sisters” around them, Gron knew very well what serious injury would mean.

They were like beasts lying in wait, waiting for some prey to collapse.

So the three red dragons remained locked in that standoff.

But in the end, Gron only let out a low growl from deep in his throat, full of unwillingness and menace.

He did not turn his back. Keeping himself facing the twins, he slowly retreated.

It was a clear signal of truce, humiliating though it was.