Amael soared through the Dragon’s Den.
As always, his presence drew attention. Eyes followed him, so curious, so indifferent, but far too many burning with sothing he could no longer pretend was anything other than hatred.
He had noticed it for months now. That slow, creeping shift in the air whenever he flew through, the way conversations would die mid-sentence and gazes would harden the mont they landed on him. He had chosen to ignore it for a while, to tell himself it was his imagination running ahead of him, but it was becoming impossible to dismiss. The hostility had grown teeth.
He knew, of course, that the relationship between dragons and humans had been worsening for years. It was not so sudden breaking point but rather a long, grinding deterioration, fraying thread by thread until what remained barely resembled peace. Still, knowing it intellectually was different from feeling it press against you from all sides as you flew through a place you had once considered safe.
He pushed the thought aside and tilted upward, climbing toward the highest peak that jutted above the rest of the Den like a crown. Even from a distance he could make out the familiar shape of Vysindra resting along the ridge, enormous and unhurried as ever. As Amael drew closer, however, he realized Vysindra was not alone.
Beside him lay another dragon, slightly smaller but no less imposing, her white scales catching the pale light and scattering it like snow in the wind. Amael recognized her imdiately. That was Vysindra’s wife. But nestled between the two of them, dwarfed entirely by their massive fras, was sothing that made Amael slow his descent without even thinking about it. A small dragon, barely larger than a boulder in comparison, its scales a soft and vivid purple, the color of a bruised twilight sky. Newly born, clearly, still carrying that rounded, unfinished look of sothing that had not yet grown into itself.
He landed quietly, not wanting to startle anyone, but all three of them turned toward him the mont his boots touched stone.
"You’re here, brat," Vysindra said.
"I hope I didn’t interrupt anything intimate," Amael said, grinning.
Vysindra’s wife regarded him with a calm expression.. "You didn’t," she said flatly. "And you won’t be interrupting anything intimate for at least the next two decades." Without another word she rose nudged the small purple dragon gently with her snout, and walked away. The hatchling glanced back at Amael for just a mont, letting out a small, high-pitched squeal that was completely at odds with its lineage, before scrambling after its mother.
Amael watched them go and then looked back at Vysindra with a raised brow. "Well. Here I thought I’d walked into a heartwarming family scene."
Vysindra snorted, a thin ribbon of smoke curling from his nostrils. "She is upset."
"I can tell. Why?"
"She believes I have been too yielding toward the others," Vysindra said, keeping his gaze fixed on the horizon rather than on Amael. "That I bow my head when I should be raising fire."
"She ans toward the other dragons?" Amael asked. "Is she right?"
Vysindra growled a low and tired sound rather than threatening. "Fostering peace requires patience. It requires listening even when what you hear is not what you want to hear. My wife believes that patience reads as weakness and that when disrespect goes unanswered it only invites more of the sa."
Amael tilted his head slightly. "I don’t think she’s wrong, you know. Wasn’t it you who always said you speak with violence first and words later?"
"Perhaps before," Vysindra replied quietly. "Before I had a wife. Before I had a daughter. The calculations change when you have sothing worth protecting."
Amael went still. "Protecting them from your own kind? Has it really co to that?"
Vysindra did not answer with words. He let out a low, slow sound from sowhere deep in his chest that said everything.
A long silence settled between them before Vysindra spoke again. "More and more dragons fall to that man. That self-proclaid king planting himself in our territory as though he built it from nothing. Redhoria is our land, has always been our land, and he had the arrogance to twist that na into a title for himself. To wear it like a crown he fashioned out of sothing that was never his."
"That is a special kind of arrogance," Amael said.
Vysindra scoffed softly. "I want to burn him. Him and every soldier who follows him. I want to reduce the whole lot of them to ash and be done with it."
Amael was quiet for a mont. "I imagine you’re not the only one who wants that."
"No," Vysindra said. "I am not. But if we act on it, if we descend on them in fire and anger, we hand every pacifist human and every neutral race the very image they fear most. We beco the monsters they suspect us of being. That man becos a martyr. His na lives forever precisely because we gave it reason to, and any hope of genuine peace between dragons and humans dies with the smoke." He exhaled slowly. "So I hold back. And my wife watches hold back, and she thinks I am choosing the world over my own family."
Amael sat with that for a mont before speaking carefully. "Your kin are not wrong to want to fight back. You cannot ask a people to swallow their dignity indefinitely in the na of a peace that only seems to benefit the ones doing the oppressing." He paused, then looked at Vysindra directly. "What do you think happens if they go after your wife? Your daughter?"
The change in Vysindra was terrifying. His scales shifted from their usual deep color to a furious, pulsing purple, the light radiating off him in waves of barely contained heat. When he turned to look at Amael his eyes were not the eyes of soone wise. "I burn the entire world down," he said.
Amael sighed hearing that. He rose to his feet and stepped onto Vysindra’s back, settling himself between the ridges of his spine.
"What are you doing?" Vysindra asked.
"Making sure it never has to co to that," Amael said, and the smile did not leave his face. "Co on. Take to this Redhoran, self-proclaid king of your lands. It’s ti we introduced ourselves."
"You’re serious?" Vysindra asked, tilting his massive head back to look at Amael with one enormous eye.
"More than serious," Amael said simply. "Unless you’re scared of him."
Vysindra made a sound that was sowhere between a scoff and a snarl, then unfurled his wings in one great sweeping motion and launched himself skyward. The force of it alone sent loose stones skittering off the peak’s edge. Amael pressed himself low against the ridges of his spine, feeling the rush of cold air tear past him as the ground fell away beneath them.
The other dragons in the Den watched the two of them go with strange, unreadable expressions. None of them said a word.
For a while neither did Amael. He sat with the wind and the silence and the vast grey sky stretching endlessly in every direction. Then, quietly, he placed a hand against Vysindra’s scales.
"I wish things had turned out differently," he said.
Vysindra did not answer imdiately.
"So do I. But war has never left this world and it never will. You have lived long enough to know that better than most. That obsession with peace you carry around inside you, you need to let it go."
"Everyone should carry that obsession," Amael replied. "Peace should not be a dream. It should be ordinary."
"Not in this world," Vysindra said, and there was no bitterness in it. Just the tired certainty of soone who had seen enough to stop arguing with reality.
They flew in silence after that. Minutes stretched into nearly half an hour before sothing appeared on the horizon, growing steadily larger as Vysindra’s wings ate up the distance. Amael leaned forward, narrowing his eyes against the wind.
A camp. An enormous one. Tents spread across the land below like a second city, and even from the air the sheer number of them made his jaw tighten. Campfires, supply lines, war structures, the organized sprawl of sothing that had been built with patience.
"At least ten thousand," Amael said. "He has been busy. A man who can rally numbers like that has more than just anger behind him. He has a voice."
"He does," Vysindra said. "He found all the people who had lost sothing to dragons and gave their grief a direction. Fear is easy to organize when you are the one pointing at what caused it."
They did not get the chance to say anything more before the camp noticed them.
"A dragon!"
"Dragon! Dragon overhead!"
"Call for the King! Soone call for the King!"
"Get the crossbows ready! Get them ready now!"
"Bring it down! Bring that monster down!"
The mont Vysindra’s shadow fell across the tents, the camp erupted. Knights scrambled in every direction, so running for weapons, so simply running. The panic was total, spreading through the ranks the way fire spreads through dry grass, fast and without rcy. Massive crossbows, the kind designed specifically to punch through scales, began to turn and aim upward.
"There," Amael said, his eyes already fixed on a large tent positioned at the top of a hill that rose above the rest of the camp. It had been placed there, elevated above everything else, visible from every angle. "The main tent. They are just announcing it at this point."
"Human arrogance," Vysindra said with a short, contemptuous snort.
He banked sharply and dove toward the hill, his wings snapping outward at the last mont to slow his descent. The shockwave that rolled off them when they caught the air was enough to knock entire rows of knights off their feet, sending them sprawling across the dirt like scattered coins. Vysindra landed atop the hill with a huge impact that shook the ground, his claws carving deep gouges into the earth.
At almost the sa mont the tent flap opened and a man stepped out, flanked on either side by soldiers who pressed close around him with their weapons already drawn.
Amael looked at him carefully.
He wore full plate armor in white and gold, every piece of it immaculate. His hair was a deep golden blond and his eyes were a cold, sharp blue that moved quickly across the scene in front of him.
Redhoran.
The soldiers behind him were already shouting.
"Your Majesty, please, step back!"
"Get behind us, get behind us now!"
Redhoran raised one hand and they fell silent imdiately. His gaze had moved from Vysindra to the figure standing atop the dragon’s back, and it stayed there with open curiosity.
Amael dropped down from Vysindra’s back and landed on the hill below. The mont his feet touched the ground every blade in the vicinity swung toward him.
"A human?!"
"What is the aning of this? Who are you?"
"Are you Redhoran?" Amael asked, ignoring them entirely.
"How dare you address the King so—"
The hand went up again. Silence fell again.
"I am," the man said, stepping forward slightly. "Ruus Redhoran."
Amael looked at him. "Don’t Apollo’s sons have better things to do than wage wars against a race that could level this entire camp before your archers got a second shot off?"
Ruus smiled. "It is precisely because they could that we have no choice but to fight. You do not wait for the fire to reach your door before you move against it."
"You are enslaving innocents in the process," Amael said, his tone dropping.
"As they have devoured and slaughtered innocents of ours," Ruus replied without missing a beat. His eyes flicked briefly to Vysindra before returning to Amael. "If you are truly human you should understand that. You should be standing on our side of this, not riding on the back of the very thing that has cost us so much."
Behind Amael, Vysindra let out a growl. Several of the soldiers behind Ruus stumbled backward despite themselves. Ruus did not move.
Amael gave it a mont before speaking again. "Both sides have buried their dead. The Dragon King wants peace, which is more than you have offered. Release the ones you’ve taken. Sit at a table. Agree to hold your own criminals accountable and let the Dragon King do the sa on his side." He paused. "That is a fair arrangent. It costs you nothing except the war."
Silence followed. A long one.
Then Ruus tilted his head slightly. "Did that dragon enslave you?" He asked, almost gently. "Is that what this is?"
Vysindra’s claws drove into the hillside hard enough to split stone. Amael raised one hand without turning around, and Vysindra, sohow, held himself still.
Amael’s silver eyes settled on Ruus and did not move.
"I do not think you are stupid," he said quietly. "I think you understand very well that Vysindra and his kind could reduce this camp to ash before midday and there would be nothing your crossbows or your walls or your weapons could do about it. I think you are counting on sothing else. If the dragons attack first, every other race watches them burn a human army and decides the stories were true all along. Every neutral party becos an enemy. Your father cos down from wherever he has planted himself and the dragons face a war on every front at once." He held Ruus’s gaze. "That is your plan. You are counting on them swinging first."
Ruus said nothing. But sothing shifted behind those blue eyes.
"There is one thing you have not accounted for," Amael continued, taking a slow step forward. "I am here. And if I wished to, I could kill you and wipe out every soldier in this camp myself. And unlike the dragons, no one would co to avenge you. No alliance would form. No banners would rise." A faint smile crossed his face. "Because no one would dare. Ask your father. He knows better than anyone that I am not a variable you can plan around."
"You—" One of the knights started forward.
-BOOOOM!!
The Authority that rolled off Amael was not sound or fire or anything so simple. It was pressure, enormous and total and inescapable, like the sky itself deciding to press down. Every knight in the vicinity crumpled. So dropped imdiately, unconscious before they hit the ground. The ones with more in them bent at the knees and then the waist, struggling against sothing they had no frawork to understand, and one by one they gave way.
Ruus alone remained upright, both arms slightly raised, every muscle in his body visibly fighting to stay where it was. His teeth were clenched and his breath ca in short, controlled bursts, but he was still standing. Amael noted that without surprise. Apollo’s blood did not bend easily.
He walked forward slowly, and with each step Ruus’s resistance cost him more. By the ti Amael reached him and laid one hand on his shoulder, Ruus’s knees buckled and hit the ground with a hard, dull sound.
"Ughhh!!"
"Father!"
The voice ca from inside the tent. Amael looked up.
Through the open flap he could see them. A woman and a small child, both frozen in place, the child’s eyes wide and bright with terror.
"Stay back!" Ruus ground out through clenched teeth, arm outstretched toward them.
Amael looked at them for a mont. Then he looked back down at Ruus.
"You have a family," he said, his voice sowhat turning less threatening. "So do they. Every dragon in that Den has people they would give everything to protect, the sa as you." He straightened and removed his hand. "Build sothing for your children instead of burning down sothing for your fear. This is a war you will not win, and I am telling you that before it costs you everything, not after." He held Ruus’s gaze one final second. "Release the dragons and co to peace. Do not make co back."
He turned, walked back to Vysindra, and climbed up.
He stared one last ti at Ruus.
"Because I wouldn’t co back to discuss again."
Vysindra’s wings snapped open and the shockwave they produced on the way up flattened what was left standing in the camp below.
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