The two played a few more rounds, with Gretel using her keen eyes to detect her hiding friend’s movements, and the latter’s reveal ability causing her to surrender similarly to the first time. In the end, it was a tie, but neither complained since they had so much fun.

The violet yearling then spotted a fox and licked his fangs hungrily.

That gave Gretel an idea. “Hey, can you teach me how to hunt on land?”

“Actually, yeah. Wind types are fast and stealthy, right? If you can just kill that fox, I'll do the rest,” he promised.

“The rest?” she repeated, confused. “What's left to do after it's killed?”

“You don't know how revealers hunt? One puny fox isn't going to be filling enough. We need bigger game. It's actually getting the bait that's the hard part for us.”

“Bait?”

“The smaller prey,” he clarified. “In this case, the fox. So let's work together, okay? You kill the fox, I kill the wolf.”

“Wolf?!”

“Shhh! You're gonna scare the fox off!”

The hatchling had no idea what he had planned, but she ultimately nodded. “So what exactly do I do to hunt it?”

“How do wind types normally hunt?”

“I like to swoop and bite,” she growled playfully, baring her teeth and snapping her jaws a couple of times to showcase it.

“Hm. I don't know; these little guys are used to aerial predators. Maybe do the same thing you did to me earlier: sneak up with your volume control and then pounce quickly with your wind. It'll never know what hit it!”

“Oh–sounds fun! Lemme try it.” Gretel did exactly that, silently circling behind the prey out of its field of vision and creating a downwind so it wouldn't catch her scent. She crept forward on stealthy paws; when she was in position, the hatchling summoned a tailwind to boost her speed as she lunged at it, catching it by the neck. She mercifully finished it off with a chomp, then dropped her kill, eyes shining when turned to her friend. “Did ya see? I got it!”

“That's amazing! Great job!” he cheered.

Gretel beamed. Then she looked down at it. “So now what? You said it's bait… for wolves?”

“Yep.” The biped walked over and picked it up, then looked around. “Let's find an obvious spot for the trap.”

“What trap? And shouldn't traps be, like, the opposite of obvious?”

“Not when you rely on the reveal ability. Just trust me on this.” The juvenile male carried it to a clearing within the sparse-treed forest of the lowlands and placed the carcass down in the center.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Gretel watched him curiously, then recoiled with disgust when he began to rake his claws through the dead fox’s pelt, drawing blood from it. “What are you doing?!” she cried, rushing to stop him. “That's so mean! It's already dead, so leave it alone!”

“S-Sorry; I'm not trying to disrespect it… But if we want to attract predators or scavengers, they need to be able to smell it. You only really broke its neck…”

“I don't get why drawing predators is so important! Besides, they're too smart to wander into the open like this, even if they're starving!”

“That's what I'm counting on.”

“What?! That doesn't make any sense!”

“It's because they're smart enough to avoid the open space, that they'll suppress their desire to eat the fox within it. As soon as it's suppressed, my reveal will force them to act on that desire, so they’ll have no choice but to take the bait.”

Gretel could only gape at him, appalled. “That's cruel…” When he used his reveal on me during hide-and-seek, I did want him to win, but at the same time I still didn't want to lose… which is why I suppressed my desire for him to win--and why his reveal made me let him. I still wanted to win, but I couldn't stop myself from losing... “This poor predator will also want to survive, but it won't be able to stop itself from coming here to its death…”

Her friend’s green ears lowered and he shrank. “Sorry… Again, I'm not trying to be cruel… That’s just the only reliable way for revealers to eat enough. And reveals don't always work if our target has good enough self-control,” the violet dragon assured her. When she was still reluctant to allow his trap to be set, he seemed to get a bit defensive, adding, “Honestly, it's our prey’s fault for letting themselves lose that self-control. When their willpower is that weak, they’re just begging to be eaten. It's survival of the fittest.”

Gretel cowered at that. “What about me…?”

“...What?”

“Are you saying I’m begging to be eaten, too…? Because your reveals worked on me…” The white-and-purple wyvern was aware from experience that larger dragon types sometimes preyed on smaller ones. Revealers grew to be the third largest type of dragon as well, with light dragons being a few feet taller, and fire types being the tallest–but not by much.

The violet yearling instantly cringed, then shook his head fiercely. “Gretel, no offense, but you're still a hatchling. Dragons grow out of impulsiveness as they age. I don't see other dragons as prey, either–even if some revealers do.”

She sniffled, slightly relieved that he didn't see her as potential prey, but she still wasn't happy about their hunting methods. “Why not just eat the fox, instead of using it as bait…? It's already dead…”

He exhaled through his nose, frowning. “Foxes aren't big enough for a meal… but their predators are. Plus, we can reuse the fox to lure more than one predator, like for our next meal, and it will even draw in scavengers as it decays over time. One fox as bait will draw in plenty of days’ prey for us,” her friend gently explained.

Gretel still didn't understand. “That doesn't answer my question… Why not just eat the bait yourself, since you've already killed it without the need to use your reveal?”

“We can use our reveals to lure our bait as well," he corrected her. "Revealers grow big; we're not stealthy enough to hunt without scaring off prey. Using reveals to draw our prey to us is really our best chance at getting food."

Gretel looked away. I get it, but... manipulating others outside of fun and games just feels wrong...

"And if we only lived by eating smaller prey, like foxes, then we'd end up wiping them out into extinction; there aren't enough of them to get us full," he continued, addressing the rest of her question in case that was why she wasn't supportive. "Besides, their bigger predators are at the top of the food chain, so dragons like us are necessary for keeping their population down instead of letting them hunt smaller prey into extinction. It's all just nature’s way of balancing itself out.”