Valen was completely and utterly frozen as the Elder finished its landing, depositing his quarry on the ground. It was something yellow but he couldn’t pay attention to it at the moment; so lost in his terror that he was fixating on the Elder to the exclusion of everything else. A small burst of dragon element emanated from its wings then it took deep inhalation from the chest, a loud whirring noise piercing the air as it did so.
Only after completing this action and shaking itself a bit did it seem that the Eder noticed his presence. And he stiffened even further, expecting it to attack him on the spot for intruding into its cave, coming back to it after a long absence. The moment when the Valstrax stared at him stretched for an eternity, where he was sure he was staring death in the face. He wasn’t even sure if he was shaking or not, as anything that wasn’t what was in front of him just faded away. The hunter knew there was absolutely nothing he could do; he was injured and unable to move, his only weapon was a carving knife that wasn’t of a good enough quality to pierce these scales, and he was in a confined space, with nowhere to run or hide.
The tension rose when the Valstrax finally walked closer, pivoting its head on the side so it could examine him with his eye. It seemed to fixate on his biggest injuries, the one on his head and his leg. Then it did something that utterly baffled him. The Elder rumbled then turned around to pick up what it dropped and walked past him, without doing anything, even making sure it circled around the wounded man, to not jostle him.
This turn of events was so unexpected for Valen that he immediately passed out in disbelief.
----------------------------------------
The hunter woke up later, his mind feeling a bit slow. At first he couldn’t remember why he felt like that, but that’s when everything came back to him. Waking up in pain and panic from his nightmare, tending to his wounds, investigating the cave, the Elder landing in the cave, and it basically leaving him alone.
The realization that the Elder left him alone made him spring up from his bed, only to groan as the sudden motion was too much for his stiff back. The pain was quickly forgotten when a noise made him look around, quickly noticing the silver-scaled dragon lying on its belly. And it was looking at him after making a small whirring rumble. He also noticed the carcass of a fresh meal next to it that was… Strangely not finished.
Something still nagged at him, but he wasn’t sure why, it was like he was missing a crucial detail, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Then his eyes wandered to his leg, his injured leg. It was at that moment that he had a wild thought. ‘It… Couldn’t have been the Valstrax who carried me here and treated my injuries? That… Doesn’t make any sense, what would it gain wasting time on me?’ He raised his hand to the scorched side of his head. ‘Wait… The burn injuries would make sense… Especially if it only had its wings to work with… But then, why? Why would it do this? Never has an Elder shown mercy before, so why would this Valstrax do so?’
Valen was so lost in his internal thoughts that he failed to notice the dragon push the half-finished carcass towards him. The hunter was instantly snapped out of his internal monologue when it entered his field of vision. He flinched away by reflex, still very much on edge, but after a couple of seconds of expecting a claw swipe, he tentatively looked at what the Valstrax did this time. And he stared at the carcass, looking back and forth between it and the Elder like he wasn’t believing it just so casually shared its food. Valen was about to try to push it away, not wanting to engage with the shenanigans when his belly disproved him of this action by making itself known. Loudly.
Nosing the carcass towards him, the Valstrax then made a rumbling noise, slightly higher pitched due to the whirring part of it. It was a strange noise that he didn’t expect from the Elder. After staring at it for a bit, he finally sighed and relented, pulling out his carving knife so he could cut the parts away. He idly noted that the carcass was from a Ludroth, judging by the hide he could see. It was not something he hadn't eaten before but he supposed he would take what he could get.
Once he finished cutting off the meat from the carcass, he dug into his bag to pull out a piece of the cooking roast. He only needed the pot that generated the flame. It contained the flame sac of a fire-breathing monster. For some reason, he had been the one tasked to carry it for the team, but he figured that for once he wouldn’t complain, as it saved him the trouble of having to start a fire on his own. He then pulled out a stick, as somebody else was supposed to carry the spitting roast assembly. Valen could remember who if he thought a bit more but shook his head before the thoughts carried him into something he did not want to think about right now.
Lighting up the flame, he stabbed the meat with the stick he had and started roasting it with the fire, using the menial task to distract him from all the thoughts bouncing around his head, either about the dilemma that was the Elder, or some stray thoughts about the last minutes he remembered of the hunts that he squashed whenever possible… And older, rarer thoughts that he knew would send him into a spiral of despair if he got caught in them. Thankfully, as intended, the action of cooking managed to keep him from getting trapped in all of the what-ifs.
He idly noticed that the dragon seemed very interested in what he was doing, and a sudden thought jumped to him, one he couldn’t stop this time.
‘This thing is smart. What if it brought you here only to study your weaknesses, and then once it’s done learning, disposes of you and uses these weaknesses against other hunters?’ As wild as the thought was, it made sense to him. It would explain why the dragon was trying to keep him alive for now. He then steeled his nerves, digging deeper into the explanation. ‘That means that I have to try to keep the things I reveal to the minimum. I’ll have to maintain a routine and only a small list of things I can do while it can observe me. I doubt I’ll be able to escape this situation, but I’d be damned if I don’t at least try.’
He continued this train of thought while turning over the roast periodically, making sure the meat was evenly cooked. Once he was satisfied with the cooking, he turned off the fire and started eating the meat out of the spit roast. It felt strange to eat in silence while the Elder was watching him, but he kept quiet nonetheless. It wasn’t like it’d be able to understand what he could say anyways.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Once he finished his meal, he put the fire pot and his knife back in the bag and cleaned up the stick. He wasn’t sure how long he would stay here so he had to make sure it’d last him as long as possible. After this was done, he exhaled a loud sigh of relief and laid back down in his bed. Noticing that the Valstrax was still watching him intensely but was tilting his head a bit now, Valen had to admit that he did look a bit innocent while being like that, albeit if you ignore all the sharp bits that it possessed.
Some small part of the hunter was nagging him that it was a death sentence to go to sleep with an Elder nearby, but he squashed that thought away. ‘If it didn’t kill me until now, it surely won’t do it until it squeezed out everything it can from me.’
He took a long time to quiet the doubts in his mind, but eventually, he managed to find sleep, ignoring the dragon sitting next to him as much as he could.
----------------------------------------
Valen woke up later, feeling his mouth completely dry. He hadn’t noticed his dehydration before now, what with all that was happening, but now his throat was extremely parched. He immediately dug into his bag, looking for his canteen, and immediately took a long drink from it. However, being half empty already, there was only just enough to satisfy his thirst. He grimaced. ‘Well, if the Valstrax doesn’t kill me, the dehydration will. What a shitty way to go… Days of agony hoping for blessed water that’ll never come. I know meat has a bit of water, right? But it can’t be anywhere near enough for what I need.’ He sighed, steeling himself for a painful day.
He was broken out of his reverie once again by his jailer walking over to himValen froze once again, nowhere near used to having it be that close to him. It looked intensely at his canteen, and then the ground on which a couple of droplets had spilled upon, then it backed away. Valen remained frozen. The dragon then walked to a wall and started scratching it, producing a scritch-scritch noise that grated at Valen’s remaining ear. However, he didn’t want to attract attention to himself, so he just bore with it.
The look the Valstrax had in its eyes puzzled him though, it was like it wasn’t focusing on anything, and doing the scratching just out of habit. If the hunter dared suggest something, it was almost as though the Elder was thinking. But he didn’t dare voice anything, lest he attract its murderous intent.
He tried to think of anything else to block out the sound, but the noise was distracting him, and his thoughts constantly went back to his impending doom, which wasn’t better… But just as he was about to resign himself to bear the noise, it stopped. Valen looked back at the dragon to see what happened. And sure enough, it stopped scratching, but what surprised him is that it looked like it had stopped mid-motion… And its eyes were no longer as vacant as they were before. And suddenly, as he was about to wonder what was up, it got back on all four and walked towards the entrance of the cave. It whirred up its wings and took off with a whoosh of air, so quickly that only a little breeze from its departure reached back to where Valen was sitting in the cave.
The hunter was quite confused by the turn of events, but quickly exhaled in relief. He hadn’t noticed that he was holding his breath for a while. Also deciding that it was a good opportunity to do something he wouldn’t do in the Elder’s presence, he grabbed his notebook from his bag and leafed through it, hoping to find some clues about the unusual behavior of this Elder… He wasn’t hoping for much though, he was pretty sure this was a first… ‘Unless some missing hunter cases could also be kidnappings by dragons…’ He squashed the thought before it could progress further. It was not time to pursue insane or worrying trains of thought.
He was fairly deep into older entries when he heard the telltale sound of his jailer coming back and scrambled to close the notebook and hide it in his bag. He had barely managed to retrieve his hands when the Valstrax landed, but he quickly noticed it was carrying something in its beak this time. Valen couldn’t see what it was from the distance, but he quickly noticed it was dripping. It was dripping a clear liquid.
‘Jumping Jaggis, is that what I think it is?’ And once the Elder came closer, his thought was confirmed. ‘Water? But… How, and why?’ Then he noticed what was containing the water… And to his surprise, it was a full Royal Ludroth mane. He was completely sure of the monster it came from, having owned armor made of the same. The battle against the monster was tough at the time, what with Valen only possessing equipment made of small monsters, and afterwards the blacksmith had complained enough about how tedious the process they had to use for the mane so that it didn’t absorb too much water when it rained or was submerged, so the armor was not made useless. And here was the Valstrax, just walking in with one completely filled with water. Once it was near him, it deposited the mane against the wall of the cave with a smooth motion.
It then made that whirring rumble noise again, but it sounded more… Satisfied? Valen wasn’t sure why he thought that, but it was the impression that came to his mind. Still, he didn’t dare move towards it, even though he knew he needed the water from it. He still knew the mane was the Elder’s property, and touching it would mean retaliation.
However, when it rumbled again and nosed the mane towards him, he tentatively reached a hand towards it, and just before he would reach the mane, he held his breath.
A second passed two. But when the dragon still made no reaction, he let out the breath he was holding. And then, the implication of all of it hit him.
It figured out that he was worried about the lack of water, it had then puzzled out that he was already completely out of it after drinking it. Then it literally went to think about a solution to this problem, as the Elder wouldn’t be able to carry water itself, and its claws or beak weren’t suited to carrying containers… This also meant that it realized this fact and thought around it. Then once it figured out a solution, it carried out his plan and brought him back water… In the form of a gift.
However, the most worrying thought of all of this … That it must imply that the Valstrax was intelligent. Even more so than what Elders were commonly thought to be. There was already proof that Elder Dragons were much more intelligent than common Wyverns, but this? This was proof that not only they could figure out there was a problem, but not only that, they also could understand how to solve it. And only by thinking. Not by trial and error.
What worried Valen the most was that he didn’t know if that was something unique to this Valstrax or was something all Elders were able to do as a whole. Because… That meant that if any of them had any intention to wipe out humanity, they may one day devise an intelligent plan, instead of trying to overpower them with sheer force. And the possibility chilled the hunter to the core. The thought of this being the Valstrax’s motive terrified him even more.