The reptilian eyes staring back at Valen did not blink as the wyvern slowly crept forward, head low to the ground as it growled a challenge to him. Valen, grinning, hunched down as well, doing his best to match the serpent-like head movements of the long-necked drake as he matched the challenge with a growl of his own.
The wyvern almost seemed to take offense to this; it let out a shrill cry of affront before pouncing, leaping through the air on its two legs, long wings giving it the extra boost of speed it needed to cover the distance. Letting loose a cry of his own, Valen spread his arms out and then brought them in as the wyvern reached him, scooping the hatchling out of the air and then spinning it around to pin it to the ground, though he was careful not to be too rough.
From the corner of the roost, he could hear the low grumbling of the hatchling’s mother that sounded almost like laughter. She looked on with rapt attention, though curled up all comfortable as she was it was obvious that she didn’t believe her hatchling to be in any danger.
The other three hatchlings from this particular brood were all pressed up against their mother, sleeping even with the noise of Valen and their sibling playing only a yard or so away in the soft bedding that covered the floor of the roost. The one that he was now wrestling with was by far the most rambunctious of the four and seemed to sleep far less than its siblings. Though the telltale signs of its gender had not yet begun to show themselves, the markings that would eventually appear on the wyvern’s bronze scales still a few months from appearing, the young wyvern Aevra was already trying to take after the ferocity of her mother.
Female wyverns were naturally more active than the males, and usually grew to be half again as large as them as well. Though Aevra was still too young for most of the differences to show themselves, its already overactive personality made it fairly obvious, though he couldn’t just make assumptions until Aevra grew a bit older.
His father always said that in the business of wyvern breeding, it was best to deal in certainties. Something about wyverns knowing an unsure mind? Valen would be lying if he said he totally understood it, but whether it was simply the personal beliefs of his father or having spent his whole life working with wyverns, he had still wound up developing the philosophy that it was always better to be sure of what you say or do than to act before you are certain.
Aevra, finally realizing it wasn’t going to get free of Valen’s hold, seemed to give up, even letting out a little huff in defeat as it stopped squirming. Grinning, Valen loosened his hold, only for Aevra to suddenly twisted about with its long neck and snap up playfully at his arm in a last effort to win their mock battle. Laughing now, Valen let the young wyvern’s mouth latch onto his arm, then began to scratch it’s underbelly, immediately causing it to let go of his arm and roll over, its challenge forgotten, left leg kicking uncontrollably in enjoyment of the scratching.
He could have continued like that for a while, and indeed would have enjoyed it, if not for the sudden blast of air as the door into the roost was pushed open, sending the young wyvern skittering, startled, over to its mother’s side for protection. Valen looked over, slightly aggravated at being interrupted in his time with the wyverns. His brother Aiden stood looking back at him, an expression of severe urgency obvious in the lines that creased his forehead.
Looking at his brother, Valen couldn’t help but note the differences between them, as he always seemed to; Valen favored their dark-haired and more slightly built mother, after all, while Aiden possessed the same fair head and broad shoulders as Aliden, their father. Furthermore, where Aiden was tanned, Valen was pale skinned; where Aiden’s nose was crooked from an accident years ago in the forge, Valen’s was straight and somehow untouched. The only similarity between them, it seemed, was the shape of their faces and their eyes of light hazel.
Somehow, that always seemed enough for anyone outside of the family that they saw to remark how alike they were, even with the added difference of Aiden being eighteen and Valen two years his junior. He never understood it. Right now, for example, Valen’s face was untwisted, one eye raised in question, while Aiden’s was bent into a worried grimace.
“Father needs you, right now,” was all that Aiden had to say. Valen was on his feet immediately, being careful to show his respect to the broodmother with a low bow before he turned and followed his brother out of the roost and back into the main throughway of the Hatchery. If father called, he answered, simple as that.
This was by far the largest building in the whole Hatchery, called the Great Roost, where all of the wyvern roosts were built into the mountainside, massive doors in place for the wyverns to move through when it was no longer rearing season and they needed to be able to get out more frequently for exercise and hunting. In the Fall, the rearing season for wyverns all over Parovia, only the males, fewer in number but no less important to the daily life of the wyverns, went in and out of the roosts at all, so that they could go out and hunt along the mountainside for the broodmothers and their whelps and hatchlings.
Two of the wyvern hunters were on their way out at that very moment, one of the snowy-scaled Central Ridgebacks that were most common to this part of the Divide and a less common, slightly smaller smoke and sapphire-scaled Western Wetjaw, both seemingly eager to be on with the day’s hunt as the morning sun shined happily through the large opening at the far side of the building.
Valen wasn’t sure what the issue might be that so urgently pulled him from his morning chores and time with the wyverns here in the Roost House, with such fine, cool weather seeming to ignore the worry that gripped his brother. Still, he knew that his father would not send for him if there was not something major happening, let alone send Aiden for him, whose chores as the next head of the Galar Hatchery were of even more importance.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
As they reached the caretaker’s exit to the building, opposite the opening for the wyverns, they walked out into the central courtyard. All around, more buildings were built into or out of the mountainside, connected by the large courtyard carved out of the almost silvery-gray stone of the Divide. Though they were far from the highest peaks of the Divide, the chill up here was still much greater than it would be at the base of the mountain, in Wyrha, the town that had grown at the bottom of the path that led up to the Hatchery.
The town had been a result of the constant need for supplies that came along with working as a wyvern caretaker and breeder. It had begun as nothing but a trading outpost through which supplies could be brought up to them, but the potential for money to be made because of that trade had led to a sizeable town of almost five hundred sprouting up in the nearly three hundred years since the Galar Hatchery had been founded, making use of some much older remnants of shaping in the mountains to build on and become the foremost wyvern hatchery in Parovia.
Valen’s father had always been quite proud to talk about that part.
As he and Aiden hurried across the courtyard, past the forge and leatherworking shop where they made most of their own tools and other craftwork necessities, Valen realized from the speed of his brother’s pace that things were even more serious than he had thought. His father had always impressed on them that they must be ever careful and calm near anything that could be considered even somewhat dangerous up here, so far from any kind of decent medical care. They whipped around their own home, a stout but happy looking two-story building that was a combination of an older, unfinished stonework ruin that had been abandoned long ago and wood that had been brought up from Wyrha overtime.
Straight through the Playground, where young hatchlings would come to strengthen their bodies and begin their first steps toward flight in the safety of the Hatchery and under the sharp eyes of the Hatchery’s Matriarch, they headed for the Matriarch’s Perch itself, a solo roost built away from the others where the head of this particular flight of wyverns could keep an eye on all of the happenings that took place there.
By far the largest of roost of them all, the Matriarch certainly needed the extra space.
Valen saw her almost every day, and still he couldn’t help but take a moment to stare in awe at the sheer size of the wyvern when they entered the Perch. The Matriarch was more than massive; Valen sometimes imagined that looking down on him from her great height felt like when he might look down upon a small puppy. Or an insect.
Standing almost thirty feet high at her full height, and weighing at least fifteen tons, the white and bronze-scaled giant turned to look at the two of them with the kind of passing interest that one might feel when a fly buzzes past. They held her attention for only a moment before she turned around to look back out at the morning sky. Valen stayed back as Aiden approached her, used as he was to working with her in his daily chores under the supervision of their father.
He was happy to let the future head of the Hatchery handle this, whatever it was he was handling.
When they had first entered the Perch, Valen had momentarily believed that whatever issue they were facing involved the Matriarch directly, but as his father did not seem to be anywhere inside, he instead had to assume that their issue required the intervention of the Matriarch, which meant that Valen was even more confused than before.
That opened quite the list of potential problems, and nearly half of them were the sort of dangerous one should be running from, not running towards.
“Maelienas!” Aiden called, reaching over for something that Valen recognized immediately as the bell their father had trained all of the wyverns to recognize as a call for immediate assistance, even the Matriarch herself, and ringing it. Her head immediately turned toward them, and the massive wyvern peeled her mouth open with a low growl that shook him to the core. He could have sworn it almost looked as if she were motioning with her head for them to lead on.
Aiden, still carrying the bell, hurried back out through the caretaker’s entrance to the Perch, turning to look on as Valen joined him and then Maelienas pushed through her own, much larger door that led out into the courtyard.
“Let’s move, Valen,” Aiden said, before turning and continuing towards the main entrance of the Hatchery that led down the path towards Wyrha. As they left the confines of the Hatchery, his brother sped up even more, turning a fast walk into a quick jog that before long had Valen breathing pretty hard.
Behind them, he could hear as Maelienas spread her wings and began to take flight, the sound like rumbling thunder as her massive frame lifted off the ground and into the sky. He couldn’t help but look back as the gusts from the wyvern’s huge wings practically bent what few trees grew around the Hatchery in half as she took off.
Though the trees were about halfway to empty already, what bright red and orange leaves remained whipped through the air, and Valen finally turned his attention forward again when one of the leaves almost cut his face as the wind blasted it by him. They were too low in the mountains for many evergreens to grow, but high enough that the lowland trees that grew in the area were few and far between.
As they descended the mountain path, Maelienas still ascending further into the sky behind them, the young Galar took to wondering once again what might have so captured the worry of their father. That they left the Hatchery itself behind limited the options some, though there were still many things that could have occurred beyond the compound that would need immediate attention like this. Their quick pace unfortunately forced Valen to focus more on careful footing than inner thoughts, as practically running down a mountain road without paying attention would lead anyone to trip and injure themselves, even those who made the mountain their home.
Before long, though, Aiden paused and turned back to look at his younger brother. Breathing heavily, Valen paused as well, raising a questioning brow as he waited for his brother to continue. There was a roar, and he glanced behind him once again to see the Matriarch soaring through the air, covering the distance they had covered in about a tenth of the time it took them, if that.
Once he saw that Maelienas was indeed close behind, Aiden resumed, except now he deviated from the actual path, picking his way carefully up along the mountainside next to it towards an area that Valen knew had a fairly large natural cave system. His guesses became true intrigue now, as he genuinely had no idea what might have brought their father up into the caves of the Divide. Unless…
His question was answered as he was startled by the angry cry of a wyvern, causing his head to snap up towards a fairly large natural overhang. Aiden pulled himself up onto the ridge a few moments before Valen, but he was close behind, and as soon as he pulled himself up off the rocky climb and looked up, he laid his eyes on the creature that was responsible for drawing them out of the Hatchery.