By the time Waver made it home to the ranch, it was already past dusk. Valor had prepared supper for themself and Pentwec, the latter of whom was now snoring quietly. Waver struck a candle, set it on the floor, and began to hang up his cloak.
“Thank you, Valor,” Waver whispered. Valor tasted salt in the air. “I talked to Valse. I knew you were worried about me, but I didn’t know he’d put you under so much pressure for my sake.”
Waver stepped back and looked at their face quizzically. Damn it, he looks way too innocent! Valor thought.
Waver turned beet red in the candlelight. “Hey!”
“Wow,” Waver said, the tears starting to leave his voice. He curled up against his drake friend, who had laid back down in the nest. “I’d forgotten that I’m me.”
“Hmmmm...” Waver thought about how to organize the matter for them, and quickly made up his mind. “Well, I guess you could say I ‘won’, but a lot of unexpected things happened. Let’s start with the ambush...”
By the time Waver finished recounting his day, his stomach had gotten the better of him, and he went to simmer a tough scrag of mutton on top of their portable drakespit stove. He’d have cooked for Valor and Pentwec, too, if they’d waited, but their stomachs could handle raw meat and his couldn’t.
The stove produced a hot, blue flame. The design was primarily military, for preparing trail rations -- no one else could be expected to have a steady supply of drakespit. No one but Waver.
Very soon, the smell of cured mutton filled the ranch, and at this point he knew Pentwec was only pretending to sleep. He plated his late dinner. As he tore into it, he saw that Valor was contemplating what he’d said. They had been relieved by his sudden reconciliation, and the prospect of seeing their father again -- and baffled by what Waver had learned about Ficus -- but he could tell they were disturbed by their father’s prediction.
Fundamentally, their way of life until that point had relied on Waver not being very important. If he became thought of as dangerous... no, rather, he was dangerous, Waver realized.
He remembered the sight of the dragon thoroughfare in the center of the city, and thought of all the cargo that dragons carried from place to place, from human to human. He thought of how many people lived by depending on the logistical advantage the domesticated dragons provided, including he himself. How had the sheep made it to the butcher and back to him so he could cook it? The answer was, of course, dragons.
He remembered Ishcal telling him that skylights could carry things like medicine and relief supplies faster than anything possible today, and he thought about a world where people depended on the convenience of enslaved skylights to live.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Surely there were other ways of solving logistical problems. Surely humans didn’t need slavery to flourish. It was ludicrous to think otherwise.
But what would he do if he found out there was no other answer...?
That question wasn’t about dragons, or humans, or logistics. It was about Waver, and even as he posed it to himself, he realized there was nothing to figure out. He already knew what he would do. It should have been a hard decision, the freedom of dragons or the lives of ordinary humans, but it wasn’t.
Anyway, if he was to be dangerous, he would just have to be dangerous.
After he finished his meal and cleaned up, he shook himself to clear his thoughts. He jumped up and down a few times to limber up his muscles.
Valor rumbled appreciatively.
They stood up and stretched like a cat, arching their back and flaring their wings.
Waver said, grabbing the offending scraps of iron from a credenza.
Drakes and humans didn’t usually wrestle together. In fact, drakes were so much heavier than humans, and with so many more natural weapons, that it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that a human trying to earnestly play rough with a drake was guaranteed severe injury, and possibly death. Of course, Valse had told stories of soldiers getting drunk and challenging drakes to try to impress each other, but not a single one of those stories ended well. Even if the soldiers weren’t injured, by some miracle, it always resulted in disciplinary action.
Of course, it was different with Waver and Valor. Their bond was much stronger than that between a knight and his mount.
Waver had gotten hurt plenty when he was a kid, but Valor quickly learned how humans moved and Waver quickly learned how Valor moved. Before long, Waver wasn’t getting anything worse than scratches, and Valor... had insisted Waver be armed, to make it a bit more exciting.
So, Waver would go at Valor with old knives, and Valor with their own claws. Waver would mark a “point” if he managed to prise one of Valor’s scales off, and Valor would mark a “point” if they drew blood. The resulting game was rather like normal children playing with knives, but the zones of safety and danger each had to perceive were vastly different from normal.
Waver clutched a bolt in each hand and began with a risky move, ducking and diving past the reach of Valor’s foreclaws to get at Valor’s soft belly scales. He was much more agile than the dragon, but unfortunately for him, Valor had the perfect counter. Too late, Waver noticed their legs already collapsing, and then the wind was knocked out of him as Valor flopped down directly on top of him. His vision briefly went black, with his face buried in Valor’s noticeably round belly, and he let out a muffled yell.
The drake stood up quickly, and Waver quickly recovered, rolling out from under his friend.
“Good play,” Waver panted. “But if you wanted better pillows, you should’ve just told me.”
The two of them reset, putting a little distance between them again, and on an unspoken signal, Valor pounced. Their claws lightly sliced the air near Waver’s ear as they ducked again, but this time he dove over Valor’s shoulder, slashing blindly at their back and wings. As expected, an imprecise strike with a blunt nail only slid right over Valor’s tough dorsal scales, but Waver wasn’t done. He grabbed Valor’s hind leg on the other side and held on tight, his momentum flipping him over and jamming his head into the floor.
He cursed, and leapt to his feet, his head throbbing, and his hand clutching a scale. He showed Valor as they turned to look, and grimaced.
Waver shook his head, and the fogginess cleared from his vision.
Pentwec, no longer needing her eyes closed to keep her ruse up, watched excitedly as the two adults played like children. It was her first time seeing Valor and Waver roughhouse, but it was also a familiar sight. Deep in the annals of her knowledge, from when blood was not necessary to form covenants. Yes, there was a time when such a scene wasn’t very uncommon at all, when humans and dragons could work and play together to better each other.
Yes, there were other conjurers like Waver and herself, to complete the work people had already done on their own, to bind tongues together in understanding. There was even something like magic that the most accomplished conjurers had been able to perform, although none of Pentwec’s past lives had any memory like that.
And the play wouldn’t be limited to drakes, humans, and Bai Ze. There were kin, and cobalt. Amphipteres, lungs, serpents of the moon, wentis, and even Prominence. The most dignified of the mythical dragon gods would sling mud and bruises with the noblest and most common of humans.
What had gone wrong?
She would never tell.
She could never tell.
Because no one alive could teach her.
In the end, Valor won, having taken eight points while Waver only took five. Valor’s agility re-established, they treated each other’s wounds, calmed Pentwec down, and finally got to bed.