Eikre

___The sound of shell cracking was like an explosion to his own ears.
___Freedom at last.
___He had enjoyed his time in the egg, of course. It was warm, it was secure; it was the bed of a sweet slumber that lasted as long as he could remember. Now, it suddenly became a cramped, suffocating prison that he hated without measure.
___A breath of a foreign atmosphere burned his throat, and he expelled drops of the liquid he had been surrounded in with a sneeze. Originally taken aback by its unfamiliarity, suddenly he had a desperate hunger for the thin, dry nothing that flowed through to his lungs for the first time that he could recall.
___A deep voice he recognized but did not know spoke, “There is the first break. I can see his little snout twitch with the air.”
___Air. So that is what the empty thing that filled his lungs was. The strange musty smell of the new world beyond his prison seemed only to entice him further, if his restless legs were not enough of a motivation.
___A stretch lengthened the crack in the wall down to the start of where his still short hatchling tail tangled itself in the small dark space that he lie curled within. With a kick of all fours, the wall in front of him burst into shatters and he rolled onto his side out of it.
___Another voice, sounding slightly softer than the last but hardly any higher, spoke moments after, “Ah, and a brilliant red much like your own father.”
___He was about to turn to see what the source of those two unknown but soothing voices were, when he then heard more cracking near to him on his left. The very same cracks he heard within his own round and white prison.
___“Fitting that he should use part of his name until his own power grows. Young little Thryn.”
___The sound of his new name passed through Thryn’s ears without much acknowledgement. Something about the other round thing, the egg, captivated him until it too opened to reveal another creature with soft-scale hide a dark brown. It looked like him.
___Thryn twisted his head at it. When it looked at him everything changed. Something within him broke and his lip began quivering in a quiet snarl. A hunger awoke within him, it overwhelmed his mind with an insuppressible need to bring it down. The brown thing gave him a confused look. That meant its guard wasn’t up.
___It was defenseless.
___Thryn tensed his legs and brought his head low. His lips quivered strangely as he tried to bare his little hatchling teeth at this brown flesh that stood before him.
___“By the moons, what is he doing?”
___The voice from what he guessed was his father failed to break the veil that took itself over his eyes. Thryn was ready to bathe in blood. He launched himself to the soft brown with jaws gaping, lunging for the neck. The impact alone had the two roll for a moment, Thryn grasping his brown brother under the throat while pinning him on his back. He kicked with his hind legs until his claws felt wet with something warm, agonized squeaks just barely escaping his brother's throat as he squirmed and gasped.
___Those stifled screeches appealed to Thryn in ways he could not yet fathom. He savored them. One final urge made him twist until he heard a crack and his squirming brother went limp. He held his first kill in his jaws, the soft flesh of a new hatchling leaking a copper tasting blood onto his tongue.
___It was all happening so quickly. He looked up to see two massive versions of him, his parents, rising up towards him to stop him from his rampage. They were too late, his brown brother had already died in his grasp.
___In that one moment, Thryn’s unusually overwhelming thirst for blood lapsed. In that one moment he was given time to be disgusted by the taste of the blood of a member of his family. His mind was given time to behave like that of a hatchling. A panic setting upon him loosened his jaw and allowed his brother to slip from his jaws. He knew he was not in control of himself, not fully. The lust to bleed his brother came not from him, yet he could feel it in the darkest recesses of his mind. Thryn felt that he could not even trust his own thoughts.
___That terrified him.
___Only one thought managed to break through his panic long enough for his young brain to consider. What was happening to him? Where did this bloodthirsty need come from?
___He met the eyes of the fiery orange dragon that was his mother. Just as he did, her eyes shook slightly as if in response or perhaps realization. Then Thryn felt something within him crack, and his thoughts slipped from his control once again. In one quick motion his legs kicked his body under his father’s outstretched claws and towards the other young creature that he now realized was his sister. When he closed distance his legs made another almost involuntary kick that had him leaping through the air in a readied pounce. His teeth had bared themselves and his claws were outstretched and ready to tear her apart. Thryn was going to kill her.
___He desperately wished he would never make it.
___“No!”
___With the pained roar came a tail that cracked against his skull, sending him flying far from his sister, but not before he had managed to get a weak grasp on her still dormant left wing. A small piece of skin and flesh tore off with him as he flew off from her. His vision went white with the pain, it just barely managing to twist the unbearable urge out of him once again.
___It was in that moment that his mind was allowed to fully realize what he had just done. Time again seemed to slow and he watched the droplets of blood float weightlessly in a trail between his gaping jaws and his sister, her eyes wide with the shock of her first wound as she fed him a pained stare.
___Why had he done this? Small chunks of his brother's throat were still stuck in his teeth. The copper-like taste of blood coated his tongue. It would have appealed to a deep thirst for battle most dragons are known to have, but it was the flesh and blood of both his sister and brother. His family that had done no wrong to him in the few short moments of conscious life. Thryn did not want this, any of this.
___His entire spine hit the floor of the cave, throwing him out of his brief moment in thought. Thryn rolled and spun wildly as he skipped like a stone out of the entire cave mouth. For a moment he was airborne but he was a hatchling with wings still attached to his soft-scaled skin. Soon he was falling in a sharp, fast drop to a hard ground.
___Everything was a blur as he could feel himself continue to roll down a steep slope of stone. The last he saw was a grassy floor below him before his world went dark.

- - - - - - -

___Sy’yrot walked over to the edge of the cave, to look down below where the little one now lie. Thryn, the hatchling-killing creature, lie on his side with blood slowly leaking from the side of his jaw. He was deathly still. It was not a very long fall. The cave was only an adult's height off the ground- if even that. Yet for a hatchling as small as Thryn, it was just far enough to threaten with death.
___Just how many bones were broken Sy’yrot did not know, and he was not sure he cared.
___“Curse that dragon-guised beast! Our second clutch, and already we lost two out of our three.” Sy'yrot didn't care to mention the irony in the fact that they had chosen a cave for that second clutch to not have need to watch their backs as often, only for the threat to come from within.
___He turned over to Aeai, watching her assess their daughter’s wound, “How fares she?”
___“Hurt and bleeding, but nothing she will not be able to retaliate from. She should be able to fly just as soon as any dragon, as scarred as her wing will be.”
___Hurt indeed. Her eyes were both confused and alert, they locked upon her brother that lie dead in a pool of blood as though he too were to wake and lunge for her neck as she cowered under her mother's wing. Hatchlings so early in their life were no less sensitive than any other youngling. It would take a bit more time for their daughter to come to terms with this than an adult.
___Aeai turned her head up to look at him, “I can only wonder what had possessed him.”
___“What difference would it make!? Thryn killed his brother. He had hatched hardly a heartbeat before his death. No doubt Thryn has been killed as well.” His lips curled into a snarl, a rumbling growl escaping his throat, “And if not, I will finish him myself.”
___“Do not act so rashly Sy’yrot. Something else is behind this. I saw his eyes while his brother lie limp in his jaws. They were wide with a terrified shock. You were behind him and noticed little more than a rampaging hatchling. I saw pain, confusion, and fear. I do not believe he quite understood, nor wanted, what he was doing.
___“The little one down there may be as much a victim as the dragon he killed if my fears are correct. If he is alive, we should at least use him to learn what took his mind from him, so we may better guard our youth from it beyond now.”
___A short stab of remorse hit him when he once again realised they may have just killed their hatchling. Regardless of what he had done, there was some pain to follow losing any young child so soon. To say nothing of the one that hatchling himself had killed, “And if he is not?”
___“It cannot be helped. Taking no action would have seen our daughter dead along with the other, and it would become as much our fault as it could be his, or whatever drove him. So have patience, my love. We do not yet know what caused this.”
___As much as he hated to admit it, she was right. There was a chance that something else was behind this, something he did not see. It felt as if Dragonkind itself was slowly falling by unseen death at times like this. Sy’yrot could not yet be sure that did not sway the events of the morning. Killing his own hatchling, regardless of his deeds, was not a solution.
___He walked back to where that hatchling fell. A light trail of dropped blood left clues to exactly how and where he fell after Aeai whipped him out with her tail. Sy’yrot was surprised when he caught sight of what lie down in the grasses beneath. Nothing but a small crimson stain.
___Thryn was gone.

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___The name Thryn soon faded from his memory, for he never heard it again. He had only lived for three hours before he lost control of himself twice. It, to him, felt as if he were watching himself thrash and kill through helpless eyes- unable to suppress an altogether foreign longing to hear screeches of unrelenting agony.

___It frightened him to his very core.

___He ran as fast as his bruised bone and muscle would carry him, limping away from his family as he ran from the dangerous beast that hid deep in his mind. He wanted to be away from dragons, away from familiarity, away from blood. Thryn was fleeing from the monstrosity that tainted his own consciousness. Yet as such a new hatchling with a stomach that still hadn't seen it's first meal, he collapsed within hours.

___He should have died, but that was when his Mentor had found him. It was he that gave him the name Eikre yet refused to tell his own, introducing himself solely as such. It was he, Mentor, that recognized the corruption deep in Eikre's mind that drove him to kill beyond his own desire, and took Eikre under his wing. It was he that promised Eikre that if he could not teach the young one to keep his curse under some semblance of control, he would kill him.

___The time under under Mentor was a long and arduous string of years. If Eikre so much as bared his teeth his Mentor would break some, and if Eikre dared flex a claw he would grind them down to bleeding stubs. If his mind tried to weave any sort of magical energy Mentor would knock him unconscious. He bashed Eikre regularly, often breaking scale and cracking bone.

___Yet pain had proven an invaluable teacher. Now an adult with more than a few scars decorating his scale, Eikre eventually emerged as a dragon with almost indominable willpower. For two decades he fought with his curse that tainted him with a seething thirst for blood. For two decades he endured torture of all kinds- starvation, sickness, and physical strain. No breaks, no lapse, no mercy. At last, he emerged victorious.

___Mentor never did tell Eikre his name. He would disappear at night, and reappear soon after dawn. Every time Mentor returned he carried with him a subtle scent that was achingly familiar. Waiting for that arrival always filled him with strange mix of eagerness and dread. Amidst all the harsh nature of how Mentor treated him, Eikre could sometimes detect the most subtle traces of a certain care Mentor had for Eikre.

___The promise of a reward for Eikre did however pass Mentor's tongue on occasion. Never did he speak what it would be, only telling him it would be given when he was deemed ready. IF he was ever deemed ready. Mentor never did let Eikre forget that death by Mentor's claws was absolutely a possibility.

___That day eventually came when Mentor arrived to him one morning, testing Eikre's reactions to an action of his own against him like he always had. Mentor taunted him, provoked him and even made himself seem tantalizingly vulnerable. Eikre seethed with that same uncontrollable rage and twisted thirst for torture, yet didn't move. For the first time since Eikre had met him, Mentor smiled and gave him a silent nod of congratulations. He then, as quickly as he arrived, set off with a beat of his wings with only a quick word instructing Eikre not to leave until the next morning.

___On the day of Eikre's departure from him he heard a familiarly proud roar. It was a roar designed to catch his attention. Eikre looked to a far off cliff to see Mentor standing proudly. Two other dragons were with him. One was about Mentor's size, a fiery orange shining off from her scale. The second, one smaller than either of them but perhaps Eikre's size, gave him an almost unreadable look that at the same time held a hint of warmth.

___She had a scar on the hide of her left wing.

___Eikre fought back another overwhelming impulse to maim and kill every last one of the three. With as much effort as he could muster, he turned away and began his journey of solitude. Despite everything, he never forgot his sister's face. It haunted his dreams and made them bloody nightmares without end. Watching her stare to him without bitterness brought a certain peace that steadied his mind. His family had actually forgiven him, to a certain measure. He wasn't sure how complete that forgiveness was, and he wasn't even sure if he deserved it, yet having it was enough. It gave him a new hope.

___It was then, after he saw his family for the last time, that he finally realized fully Mentor's doing. All these years spent breaking his scale and inflicting suffering upon Eikre, and Mentor never wanted to kill him. He had spent so much of his energy on Eikre so that he wouldn't have to. After all he had done to his family, Mentor- no, Father- still cared for his life.

___An age had passed since then, and Eikre is haunted by his bloodthirsty curse as much as ever. He has slipped times before and again, but they are few and far between. Every time he learns more of himself- learns more of it. His father had taught him more than he had initially believed, instilling within him a vigor to cut down the bloody tendrils whenever they rise to challenge him. The curse's very nature has instilled within him an unmatched strength and unparalleled power in dragons even twice his age. Eikre refuses to use it. It is the same power that demands that dragons die while their bones are being split into a bloody mess. It demands that he let hatchlings bleed while wailing for their mother and for even her blood to soak his own hide. He cares not for the power it has gifted him from hatching. Never again will he allow it to consume another innocent life.

___Never. Again.

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