Rebettica

Breathe in. Breathe out. Your body was yours. Death, your own death, waited within it, but it was your death. It was yours to give in to or resist. Rebettica was going to resist. It was how her mother had raised her. Live, or die. Life was simply that.

“I do not die here,” Rebettica warned. “I was born Guardian, like yourself. The Clan is my charge. You do not break it under my watch.”

Enacting the philosophy was a harder matter. Felsabfal, her mate, her love, her match, lie to the side, unbreathing and unmoving. He had fought well. He had done himself no shame as a dragon of Plague flight. If she survived this, Rebettica would miss him.

No if. Kill the if in your heart.

Her sister paced across from her, frills twitching in agitation, claws slashing at the ground, frantic, rabid, mad. “Why? Why defend it? Rotten thing. Rotten limbs, you cut them off. The whole Clan is rotten. I am purifying it. Cleaning it.”

“No. Injured animal, you’re biting everything around you in fear. There is no permanent strength in fear.”

Andasreth flared her wings, her frills, dug her claws into the ground as if it were Rebettica’s flesh. “Fear is strength! Complacency is death! Mother taught you that much, I know.”

“All you’ve done is kill your Clanmates,” Rebettica growled. “You seek her approval with that?”

“Her approval! She doesn’t care for you either! The most powerful of the least powerful dragons, that is what she’s called you!”

“I’ve long since outgrown the need for my mother to praise me. I do not need her favoritism. The Clan is mine. I make the laws, I protect it, organize it. In blood I will prove my claim! You are not destroying what is mine any further.”