Kairava was fraught with worry as he led Ygrain along down the steep rocky path.

  They had crossed deep into the wastes now and though she had asked him on several occasions where they were going, he responded only in vagueries.

  “I want to show you something.” He had said, stupidly.

  Not even realizing his efforts to maintain surprise were only serving to deepen the princess’s mounting suspicion and anxiety as to the morning walk's purpose.

  The princess had only agreed to come at all because the palace gardens were beginning to get droll and desiring for fresher paths to walk this morning she had agreed.

  Steadily she had spent more and more time around the boy, who was her only possible conversation in her imprisonment outside of Alane.

  So in the name of continued conversational stimulation, and an escape from boredom --- and these reasons alone --- had she agreed to follow the prince on his mysterious early morning summons.

  They had been hiking through the craggy foothills for some time, and the steep rises and falls of the trail leveled to even ground, the hills vanishing behind them.

  The stretch of land was broken into treacherous terrain with deep cravessas wide enough to swallow an unexpecting traveler whole.

  The light dry brush of the foothills had fallen away to large green bushes with long oar-like leaves, and dense walls of thorny vine-brambles that covered natural stone pillars and blanketed portions of the earth.

  “What is this stuff?” Ygrain asked, stepping around another cluster of the brambles as large and dense as a dead horse.

  Miraculously despite their wide spread, the brambles all seemed to be rotting.

  Many were dry and collapsing. Others bring subsumed by other plant life, mushrooms and moss spreading across the lengths.

  “Hm? Oh, ha! Yes.” Kairava said as if having a two-sided conversation with himself, only one half audible.

  He shook his head in self-admonishment.

  “What?” Ygrain scowled at the strange boy. Struggling as she trudged after him to retain her boots from the grasping vines covering the earth in greater masses.

  “I just forgot, is all. I don’t even really notice them anymore. Don’t think anyone who lives this close to them really does.”

  “This close to what?” she asked, but he was deep in thought again.

  She sighed as loudly and as exasperatedly as she could.

  He turned his head, looking startled.

  “Yes?”

  “Firstly, what are these annoying, and sharp, sodding brambles?” she asked in a saccharinely sweet voice.

  “Oh. It’s drake-brier. It means we’re getting close.”

  “Drake-brier? No, wait, secondly, what do you mean this close? This close to what?”

  “The site of dragon fire.” He said conspiratorially.

  “Drake-brier only grows where dragon fire scours the soil. Everything else is incinerated. But the heat and the freshly ashed nutrients feed seeds that can wait for decades to respond to just those conditions, some wait centuries for their chance to sprout.”

  “So what's happening to it now?” she gestured lazily towards a wilting patch that had begun to crumble away like fine white ash.

  “Ah. This batch has gone through its rooting and seed laying phases. It's rotting away now, granting nutrients to the soil that a fresh patch of grass will feed upon. Until another dragon comes along and burns it all away again.”

  “Seed laying?”

  “Drake-brier are unique among plants. Like dragons themselves are to beasts. They seem to have some kind of mutually beneficial relationship.”

  “Fascinating.” She said in a dry tone that the boy didn’t seem to notice.

  “Why were dragons lighting fires over here, was there an attack?”

  “Hm? Oh, no, no not exactly. The soldiers would have left targets if they were training. It was maintenance, I’d wager. Dragons relieve excess flame, they can be brought to the edge of bursting if they don’t. I have heard the wurm-catchers call it dowsing. Laurent isn’t terribly fond of it. But then dragon fire always makes him nervous.”

  Ygrain had stopped in her tracks, staring intently into the back of the prince’s skull.

  “Wait. If soldiers didn’t leave these patches of drake-brier, then what did?”

  “A nest of wild dragons.”

  “What!?”

  “Oh. I shouldn’t have said that. It was a surprise.”

  As he finished speaking they came to a sudden grinding halt at the lip of an enormous chasm which was as wide as the entirety of the palace grounds.

  Looking down about a twenty or so foot drop, the small canyon was shaped like a rounded bowl, and pocketed in vast burrows in the stone.

  There were great pillars and archways that sat in the openings of some tunnels made of a soft looking reddish stone, like clay, and some of it had the smooth look of cooked ceramic. The work was incredibly crude, but the supports likely held the tunnels open far longer than they would have remained otherwise.

  It resembled something akin to a giant hive of termites, or bees.

  “What are those? Did the wurm-catchers build those?”

  The tunnel openings were all at least three times as tall as she, and the pillars were at least that height.

  “I’m going to start sounding repetitive if I have to keep saying ‘the dragons did it’.”

  He got low and ducked down to the floor, he pointed down at one of many large cavernous maws in the floor of the chasm.

  “Now watch.”

  When Ygrain saw the first wild dragon poke its head from the open hole she dashed low to kneel beside the prince.

  The dragon looked around, scanning for threats or prey. It had the face of a great plains cat but its hide was slick not with fur but with scales the color of soot and a brow dense in spined ridges.

  A bright white mane clung to its neck and shoulders giving it the appearance of a lion.

  Sensing nothing the creature flapped into the air on vast white wings like those of a swans, rocketing into the sky.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  It was easily the size of a full grown ox.

  She was momentarily disappointed to have lost it in its flurry of movement before a second and third dragon began shoving over the lip of the hole, these bearing the chimeric faces of a blue stag with antlers that sprouted like tree branches above its head, and the grinning maw of a baboon, it’s body and face bright red as a tomato.

  And as more and more dragons rose to meet the rising sun, each more vibrant and colorful than the last, Ygrain grew simultaneously more joyous and fearful.

  Joyous to have seen such a sight, but fearful, as the experience was tainted by the nagging question of why the prince had brought her here?

  “Are you here to kill me?” She spoke levelly, coolly, as her mother would have done when making an accusation in court.

  Kairava glanced momentarily away from the growing cloud of dragons swirling about the hole.

  “Hm? What did you say?”

  “Are you here to throw me into this pit for these creatures to tear apart? Rid yourselves of the enemy once and for all?”

  Kairava stared at her for a long while as if she were speaking some unknown tongue. Then shook his head, face flushed with embarrassment.

  “No! I wouldn’t-… I mean, no. I just wanted to show you the murmuration.”

  “The what? Why?”

  “I thought you might like to see it?” He offered, somewhat embarrassed.

  He had returned his attention back fully to the chasm now, staring intently. Ygrain followed his gaze.

  She was glad she did.

  Spinning about the massive opening in the earth was a rising funnel of flying dragons arranged in careful rows, the vastest beasts flying behind the smaller creatures, of which there were many.

  Spiraling lanes of dragons moved in clockwise and counterclockwise directions, the corridors of space between them always sufficient. Though Ygrain was sure more than once that they would collide in the air, they never did.

  The entire formation spun and spun higher and higher into the air, allowing creatures the size of elephants to join the skyward dance.

  Before long the flight of dragons was coming to its zenith, at the edge of the distant sky they began dispersing from the top downward, a cloud of dragons flying about to land on various perches throughout the chasm.

  Ygrain glanced nervously towards the nearest dragon, lying lazing on a bed of drake-brier not fifteen feet away.

  Kairava smiled assuredly.

  “Don’t worry. Dragons are afraid of very little, so if they aren’t hunting and we don’t bother them we’ll hardly register to them at all.”

  “So it's safe?”

  “With precautions, it can be safe.”

  “Can be?” Ygrain was growing green in the face.

  “There is always danger with dragons. But you are safe with me princess. Dragons like me, they always have.” He smiled at her

  “I will not let any of them harm you, I swear it.”

  Ygrain seemed to ponder him with great consideration.

  Before she could make a clear resolution she asked,

  “Is this where you get the eggs from? Laurent said you don’t breed them like livestock.”

  Kairava seemed relieved by the change of topic of.

  “We breed dragons, but it's rarely done. Dragons live for ages, they have no natural predators, so even in the wild they rarely lay eggs. Most of the time there’s enough dragons to go around for a young lordling to merely inherit one. But when there aren’t enough to go around they take so long to produce eggs and for them to hatch, that it's more efficient to take developing eggs from wild nests.”

  “That’s why you call them wurm-catchers? They’re egg thieves?” Ygrain raised an incredulous brow.

  “Thieves is a strong word. Half of wild dragons that hatch will die before they live a full year, many more before they reach the age of ten. A dragon raised in captivity is almost guaranteed survival, so the catchers are the only reason the dragon hasn’t gone extinct.”

  “Extinct? I thought you said they had no predators?”

  “I suppose I misspoke…There are always poachers.”

  Kairava’s face grew grim.

  Distaste and contempt for this particular topic clear as a cloudless sky.

  Regardless, Ygrain couldn’t drop her curiosity.

  “Men? Humans are a threat to that?” She gestured towards the enormous shrieking and roaring throng.

  The prince nodded sadly.

  “Pirates. They build traps, bait atop deep holes with spikes meant to cripple a dragon, not kill it. Holds them fast so they can harvest without spoiling the meat. Then while the dragon is tied down with heavy chains they cut the dragon's pearl out while it's still breathing.”

  Ygrain was horrified.

  Her people hunted. Even she had taken up bow and spear to bring a creature low. But to wound and not kill a living thing?

  To prolong the prey’s suffering for mere profit?

  It chilled her to the bone.

  “That’s evil. Can’t anyone do anything about it?”

  The prince sighed deeply.

  “We do. We burn their ships when we find them. We execute those found selling dragon in our ports. But for every poacher we catch there’s four that we don’t, and once they leave our waters they’re gone…”

  “Nests as big as this are rare now, maybe only three or four of them left in the whole of the continent.”

  “I’m sorry Kairava.” and she meant it, the pain on the boy’s face was a personal sort of loss.

  A familiar ache, the loss of a loved one, reflected back at her in those drooping cerulean eyes.

  “Thanks. Sorry I scared you, I only meant it to be a nice surprise.”

  “That’s alright, Rava.” She chuckled. “You’re sweet...today was very thoughtful.”

  He smiled softly, but did not turn to look.

  An ear-splitting roar shook the earth beneath their feet.

  With two heavy wingbeats that blasted the entire chasm in gusts of strong wind a dragon near the size of a barge picked itself up from the stone it lay perched upon.

  The creature reminded Ygrain of a hedgehog (an animal she had only recently been introduced to via the palace menagerie) as its back and wings were covered in hair-like spines as long as spears. The blanket of thorny armor terminated at a head like that of a fat toad, its maw full of black needle-thin teeth.

  The dragon launched across the chasm, shrieking with clear indignation.

  A dragon across the way, just as large and sporting the head of a serpent shrieked in response and dove to meet its aggressor.

  Kairava looked at Ygrain nervously.

  “We should go, now.”

  As he spoke the first gout of fire erupted across the chasm, striking the serpent drake mid-flight, the flames splashed over its bulk like an ocean wave, cresting over its form like a veil and dripping to the chasm floor beneath it.

  It seemed to have little effect but to scorch the drakes coat, the hairs blackened now.

  The serpent drake cried in utter fury and released a fiery gust of its own in a white hot line of heat that glowed all the brighter against the already considerable illumination of the early morning sun.

  The toad drake swerved in the air, a single beat of its heavy wings sending it flying away from the blast.

  Where the line of fire struck the stone walls the rock had begun to melt away in bubbling pools. The liquid stone splashed against the chasm floor beneath, causing several groups of infantile drakes to shriek and fly away in fright.

  Kairava grabbed Ygrain by the back of the head, ducking both their heads low to the ground as the fire flashed through the air.

  Sparks and fragments of scattered stone rained across the chasm.

  The toad drake flung itself against one of the chasm walls, burying its talons into the stonework, and coiling itself carefully it suddenly sprang back out into the air and across the gap at great speeds.

  The snake drake had no chance to respond, as the two creatures smashed into one another in the air they fought, writhing, clawing and biting at one another.

  Kairava glanced up as an eruption of flames died out.

  He wrenched Ygrain’s hand into his own and pulled them both roughly to their feet. He tugged her along, moving quickly but quietly away from the chasm.

  Ygrain looked back in fascination and horror as the titanic creatures grappled in the air.

  The toad had bitten deeply into the snake’s shoulder, and the snake was desperately clawing at the toads side, but it's tough quills were serving as excellent defense, cutting deeper and deeper into the snake the more tightly coiled around each other the creatures became.

  Their wings still managed to keep both beasts afloat as they struggled in the air seemingly weightless.

  The snake let out a strangled, desperate cry as its blood showered the landscape below.

  Then it snapped its neck back, angling its open maw towards the bulk of the toad as it clung on like a leech.

  Where the serpent drake’s neck met its shoulders a bright light had begun to emanate from beneath the scorched skin.

  Ygrain could not decide on the light's color, as it seemed to shift moment to moment as she watched.

  A sudden white beam erupted from the snake’s maw, a line that cut through the air like a razor and perfectly speared the toad through its midsection.

  Molten fire turned its quilled hide into crackling kindling and the toad let out a single low moan as it released the snake.

  A perfectly round hole was tunneled through its chest, spilling burning and smoking viscera out onto the chasm floor.

  The serpent let out a victorious cry, which many dragons answered in kind. It flew off to the perch wherein the toad had occupied, a fine shelf carved into the canyon wall.

  Several smaller dragons flew over to nest cozily beside the serpent.

  Flocks of tiny dragons began to pick at the corpse.

  They did not speak until they had gone past the heavy brambles of the drake-brier, and begun to crest back into the rough trails of the foothills back to the palace.

  “What was that all about?”

  “Dragons are hierarchical, they struggle to prove themselves to the flight, to gain power over those weaker than themselves.”

  “That doesn’t hurt the dragon population?”

  “They only get that way when they reach considerable size. That takes decades, even centuries sometimes for dragons. Anyway, sorry you had to see that.”

  The boy looked crestfallen, as if the dragons’ duel was somehow his doing.

  She punched the boy on the arm reassuringly, he yelped as softly as he could manage.

  “That’s alright, it was the most excitement I think I’ve had in months.”

  Kairava rubbed at his sore arm, but he was grinning through the pain.

  “It was my pleasure, princess.”

  They trudged back along the paths up the palace trail, failing to notice the eyes low in the dense brier, watching them go.

  The teenagers chattered amongst themselves oblivious that the eyes followed them.

  Tracing the road carefully back to the Raichan Palace.