Rikyn

The overhead wheeling of the dragons causes Duir too simply flicker out of existence, right where he stands, before he scampers about behind the tree they are busy clearing away. His natural magic is easily roused by the immediate threat of two carnivores, his timid nature lending to the ease with which he chooses flight, over fight. My reaction is much less minimalist, however, and involves both my ears flattening firmly to my head, and my own magic crackling within me, eager to drive into the gold one, and force her hideous face into the sand, if she actually tries to hurt my (almost only) friend.

It doesn’t seem necessary, but Volterra’s joke does little to ease the level of aggression currently lining my face. Mentally telling Duir to quit hiding like a pussy, I shrug my unarmored shoulder, as if his words don’t make me want to stab him (because they do, I’m just not sure if its my pride actually being wounded or the sniveling little boy I’ve become in mourning).

"And yours are still mutant turkeys," I remark, still unsure as to whether he’s kidding or not; my buck’s mind tenuously insists that they are far more dangerous than turkeys. Still, Volterra’s smiling, so a joke seems better than a threat, which is the best I can offer most dragons, having inherited my family’s dislike of the entire species (thanks, Mirage). That the red one of the horrible, fanged pair had once covered me in squirrel blood doesn’t do much for my opinion of him.

Equine. It’s almost synonymous with barbaric savage.

Still, this barbarian holds the muscles such people are renowned for, and though his pets are vermin, he himself is not; while he certainly hadn’t held any of strength back during our fight, I also believed that those who the massive black considered his friends would find that same strength on their side. Such loyalty was admirable, even if he was a hornless; besides, I’ve never been as blind to the truth as my mother. The flighted and crownless were lesser, to be sure, but it did not mean that there weren’t those among their kind who could be found worthy.

I simply nod in agreement to not withholding any of one’s power during a fight, refusing to watch Volterra’s manly muscle flexing. I certainly always had tried with every ounce of my strength while sparring, even if the weight of my ambition was far greater than the mass of my weaponry. I’d even fought Gaucho the Wildfire once, the Wildfire, and lived to tell the tale; the memory, however, is much more bitter than it once was.

I never got to tell dad.

"Yeah," I morosely state, in response to both questions moving to roll the logs towards the Indomitable breaks lose towards the accumulated pile.