Night Fury's Wrath

Chapter 33: Torment

-Ah, the next stage for the plot is finally upon us! The story is gonna take a fast turn in this chapter, and it's a culmination of a few tiny hints in the past few updates leading up to this. Now, without further ado, let's get to it!

Enjoy!

-NFD

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"No!" I barked hoarsely, making my charge freeze. "Vænn! Spit that out right now!" The hatchling in question stared up at me with wide eyes, his tail pinned under my forepaw, and a strand of brown sticking out of his maw. Luckily, it was only a dead piece of grass, so it wouldn't actually harm him, but it was his disobedience that I wanted to fix. Mom called it 'practice,' but I considered this a way to do what my brother would've done for me. Unfortunately, I had to make this quick to avoid getting him sick, so I couldn't afford to be gentle.

I narrowed my eyes on my little brother. "Spit. It. Out." He tried to inch away, forgetting that his tail was pinned. "Vænn... Now." He looked up at me one more time, then slowly opened his mouth, letting the grass drop to the slush at our paws—Nana Moon had been since enough to melt the worst of the snow around our temporary home with her fire. "Good," I purred warmly, lifting my paw. "If you're hungry, you ask Mom for food. You don't eat random stuff off the ground." He chirped happily and darted toward the burrow.

With Vænn out of sight, I finally released the string of coughs I had held back, my head pounding fiercely once finished. I really shouldn't be out here in the cold, but the quiet was calming, and Vænn would've run out here alone if I hadn't gone with him.

With my core once again closed off from the moon's energy, only the moonlight gave me enough light to see by. The tall grass had long since been flattened by the snow, granting visibility across most of the island while on the ground. Barring the huge crater, the land was mostly flat and had trails where Vænn had bumbled through the snow. He loved the freezing stuff, contrary to how I felt about it.

Would any hatchling of mine enjoy the snow as Vænn does, or would they share the same weakness I did? I kept to my promise to think about having an egg with Myrkr—ironically, I couldn't stop thinking about it—, and in that thinking, I've discovered a few problems.

I had asked Nana Astra dozens of questions in private about eggs and hatchlings, but only after I made her swear not to tease me and to take my questions seriously. Since then, I've kept my distance from Myrkr—it was hard, but I was trying—so that I wasn't distracted, and so he wouldn't get sick.

The hatchling would have attributes from Myrkr and me mixed together into one tiny dragon. What worried me wasn't what it would inherit from Myrkr, but what it would inherit from me. Would my weakness to cold pass down to it? Would it have my unstable state of mind, if that could be inherited at all? Would it have my scales that have earned me so much pain? Myrkr claimed he loved my scales, but he was one dragon out of countless dragons in the world—my family's opinion went without saying.

Any egg that came from me would be at a disadvantage, to put it lightly. Maybe Myrkr's 'contribution' to the hatchling's makeup would balance out whatever my body put into the poor hatchling, but what if it didn't? What if by agreeing to have an egg, I was dooming an innocent hatchling to a life of physical or mental pain?

At this point, I wasn't too worried about the pain I would experience by carrying and laying an egg—Myrkr's clever plan had helped a lot with that. Now, my hesitation came from what that poor hatchling would get from me, and what it would learn from me after it hatched. My body had stopped making the 'eggs' that gave me so many cramps, which, according to Mom, meant I had finally matured, and that I would soon have my first 'cycle.'