The Hatchling

Lockjaw

I closed my eyes and floated on the artificial breeze for a while, only beating my wings when necessary. To just be still in the sky was a treat to me, calming me from my earlier anxiety.

"I said fly, not sleep!" Aiden barked from below.

Craning my neck, I banked right and cut through the air like a knife. When I looked up, I could see Milo slipping through the sky like a fish would swim. He was effortlessly quick and could make blade sharp turns.

Yuri seemed to having a bit more of a problem keeping up with him and actually struggled to stay with Milo's regular pace.

Alric was above me going the same speed. Out of hate, I moved up and shoved his underbelly with my horns, knocking him on his side and almost sending him back to the ground.

"Hey!" He spat at me from below. "Who do you think you are?"

I felt smoke puffing from my nostrils as fire boiled up in my chest.
"I'm everything you're not."

Picking up my speed, I shot away from him and rocketed through the air.
The average dragon's top speed was around five hundred miles per hour during a dive, but I'm sure Milo was capable of breaking the sound barrier.

The humans were always surprised by our speed in the air with our size, but we didn't weigh as much as we probably seemed like we would. Our bones were hollow like birds and, when we tucked our arms and legs in, we were like a spear in the sky. Our wings were the biggest parts of us.

I was forty eight feet high but my wings stretched out a little under triple that. They were like sails and I was the vessel.

Dives, even I knew, were the primary way to attack one another. A strong hit from above was extremely lethal on other dragon. If you knocked one on their side and could expose the soft underbelly, not even the best armor could save them.

Even with Milo's size, his hit would most certainly kill someone if done the right way.

But it's hard to sneak up on a dragon like that. Trained soldiers could hear wing beats a mile away. Only special forces can truly fly silently, and even then, managing to get above a dragon with stellar eye sight was a task.

Most dragons fought in the air, grappling each other till one fell and could be taken down on the ground, or till one was killed aerially.

There were no survivors in our kind of battles.

"You can come back down!" Aiden shouted up at us all.

I landed first, light on my feet, and everyone else soon followed.

"I'm impressed, but certainly with you," Aiden pointed to Milo. "You're very talented already, so I have high expectations as to what you'll become in a year." Aiden turned his attention to Yuri.

"You need some work. Flight is the most important part of anything you'll ever learn about being a soldier, so you can't be slow at it. Conditioning will be difficult, but it must be done."
Aiden then looked at me. "You're pretty good, but only a bit above average. You're long and tall, so you should be going faster. You need work as well."

And finally to Alric. "I'm a little disappointed you couldn't keep up with the lass here. You sorta look like you could be fast, but only time will tell."
He clapped his hands and stepped back, looking all of us up and down, seeming to be somewhat pleased.

"Now let's go inside and test your bite force, ram force, and squeeze force."

I looked for another door on the ground, but could find one. Not until Aiden looked up.

High up on the wall were two sets of doors made for dragons, but with no steps down to reach it.

We had to fly to get up there.

Aiden shifted and I was astounded by his size. As a human, he was average, but as a dragon he was monstrous, almost as tall as my father, but certainly more muscular. His scar had transitioned over, making a long white line through his emerald scales. You could easily tell it was from a talon.

Aiden stretched out his wings and it only took him one flap to reach the door twenty feet up off the ground.

"Come one! Don't just sit there!" He cried out as he pulled himself through the entrance.

I was right behind him, pulling myself up the edge and down the hall into an all white room. There were dozens of charts and machines and equipment lying around, but I hadn't a clue to what each one did.

"Let me explain each of these before I make you use them. This one is the bite force tester." He held up a metal plate with little indentations in it like others had bit into it before. "You just bite as hard as you can for a few seconds and a number will pop up on the screen right next to you. That number is the pounds per square inch of force you have when you bite down."

He waved Yuri over and handed him the metal, letting him take it in his maw.

Giving him a conformational nod, Aiden turned his attention to the small screen with red digital numbers flashing up on it. It rested on a 15.7.
"Over thirty-four thousand pounds per square inch. Impressive."

Aiden gestured me over, and I cringed as I took the used piece of metal in my mouth.

When he nodded, I bit down with all my might and felt the strain in my teeth as they ached.

"A little less than thirty thousand. That's good for a female. Now you skinny boy."

Milo's leveled out to only a bit more than mine. Then came Alric.

When he had the plate in his mouth, I sneered, "Be careful. Wouldn't want to break those teeth the first time you use them."

He let out a growl and squeezed down. We all froze as we heard the metal creaking and groaning like it was in pain. The machine began beeping quickly and Alric spit out the contorted, no longer level plate.

The screen had a 22.7 blinking, and all we could do was stare.

"That's forty-thousand," he mumbled. "You may not be quick or good flyer, but you've got an insane bite. This is exciting! We've got the flyer, we've got the muscles, we've got the fangs, and we've got..." He paused on me, trying to maintain his optimism. "We've got something."

The next few machines were simple. They tested how strong we were, and I was only a smidgen above average each time, and that dampened my spirit. Meanwhile glitter wings to my left kept going off the charts, and the whole experience left a sour taste in my mouth.

I wanted to be the best. I wanted to be the most successful soldier there was, but how could I be?

Everything and everyone said otherwise.