Gaia's Sword - A Dragon's Revenge

Chapter 1

Perched on our high mountain eyrie, with my Brother - Icefire and Sister – Stormwing, we waited. As we had for the last few months, each day testing each other. Time seemed to pass ever so slowly, but we were ready!

Stormwing raised her scaly snout,pointing to the south-west. "Brothers! Look! The sign," her excited voice echoed telepathically in my head.

A deep rumble of anger sounded in my throat, and my lips curled back to show my myriad teeth. My head snapped skywards and I saw a flash of red fire streaking through the clear blue, leaving a thick trail of black, indicating its path through the heavens. This was closely followed by a thunderous crack and a low rumble, which grew in intensity, vibrating the whole mountain and showering us all in fine powdery snow..

"Brothers, come," she called, launching herself skyward. Icefire looked at me, raised one scaly eyebrow and shrugged.

"Are you ready, Brother?" he growled, a glint in his green eye.

"Icefire," I answered solemnly, "we have never been more ready!"

Excitement building, I drew a deep breath and leapt from the rocky ledge, snapping open my leathery wings, speeding after her...

                                                                                                              *

It seems like yesterday, I was desperately chipping away at my shell. Feebly pecking away with my snout for what seemed like an eternity before finally breaking through. It was a terrible shock, emerging from the relative warm darkness of the egg, to the harsh, bright, cold reality of life. I was blinded by snowlight, and as my eyes drew focus, they found Stormwing and Icefire, already hatched, noisily crunching and eating their shells.

We huddled close, sharing body heat, snuggled in a nest of fir branches, woven expertly together to help ward off the bitter wind blowing through the cave mouth. Our eyrie was a huge cave, high on an icy mountain-side, with a sheer cliff face falling sharply to a glacial valley, far below. Stark, snowcapped peaks filled the skyline in all directions, jagged, razor ridges locking our world in a frozen fist of ice.

Suddenly the harsh light disappeared and a blast of warm sulphureous air covered us. A huge silhouette filled the cave mouth, and I knew instantly it was our Mother. Her long pale neck towered over us, there was joy evident in her eyes at seeing her offspring safely hatched.

Those blue eyes...they hid a terrible pain, loneliness and perhaps... fear.

She had a sleek body, her underside was plated with large translucent light blue scales, tinted with a rainbow hue. Thousands of smaller scales, dazzling white spread across her back, a very helpful camouflage in this icy fastness.

She unfolded her giant, white wings, and wrapped them around us, warding off the worst of the weather. It did not take long for my fangs and claws to develop, and my keen eyesight to sharpen to a point, where I could pick out the snowhares and the shaggy mammoths, in the glacial valley far below. In those early days, Mother brought us fresh meat, helping us build energy and strong bones.

She taught us well, and we were all eager to learn, we learned to fly and to hunt, but at times, she seemed over anxious, slightly over protective, as if she was preparing us for independence.

We developed our communication skills to a point where we could converse with each other at distance, through telepathy and projected imagery, a very useful and entirely necessary skill.

Time flew as fast as we did and after several years, we had reached a standard that satisfied her, and then she told us something that would change our lives forever.