The Cursed Egg

CHAPTER THREE

Jerboa wasn't dead yet.

He knelt, shivering, on the sand-coated floor of the throne room. His claws threatened to carve a dent in the stone beneath the sand, and he felt the familiar heat beam down from the hole in the ceiling above him and warm his scales to a temperature some would consider unbearable.

Dragons of various shades of pale yellow and gold stood firm in the archways, almost blocking the views of rolling sand behind them. Some wore fine golden ornaments, and their heads were held higher, as if that small bit of wealth had elevated their status to one that was untouchable.

Other wore simple necklaces of glass beads—beautiful, but simply lacking next to their gold-adorned brethren. Their expressions, though, were as smug as their fellows as they stared at the cowering diplomat in the middle of the room.

The last group of dragons were coated in an intimidating coat of armor, but any dragon who stared at it for longer than a moment would know it was mostly ceremonial, created from the cheapest metal to keep up appearances. It wouldn't hold up to a dragon's claw, and they knew it. Their claws scrapes the ground occasionally in nervousness and their tails twitched involuntarily, as if preparing to jump into battle at any moment.

Every one of these dragons—the court, the guards, and the sisters of the current king—they all sat, watching the cowering dragon in the center of the room. Some watched him for entertainment, others in boredom, and some even felt a dose if pity for the young diplomat. No dragon wished to engage in conversation with the king, he was...unsettling.

On the one side not open to the air sat the instantly recognizable pale yellow dragon by the name of King Ibex. A smaller, more delicate-looking female stood to his right, an intricately carved golden cricket curling around one horn then looping over itself to the next molded perfectly to her horns. Her tail twitched every now and then, her eyes darted around, and her mask of indifference was lacking. She didn't need it, her mate never even looked at her.

The young king read the scroll in front of him intensely, glancing down at the cowering diplomat occasionally. His expression, as any dragon could have known, was completely flat and gave away nothing, his famous mask of indifference never cracking for even an instant.

Of course, if one looked very closely, they could see the flickers of emotion cross the young king's face. A slight shift of the scales above his eyes showed surprise, and a slower than normal blink showed disappointment.

But Jerboa, like the other residents of the Tribe of Scorching Sands, didn't notice the subtle changes of expression, their eyes blinded by their own nervousness and the expectation that they wouldn't know what he was thinking. In fact, many didn't want to know what he was thinking—most dragons knew that their king was as mad as they came, left alone in the desert for a week as a hatchling after being kidnapped and losing his sanity.

A breeze shifted the sand on the ground slightly, whistling around the tall columns that made up the open-air throne room. There were no precious stones to capture the glaring sunlight and coat the area in color, nor gold to boast their kingdom's richness. Instead, every inch of the sand-colored stone pillars, cut-off domed ceiling and floor was carved with symbols, dragons, and designs.

Jerboa traced one of those very etchings beneath his claws as he snuck a glance upward, trying to discern the king's reaction. But King Ibex's face may have well been carved out of stone for all the expression it offered.

Spirits help me, was Jerboa's only thought as he anxiously watched the king roll up the scroll and fix him with a blank stare.

"Is this true?" asked the king simply.

Jerboa suddenly remembered why he hated the meetings with the king—he seemed just wrong, off, strange.

"N-no, Your Highness," he stuttered. What was up with him? He never stuttered!

The pale yellow royal raised his brow ever so slightly, the first expression that he's displayed all afternoon. The assembled dragons all reacted ever so slightly to his display of emotion, of normality, that was so rarely seen. "Is that so? You didn't contribute to a female noble's egg?"

Jerboa winced inwardly at the strange wording. "Well, no—I mean, she agreed—we were in love, by Itheria's scales!"

There was the slightest intake and then exhale of breaths, not loud enough to be heard, but enough to scatter the sands on the floor.

The silence, though, seemed almost calculated, worse than if the assembled dragons had simply gasped audibly. Jerboa's claw began to trace the etchings in the floor once more.

"I see," mused the king. His tail suddenly lifted, draping lazily over his talons. "So why did she tell her king this, then?"

Jerboa felt a shiver ripple through his scales as he realized that he couldn't answer that question honestly. Being rude to a noble would certainly get him killed, especially by King Ibex, the dragon that had dragons executed for whispering that he'd gone mad. "S-she was a spy...the king just didn't want the trade deal anyway." He winced at how uncertain his voice sounded, but that seemed to work to his advantage as Kimg Ibex nodded slowly.

"I see," he said again. The assembled dragons could almost see his mind whirl—no, turn slowly and methodically—as he realized that he needed those gemstones to pay off their tribe's debt he pretended didn't exist. His talons clicked across the floor, one at a time, before his ears flicked upward ever so slightly. "We will send a new diplomat," he announced, in a tone that seemed indifferent, or almost bored. "And if they refuse...well, we can always take the treasure by force."

Jerboa's expression instantly brightened and his muscles relaxed dramatically, his wings unfurling slightly as he did so. He wasn't dead, he was alive and safe.

But he was the only dragon relieved in that throne room. Heads were tilted back slightly in worry, wings had bent to cover more of the body. They knew that was safe, the king only looked at faces for some reason no dragon could understand.

The king blinked, scanning the faces assembled before him with an expression of delight and another emotion that couldn't be properly described—a sort of mad elation that he could do whatever he wanted without a single voice speaking out against him.

Because every dragon kept their masks tight, none foolish enough to stand against their mad king.