A Match of Monsters

Chapter Eleven

Manasseh was ready. Unlike last time, this round he had been prepared for her Ladyship's tricks. His claws glimmered with his green magic as soon as he raised them, the colour of unripe fruit perfectly matched in shade to the maniac light that shone from within his eyes. A single heavy swipe was all it took for him to shatter the Lady's shield, and his out-spread wings kept his stance strong when the force of the explosion drove the two dragons into opposite corners of the expansive cavern.

He stood tall and imposing as he finally stopped moving; reared frightfully with his hind claws digging deep gouges into the artfully dwarven-carved stone floor and the shadows of his wings casting a dark halo around his scarlet silhouette. Thick smoke rose from his flared nostrils that gleamed in the blue light like a raven's feathers. The black plumes spiralled as they moved, forming abstract shapes that left Elain's head aching the longer she stared at them, her mind telling her one thing even as her eyes told her another.

The movements looked meaningless to her eyes, much like the way clouds shifted in the wind. But something inside her could read so much ore than that, from the billowing smoke, interpreting symbols and codes – an entire alphabet – that she could not read, not really, but still somehow knew the meaning of. It was like staring into the campfires her tutor would set alight on their scouting trips as he told her of legends and histories from all the peoples of the land, mortal and not. Stories that he had taught her to read in the smoke.

Elain's mother had disapproved of such lessons, calling them unnecessary and dangerous, it didn't help her case that Elain was the best human student that her tutor had taught on the subject. But as their village had always been her Ladyship's envoys to the rest of the mortal fiefdom, her fey tutor had won the argument on what Elain would eventually need to be ready for when she one day took over her mother as the village leader.

Elain had never been more grateful for those lessons than she was now, as obscure and confusing at the time as they might have been. Many of the symbols might be different, and their combinations far more complicated, but Elain could still interpret the core meaning behind many of the swirling spells. Jinxes for fortune and sharp claws, hexes to distort perception, and an enchantment to illuminate... something.

A deep thrum sounded, steady and slowly repetitive, drawing the human girl's attention away from the vaporising runes.

Across the cavern, Manasseh had begun to move his spread wings, firmly lifting his enormous mass until the last of the broken scales of his tail tip no longer rested on the distorted carvings below. Neck fully stretched, there was less than a quarter of his full body length from snout to tail between the jagged points of his horns and the lethal looking tips of the cave's decoratively carved stalactites.

For a moment, Elain hoped that the dragon would continue to rise until he impaled himself, but as soon as she realised what she wished for, the girl was horrified that she would have such a brutal thought. It did not matter if that Elain believed in what Manasseh was saying or not, that even if in the forethoughts of her mind she agreed with much of what he had said – she wanted him dead. He was a threat; to Elain, the kit, her Ladyship, the unhatched clutch, and their fiefdom's entire way of life.

Elain knew that her Lady of the Fine Tooth Mountain Range ruled the only fiefdom in their continent to treat humans – and really all of her mortal and immortal subjects – so well, and she knew that another dragon would not treat the shorter living races so kindly.

That was the rational reason for Elain to want Manasseh dead – just not the one she felt most strongly about.

His words and logic were sound, Elain just couldn't find it in herself to care for them. Due to Elain's village, she had been born an envoy to her Ladyship, a messenger to her decrees, and loyal beyond reason. It did not matter to the girl what this male had said – he could have proclaimed anything from that humans were to be hunted like and considered prey, or that the mythical time of the dragon riders where mortals and immortals had been equal had come again – it simply did not matter. He was challenging her Lady, the all powerful and immortal ruler of the Fine Tooth Mountain Range Fiefdom, demanding a duel and claiming that she was wrong. In Elain's mind, such behaviour was akin to treason. This dragoness that was their absolute ruler, and not only allowed Elain to live, but was even protecting her.

But, the greatest reason of all was that Manasseh want to get rid of – kill – the clutch of unhatched dragon eggs. He would follow the laws of the Great Councils at the expense of the unborn kits. It was common knowledge that Dragons would kill those inferior to them, but Elain had still believed that here were somehow better than humanity, despite their own brutality, and she was horrified that this male would kill innocent young dragons – for that was the kind of behaviour that dragon kind killed humans for. Her Ladyship had executed one such human crone that had beat the children from their mother's wombs with her walking stick.

It was wrong, it was monstrous, and most of all – it made him a threat to Elain. It did not matter that the male did not yet possess the knowledge of the silver kit that curled up against his human guardian's heart. For if Manasseh ever found out about him, she feared what the outcome could be.

Elain dared not make a sound, she dared not compromise her safety or that of the hatchling's. But she whispered silently into the deepest shadows within her heart and her mind, wishing with all of the frantic desire that her desperation could summon that Manasseh would not get the chance to enact his threat.

Hidden behind shining treasures and shimmering magic, the mortal girl and her immortal ward watched motionlessly as two eternal powers clashed.

Claws glowed as fangs were barred, magical runes dispersed into dark wisps as the enchantments were exhaled. Wings flared and scales flashed.

The cave shook as they roared, the vibrations sifting through priceless pillars of delicate and ancient treasures, whilst the two young ones could only observe in terrified silence as the troves that hid them from the dragons' view shook to the ground.