Chp.11: The mother arrives

"Baby dragons? These?" Ash looked at the animals at his feet, and then he laughed. "Come on, old man, you must be wrong! Look at them, they don't have wings and they have silver scales! I know that dragons have red, blue, gray or even brown scales, but I've never heard of a dragon that..."

"Baby dragons don't have wings, you fucking idiot! And since they haven't gotten a domain yet, their scales are silver!" Ethan growled, so loud that his companions could see his teeth through his lips.

"But they're too big to be babies... come on, they must be five meters long at least..." Tyana tried to opine with a thin voice.

Ethan looked like he was about to tear his hair out. "Baby dragons ARE big! Or do you think the terrifying size they reach as adults is just a case?"

"But dragons are rare..." Sven tried again, even though he was so uncertain that even he didn't believe it.

"Rare? Rare!? Did you realize where we are, you idiot!?" Ethan screamed with sparks in his eyes. "We are tens of kilometers from the nearest sign of civilization, in a valley surrounded by extremely high mountains!Dragons are rare precisely because they live in isolated and uninhabited places like this!"

Ash, Tyana, and Sven gave each other worried looks. They were seriously starting to think they'd done something stupid. If Ethan was right and the two animals that they caught were really baby dragons, then they were in a lot of trouble! Even if they had never met a dragon in their lives, the stories of the terrifying fury of those gigantic beasts were numerous, so they knew what happened if someone dared to offend one of them! And even if they didn't know basically nothing about dragons' parental care, they were pretty sure that no dragon would have liked to see their children bound like two salami.

"Enough talking! When they're so young the adults don't leave them alone for long, and if I'm not mistaken that high-pitched hoarse I heard on my way here must have been some kind of call!" Ethan yelled in a desperate and terrified voice. "We have to get out of here as soon as we can, before..."

Suddenly the world went dark. The sun's rays were obscured, as if something enormous had come between the star and the ground. Ethan seemed to choke on his own saliva. "... the mother arrives!"

The trees split, collapsing in on themselves as if a gigantic weight had just been placed upon them; from the crown to the roots, they crumbled completely until they completely turn into a bunch of splinters. Leaves and bits of wood flew in all directions, crashing into Haku and Darbi's scales and forcing their attackers to raise their hands to shield their eyes.

Neytiri's huge paws landed on the ground with unheard-of force, making the whole valley shake as if it were a bell. The sismic wave was so strong that even animals more than ten kilometers away panicked and started to run in all directions. The huge red and blue dragon seemed to have the flames of a wildfire dancing in her eyes as she watched her two cubs encased in the hunters' traps, and her deep breath seemed to give off the smell of death.

Haku breathed a sigh of relief as his mother appeared. Now he and Darbi had nothing more to worry about. They were safe.

"You nasty little bugs!" Neytiri snarled with an anger Haku had never seen before. The dragoness would have immediately roasted with her fire breath those bastards who had dared to trespass on her territory and even harm her offspring, but she knew that by doing so she would have also hit Haku and Darbi, who had no way to defend themselves or to move; so she prepared to fight without using magic, and she raised her mighty tail and then slammed it on the ground like a whip.

The movement was so rapid that no one was able to see it; the four hunters acted instinctively, without even thinking, and launched themselves in the most varied directions hoping to avoid being hit by the tail. Ash, however, took too long to react: before he could move he felt an immense pressure hit him, as if tens of tons had just crashed against him in the form of a thick, hard and sharp skin. All of this lasted just a millisecond; in the next instant, Neytiri's tail reduced all of his bones into dust and smashed his internal organs into tiny pieces no bigger than a grain of sand. When Neytiri raised his tail again, Ash had disappeared completely, leaving only a stain of blood, flesh and brain fluid on the forest floor as the only evidence of his existence.

As she smugly admired her kill, Neytiri felt something nagging hit her eyelid, as if a mosquito was trying to sting her. She looked down a little and saw that Tyana, probably driven by desperation, was vainly firing numerous arrows at her. Useless: although they were probably magical arrows, on the thick skin of the dragon thay had the same effect as a stone that hitted a marble wall. Neytiri barely felt their impact against her tough skin, which wasn't even scratched thanks to her indestructible scales.

However, the dragon was annoyed: the simple idea that such an ant still had the courage to challenge her made her furious. With a growl, Neytiri lifted her paw and brought it down on Tyana. The woman just had time to notice the huge claw descending on her and in an instant she understood what was about to happen. Her brain panicked and her body became hard as stone, numerous tears fell from her eyes and that tiny part of her mind that remained rational screamed for mercy, but it all lasted less than an instant: the next second Neytiri's paw crashed against her and she disappeared under it. As the dragon lifted her paw again, she could see that the force of the impact had turned Tanya into a squashed mass of flesh and blood.

Sven tried to escape by taking advantage of the dragon's distraction, running as fast as he could and looking from side to side for any cover, but Neytiri wouldn't have let her prey escape from her so easily. Within moments she was upon him and her jaws closed on him. Sven didn't even feel the dragon's teeth: he was literally swallowed whole, falling down into Neytiri's esophagus until he ended up in her stomach, where he was instantly corroded by the gastric juices. His skin dissolved after a few seconds and his bones turned to a pulp, floating in the large stomach waiting to be digested.

"Mh... weren't there four of them?" the dragon thought as she finished swallowing Sven. However even if she looked in every direction she couldn't find the last hunter, who seemed to have vanished; she couldn't even smell him despite her extraordinary nose. Which only made her more and more infuriated. In the end, in the grip of total rage, she decided to end it once and for all: she stood on top of Darbi and Haku to protect them with her body and then she erupted a river of golden and super-hot flames from her mouth. The forest within several hundred meters charred; the trees turned black and then crumbled in on themselves. Any animal that was within the radius of the flames, even the smallest ants, were literally sublimated, instantly evaporating and leaving behind only charred bones, without even having time to understand what had happened or even just to suffer. By the time Neytiri stopped, an area of ​​at least three hundred square meters had been turned black and smoking, with small glowing embers everywhere lighting the ground red. Virtually nothing could have survived such a firestorm.

Neytiri laughed heartily, pleased with her work, and then she bent down and looked intently at her still imprisoned children, who hadn't turned to ashes like all the rest just because her body had shielded them. With a quick movement of her eyes several blades of fire appeared above them and darted towards the two young dragons, and in less than a minute they completely severed the golden strings that bound them. "Are you ok?" she asked them.

"Mom!" Darbi gripped Neytiri's muzzle as if he wanted to hug it; evidently he had been very frightened and he was now seeking contact with the parent to feel safer. "Did you see? Those strange animals wanted to hurt us! They even called us in a disgusting way... lind... worm... they called us worms!"

Even Haku had been scared to death, but he avoided a tear-jerking scene like that of his brother. He just stood up and shook off the dust from himself. He knew very well that the troubles weren't over. The greatest danger had passed, but now he knew he owed a lot of explanations to his mother.

And indeed, Neytiri's eyes immediately fixed on him, and they were clearly angry. "I've suspected it ever since you started asking weird questions, and then when you started giving your share of food to your sisters. You've been going around without my permission for a while, haven't you? And apparently you also involved Darbi in your transgression"

Darbi immediately descended from Neytiri's snout. It wasn't hard to understand that his mother was angry. "Mom, I'm sorry!" he hastened to say. "I know I made a mistake! I..."

"It's not from you that I want to hear these words" Neytiri said shushing him. "Have you nothing to say, Haku?"

Haku up to that moment had remained silent. There was no trace of shame on his face. "I don't see why I should apologize. I was just hunting"

"I ordered you not to leave the cave!" Neytiri retorted in a furious voice. Anyone else, hearing her tone, would have immediately lowered their heads and asked for forgiveness for their actions.

But Haku didn't flinch at his mother's anger. On the contrary, he didn't take his eyes off his mother's and retorted with an even more angry look. "Yes, you ordered it" he confirmed. "But that was a stupid order, so I chose to ignore it"

Neytiri's eyes narrowed. "How dare you talk to your mother like that? Do you think you are so superior that you no longer respect me?" she growled furiously, but then something that surprised her happened.

Haku's eyes seemed to flare up and his body started shaking slightly, as if the little dragon was summoning all of his self-control not to punch the dragoness in front of him (also because he knew he would have ended up much more hurt than her): "Respect you? Respect you!?" he repeated furiously in a hissing voice. "If you want me to respect you, then try worrying about our family, instead of giving imbecile orders and watching us slaughter each other!"

Neytiri was caught off guard, not expecting that reaction. "What... What are you saying?" she was only able to ask.

"Are you playing dumb? You haven't brought us enough food for days now! Our sisters are starving! But you don't care, do you?" Haku yelled. "Do you dare to call yourself worthy of respect? You don't care a damn about us! I've seen you when you bring us food, you stand by while some of your children are beaten and deprived of their share! When my sisters were excluded from meals, you looked at them without lifting a finger and without even the slightest displeasure in your eyes! Have I violated your command? Have I transgressed the rules? Yes, and I would do it a thousand times again, because otherwise my family would have been decimated at this moment! And unlike you, I care about them! If it hadn't been for me, and for Darbi who courageously chose to help me, at least two of our sisters would have already died and some others would be feeding on their corpses in order to survive!

You knew this, yet you did nothing to help them! You left them to die! You just turned on the other side and didn't care, just like they were of no value to you! Just like all of us were of no value to you! Answer me sincerely for once, my 'dear' mother: do you love us at least a little, or are we just a passing distraction for you!?"