Chp.41: Long live the queen!

Haku was still running when he felt the earth shake slightly. The trees around him shook and several leaves fell to the ground, the birds flew away and the animals fled in fear to their holes.

Haku wasn't stupid. He knew that that shock wave must have been due to his mother. He leapt over the nearest tree and scrambled to the top, where he could see Neytiri hovering above the fairy city. When he did it, his body shuddered.

The fairy capital had just been burned down and half wiped out. Fire and flames were devouring everything, while earthquakes and winds stronger than tornadoes or hurricanes were destroying what was left. His mother hadn't even landed: she was flying placidly, hovering in the middle of the sky, observing the devastation below her with a smug look.

Though that destruction wasn't directed at him, Haku could still feel his survival instinct kick in upon seeing that scene. A creature capable of unleashing such catastrophes could obliterate him as easily as he squashed a mosquito, and only a madman would have felt no fear at the prospect. At the same time, however, he couldn't help but feel a certain admiration: it must have been extraordinary to have so much power. Dragons were indeed creatures of immeasurable strength, beings who could shape heaven and earth to their will. If they hadn't been so few and so divided, surely the newcomers couldn't have stood against them for a single day.

From the tree he could see his mother conjuring another spell and sweeping away another chunk of the city, then flapping her wings more violently than usual. Even though Haku was several kilometers away, he immediately knew that something was wrong as he saw the trees around the city heave and fall several meters back; immediately, he ran down from the tree and used some runes containing earth magic to dig a deep hole, and he took refuge inside.

For a few minutes he felt nothing, then the shock wave reached him emitting such a loud roar that Haku felt his skin tremble slightly. Even though he was flattened on the bottom of the hole, he could hear the trees above him cracking and falling. He waited for the noise to die down, then finally had the courage to emerge from his hiding place. The forest around him had been completely torn apart, and probably had been for many more miles given the force the shock wave still possessed.

Haku gulped. Maybe he'd better run back, hide in the first hole he could find and wait for his mother to go back to her territory. He shook his head; no, he had brought about this situation for a reason, and now he couldn't escape. He had to go through with it. So he gathered his courage and moved back towards the city, using the broken trunks of the trees for cover and always keeping an eye on his mother to make sure she didn't hit him with one of her attacks.

He came within a kilometer of the epicenter of all that devastation. When he arrived, the fairy city was already completely gone, reduced to nothing but rubble that was rapidly being devoured by a firestorm. Haku decided not to go any further: even if he wanted to have a good look, he preferred to keep a safe distance. From his position, well hidden by several broken trunks and uprooted plants, he could see his mother dealing with a fairy holding a strange golden spear. The fairy continuously moved to different locations using the portable gates, thus avoiding Neytiri's attacks.

Perhaps that fairy would have been thought brave by the members of her own race, but from Haku's point of view she was just plain stupid. He would never have faced a monster like his mother unless he had no other choice or one of his siblings was in danger. If he had been in the fairy's place, he would have used one of the portable gates to get out of there immediately, taking his family with him and leaving everyone else to die.

He looked at the fairy's weapon. It was really strange: it wasn't like the staves of the druids or the weapons of the fairy soldiers that were covered with magical runes and stones, it was a simple spear that throbbed with a strange power. Haku didn't know what it was, and he really wanted to take the spear to study it, but he certainly wouldn't have been foolish enough to jump into the fray in such a critical moment. In any case, the fairy was unlikely to stand a chance, even with the help of the other fairies who were covering her back: that spear, however magical it might be, was barely scratching Neytiri's armored body. As Haku had imagined, no one in all the fairy people had the chance to fight face to face with a dragon: after all, according to Ethan's words, to kill a dragon with a single domain would have required at least three or four newcomers of legendary level, but in all that time during the war a fairy with those qualifications had never appeared. Furthermore, Neytiri hadn't just one, but two domains. The difference in forces was too great.

Therefore, the only chance for the fairy people to survive another day was divine intervention. According to the legends, the gods had never allowed the people they protected to be destroyed; certainly, they had never intervened during wars, slavery or abuses, but faced with the possibility of the total extinction of the race that venerated them, not even they remained in the sidelines. As a result, by unleashing Neytiri against the fairies, Haku could finally know if the gods really existed or were just a silly superstition.

If they existed they would have intervened, because otherwise Neytiri would never have stopped hunting the survivors until he killed them all: Haku knew the rancorous and vengeful nature of dragons, therefore he knew that his mother would never have considered the affront repaid until all the members of the fairy race were killed. And if the gods didn't exist… well, then nothing would have happened. In both cases, Haku would have had his answer and would have lost nothing: on the contrary, once the battle was over, he could have gone to the fairy city and recovered everything that had been saved and that could be useful to him.

"What the heck are you doing!?"

Haku turned surprised to hear that voice. Rhaegal had appeared behind him, and nearby Darbi was joining them as well. "What are you two doing here?" he asked them.

"That's what WE should ask to you!" Rhaegal exclaimed. His expression was very angry. "We were quietly making our final preparations for our departure, when suddenly the earth shook! We leaned over the cave and saw what was happening! We were scared out of our minds! You weren't there with us and we feared you were in trouble!"

"Rhaegal and I went out looking for you" Darbi, that meanwhile had reached them, said, who had a much calmer expression than his brother. "We followed your scent here. When we saw the state of this place, we thought for a moment that you were dead. Can we know what you're up to?"

Haku snorted. He didn't expect his brothers to follow him. Well, after all, that was the spirit of the family: to watch each other's backs… right? "I was just checking the situation. You don't have to worry, soon..."

"Don't try to lie to us! You think we're completely stupid!?" Rhaegal roared.

"Brother, please..." Darbi tried to calm him down, but it was all in vain.

Rhaegal pointed a finger at Neytiri, while glaring at his brother with a glare so furious that if eyes could kill Haku he would already have been a pile of ash: "Do you really think we would believe that our mother, who has spent who knows how many centuries in her territory, woke up one day and said 'hey, why don't I go to destroy something today?'!? Or that we didn't notice that you occasionally disappeared for no reason? Come on, do you think we don't have a brain? You did it! You caused all of this! Perhaps do you want to deny this?"

Haku narrowed his eyes. He knew he couldn't lie to his brothers: even if they weren't as intelligent as him, they were still dragons and possessed a decent intelligence quotient. It was impossible that they didn't understand that he was responsible for this situation.

Suddenly Darbi stepped between him and Rhaegal. "Okay, that's enough. Let's all calm down" he said. "Haku, can you please explain what you're doing? Perhaps is it because of the promise you made to Sarpa? I thought you said you didn't want to interfere any further with his war with the fairies"

Haku shook his head. Might as well be telling the truth at that point. "I didn't do it for Sarpa, I can't give a damn about him. I lured our mother here for another reason"

"So you admit it!" Rhaegal exclaimed. "How long have you been planning this, huh? When were you thinking of telling us?"

"Brother, stop! Let him talk!" Darbi said. "Why are you doing this, Haku?"

"It would take a long time to explain you all the details, so let's just know this: I have reason to believe that the gods that fairies, ogres, humans and other newcomers worship could be real. If that were true, they could be a big risk for us" Haku answered. "So I decided to see if that was true. According to legends, the gods don't intervene in mortal affairs... but they won't stand by and watch the people they protect get wiped out"

"And you used our mother for this?" Rhaegal looked really angry. "Are you completely out of your mind?"

"Why? She kicked us out, have you forgotten?" Haku growled. "Or do you want me to believe that you still have affection for her?"

"You..." Rhaegal was about to retort, but suddenly something changed. A light appeared in the sky and clouds began to swirl around it. The three young dragons immediately stopped arguing and hid under a fallen log, watching what was happening.

For a second there was stillness, and then an arrow of light shot down from the sky. Under the astonished gaze of the three brothers, the divine weapon struck Neytiri in the shoulder and destroyed part of the dragon's indestructible body, exposing her internal organs and throwing a huge amount of scales and blood on the ground. For the first time they heard their mother roar in pain. Then, as fast as it had come, the arrow vanished and the light in the sky disappeared, and everything returned to normal.

Haku was speechless. He couldn't believe it: that was definitely a divine intervention! He had been right: the gods really existed! And they looked very powerful indeed… though not as powerful as he'd imagined. In fact, Neytiri hadn't been too damaged by the attack: even if she was badly injured, she was still able to fly and use magic very well. Surely she could have easily recovered from such an injury. Haku thought that he had a lot of information to evaluate in the next near future.

However, his body suddenly froze as he saw Neytiri sniffing the air with a suspicious expression. Haku felt his heart skip a beat: his mother had smelled them! For a moment, he thought he had seriously made a mistake. Perhaps he had underestimated his mother's physical strength and overdeveloped senses too much: she would soon have recovered and then she would have hunted them down. Dragons were intelligent, and his mother would have understood that he had something to do with that situation. It could be a really bad end for him…

But Neytiri was badly injured by now, and there was still one player left in the match. A fairy appeared out of nowhere and grabbed the spear that the other fairy, now lying on the ground dead, had used to fight the dragon. Haku opened his eyes hopefully: even if that weapon wasn't very powerful, if it had hit his mother's heart it would have killed her. But the spear first had to pass through the many magical wards Neytiri had just cast…

Suddenly, Haku understood exactly what he had to do. It was the best option in that moment. And in a way he liked it. As the idea took shape in her mind, he realized it was perhaps what he had always wanted to do. He didn't just want to be the strategist... he wanted to be the executioner.

He came out of his hiding place and began to use his claws to carve something into the trunk. Darbi and Rhaegal looked at him in surprise. "What are you doing?" the latter asked.

"Isn't that obvious? I'm carving a nullification rune!" Haku answered. "From this distance it will be easy to hit our mother's heart and consequently her mana core"

"Wait! In this way our mother will be killed!" yelled Rhaegal, and for a moment he seemed to want to stop him. But Haku blocked him with his gaze.

Rhaegal recoiled slightly: his brother's eyes had gone cold and empty, the same look he had when he killed or ate other living creatures. Rhaegal had seen that look many times, and often he'd had it himself while hunting or looting corpses or even killing newcomers, but he had never seen it directed at him or any of their siblings. And it was terrifying. "And if she's not killed, she'll kill us!" Haku exclaimed. "She smelled us, didn't you notice? Now it is us or her! We have to do it and we will do it! If you don't want to help me, feel free to stay behind, but shut up and let me work!"

Rhaegal and Darbi didn't answer. They didn't come to help him, but they didn't even try to say or do anything to stop him. That was enough for Haku. He quickly finished carving the nullification rune and then made a small cut on his finger, from which he dripped some blood onto the design. The rune glowed dimly, a sign that it had been charged. Now he just had to touch it to activate it.

For a moment he hesitated. His body quivered and a strange feeling was pervading him. A series of memories flashed before his eyes: every time he looked at his hungry sisters who couldn't find enough food, the moment his mother told him she didn't love him, the indifference she showed towards them, the way she encouraged them to fight each other for food and remain alone, and finally, the moment she chased them away and hit Darbi with her paw. All these images appeared in front of Haku's eyes, who instinctively grit his teeth. He'd drawn his mother here for another reason, but now he had a chance to take revenge for everything she'd done to him and his siblings, for the fact that she'd never loved them, that she never even really cared about them. As his paw moved towards the rune, Haku felt as if Neytiri was standing in front of him and looking into his eyes. And what could he say to his mother in her last moments of life?

The answer came out of his mouth by itself.

One sentence. Four words.

"Long live the queen!"

And he pressed the nullifying rune with all his strength, generating a light that struck full force into Neytiri's heart and deprived her of her mana. And while he watched the fairy hit his mother with the spear and the body of the creature who had given birth to him fall to the ground with a crash, Haku felt pervaded by an extraordinary and feverish sensation that he had experienced few times in his life. The sheer pleasure of taking a life, especially the life of someone who had hurt him and his siblings so much.