Chp.11: The family splits up

Haku stood up completely on his paws, staring at his siblings with an absolutely not at all reassuring expression. Everyone felt a shiver down their spine. Haku's eyes seemed to have boiling lava inside them. "So that's it, mh? You really want to abandon me"

Rhaegal took a step back. Haku's look was very similar to the one he had when he almost threatened him. No, maybe it was even worse. His survival instinct warned him that it was best to retreat.

"Hey...how long have you been awake, brother?" Darbi suddenly intervened, trying to change the subject before the situation could escalate.

"Rough from the beginning. I learned to sleep with only one ear" Haku answered without changing his expression in the slightest. "Apparently it turned out to be useful..."

Kotaru jumped in front of him: "Haku, I know you're angry, and you have every right to be. We'll talk calmly about this, but now sit down and try to calm down"

"Kotaru, move. Now" was the only thing her brother answered.

Kotaru gulped. "Haku, if they want to leave, you can't stop them. Try to reason and..."

"I SAID MOVE!" Haku roared.

Kotaru instinctively backed away. She didn't remember ever seeing Haku so angry, at least not with her. "Hey, don't talk to our sister like that!" Darbi exclaimed.

Haku blocked him with just a look. Darbi felt immobilized by his brother's flaming eyes. "I'll deal with you two later. The important things first" Haku said in a whisper-like voice, looking back at their siblings. "So that's it? Are you going to leave me here, after all I've done for you?"

Her sisters looked especially frightened. Rhaegal was too, but nevertheless he stepped forward: "Yes, Haku. That's right. Now we go forward, and you stay behind"

Haku let out what sounded like a hiss. "If it weren't for me, Rhaegal, our father would have killed you! And you!" he said looking at his sisters, "Half of you would have starved if it weren't for me, and the other half would have died in the forest! You are alive thanks to me! If I hadn't saved you now you wouldn't be here fearing me! And this is how you pay me back? Trying to leave without even having the courage to say it to my face!?"

"I never said we like it! We hate it as much as you do!" Rhaegal exclaimed. "But we can't stay here with you, not anymore. You're becoming a danger to yourself and to others, and you don't realize it"

"A danger? Me?" Haku growled. "Would keeping yourself alive by preventing you from making stupid decisions be dangerous?"

"Maybe it used to be like that, but now you're not stopping us from making stupid decisions! You're stopping us from making arbitrary decisions!" Rhaegal almost screamed. "You want to have everything under your control. You want everyone to do exactly as you say, and you expect us to always agree with you. You don't want to be part of the family anymore, you want to be the boss!"

"If I have better ideas than yours, then it just makes sense for you to follow them" Haku replied.

"But yours aren't the best ideas! You may be the smartest among us, but that doesn't mean you're always right!" Rhaegal said. "And surely, that doesn't give you the right to boss us around and not even ask for our opinion!"

"I promised you that I will always share my plans with you. Isn't this giving you a chance to opine?" Haku asked.

"No, it's not if you ignore us!" Rhaegal answered. "It's no use for you to let us know what you want to do, if you then expect us to agree with you, you'll check us and if we try to react, you'll yell at us! You are our brother, not our tyrant!"

That last word triggered something inside Haku. "Now… stop. Shut your mouth" he hissed.

Rhaegal felt fear gripping his heart like a vise, but he didn't shut up: "No! I don't want to! I'm afraid of you, but I won't keep quiet, not this time!" he screamed. "You can't order me to shut up if you don't like what I say! You aren't my master! Did you want to know why we want to leave? That's exactly the reason!"

"I said... shut your mouth" Haku said again, this time in a much more menacing tone.

"And I said no!" Rhaegal replied. "You wanted to know why we think you're dangerous, right? once, and we all can't help but think that one day you might do the same thing to us! You wanted a pack, not a family! I try to convince myself otherwise, but I know that if we become a problem for you, you wouldn't hesitate to do to us what you did to our mother!"

"You're crossing the line..."

"And who would have set that line? You? You have no authority to do that! I keep talking all I want! And while I'm at it, I'll tell you something: do you know why I'm really scared of you? Because I was there when you killed our mother! Darbi was too scared at that moment and closed his eyes, but I didn't! I saw your look, I saw your expression, I saw the smile on your face at that moment!"

"Shut up!"

"I'm not afraid of you because you threatened me, because you went behind my back or because you want to boss us around, or even because you killed our mother! I'm afraid of you because you killed our mother AND YOU LIKED IT!"

SCRATCH!

Time seemed to stop. The wind, the sounds, the bugs, everything stopped. Even the motion of the moon and the stars across the sky seemed to freeze.

Rhaegal noticed that he was suddenly no longer looking at Haku. His head had moved at least ninety degrees and was now pointing to his right. But he hadn't moved it. He wanted to move, but his body went numb. He was no longer even able to feel anything, as if his sense of touch had shut down.

And then, something ran over his left eye. The strange, viscous liquid touched his eyeball causing it to hurt, though he barely felt it as even his sense of pain seemed to be paralysed. The liquid was red, thick, and smelled sweet. It ran down his face and fell to the ground in droplets, making a continuous 'tick-tick'. A puddle began to form beside his paws, a red, slimy puddle that widened every second.

Blood.

His blood.

That realization seemed to awaken his body, which began to tingle. Suddenly, Rhaegal felt a slight pain on the left side of his face, pain that grew more and more intense. The pain was coming from three distinct points that seemed to form lines on his face.

Instinctively, it raised one of its paws and brushed against its face. Three deep grooves were now present on it. The scales had been torn off violently and blood oozed from the wounds profusely. When he touched them, his wounds burned, a sign that the flesh and nerves beneath his skin had been exposed to the air. When he withdrew his paw, it was already covered in thick red blood, which meant that the wounds must have been very deep.

His breath caught in the gasps and his body began to shake slightly. He turned his head very slowly, and saw exactly what he feared to see. The rhythmic 'tick-tick' of the falling blood was not only due to the puddle forming next to his paws: the blood was also oozing from elsewhere... raised in mid-air, completely motionless, there was in fact a paw whose claws were stained with the thick red liquid, which was oozing from them forming a smaller puddle under them.

That paw belonged to Haku.

Rhaegal looked at his brother. Haku was completely still, just like he had been until two seconds ago. His eyes were wide open and the fury of moments before was gone, giving way to shock, fear, horror and a long series of other emotions that Rhaegal could not identify. Haku's gaze darted continuously from his paw to his brother's face, as if he didn't even notice what had just happened, but that it was very clear to both of them.

Haku had just hit Rhaegal.

He had thrown a claw at him.

He had ripped off half of his face.

He had dug three deep wounds in his brother's face.

If one of his claws had poked slightly higher or lower, he would have gouged out his eye as well.

Haku's body started shaking. His gaze landed on his paw, and he looked terrified. But Rhaegal didn't care at the moment. His body moved by itself and he took several steps back, then he turned around: "I'm leaving. Now. If you want to stop me, kill me"

Haku looked up at his brother. He appeared to be in complete shock. He tried to open his mouth, but no words emerged from it.

Rhaegal walked to his siblings. All of them seemed to be paralyzed as well. It had all happened so fast that they hadn't been able to process what had just happened. Only when they saw the three deep wounds on Rhaegal's face, which continued to drip blood every second, did they realize that what had happened had not been a dream or a hallucination.

Rhaegal didn't know what to say. He was upset himself, so he didn't know what he could do to calm his siblings. He could see the fear and despondency in their eyes. Suddenly, Sisna came up to him and very reluctantly she touched the wounds on his face. Rhaegal let her, even if it hurt him a little. Then Sisna made a sign to his other sisters, who only then seemed to awaken from that torpor and began to search inside their dimensional bags, until one of them (Kialandì) found and threw a regeneration potion at them. Sisna poured some of it on the wounds, which immediately stopped bleeding and began to heal.

Rhaegal felt the pain subside a lot and when he touched his face he felt the wounds gone. There was still some blood, but a wash would remove it. Even with the wounds regenerated, however, he still felt a slight tingling on his skin, as if Haku's claws were continuing to strike him at all times.

Seeing that everyone was waiting for him to say something, he finally simply said, "I'm leaving now, I can't stay here a second longer. Who wants to come with me?"

There wasn't even a single one against it. Even if no one said 'Me!' aloud, the look in their eyes was evident. No one wanted to stay close to Haku any longer.

Rhaegal turned to Darbi and Kotaru. They too were clearly shocked, and were doing nothing to hide it. "If you go you will want to come to Thul Oasis, you will always be welcome. We will welcome you with open arms and celebrate your return to the family" he said, and than he pointed to Haku, who was still motionless. "But HE stays out. I don't care how much time has passed, how much he's changed or how much he's improved, he shouldn't go near where we live. If we see him coming, we'll kick him out by hook or by crook. Remember it"

Having said that, he turned and walked away, followed by their sisters. After a few steps, they all activated the rune of invisibility and disappeared.

Kotaru and Darbi stood for a few moments looking at where their siblings had disappeared, then the latter let out a sigh. "Well, it was really messed up this time" he muttered. "Haku, we need to talk immediat... Haku?"

Only then the two dragons realized that Haku was missing. The spot where it was up to five seconds ago was now empty.