Page 9 of Thauglor (Dragonis Academy Year 3.5 #5)
Chapter Seven
We spend several hours hunched over battle maps and intelligence reports.
We review our most likely suspects with the methodical precision of predators planning a kill.
The war room reeks of ink and parchment, sweat and barely contained fury.
My fingers leave damp prints on the aged paper as I trace potential routes.
Between everything that has happened in the last few months—the coordinated attacks, the strategic timing, the knowledge of our weaknesses—we figure it has to be the blue dragons orchestrating this campaign of terror.
I watch Klauth’s hands shake as he marks another suspected location on the map.
The tremor isn’t from age or weakness—it’s from pure, unadulterated rage that threatens to consume him from the inside out.
I’ve known this man for over two centuries, fought beside him through countless battles, shared victories and defeats that forged bonds stronger than blood.
But I’ve never seen him like this. The hollow look in his eyes cuts deeper than any blade ever could.
My thoughts drift to my progeny scattered across the continent.
Over the last hundred years, I’ve sired seventeen young with various dragonesses.
Each one carved a piece of my heart away when they left to establish their own territories.
Korrath, my eldest, with scales like polished obsidian and a roar that could shake mountains.
Velara, fierce and beautiful, inherited my acid breath and her mother’s cunning.
The twins, Drakmor, and Nexus, barely fifty years old and still learning to hunt properly.
The mere thought of finding any of them reduced to ash and empty shells makes my stomach clench with nausea.
I can almost smell the acrid stench of burned scales, almost hear the silence where their voices should be.
If someone destroyed my nest, murdered my young before they could even take their first breath.
.. The rage that builds in my chest threatens to eclipse even Klauth’s fury.
I would tear the world apart with my bare claws until nothing remained but rubble and the screams of my enemies.
The idea of hunting a species of dragon that can wield one of three different breath weapons is daunting, to say the least. Lightning that can fry you from the inside out.
Freezing cold that turns blood to ice. Sonic blasts that shatter bones like glass.
But hell, if we’re going to die in this crusade, we may as well do it in a blaze of glory that legends will remember for a thousand years.
This hunt will take us over most of the continent and then some.
We’ll travel through hostile territory where every shadow could hide an enemy and every peak could conceal an ambush.
We’re either going to make history as the dragons who brought justice to the innocent dead, or end up being lost to history as two more casualties in an endless war.
One way or another, we will make the ones responsible pay in blood and screaming agony.
We fly west through skies that taste of salt and danger.
We search for the blue dragons’ nests with the patience of apex predators who understand that haste leads to death.
The wind carries our scent toward enemy territory, but there’s no helping that now.
The cold air cuts through my scales like thousands of tiny blades.
Once we find their stronghold, we’ll wait and watch until we get the break we so desperately need—the evidence that will justify the extinction we’re planning to deliver.
For the past three days, we've perched high in the mountains like gargoyles of vengeance. We silently watch the blue dragons come and go from their nest with clockwork precision. Every thunderous wingbeat they make reverberates through the stone beneath us. The vibrations travel up through my claws and into my bones. Every route they take across the craggy peaks gets noted and memorized for our eventual strike. The cold mountain air bites at our scales like angry insects. But we endure it like the patient hunters we’ve become.
During the long hours of surveillance, I steal glances at Klauth’s profile.
His jaw is clenched so tight I worry his teeth might crack.
The lines around his eyes have deepened since we found the nest, carved by grief that no amount of vengeance will ever fully heal.
I remember when he first told me about Syrax; he lit up talking about his first viable clutch.
That light has died now, replaced by something cold and hollow that makes my chest ache.
I think of Ysara, the black dragoness who bore my youngest, Thalion.
The way she curved protectively around our egg, singing ancient lullabies in the old tongue while her scales shimmered in the firelight.
How her eyes would flash with maternal fury if anything dared approach our nest. The memory fills me with both warmth and terror—warmth for what was, terror for what could be lost.
My muscles ache from holding the same position for hours at a time.
The bitter taste of wind-blown snow coats my tongue like metallic powder.
But we store every detail, cataloging their patterns and weaknesses like scholars of destruction preparing for the most important exam of our lives.
My neck cramps from keeping my head perfectly still for so long.
By the end of the week, we’ll be ready to move with deadly efficiency.
I’ve watched three of my offspring take their first flight, watched them spread wings that seemed impossibly fragile against the vast sky.
The pride that swelled in my chest those days could have lifted mountains.
But now, knowing that Klauth will never experience that joy, that his progeny were stolen before they could even break free of their shells.
.. It makes every breath taste like ash.
On the fourth day, the last piece of evidence we need arrives like a gift from the god of war.
A small flight of wyverns lands in the courtyard below and shifts into human form right there in the open.
Their arrogance is so complete they don’t even bother with basic security.
Those stupid sons of bitches—may they develop the worst case of scale rot to ever exist and die screaming as their hides fall off in rotting chunks.
Klauth damn near loses his mind seeing what happens before us.
His massive form tenses like a coiled spring ready to explode into violence.
The muscles beneath his scales ripple with barely restrained power.
A low growl rumbles from deep in his throat, a sound I’ve heard him make only once before—the night we found Syrax’s remains.
I have to slam him back against the stone wall behind us and pin him in place with my full weight.
My claws dig furrows in the rock as I fight to keep him from launching a premature attack.
The sound of scraping stone echoes off the mountain walls.
“Bloody hell,” I hiss between clenched teeth.
My breath creates small puffs of steam in the frigid air.
“I didn’t think I’d have to be the voice of reason here.
” The irony isn’t lost on me—if I have to remain the reasonable one out of the two of us, we’re well and truly screwed.
My reputation for level-headedness is about as solid as morning mist.
I feel the tremors running through his body, see the way his claws extend and retract unconsciously.
He’s reliving that moment of discovery, seeing those empty shells crumble to dust in his hands.
Part of me wants to let him go, let him tear these bastards apart with his bare talons.
But the strategic part of my mind, the part that’s kept us both alive for centuries, knows we need to see this through.
We need proof. We need to follow the trail to its source.
I think of Korrath’s first kill, how he brought the deer to me with such pride, blood still dripping from his young fangs.
I think of Velara’s laugh, like silver bells in the wind, when she successfully performed her first transformation.
These memories feel sacred now, precious in a way I never appreciated before seeing Klauth’s devastation.
Every milestone my progeny achieved, every minor victory and moment of joy—Klauth will never have those with his lost young.
The weight of that realization sits on my chest like a boulder.
We remain motionless as carved stone and watch the exchange unfold below with predatory intensity.
By the looks of it, money changes hands in leather pouches that clink with the sound of betrayal.
The metallic ringing carries up to us on the thin mountain air.
Payment for services rendered. Blood money for innocent lives stolen.
Then the wyverns launch themselves into the air and head south with lazy wingbeats that speak of creatures who believe themselves safe from retribution.
We share a look that needs no words—this is the break we needed, the thread that will unravel their entire conspiracy.
Quietly, we shift into our human forms. Bones crack like breaking branches as we compress our massive frames into more manageable shapes.
The familiar agony of transformation shoots through every nerve ending.
We tail the wyverns at a careful distance, following their scent trail through mountain passes and over barren wasteland until we discover their lair in the southern isles.