ORIGIN

Dread's den was indeed a cave--one cut high through a steep-edged sea stack midway through Leo's bay. The waves crashed at its base, and he himself was lounging within, cooling himself in the cave's shadow while listening to the roar outside. And listening, too, to the silent presence of his new familiar.

The thing had been annoying him, mostly. It was a gargoyle sort of thing--a Crystalwing or whatever bat, he thought, but huge and gold. The Wishing Stone had given it to him but it'd claimed his hoard when they'd returned home and that's all it had done since. It just perched on his hoard, content with all the gold, staring at him in mindless, possessive silence. It helped him guard it when he was away, which was good, but Dread thought that all its silent sitting around on metal was very boring.

The wild irony was lost on him.

He huffed, ember eyes sliding away to regard one of the cave's open exits, studying the distant ridgelines that danced in blinding light. Renasci's voice, when it came, was a welcome distraction. Dread dragon? he thought, quizzical, and then--Earthbreaker? I like that! Dread pushed up, shaking a bit of dust from his spines, and wing-walked at a clamber to the lip of the cave, peering down. Renasci was on land--far out across the bay--and it took a moment for Dread to recognize them. They were one of the ones that'd helped the Blacksmith find the sword-thing. Hm.

He leapt, shoving out and into the air with a powerful thrust of hind legs, his tail curling sinuous behind him; his neck arched upward, massive wings billowing to catch the wind. A few beats had him sailing for the shore, and he circled down in a glide to thud down a moment later (with a spray of surf) at the waterline. He then walked the last few paces to Renasci, peering down at them.

"YES, IT IS ME--THE EARTHBREAKER," he declared, fins rising and rattling, his ego pleased by this new title. "YOU WERE-" he hastily thought back. "REN-... SOMETHING," he declared, unable to remember the rest of the creature's name.

He tilted his head, and prompted by curiosity--wondering what had made Renasci seek him out--asked, "DO YOU NEED ME?"

Dread was not, generally speaking, a fantastically social being. It wasn't that he disliked company, exactly; but he never really sought it out, never really needed it. His weird familiar was a form of company, and Bone, Svartis, and Blight visited often enough--Blight generally lived atop his sea stack, even, so it wasn't like he was alone. And when he did wind up in social situations, he--unawares--generally blundered through them with loud vehemence, the bull in the china shop but with words instead of horns and hooves.

This, though--Renasci's asking him to teach--hadn't ever been asked of him before, and again it struck just the right chord with Dread's ego. He swelled up, spines rising and fins expanding, his nostrils flaring with pride. "I DO KNOW MANY THINGS!" he boomed proudly (he... didn't, really; he had some experience, and he could sort of read, but mostly his concepts of the universe were wildly out of place). "AND I AM VERY POWERFUL! YOU ARE SMART TO ASK ME TO TEACH YOU EVEN IF YOU ARE THE FIRST ONE." And, for a moment, Dread wondered why nobody else had come to him for some sort of training.

It almost seemed like an insult, really, and he wondered why he'd never thought about that before.

Ego thus stoked, he continued. "I CAN TEACH YOU STRONG MAGIC AND SHOW YOU WHERE TO FIND SOME SHINIES! -BUT I WANT SOME TOO," he finished--he didn't understand, yet, that Renasci was maybe asking for friendship; to Dread, almost all things were transactional.

As if hoping to seal the deal, he reared back further, an air-rending, screeching roar rippling from his jaws. His wings tore at the 'sky' and a moment later, what looked like balls of embers began to condense in the air--before coalescing into meteoric fireballs that began to hurtle down all around them. Some smashed into the trees along the shoreline, obliterating them in splintering, flaming cracks; others plunged into the bay with plumes of hissing steam. It was an impressive display, and at least controlled enough not to hit either of them, but Dread was well aware he could do better, and he slammed back into the beach with a somewhat defensive stare at Renasci.

"I CAN MAKE IT STRONGER," he hastened to assure the humanoid. "THIS WAS JUST AN EXAMPLE!" -Would he believe that? Eh. "I WILL TEACH YOU THINGS IF I GET SOME OF THE SHINIES," he finished, a repetition of his offered 'deal.'

Deal thus struck, Dread settled back a bit. Nostrils flared and threads of smoke twisted upward as he stared at Renasci, and wondered WHAT NEXT?

Truth be told, he didn't know; he'd never done a "casual friendship" thing, really, nor a "business partners in action" either. He'd had family, but right now, he was rather at a loss as to how to proceed. Did Renasci want to go, like, now? And if so, to do what? Training? Shiny-hunting? Was there some intermediate step, should they get to know one another better?

Like most things that confused the dragon, this one prompted him into simply shaking his head, eyes squeezing briefly shut as if to banish his bewilderment. Frustration briefly welled in its place and so he simply blurted his questions aloud. "WHICH DO YOU WANT TO DO FIRST? DO I TRAIN YOU NOW? OR DO YOU WANT TO GO FIND SHINIES?"

It was hang-out time right now, it seemed. Or shiny-hunting time. Or training.

It was, as Dread apparently believed, up to Renasci.

Relief flickered in him. The harpy's suggestion made sense, and Dread was glad to have the confusion erased away. "OKAY," he agreed, his booming voice clear again of frustration. "WHAT DO YOU EAT?" And immediately, he followed that up: "I EAT ANYTHING. FISH AND DEER AND--ANYTHING ELSE. BUT NOT THE BIRDS-!" he added, with an alarmed glance around, and then he shot a possessive glare at Renasci. "THEY ARE MINE!"

He hesitated, struggling with his own lack of eloquence. He knew he wasn't a very good speaker; he had serious trouble articulating his rather nebulous thoughts and emotions. Sometimes, that was frustrating--even devastating, particularly when he couldn't properly express himself to family. Right now, he had to fight to even find the words to explain why in hell the birds "were his."

"THEY FLY WITH ME! WHEN I HUNT FISH! THEN... THEY EAT SOME. WHAT I LEAVE BEHIND. LEFTOVERS," he tried to explain. Not the most graceful explanation, but it would do: some of Leo's seabirds were like little companions to him, and he not only tolerated them but rather liked their company. He indulged them, but also it made him feel like some sort of king: the great monarch of the skies, flanked and surrounded by all his little vassals.

He prepared to take flight nonetheless; his body tensed a bit, thinking over where they could find Renasci's food. If the harpy wanted fish or deer, those were readily available here; but little things like wind hoppers were more easily caught in Pegasus, where they could be spotted on the open plains. But he was getting ahead of himself, wasn't he-? He stared intently at Renasci, and waited.

Nostrils briefly flared, and Dread shook his neck and head, the fins along his neck rattling again. "ALL RIGHT. HOW FAST CAN YOU FLY?" he added, half-glancing back.

Perhaps if he'd known Renasci a little better, he'd have invited him to ride on his back, but the gnawing knowledge that someone at his back could stick a knife in his neck was too unsettling.

He waddled forward, back toward the water, then broke into a bounding wing-walking gallop, before leaping with a thrust of his powerful hind legs for the air. Wings snapped out, catching the wind with a hefty pump, lifting him over the sea spray. "THIS WAY," he called back, without looking--as if fish could be anywhere but the water.

Dread then set out flying low over the breakers, and then out across the surf, eyes picking the sparkling reflections for the flashes of fish between. "BLIGHT IS A BETTER FISHER," he complained--the other, smaller dragon was made for it, and tended to just dive and swim for his fish. Dread had a harder time taking flight out of the water, so he tended to fish by snagging head or hind legs for shallow swimmers. More often, he'd forego the fish altogether and look for deer, since fish did little to fill his belly unless they were very large.

At length he changed tack, opening his 'magic eye' instead, watching as little red shapes flooded his vision. He picked out a shallow-swimming school of decent-sized fish and banked toward it, calling to Renasci: "THIS WAY!" Maybe the harpy could grab them more easily than he.