Alek felt it easier to be closer to his fellow draconic-sibling than to his kooru-sibling. Not because Gaheris was his favorite necessarily, he adored both his siblings after all.
It was only... Kaizer looked to Alek a lot like prey might, and so he feared that Kaizer might be as fragile as the prey he resembled if Alek tried to play. So he tended to play with Gaheris instead.
Spying Gaheris in the distance, the lion-sized fish-dragon crouched and began to prowl forward. His shifting across stone grounds was smooth and silent. He inched closer and closer.
Now, all that was left was to pounce. Alek assessed the distance, deeming it satisfactory.
And he did his mental calculations pretty well. His predatory instincts seemed to only grow with age instead of lessen.
He spread his wings, useless for flight but useful for stabilizing a good pounce when on land, and he threw himself at his fellow aquatic sibling.
@Gaheris
Alek found Gaheris unaware, his thoughts swirling a soothing current: He contemplated his day, then his magical potential, then Cadenza, the smell boiling meat, hungry eyes from far away, the feeling of teeth on flesh and the blood dripping from soft scales and the feeling of being
shaken and -
With the memories fresh in her mind and the sudden weight at her back she tumbled, hissing and scrabbling.
"SLIME BORNE-" She choked out as she pushed against the bulk of blue scales and heavy wings.
"POND SCUM!" She shrieked with a kick, pushing all her weight into what she hoped was a stomach.
"GET OFF!" She'd skitter back if allowed to, wings, gills and fins flared to their fullest. She had not recognised her sibling yet, but the panic was beginning to leave her.
@Alek
For a moment, Alek paused to assess the situation to figure out if Gaheris was genuinely upset. But he couldn't really tell either way. This brief distraction was enough to result in a leg kicking his stomach and knocking the air out of him, and that felt like a challenge.
Alek was not one to turn down a challenge.
"If I am slime-borne, so are you, you know," He retorted in his inherited musical voice.
Gaheris wanted him to get off, but that sounded like defeat to him. And Alek was determined to gain a victory here.
"Make me," He suggested, tone playful.
But he had no intention of actually hurting Gaheris, of course. Instead, he went to lick one of her eyes.
@Gaheris
With Alek's response Gaheris was allowed to recognise that the attacker was not, in fact, an attacker at all - just his troublesome brother, who was no threat to anything except an uninterrupted train of thought. He sniffed, still offended by his blatant ignorance of his personal space.
"The difference is that I can still smell it on you."
She tried to ignore the undercurrent of panic that still crackled through her muscles, though it was no easy task. As his stumpy blue head moved to slobber over her precious eyeballs, she tried to focus the maelstrom into a single desire -
"OFF." Maybe the wave was a bit more powerful than was necessary, but it made her point clear. She aimed the force up and away, hoping to throw the little hooligan a fair distance.
@Alek
Alek was sent flying, but before he could land hard on anything, he attempted to cast some magic of his own. It was the protective magic that was about the only magic he knew how to cast. Magic was useful sometimes, he supposed.
He landed a bit uncomfortably, with only minor pains. He ignored that to stand up, shaking his wings to get the kinks out of them. When he finished that, he focused back on Gaheris. If he could form the expression properly, he would pouting. As it was, he was visibly sulking with his posture.
"I don't get why you like magic so much," Alek grumbled.
"It fails all the time. And even when it works, sometimes it just barely works!" Alek much preferred to rely on what he knew, instead of an unpredictable thing like magic.
"It's not even that cool!" Alek proclaimed, though that part was a lie, even Alek could admit that magic was pretty cool. But it was cool in an annoying way, he justified to himself.
@Gaheris
It was satisfying watching him tumble -
that's what you get. He caught the flicker of Alek's own magic spreading across his scales in anticipation. The quick response impressed him, but he wouldn't let his brother know that, not yet at least.
She watched as he sulked with a faint amusement, expression unpleasantly tainted with thoughts of her clear magical superiority. In an attempt to rub salt in the wound, she pointed her head towards a larger sized rock, sitting loosely. With another spell it left ground, thrown skittering into the distance.
"Barely works, huh?"
He watched him squabble with a blank friendliness, the expression purposely infuriating.
"As if you could do anything cooler." A challenge of her own - would he accept?
@Alek
Alek sat up, eyes narrowed as he looked at Gaheris. The other was clearly taunting him by displaying magic like that. And then following up with a challenge!
Generally, Alek always accepted challenges. But, that was with challenges he thought he could feasibly win. He wasn't dumb enough to knowingly chose a path of failure. ...Usually, at least.
If he could not win, he would just have to outsmart his sibling instead.
"I don't need to do anything," Alek smugly stated. His antlered head tilt, and his many eyed gaze remained focused on Gaheris.
He paused for dramatic effect.
"After all, you always use the same magic. I bet you can't even use magic other than that," Alek challenged right back.
"And the magic I used doesn't count, we all know how to do that!"
@Gaheris
Alek's first claim was met with a raised brow, or as best a raised brow her face could physically manage.
"Oh really?" A bold statement - consider her intrigued.
The same magic: While true, he felt it was a bit unfair. Why fix what isn't broken? It had done him good.
"Well, it was still enough to beat you." He huffed. But - maybe he did need to expand his skillset. His magic hadn't been of much use to him against a real opponent. Beating an incompetent sibling wasn't enough if he wanted to survive, and if he ever wanted to match Cadenza's level. (Surpass them one day, perhaps.)
Her face shifted to one of thought, considering her options. She slid further from him, anticipating a better chance of collateral damage. She could feel her own potential, the energy untapped - whether she could harness it was the question.
"Stay back." She said sternly, her taunting enthusiasm gone, as her focus redispersed and collected again within. The task proved too difficult, and what she had stored flickered away without so much as a gust.
"It's harder to concentrate without a direction." She explained lamely, embarrassed by the public failure.
@Alek