ORIGIN

He'd crept in only quietly, ember eyes wide at the sight of the ceiling's glittering patchwork of quartz. After that he had lurked, for awhile, crawling through the darkness with eyes reflecting back the light, his magicka helping him to see. He had not seen anything in the way of danger--nor water, nor food; nor anything, really.

Eventually he had taken flight, a running start and a laborious leap sending him winging through the air. Still only the size of a small dog, but with billowing wings to keep him aloft, Dread had circled Orion as a whole, exploring. The air wasn't warm, like Fornax--but nor was it cold like the tunnel which led here. He wasn't able to drift easily on updrafts but he didn't damn near fall out of the air shivering, either.

The tower, encrusted with crystals, had entranced him at once--and this he'd circled, even trying to scrape at the shinies along its surface once or twice. But his little limbs hadn't been able to gain purchase and he'd quickly abandoned this.

A few glides along the edges of the cliffs had shown him nothing of interest there, and the Throne held a sort of dark and ominous presence that had the little dragon instinctively turning away after but a single pass.

The arena, however, interested him.

He kept coming back here--circling quite high overhead, banking and peering down into its depths, through the archways and into the coliseum-like structure within. He wasn't sure why, but something about it interested him--and frightened him, too.

He circled, finally letting a single screech that carried through the open space: the call of a very young dragon. In time, perhaps, it could be called a "roar," but for now it was barely a shrill squeak. It echoed through the coliseum, and he listened to it fade, and then repeated the noise. He listened, too, to how the beat of his wings resounded through the stone space.

I like this, he decided simply, though it irked him that thus far he'd seen no prey.

He fell silent, turning his keen eyes to the buildings just outside, soaring out and around the arena and peering into the darkness as he circled. His magicka welled up faintly, enhancing his sight as he pried into the shadows, searching for something to hunt.

He'd circled for ten minutes or so, learning how to fly on this dry, cool wind--comparatively speaking. He banked and soared, wingbeats a quiet muffled thump as he did so.

When at last he spotted prey--a simple rat, a thin rangy thing rummaging on the outer edges of the arena--he turned toward it at once. A half-clumsy turn in the air (he was still young, after all) and a fold of his wings; a sweep downward. He opened his little jaws, inhaling, eyes sparkling bright with predatory instinct as magicka and heat welled up within him.

Wings spread just as he swept over the rat, the shimmering air pouring over his prey with boiling heat. Billowing leathery membranes between forefinger bones spread as he brought himself to a near-halt midair, hind legs jolting forward to grab the stunned prey's dark-furred back. The rat was screeching, squealing pitifully, turning to flee--and then his talons had found their mark, and--tail lashing behind him--his forward momentum carrying him ahead with the rat in his claws.

A few laborious wingbeats and he'd taken off again, the rat struggling and thrashing in his grip.

He'd learned to hunt in Fornax, and this rat didn't seem much different--a bit less sleek than his prior prey, perhaps, a bit darker and shaggier, but not by much. It still squealed, and as he landed, wings again spread for balance, on the top of one of the arena's arches, it still thrashed. And as his jaws closed over its neck, as he hopped back and lifted it and shook it as best he could, it still died.

Wings spread, he glanced around, perched over his prey; he panted slightly, mantling like a hawk as he caught his breath and watched for competitors.

My rat, he thought sternly and intensely to himself. Mine.

The young dragon ate fairly quickly, killing the rat and then tearing off strips of meat, shaking them away from the fur to swallow them down in large chunks. He cracked a couple of bones and chewed down the marrow contentedly, ever eyeing around for signs of competitors. When he was done he again took wing, leaving behind a bloodied pile of pelt and gore.

Upwards he flew, circling, now looking for somewhere to rest. Somewhere quiet--somewhere dark, somewhere hidden. A place like the niche he'd been born from, the crack in the stone wall of Fornax. A crack he was rapidly growing too large to fit into any longer, in fact, though he did not yet know that.

Dread soared around the arena, wings beating, then lifted higher. The ceiling interested him, with its glittering pinpoints of light--so like Fornax, yet violet-white rather than bright golden. But he had no energy to investigate that, now; he was full, and he wanted nothing more than to lie down and to rest. The arena was too open; the area around it too lacking in cover, and anyway, he had no desire to nest vulnerable on the ground. Instead he rose, and angled toward the cliffs not far off, eyeing them.

Yes--those would do.

A few quiet wingbeats and he was flying that way, spined and spear-edged tail swaying out behind him, fiery eyes fixed on his destination. He tried to focus his vision again, in that magic-enhanced way, to try and pick through the shadows on the ledges--but nothing came, and he found himself having to land blind. A bit of a tumble over rock, a skid across the stone, and he pulled himself back upright and shook himself off. Dust flicked from his scales and he crawled into the crevices between the cliffs, finding a quiet, dark, unobtrusive corner high up along Orion's wall in which to tuck himself.

He curled up and set his jaw lying over his obsidian-edged tail, eyes watchful for only a few moments before slipping shut as the young dragon fell asleep.

When he woke, he was cold. This place definitely wasn't Fornax; the darker, shadowed corner here had him shivering with it. Quietly he drew his wings in closer to his body, and focused on his magicka for a moment.

He could feel, bit by bit, the air around him begin to incrementally warm: the faint stirring of heat just barely touching the stone beneath. It was still cold--still too cold--but at least he'd managed to affect it a little.

"Cold," he murmured to himself, looking around with ember eyes. Eventually he felt, at least, that he wasn't dying, and so he hauled himself to the cliff's edge and peered down with caution.

Far below he could see the arena, still and silent in the darkness. The orbs were dim, still--night time, or so he assumed, or perhaps the very early hours of morning--and he found, with some surprise, that he was hungry again. Dread had no idea how fast a dragon grew--he hadn't even realized, yet, that he was growing. No one had conveniently been around to explain to him how life and growth worked.

He had no idea he'd be doubling and tripling in size very rapidly--that his muscles and bones would be strained, that he'd need ever-larger prey to sate his hunger.

All he knew was that his belly rumbled, biting at his gut insistently.

It was time, again, to hunt.

The little dragon spiralled into the air, wings beating heavily against the air beneath him. Hunger driving him, he coursed forward, gaze again scanning the darker corners of the "star"-lit cave for rats.

There--... Down, in that corner, something flickering, the heartbeat, a red something that answered to the faint call and pull of his own seeking, testing magicka. Black leathery wings half-folded into a glide, Dread turning to angle his body for his target like an arrow. He felt the wind whispering over his scales as he flew, heard the gentle billow of air against his rippling wing-membranes.

For a moment, as he plummeted, he revelled in the feeling of who he was. From Asimona he had learned a few words--among them hot, cold, ice, alive, breathe, hungry--and "Name." He had at first taken this to be his own title, his own name--Name--but he had since come to equate himself with two of the other words. He was "hot," in terms of his magick; and he was "hungry." Hunger was what drove him; hunting was what he delighted in.

Well, that and collecting small, shiny objects that were pretty to look at, but he didn't have a name for that, not yet.

So he was hunger; and he was hot. And both of those things now dove toward his prey, and he exulted in it: in the upwelling of heat that rose in his gullet and up along his throat, and in the intense rush of predatory glee that sang through his nerves as he slipped lower.

It was in moments like these that he was truly himself--primal and pure, a hunter chasing down the hunted.

An inhale, a rush of wind beneath the wings, a glint of joy in ember eyes. The small spines lining neck and throat rose, turned, spreading the thin membrane of flesh between them like fins--like rudders--without conscious thought, controlling his movement. He'd learned to fly properly given practice, and now he did so fairly well. No longer was his flight the midair-stumbling and unsteady bobbing of a new fledgling; it was the smooth, deadly flight of a predator.

He could see the rat turn, a sharp skitter as it glanced up toward the soft rustling of wind in wings. His wings were not silent, like an owl's, but gave a soft bass thump with each beat, and it tipped the creature off. The rat turned to bolt, and Dread finished his deep inhale, folding his wings near fully against his side, banking into a low, steep dive.

He felt the heat that rose within him ready to break forth, and opened his jaws in preparation, taking careful aim.

Hot.

The thought was satisfying. The rat turned sharply, and Dread corrected with a rapid movement of one wing and the erecting of all the spines on one side of his body, the fins sending him into a sharp bank. His tail lashed around behind him, a deadly blade, as he beat his wings to catch up, his jaws closed again--and then they opened once more, the shimmering heat pouring forth, welling out as he flew directly over the rat. He shot past and banked up and around, turning to the satisfying odor of burning fur and the squeal of pain the rodent emitted.

Two wingbeats later he'd slammed his talons down into it, then snatched it in his teeth--and once he had it securely in his jaws he leapt back, shaking it rapidly before it could bite him in turn. The heat had merely stunned it, but now he killed it, his brisk flinging to-and-fro snapping its spine.

Dread glanced sharply around; with another few beats of his wings he was airborne once again, carrying his prey off to a safe corner to eat.

Fangs crunched through bone, meat and blood. The satisfying taste of a job well done, of survival, flooded the little dragon, and with a quiet, smoke-laced belch, he curled up to rest.

For a time he slept, and then he again woke, stretching his wings. He launched from his high stone perch, feeling the joy of the air again billowing up beneath his wings. Dread let out a loud screech, the sound a young dragon's roar, a high-pitched sound that echoed through the arena.

It wasn't a squeak, any longer--it wasn't a roar, not yet, but it held a resonance to it that it had not had prior.

He liked it.

He let out another, circling, his wings beating and finned body banking, bladed tail lashing behind him as a rudder.

"SCREEEEEEEEEEECH!"

And another. He circled for ten minutes or so, finding no one to challenge his glorious reign over the old abandoned ruins, and soon grew bored. Or rather--curious. What lay beyond this room? Was there more to see? There was little water here, and that he didn't like. The young dragon was not a very water-loving creature, but Fornax had been full of it, and there was something strange in its lack.

With a final screech, he made a last circle around the arena, his flight swift. He got it into his mind, then, to try once more to cast true fire--real fire--dragonflame that would leap from his jaws and scorch the very stone. But he had to do this cautiously. Somehow, instinctively, he knew that this was something he needed to perfect: a natural weapon that he had to master in order to thrive.

He inhaled deeply, briefly closing his eyes even mid-flight, then opening them again. This time, rather than expelling his superheated air, he held it in. He felt it roil, stoking something else within him, and as he felt the thrill of flame pouring up through his throat, Dread turned to strafe along one side of the arena's walls.

A more guttural rumble escaped him as the sound of hot rushing air and the roar of flame poured forth, the swift little dragon sweeping near-sideways along the stone and blasting it with a flamethrower-torrent of fire as he went. He left black scorchmarks in his wake, trailing embers drifting down to mark his passage.

HOT! he thought joyously.

It hurt--it burnt his mouth and throat--but after all his prior practice in burning his mouth, and perhaps because he was a dragon, not as badly as it could have. Triumph overwhelmed the pain, and he shot out of the arena with a final triumphant screech, arrowing for the cave's far walls.