ORIGIN

...It was TOO COLD.

Black wings flapped, the magma-hued tattoos glittering and shifting with bright fire against the snow-choked fog of Ursa.

TOO. COLD.

He was looking for Svartis, and for Bone, the dragon visitor Carja (asshole) having prompted some measure of fear for his children in him. He'd kept watch to make sure she wasn't around (no thanks), creeping with narrowed eyes to the tunnel entrance and waiting for it to be wholly clear before launching into the mountain cave.

Now he was searching, in great, sweeping circles through this shitbag place. It was COLD. It was snowy, hard to see, and those stupid big white birds kept almost hitting him. He hated it.

"BONE! SVARTIS!" he bellowed, over and over, an antithesis to his attempts to be quiet and sneaky. He'd given that up upon not immediately running into either child in the vast alpine cave.

When no response was at once forthcoming, he called upon his magic: a rain of flaming boulders coalesced midair, crashing down around him in a storm of fire. It was blatant, it was bright, it was hot (thank the caves), it was obvious.

His spear-tail lashed through icy air behind him as he wove between a couple that drew too close, roaring out again. "BOOOONE? SVAAAAAAARTIS!?" If his snow-muffled roars didn't attract their attention, then surely the firestorm would-?

The call alerted him, and he swerved, surprised to hear that child's call so close to his own location.

Whoops.

What Carja said rang with the alarm in Svartis' voice and for a moment, Dread felt fear: had she been right? Was here, in danger, trapped? Was he-

-encased in his own ice. At least, Dread assumed it was his own.

One flap of leathery black-backed wings later, the fire dragon was thudding into the thick snow--blinking against the driving onslaught of blizzard--beside his son. He'd brought his own heat, it seemed, warmth crackling around him in a steaming shimmer, and he drew close to offer that warmth to the chrysalis of ice. He wasn't sure it'd be enough to melt it--it was only a few degrees warmer--but maybe it'd get above freezing? A mental shrug, and he put his talons to aid the task, cracking at the ice where he could.

"ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?" he asked, and "WHY ARE YOU IN ICE?" and "DID SOMEONE PUT YOU IN THIS? SOME BLUE THING CAME AND SAID YOU WERE DYING."

...At least, that'd been sort of how he'd interpreted it.

A pause, and he half-corrected this thought. "-THAT YOU WERE IN DANGER. BUT IT WAS DROOLING FROM ITS EYES AND SAID BAD THINGS," he added, unaware of what 'tears' were, or how they worked. He hadn't liked the insults, either. He finished off this speech--grand, by Dread's standards--with a repeated, and distinctly worried, "ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?" his son's way.

He helped his son break free, idly, most of his focus on grasping Svartis words (Dread did not have Good Words). "THAT WAS MY FIRE," he confirmed, pulling a sheet of ice away and dropping it into the snow as he stepped back. "I THOUGHT MAYBE YOU WOULD SEE IT AND COME SEE WHAT IT WAS AND FIND ME. I COULDN'T FIND YOU. THIS PLACE IS TOO BIG," he added, looking around, each word needlessly a half-shout. "AND TOO COLD."

Ember eyes shifted back to Svartis, Dread's serpentine black-scaled neck glinting with the light of wet and melting snow falling over it. "SORRY." Probably for the fireballs. Maybe. "I LIVE HERE NOW! NOT HERE, BUT NEXT TO HERE. IN THE CAVE WITH WATER AND ISLANDS. IT IS LIKE HOME. WHERE I WAS HATCHED. BUT WITH DRY PLACES, TOO." A pause, as he considered--and maybe regrouped from launching this assault of More Words. "I LIKE IT," he finished.

As for the blue thing: "THE BLUE THING LOOKED LIKE A DRAGON, BUT IT HAD A WEIRD FACE. IT SAID YOU ADOPTED IT. BUT IT SAID I DIDN'T LOVE YOU OR BONE AND IT SAID I DIDN'T KNOW SHE DIDN'T LIKE THE COLD," he added, and there was clear confusion at this last. The dragon, though, was blunt with his assertion that he loved his children, indignant even: it was no cause for shame in him, despite his generally 'Proud Destroyer of All Things' image. Really, he just hunted and lived his life and loved his kids--and collected shiny objects, of course. He was more a firebreathing magpie than an apocalyptic monster. "SO I TOLD IT TO GO AWAY. BUT IT SAID YOU AND BONE WERE SICK."

He eyed Svartis closely, now: a careful inspection.

"-ARE YOU SICK?"

Dread noted down the "really big rocks" in his head. He knew what mountains were; he had them, sort of... in Leo, and plus he just... knew. That was one of those words that seemed to come with Knowledge From Nowhere in his brain, at least.

Which was good. Less to think about and puzzle over and commit to memory on his own, really.

"IT'S WARM!" Dread confirmed, loudly--about Leo, obviously, because Ursa was anything but. "THE PLACE WHERE I WAS HATCHED WAS ALL WARM WATER. THIS IS LIKE THIS BUT WITH LAND-PLACES TOO, SO THE FLOODS WON'T TAKE MY STUFF." Important note. Dread had only ever left Fornax because he'd grown too large for his little wall-niche and all the tiny shinies he'd hidden away within, and no region of Fornax had been elevated enough to otherwise protect said shinies. Impulsively, even warmly, he added--"YOU SHOULD COME." A pause, as he considered this. "SOMETIMES THERE IS RAIN, AND IT IS COOLER THEN, IF YOU WANT."

How considerate.

He eyed Svartis, then, emberglow eyes thoughtful, critical, as he examined him. "SO YOU ARE NOT SICK? YOU ARE OKAY? BONE IS OKAY?" He flinched against a brief cold wind, shifting his wings to reposition himself against the cold, a little. "IT SAID YOU GOT SICK IN THE FIGHT."

He didn't know what that was all about. He certainly hadn't gotten sick. "I TOLD IT TO LEAVE. I DON'T KNOW WHERE IT WENT. IF YOU WANT TO FIND IT," he added--an explanation that no, he had no idea where to find Carja, not after he'd yelled at it to go AWAY.

Dread looked around again, considering the very concept of even staying in this snowy hellhole long enough to hunt and eat. He hated the cold. ...And here, the slightest inkling--the memory of Carja insisting that Bone hated ice, too--came back to him. There was something weird about that... but then, Bone and Svartis were close. Maybe she just wanted to be near family. It was a seemingly unrelated response, then--generated from this train of thought--that came from Dread in 'answer.' "BONE COULD LIVE WITH ME IN THE WARMER CAVE. IT IS CLOSE," he informed Svartis, swinging his head back to look at him with those emberglow eyes.

There was a pause as he tried to remember what he had meant to answer.

...Ahh, yes. Hunting, food, in the cold. "I DON'T LIKE THE COLD, BUT I WANT TO STAY WITH YOU FOR AWHILE BECAUSE I HAVE NOT SEEN YOU. WE CAN HUNT," he agreed. Dread was honest with his kids--and he genuinely cared for them. Apparently, some close father-son time would be good, in his mind.

Plus, it wouldn't be a bad idea to know about the prey here, if he ever wound up hungry in Ursa.

A slow gaze around, the pinprick spark of magic behind his eyes, and he looked himself for other living things. It struck him at once the size of the cave: many of the squiggly red sigils of "flowing blood" were very, very distant, or tiny. Most were spread out throughout the bitter cold, seemingly living solitary, struggling lives. There were a few clustered close--so small and piled up that they seemed a single heartbeat.

Dread took note of them, and looked to Svartis to take the lead.