the thing about dragons

chapter three (I)

in which a dragon is claimed and Otto Hightower gets bullied.

part I

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warnings: Daemon Targaryen as a POV character, blood, dragon-on-dragon cannibalism (mentioned), life-threatening stunts

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Daemon stays behind, even though it's obvious that he really wants to follow. But he can't, because this is something Lyra must do on her own. A Targaryen rite of passage, almost, years before Rhaenyra and her bad decisions and bastards and that stupid egg-in-cradle tradition. (Did they really expect the eggs to not hatch when the mother is the source of Targaryen dragon-blood?) So instead, he chooses to wear a hole in the grass with his pacing at a distance great enough that Lyra would barely hear him if he yelled. It's still a bit of a long walk from the keep, and with her short legs it takes a good few minutes, but she gets there.

The Cannibal dragon only looks worse up closer, with jagged teeth and bright, slit-pupiled eyes, and black scales. Like all the tense scenes in Jurassic Park, the original one, that she watched when she was probably too young to, all put into one giant fire-breathing lizard with its gaze trained on her, unblinking. Except this one is real, and not animatronic or CGI.

It's a wicked kind of beast, all black like tar or a starless night, with eyes glowing acid-green, alert and intelligent but half-crazed, and horns curving about its skeletally wolfish head scarred in a way only another dragon unwilling to become prey without a fight could maim while thrashing between its teeth. It's utterly crowned with horns; two curling forward, in tandem with its muzzle, and the rest curved backwards, uneven, jagged, and all black. She could walk on each; she could lay down on each, with room to spare.

This, Lyra imagines, is how the Devil must look like.

Actually, now that she's looking at it, it's looking a whole lot like Black Dragons from Dungeons and Dragons, in shape and colour both; especially with its head, though not quite as sunken and skull-like.

She's not very tall, being seven and all, but her whole body is about the size of the teeth she can see clearly now, as the dragon curls its lips back in a wordless snarl. Still, she's almost vibrating, excitement and adrenaline and giddiness swirling in her head. It takes a lot of effort to not squeal, and to walk instead of skipping. She may have memories of having lived thirty years before this, but she is biologically seven with all the emotional control that implies.

Which is little on a good day and almost none in the face of something like this. She's only good at pretending she has her shit together.

The dragon rears back, bares its teeth again, hisses. Opens its maw as its throat glows green with something that looks like the not-yet-invented wildfire. Lyra feels the heat hit her as the green glow builds up slowly, threateningly, but without hostility. She would know if it was hostility, because if it was it wouldn't be waiting, watching, seeing what she's going to do about the situation. She's be a pile of ash at best already, if it really aimed to hurt, killed like every other fool that tried to approach.

A loud, clear 'daor' is enough to make it slam its maw shut with a loud clack and a puff of green fire.

She finds herself oddly unimpressed at the threatening display; she doesn't even flinch. Instead, it gives her the same kind of exasperation as when she found Rascal chewing on her shoes, again, the little orange runt living up to his name every day, even as he grew old and slow.

(Gods, she misses her cat so much still. He was with her for most of her life.)

The dragon cocks its head at her, bright eyes not leaving her for a moment. It's coiled, she notices, tense in a way Caraxes is just before he takes to the skies.