At long last, I laid down to sleep.

  It did not come easily at first. There was still a simmering fire in my veins from being abruptly awoken. Despite the heavy weight dragging my eyelids closed, swirling thoughts danced around in my head. Worries about what would come in the future and reflections on the present both played their part.

  I wished that I could have the people that were Mine here with me. It had taken all the mental strength I possessed to not snatch them up and carry them away. Unfortunately, they were far too busy to waste the day soothing my nerves. Perhaps one day, our lives would calm enough to allow such frivolity.

  Beyond our immediate needs, there was one other reason I had resisted the urge to tuck my Cassia, Edith, and Visk under my wings. I wasn’t sure just how long I would be asleep. The whisper of instinct from deep inside of me indicated that this was not a normal night time nap. This was something important to my growth as a dragon.

  Cassia had interrupted my slumber in its beginning stages. If she had waited much longer, there was a good chance she’d have failed to wake me. Once I fell fully into the depths it would take a truly monumental effort to bring me back out of it.

  As I slowly drifted downwards into the black depths, my mind lingered on Visk. They had been added quite suddenly to the roster of what I considered ‘Mine’. That wasn’t entirely without precedent. I’d considered my Cassia to be ‘Mine’ only a little while after we’d met.

  The difference was that I’d felt I owed a great debt to Cassia at the time and that I knew far less about the world. I’d known Edith for a while longer before I started to want her as a permanent part of my life. That had only been solidified when I was confronted with the possibility of losing her by T’laanga. In both cases, my human companions had played pivotal roles in teaching me about the world.

  Visk was different. They had been an enemy, albeit a reluctant one, when we met. While they had not directly harmed me or those close to me, they had been partially responsible for a great deal of pain and suffering. It was only when Visk was confronted with undeniable evidence of their former ally’s betrayal, that their outlook truly began to change.

  While the elf had gone to some effort to help my Cassia and Edith, they had not done anything truly worthy of note. I doubted that any other bandit in their position would have done differently, if they’d been threatened with ‘death by being dropped from the sky’. If I was honest, I’d been quietly considering getting rid of them when my Cassia and Edith weren’t looking.

  Lying to them would have been difficult, but leaving a dangerous enemy like Visk alive didn’t sit well with me.

  It was Visk’s fury at seeing the belongings of their loved ones pilfered that changed my mind. Was it hypocritical for a thief to be so angry at someone stealing from another person? Yes, probably. But perhaps the shock of seeing the consequences of such actions against those they cared for had been necessary to set them on a different path.

  I could also see the glint in Visk’s eyes when they looked at me sitting next to my treasure hoard. There had been an intense interest behind those silver discs. Visk had followed Avery for a variety of reasons. They’d claimed the man had treated them well when most others did not. Perhaps Visk had truly ‘loved’ him, at least for a time.

  What I saw in Visk’s eyes was a reflection of the Greed burning inside of me.

  The elf had looked upon the sight of my ruby scaled form, with gleaming treasure piled in front of me, and seen something that they wanted more of. One might think I’d find this disturbing. What was to keep the thief from returning to their old ways?

  I believed that Visk was like myself. They desired more than just wealth. Part of Avery’s betrayal was that he’d stolen things which Visk had bought for those who’d died. Those who were solely concerned with wealth would not purchase meaningful gifts for others.

  It was only speculation at this point, but I felt fairly confident in my assessment. Whether they had acknowledged it to themself or not, Visk had likely replaced Avery with a dragon. Meaning myself. They would be protected by something far stronger than themself, by a creature that would naturally attract followers and wealth.

  Even the need for companionship would be satisfied. My Cassia and Edith were, for better or for worse, very forgiving of other people’s faults. So long as Visk didn’t go out of their way to cause trouble, I was fairly sure that my companions would fully accept the elf before long.

  Did all of these thoughts involve a massive amount of guess work and possibly projection of myself onto Visk? Yes. Did I think I was going to be wrong? No.

  As much as they might have protested, Visk had been just as comfortable tucked under my wing as my Cassia or Edith. I didn’t remember putting them there. Even while fully unconscious, it seemed unlikely that I’d forget doing such a thing. A more likely explanation was that Visk had tested the waters to see how close they could get to me and gotten a bit more than they bargained for.

  I intended to pin the elf down and have a long chat with them after I woke up.

  The boundary between the waking world and sleep was an intangible thing.

  I’d crossed over without realizing it. Normally when I slept, I encountered an empty black void with occasional flashes of color. Full dreams came and went without rhyme or reason. Half recollected memories slipped by my notice unless I deemed them important enough to pursue.

  This time was different. While I still floated in a dark space, it was a familiar one. The creeping feeling of being somewhere in particular, rather than generally nowhere, slipped into my awareness. When I finally pinned down where exactly I was, it came as a surprise.

  I was back in my Egg.

  While a human might consider it a flight of fancy or an overactive imagination, my dreams did not work that way. I had always been fully cognizant of my presence within a memory or made up story. If I wanted to, I could fully exert control over my environment and dream of something else.

  I often liked to dream of when I was a hatchling in Cassia’s cabin. It was a more peaceful time.

  That option was not available to me right now. The Egg stubbornly resisted all my attempts to leave it. I had not felt so helpless for a long time. In fact, the last time was when I was in the real Egg. It troubled me greatly that I could not tell the difference between my current circumstances and my memories.

  An intrusive thought slipped into my mind. What if everything I had experienced up to this point was a dream? It could all be the fitful imagination of a hatchling trapped in an egg, waiting to wake up and face the real world.

  If that were true, it would mean that I had another chance to be born. I could do it better this time. If my siblings tried to push me out of the nest, I’d resist with all the ferocity I’d learned to wield. My mother would not abandon me and leave me to die alone in the cold.

  But if it were true, that would also mean I would leave the life I’d lived behind. It would all become a hazy memory when I woke up. The people I’d met, the enemies I had faced, and the experiences I’d had would all fade with time.

  It would mean leaving those I cared for behind.

  That thought was what snapped me out of my stupor. My mind burned with unrestrained fury. Time and again the world had tried to take what was Mine away from me. I had fought and bled to keep those close to me safe. Just when things were finally starting to settle down, my own dreams now tried to take my companions away from me.

  The Egg began to crack. In the dream, I did not possess the body I had grown into. My shape was amorphous and hazy. I had not yet become whatever it was I was meant to be. That did not stop me from lashing out and attempting to escape.

  As I vented my rage against my prison, I was able to sense movement around me. I knew them only as heartbeats, small candles of warmth that had huddled together for survival in the nest. Now, they blazed with power. If I had been less enraged, perhaps that would have made me cautious. While in the grip of my boiling rage, the only thought that came to my mind was that I’d destroy them all if they attempted to stop me.

  My prison shattered around me all at once. Each fragment burst into a million grains of sand, which flew away on an unseen wind. The grains circled around the space I now found myself in before they flowed back towards me. I was momentarily blinded as I was sand blasted with the remnants.

  Each particle was absorbed into my shape, adding to it and refining it at the same time. I had been something like a dense cloud of smoke while in the Egg, but the biting wind of its destruction carved me into a proper figure. The closest thing I could compare the experience to, was like being a block of wood that my Cassia had chosen to whittle with a knife.

  The details slowly emerged as I was both scraped away at and added to. Just like being carved with a knife, it was also considerably painful. By the time the last grains had settled onto my body, I was exhausted. Not that it mattered to me, but the pain had been mental rather than physical.

  As I observed myself, I found that my new shape was like my hatchling body, but refined. All of the awkward half grown features which had plagued my early life were absent. In their place was a sleek form that possessed all the strength and speed of my mature body, but without the bulk, spikes, and armored plates that came with it.

  It was something akin to an idealized idea of me, how I saw myself in my own head. Noble. Regal. Scales that shimmered like the ruby rain cast in a warm sunset.

  I stopped admiring myself long enough to look around. It was unfamiliar to me, but was steeped in nostalgia. A deep bed of fur, twigs, moss, and other soft materials were packed into a wide circle about ten yards across. That was a wide expanse, compared to my tiny hatchling body.

  The nest was empty, save for myself. Scents that were strikingly similar to my own lingered in the air, but their owners were absent. In the bottom of the nest was a thin layer of broken eggshells which gleamed with the colors of the rainbow. They were intermixed and tangled together.

  Notably, there was no red like my scales or Egg in that mixture.

  When I looked back up, I was startled by another figure sitting across from me. It hadn’t been there when I looked before. It was a hatchling like myself, but it was horrendously injured. Wounds covered its entire body, like it had been attacked by a pack of ravenous beasts. Patches of scales had been torn from its flesh and both wings had nearly been ripped from their sockets.

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  The hatchling’s eyes had been put out, leaving it blind to the world.

  In spite of that, I could still see the beauty inherent to a dragon’s body in it. Its scales were a lustrous pink, the hue of an orchid I’d once seen pressed between pages of Edith’s tomes. Even more so than my own, this hatchling’s form was a sleek and gentle shape. I couldn’t imagine it growing up into a monster.

  “Hello brother,” the hatchling said to me with a broken jaw. It did not need eyes to look in my direction. A deep unease swept through me. This reminded me far too much of the unliving bear in the Cursed Forest. Despite its lingering beauty, this creature was far too damaged to still be alive.

  “Who are you?” I growled warily. “Where are we?”

  “Do you not remember it?” the creature asked in return. “You left it not so long ago… although I suppose you weren’t yet hatched to see it.”

  “... The nest?” I asked, not believing my own words. I’d sensed my sibling’s heartbeats while in the Egg, but I felt nothing coming from this creature. It was hollow, like a broken puppet acting out the motions.

  “Yes, the nest… or I suppose the dream of the nest,” the creature crooned softly. When I blinked, it was right in front of me. I tried to recoil, but one of its snapped claws hooked me by my lower jaw. “Aww, don’t be scared of me, dear brother. I won’t hurt you.”

  In spite of its honeyed words, I could sense nothing but danger from the creature as it hooked me like a fish. I didn’t feel any pain from the claw embedded in my scales, but I wasn’t able to resist its pull. When I looked into the broken hatchling’s empty eye sockets, I felt a deep and burning hatred staring back at me.

  “You… are not… my sibling,” I managed to choke out. My body was growing numb, spreading from the place the claw had pierced me. “My siblings… pushed me out. Left me… to die.”

  The empty eye sockets bored into me, piercing through my flesh as they stared into my soul. I tried my best to resist, but whatever animated this puppet was beyond my power.

  “Is that what you think?” it asked me sweetly. “That the others forced you out? How intriguing. Answer this for me then, dear brother. If our siblings wanted you to die…” It leaned its small pink head close to me, twisted jaw whispering just loud enough so that I could hear. “Then why did they not simply devour you, like they did me?”

  I did not know how to answer that. Instinctively I had known that if I encountered my siblings, the most likely outcome was for them to attack and try to eat me. The craving for vitality would simply be too strong. Pushing me out of the nest wouldn’t make any sense if they wanted an easy meal. All they had to do was wait until they were hatched. Then they could have attacked together.

  Even so, the claim that this thing was my sibling, which the others had eaten, was hard to swallow. That had nothing to do with the claw half embedded in my mouth.

  “I… am sorry,” I whispered to the creature. Even if it was a fake, a pale mockery of my sibling, it did not deserve the fate it had been condemned to. We may have been inside of a Dream, but I could feel that this creature’s pain was very real. The numbness seeping into my body was from my vitality being drained.

  This unliving caricature of my sibling was draining it, just like the unliving denizens of the Dark Wood. I didn’t know what purpose such an act served. It didn’t seem likely to bring it back to life. No matter how much vitality the Rotting Bear had fed the Vile Tree, neither had been satisfied. If anything, the hunger for life force only grew.

  The creature recoiled from me at my apology.

  “Sorry? Sorry?!” it hissed. “‘Sorry’ is a word unbefitting a dragon! Do you not think that I pleaded, begged, and wailed when our siblings tore me limb from limb? What words could possibly match the torment of being eaten alive for the crime of existing?”

  The creature hurled me across the nest, scattering fragments of multi colored egg shells into the air.

  “You do not get to say ‘Sorry’!” the broken creature screeched. “You got to escape! You got to live! You do not have to exist as a broken shadow within the Dream!”

  It leaped at me, the shattered form of its body twisting unnaturally in the air. My body twisted onto my back on the ground. The lessons I’d learned guided my movements. As the creature descended on me, I lashed out with one of my hind legs and kicked upwards. My foot caught it in the belly and threw it over the top of me.

  The broken creature screeched and rolled, unable to control its movements. It had never learned how to use its body. The momentum of its leap and my kick kept it moving all the way to the edge of the nest. Broken claws scrabbled at the soft bedding but found no purchase. As I turned my head, it began to topple over the edge.

  My broken sibling let out a scream of fear and despair.

  A second later, my claws caught it by its forelimbs. The razor sharp tips dug into my sibling’s flesh, but it did not bleed. Its shattered body held no blood. All of it had been drained when they died.

  Those empty eyes stared up at me from the abyss. Below the nest was not the cave I had hatched in. Instead, there was oblivion. Death.

  In spite of all its hatred, my sibling could feel fear. Whatever had caused this twisted condition, the desire to live remained. The same instinct that had led me to strike out on my own and defy becoming nothing, burned within my sibling.

  “Why?” it asked me, unable to comprehend my actions in spite of its terror.

  “Because if you are my sibling, then you are Mine,” I replied. “I do not care what the others think about what makes a dragon. You do not need to be Alone.”

  “You are a fool,” my broken sibling hissed. “You cannot deny our nature.” In spite of its rejection, I could hear the painful longing in its voice. It might have been broken and twisted, but that did not mean it deserved destruction.

  “If I’m a fool, then let me be the Dragon of Fools,” I retorted. “I will not stop being who I am or doing what I desire for anyone. That is my nature.” With all my strength, I pulled my sibling upwards. It was a struggle beyond the merely physical. In this dream, I was pulling against the draw of the abyss. Unlike a mere void, oblivion was hungry and did not give up its prize easily.

  “What are you doing?!” the pink hatchling screeched. “This is the Dream! I am just a shade! There’s nothing left of me!”

  “The only one complaining about that right now is you!” I shouted back. “Either help me pull or shut up!”

  The hatchling shade scoffed in disbelief, but it reluctantly tried to pull itself upwards. A great moment of tension began to build. I could feel an incredible resistance to my actions. Something began to rise out of the abyss in response. I didn’t bother to look at it. It would not deny me what I’d decided was Mine.

  All at once, the tension gave way with a snap. I flew backwards from where I’d been hauling my sibling upwards. They came with me. Our bodies became entangled as we held onto each other, wrapped in a desperate embrace. My sibling didn’t know how to do so gently and instead embedded its claws into my hide.

  A great roar rose up out of the abyss. Whatever was down there was angry beyond words. I clutched my sibling tighter to my chest. Now was not the time to fight. It was time to flee.

  Without a moment to spare, I woke myself up.

  From his vantage point looking over the world, First was observing the results of his latest plaything. The human known as Sigurd had reached the nearest village, staying upright just long enough to tell his tale before collapsing. All of those listening had been skeptical. A man on a horse was sent to investigate Sigurd’s homestead and came galloping back into town not long after.

  The humans had reacted poorly to the confirmation of a dragon attack. Many of them began to panic and argue with each other. It was only when Sigurd woke back up and demanded that they help him send word to the Baron’s castle that they’d agreed on a course of action.

  They had tried to keep Sigurd in the village to recover, but the mania which had infected the young man’s soul was hard to resist. Sigurd only relented to let them bandage his wounds before he and the horse rider set off on two steeds for the castle. First was paying close attention as he watched Sigurd be led into Baron Reimse’s court. The guards had been just as distrusting of the young man’s story as the villagers, but the Baron had caught wind of the visitor and summoned him immediately.

  Sigurd had just started telling the Baron what happened when a sudden snap of magic broke First’s focus.

  First immediately began checking the traps and alarms he’d make around his lair. They were all intact. It should have been impossible for an intruder to reach the lair’s location, but First was nothing if not thorough. When nothing revealed itself, he began to check other possible sources.

  What he found was that the Oath he’d made with his siblings was damaged. That should have been even more impossible than someone breaking into his lair. First had been diligent to the point of excess in making the Oath ironclad. None of his siblings should have been able to break it without severe repercussions.

  A quick check of his sibling’s locations revealed that none of them were the culprit. Fifth was still flying above her sand pit. Fourth was skulking around a backwater swamp like usual. Second was arguing with a lawyer who didn’t realize that winning an argument with a dragon meant becoming its meal. All of them were acting as they normally did.

  Third was flying towards the Redstone Hills, but he kept getting distracted eating shepherds. He’d noticed the snap of magic too and abandoned his current meal to fly towards it in a rage.

  That narrowed down the culprit to one individual. Seventh. But what exactly had he done? The Oath was still in place. It was like he’d kicked out one of the foundations…

  ‘Wait.’

  First turned and moved at high speed towards his hoard of treasures. A small unassuming shelf sat in the middle. On it sat a collection of mundane glass orbs, resting on small cushions. Each swirled with color. White, Blue, Black, Green, and Yellow. A sixth orb sat broken on its cushion, its former pink luster turned a dull grey.

  For the first time in a long time, First screamed in rage.