Elven Blood, Dragon Heart

The fireball hit the cave ceiling at dawn, as it always did.

Finnian was already awake when Pyrrhos sneezed, because he had learned years ago that sleeping through his father's morning fits was less a matter of rest than of survival. The explosion of orange flame lit every crack and crevice of the limestone cave in a single, brilliant burst, casting long shadows across the stalactites before fading back into the cool grey of early morning. A shower of soot drifted down like black snow.

"Magnificent," Pyrrhos intoned, to no one in particular. His copper eyes blinked open, his heavy tail flicking against the limestone floor with a dry, rhythmic thud. "A fine sneeze. Perhaps my finest yet."

"You singed my sleeping hide again," Finnian complained, sitting up and brushing ash from his silver-blonde hair. He looked at the charred corner of his drake-hide blanket, which still smoldered with the acrid, oily stink of burnt leather and singed hair. He clicked his teeth once, a short, dry sound of frustration. "That is the third one this season, Father."

"A hatchling who sleeps too close to a dragon deserves toasted blankets." Pyrrhos settled his enormous crimson head back onto his forelimbs and closed his eyes again, thoroughly satisfied with this logic. 

Finnian stood, stretched, and moved to the wide ledge at the cave mouth. The Smoking Crags spread out below him in the pale morning light, all jagged peaks and thin clouds and the distant sound of wind threading through stone corridors. 

He loved this view. The sharp draft buffeted against his chest, smelling of cold stone, frost, and the sulfur-rich thermals rising from the deep ravines below. It felt, to him, like the world was arranged exactly the way it should be, wide and high and dizzyingly far from the solid floor of the valley. He squared his shoulders and roared. But the sound that left his throat was not a roar. It was closer to a shout, clear and almost musical, bouncing off the rock face with a bright, ringing echo that startled two mountain birds from a crevice below. He tried again, with the same result.

Behind him, Pyrrhos made a sound that was not quite a groan and not quite a laugh but lived somewhere uncomfortably between the two. "Again with the singing," the old dragon rumbled. "My son, the bard."

"It was a roar," Finnian stated firmly.

"It was a folk ballad," Pyrrhos replied with a smoky breath.

Finnian clicked his teeth again and turned away from the ledge. He crouched by the wide, still pool of rainwater that collected in a natural basin at the rear of the cave and looked at his reflection. He traced a finger along his left cheek, following the shape of the mark that had lived there his entire life. A dragon in perfect silhouette, small and dark against his skin, curled as if sleeping. He had always thought it looked like a brand of belonging, proof that he was one of them, even without scales or wings, even without fire. He was just a late bloomer. That was what his parents told him, and he tried quite hard to believe them.

Syllis arrived before the sun had fully cleared the peaks, her sapphire scales catching the light as she folded her wings and dropped a mountain goat onto the cave floor with a businesslike thud. She looked at the soot on the ceiling, then at Pyrrhos, then back at the soot. 

"You sneezed on the boy's blanket," she stated, her tail flicking against the cavern floor with a sharp snap.

"The cave required some illumination," Pyrrhos replied, as though he had done nothing wrong. He was used to Syllis's statements about his conduct; he just went with the flow. He managed a slow, deliberate roll of his slit-pupiled eyes, a feat of dramatic exaggeration that made Syllis hiss in exasperation. 

"The cave required no such thing." She turned her yellow eyes to Finnian with something much warmer in them. "Eat. And stay on the high ledges today. There were fresh crawler prints on the lower trail when I came back. Two sets, maybe three." 

Finnian felt his stomach tighten. "Crawlers? This high up?"

"Not yet. But the season is changing, and they grow brave when the passes clear." She nudged the goat toward him with one elegant claw. "Eat first. Worry after." 

He was halfway through breakfast when a pint-sized, rusty-furred shape launched itself through the cave entrance with a frantic clatter of loose gravel and a series of sharp, indignant squeaks. Digger landed on a low boulder, skidded, caught himself with his long toenails, and stood up with an expression of profound self-importance.

"I have an intelligence report," the meerkat announced in his loud, high-pitched voice. He blinked rapidly. "A very important report. Of the highest importance. Someone should probably be writing this down."

"Not gonna happen, Digger; don't you have someplace else you need to be? No one is writing anything down," Pyrrhos huffed at the small meerkat.

"Fine. Fine. Your loss." Digger straightened his totem with as much dignity as he could muster, the miniature carved piece that hung around his neck and always seemed to hum faintly when trouble was near, and it was humming now. 

"I went deep this morning. Under the obsidian shelf, past the sulfur vents, all the way to the second leyline crossing." He paused, his sharp whiskers twitching. "Elven magic," Digger said, dropping his voice. "Fresh, raw, and alive in the lower passes." 

The cave went dead quiet.

Syllis and Pyrrhos exchanged a look over Finnian's head, but he watched their posture shift in subtle, uneasy sync... Pyrrhos's broad shoulders tightening beneath his crimson scales and Syllis angling her neck slightly forward, muscles coiled as if bracing for impact. It was a silent conversation built from ancient history, and try as he might to decipher the tension in the set of their jaws, he remained entirely shut out from what it meant. 

"How long since there has been elven magic on these trails?" Finnian asked.

 "Decades," Syllis replied. Her voice was even, but her tail had gone still.

"Thirty-seven years, five months, and approximately twelve days," Digger offered much too cheerfully. "Give or take. I checked my burrow records." He blinked again. "Also, for what it's worth, it smells like someone is looking for something specific, or someone." He scratched his ear, and a single flea flew out. "Just thought I would mention it. No filters, that is my policy, and I'm sticking to it."

Finnian peered down at his reflection in the still pool again. The dragon on his cheek stared back at him, compact, dark, and perfectly silent. Outside, the wind moved through the Smoking Crags, and somewhere far below, on a trail no crawler had used in nearly four decades, something that smelled of elven magic was drawing steadily closer.