Confrontation and Conflagration
Celero stood restless vigil at the peak of a young mountain overlooking the sea every sinuous muscle tense. His wings held away from his body ever so slightly seemed like hackles raised on some dire beast. Each of his four powerful hand-like talons worked and worried at the boulders beneath him blunting the once jagged summit.
The presence of a far off mind pressed against his awareness, “Your lack of patience was ever your weakness brother”. Celero did not take the meager effort to reply with words. Instead he pushed the curt sensation of disgust and disrespect giving the notion of an upturned nose as he blew a gust of smoke from his nostrils. “She has you right where she wants you” the voice insisted, “waiting on her, and growing more unreasoning with each passing hour”
“She wouldn’t dare put me off. I’ll soon get hungry and there just happens to be a herd of her favored beasts nearby. I don’t prefer the taste of horse flesh, but as you said, my actions often reflect expedience.”
On the horizon there began a gathering of dark clouds. A storm was brewing off the coast one not soon to be forgotten. “That statement alone sums the reasons for her hatred for you. You would hunt even other magical creatures to their end and feel no remorse that no one would enjoy their majesty ever again.”
“You’re right, I make no distinction, because there is none. She has enjoyed hunting my creations. What difference is there that I may do likewise?”
“The difference”, they said in a calm uncaring tone, “is that you made the great white stag to be hunted, and she made the unicorn as a thing of beauty.”
Another curt snorted reply and more crumbling mountain debris. “Enough of this. I have nothing to fear in the sky, especially a wingles infant serpent like her. Observe Fama as our sister Formas becomes the first of the true dragons to know union with the void.” Launching himself from the ridge top Celro streaked through the sky and out to sea.
“Fool”
The journey of several miles was quick as each beat of his huge wings was amplified by unrestrained magical power. The kind of feral ferocity only Celro and his master could produce. He entered the thunderhead without a second thought and was immediately engulfed by the gail force of what would soon be a hurricane. Momentarily disoriented and hardly able to maintain control, his might and will were all that kept him from tumbling. The mighty span of his wings made him champion of the skies. Here amongst her turbulent winds his wings became sails at the mercy of this unnatural storm.
Lightning struck Celero’s right wing and while it was not enough to hurt him it was enough of a distraction that he lost his tedious control. His other wing, catching a gust, pushed him into performing what under normal circumstances would have been a brief roll, but this was an opening his sister would not miss. Straight down in a silver flash she struck his exposed torso and ripped free a mouth full of flesh and plated scales. Then disappeared just as quickly into the storm.
He regained his bearings and issued a deafening roar. It echoed off the distant mountains and parted the clouds around him. It was a challenge, it was a battle cry, and it was a spell. Issuing forth from his maw as he hung suspended in mid air came a fiery orb that grew to engulf him. The colossal furnas roiled with tongues of blue and white madness and just as it touched down upon the water it erupted. Anything living on that nearby coast became not but ash in an instant, any shore along that ocean would feel the kiss of the resulting tidal wave, and Celero basked in his sheer destructive power.
As he hung there he heard a rush of water from below. He jerked his body from vertical to inspect the sea beneath him just in time to meet a geyser of water followed by the streaking silver bolt he knew to be Formas. Before he could react her muzzle was around his. Her momentum sent them spinning out of control. With each turn her long serpentine body wrapped around him. First his neck to crush his windpipe. Then she immobilized his wings, broke ribs, and crushed his abdomen against his spine. Her long wingless body worked around him as a constrictor and the two stared through her wind lashed whiskers in a battle of wills. He was not helpless however for all the while he was tearing away at any part of her he could reach. With all four ferocious talons he ripped out her armored scales and into her exposed muscle. They tumbled through the air a silver coil around a grey muscled core streaming red gore in their wake.
Together they plunged into the ocean and together they perished.
***********
From the coast Vanus tsked. “Fools the both of them, to openly oppose their polar kin.” The obsidian dragon watched as the great conflagration rolled toward them. They were powerless to stop it before it reached their lair, but powerless they were not. Wrapping their influence around the disaster area they slowed its spread to an impossible crawl. What should have been an explosion to change the entire world for centuries would instead take only Vanus and their home. What should have killed millions would take only their own kin. A sacrifice worthy of the highest praise. A more clever ploy had never been attempted.