AllFreeNovel
Share Us
BOOK ONE
Hatchling
“A BAD START IS STILL A START.”
—Tyr FeHazathant
Chapter 1
No pleasant dream, this. Discomfort and darkness, cold and cramp, clinging tendrils binding. The restrictions vexed him.
The hatchling struggled against his torment, twisting his neck to a more comfortable position, for his head kept jerking uncontrollably.
Suddenly his nose tore free of its bonds with a startling crack that ran down his body to the tail-tip. A membrane gave way, air tickled at his nose, and his lungs greedily pulled in its enticing freshness and a comforting, musky odor that filled him with longing.
A weight dragged at his belly, and he knew he had to be free of it. He reached up a rear claw and tore it away, the small pain worth the greater freedom.
The pain brought an additional benefit: His mind cleared of dreams and confusion and doubt. Instinct took over his little body, from deepest fiber to smallest hatchling scale. He pushed in every direction at once, head twisting and battering at the gap as his nose worked out.
Then it all gave way and he sprawled, whipping his tail around and fighting to right himself in a mass of clinging membrane and white shards. He opened his eyes, but the light pained and confused him, so he shut them again.
A wet web hung on him. It stuck everywhere in his scales, in the folds of hide and bone behind his jaw, his crest, his claws.
Strange, strange, strange. No clouds or currents or friendly sun, yet he was not frightened at the newness. The musky smell told him that all was well. He was safe.
He brought up a forelimb and wiped the web away from his eyes and off his crest. Now he could go to work with his long, flexible neck and sharp teeth, getting it off his limbs.
“We’ve done it; oh, thank Susirion and the four shapers, he lives.” The voice, the mind, more than half his own, had spoken to him in the egg. Through it he had seen brilliant sunlight and hot, flowing gold, blended and poured into his consciousness. This was the voice of his dreams, the spinner of images bright but vague around the edges, sunlight, crashing ocean waves, herds of blotch-backed beasts thundering below, leathery wings flapping and a proud, booming voice shaking the mountainside with song.
“Open your eyes, my jewel. See your mother and your world!”
Mother!
He opened his eyes, and it took a moment for his vision to clear. Too much to take in: a wall of green scale, curled-down head with its sniffing nostrils and shining, wide-open eyes, darkness filled with strange columns bathed in a glow from pools of light gathered on the floor, even a gentle, probing tail-tip as thick as his midwaist flicking bits of…of…shell, his brain supplied…flicking bits of shell off his haunches.
Wave after wave of love, delight, contentment rolled out of her and over him. This was better than any of the dreams before. The hatchling basked in it, a tiny thrumming deep in his throat answering her powerful one. They prrumed to each other. The ground almost vibrated with the low, resonant thrumming.
Two other eggs stirred. One rolled into the other with a soft tap.
The shifted egg opened like a jagged-toothed mouth, and a powerful red form spilled out. Its back legs outdrove its front, and it collapsed forward for a moment, jaw flat against the hard ground.
It squawked. He listened to the echoes and determined that they were in a confined space, but a very large one, and that a vast distance—to his few moments of experience—yawned behind, like his body, far longer than it was high.
The hatchling hardly noticed its smaller forelegs, its powerful neck, the clinging goo trailing from its rear limbs and bits of egg flying off its whipping tail. He had eyes only for its crest, a short rise of flattened horn sweeping back from its eyes.
Every instinct screeched: Threat, threat, threat!
The Red snorted liquid out of his nose. He opened his eyes and blinked. The tiny sharp spur crowning his nose turned toward the hatchling. The Red gathered himself, short flaps of armored skin behind his jawline rattling angrily against the base of his crest.
The hatchling found his own flaps answering the sound.
Tchkka-tchak tchkka-tchak tchkka-tchak!
The Red lowered his head and exploded toward him in a flash of glittering scales, mouth agape, fans wide and menacing.
He shifted to dodge him, but the clumsy new body didn’t react the way it did in dreams. They reared up on hindquarters, claws scrabbling and mouths biting—
—suddenly they were suspended in space.
