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“You should try it sometime. Practice makes perfect.”
Kai downed his mead in two big gulps, his thick, corded throat hurrying the liquid along. He didn’t bother wiping his lips before sopping up the remaining stew with the half loaf of bread and stuffing it into one cheek, making it bulge like a chipmunk’s.
A garbled rumble emerged from his chest.
“What’s that?” Ere really couldn’t decipher this one, and he was a master at all languages. Alas, Kai-speak was not in his repertoire.
The warrior shifted some of the bread for swallowing to give his tongue more room.
“No point.”
Ere blinked, his brow furrowing slightly in concentration.
“You mean…no point in speaking because you have nothing to say, or communication in general is a waste of effort?”
Kai swallowed the last of his bread and punched his sternum with a fist, letting out a heartfelt belch.
Ere just barely managed to turn his face away from the noxious fumes that blasted from the warrior’s greasy mouth.
“Soon dead anyway,” Kai uttered, leaned back against the tree trunk, and closed his eyes again.
Ere frowned.
“Why would you say that? This is my third quest for the Jade Emperor, and I haven’t died yet. None of my friends have either. I’m certainly planning to avoid dying at all cost.”
He paused and considered for a moment.
“Unless Sorin got killed,” he amended. “In which case, I would chase him into the afterlife and drag him back to the living.”
A deep rumble vibrated from Kai’s massive chest. It sounded like thunder rolling across the skies. Or tectonic plates shifting beneath the earth.
“I don’t speak in subterranean resonance,” Ere said testily. “Please use words.”
Kai opened one eye to pin him with a fearsome stare.
Ere simply crossed his arms and stared back, waiting.
A battle of hairy eyeballs ensued. But Ere was a master at that kind of warfare. He wasn’t backing down.
“Mouthy fucker,” the big man finally muttered.
Ere quirked his lips.
Kai used to communicate much the same telepathically when they’d been dragons. But it was always said with an undertone of affection.
Ere took a moment to reminisce, since the warrior didn’t seem inclined to speak further or engage in any kind of conversation. Even though the Age of the Gods was tens of thousands of years ago, right now, with Kai, those memories surfaced to the fore as if they happened just yesterday.
There were three of them. The first three dragons in creation.
Rai was the first to hatch from his dragon egg. Kai had been next. And Sai was the last.
Despite Kai being the middle one, because of his size and personality, Sai and Rai had always regarded him like their big older brother. Rai might have led all of the Beasts with his eagle flights, but Kai had been his rock. Sometimes literally, given the way he used camouflage.
If Kai hadn’t supported his plans to usurp the gods in the end, they wouldn’t have had a chance.
“I missed you,” Ere murmured in remembrance of the way they were.
“I thought you were gone forever when I regained my soul and all of my memories a few years ago. I can’t believe you’re really here. The same Kai I always knew. You haven’t changed at all.”
