He must have drifted into sleep, despite his mortal unease, because with a quick movement, he found himself flipped across the floor, his horns making wild noises against the stone, by Blazer.
The dragon lifted his head imperiously as Harktoum picked himself up off the ground.
“Now, we’re even.”
Grunting noncommittally, Harktoum got up to stand in front of Blazer.
“So, what was so important that you felt the unrestrainable need to dropkick me in the face while. I. was. Sleeping?”
The red dragon punctuated his last words with angry taps of his deadly claws on the floor.

Recognition flashed through Harktoum in an instant of his twilight jaunt. Shaking the last remnants of slumber from his head, he practically hopped in agitation.
“Here! In here. There were golems! Ahraim golems! And, and, they…killed?...Dante!”
Blazer lifted a horned eyebrow to accompany a sardonic smile.
“There hasn’t been life here for hundreds of years, why now would they just…appear?”
Miffed, Harktoum flicked his wings, “How in all the hells should I know? You’re the freaking ages old dragon!”
Sighing, Blazer shook his head, “Are you sure this happened and you didn’t just dream it?”
“YES DAMMIT!” Harktoum stomped over to where his rooted through pack lay and upended it in front of Blazer. “There! You see Dante’s gems there anymore?!”

“No, the rubies aren’t there. So where are they? Even if the ‘Ahraim’ killed Dante, and I find it hard to believe that the Ahraim would be so silent for this long of time without trying to rebuild their city, the gems must just be somewhere else.”
Harktoum slapped a hand to his left arm. Blazer gave him a suspicious look.
“In…my arm I think. Or at least in that chamber….”
Blazer grunted in amusement.
“In your arm? Not likely. There’d be evidence of an insertion. Where is this chamber?”

Harktoum looked at the tunnel he’d followed in the night.
“This way. Follow me.” And he started padding down the massive corridors.
With a grunt and a series of pops audible to Harktoum, Blazer lifted himself off the stone, warmed now from his body, and stretched catlike, working the stiffness of sleep from his joints. Not for the first time he silently grumped at the constraints his asceticism forced him to accept.

Harktoum led the dragon through massive halls, the daylight diminishing the further they went in, reducing some areas to the darkness of night once again. Pausing, Harktoum peered into the gloom, unable to follow the same path without something to guide him with a magical beacon.
Bright light flared from behind him, banishing the looming darkness into oblivion, and Harktoum turned to see an arrow shaped gathering of magic manifest and swirl around blazer’s head and neck. From the dragon’s raised paw, another flowed from his hand and streaked toward the draconian, who cringed until he realized that the magic was hovering motionless just over his left shoulder.
“Ho-Wha?”
Rolling his reptilian eyes’ Blazer remarked, “Aura darts. Parlor tricks. Usually for battle, but also fine flashlights. Lead on.”
He looked nervously at the bolt of energy before shrugging and leading into the dark innards of the anchor. Around corners, the only sound was the dull humming of killing energy of Blazer’s darts, and the dragon’s claws as Blazer padded after him.

Harktoum lifted off at the vertical column, and crested the ledge and peered over the edge waiting for blazer to wing his way up.
With a bit of a start, He realized that the column was too narrow for blazer’s prodigious wingspan. The dragon had been able to manage the corridors with ease, but Harktoum couldn’t see how he’d be able to make his way up the sheer faced shaft.
“Blazer!” he called down, “Is there any way you can get up?”
A glowing radiance rose in response to Harktoum yell, and shortly after Blazer’s head peeked over the rim, a sarcastic smile on his features.
“Well obviously.”
“How the hell?”
Blazer’s body lifted above the shaft rim and he stepped of a glowing disc that filled the shaft center until the dragon stepped off of it and it dissipated into nothing.
“Drift disk.” Blazer shrugged, a gesture Harktoum knew he’d picked up from humans.
“hmmf” The draconian turned and walked until he reached the twin double doors. With a start, he looked rapidly from one huge slab of wood and steel t the other.
Both doors hung dejectedly from their hinges, and a deep rime of dust sat on the bands of metal.
Blazer’s head drifted lower, “Is there something interesting about dust covered doors?”
“well….they weren’t dust covered last night. They were hinged….”
Absently, Harktoum strode into the big circular chamber.
Sure enough sixteen statues stood there, but none were whole, each looked to be in a greater state of disarray than the last.
He looked for what remained of Silver eyes. There was a huge pile of rubble at the peak of the shattered vane where silver eyes had stood. Harktoum sifted through the rubble and came up with a melon sized chunk of stone, the largest part that was left of the golem. Dark eyes looked blankly at him from the remnants of the stone head.

Blazer, sniffing about the chamber, brushed one of the most intact statues and it crashed to one side in a rumbling crash that brought a startled hiss from both of them.
“They…they were alive last night.”
Straightening up, Blazer looked at the chamber as a whole.
“Be that as it may…there’s nothing here now. Nothing but the ghosts of a lost civilization.”
Harktoum walked up to the center column which was now cracked and crumbling along one side.
A faint glimmer flashed at him from the bottom of the bowl shaped depression. Reaching in, Harktoum lifted out a handful of sparkling dust, and let it slip through his fingers back into the column.

Blazer padded over and sniffed at the dust with one nostril.
“Crushed gemstones. Amethyst, emerald, diamond, sapphire, amber, obsidian, ivory….ruby.”
Harktoum nodded, “The golems did it. One with yellow eyes smashed both rubies into dust.”
Shaking his head, Blazer looked around. “There’s nothing here. We have to be moving. I’m sorry you lost Dante. But he was just a golem, another can be made. I’ll be at the camp, don’t tarry too long.”

With that, Blazer padded from the room and from Harktoum’s field of view.
“Just last night…this was all new…alive…”
He looked down at his arm, where Silver eyes had put the glow into him. He felt as if there should be some sort of pressure…or of pain…or SOMETHING. The skin was as unblemished as ever, nothing felt different. Harktoum dug his claws into his own shoulder, drawing pinpricks of blood. What did they do to him! Angry, he kicked the column. He grunted in regret as his toes collided with the stone and popped at the impact. He yelped. At the same time a wild puff of gem dust coughed from the column’s top.

Harktoum sneezed away the cloud and rubbed his sore toes.
“Way to lose your temper again, stupid fool” He grumped.
“Why the hell am I talking to myself?”
Shaking his head in exasperated resignation, he looked at the settling cloud of gems.
“Well no use talking to myself if I don’t gain anything for it.”
Shaking a small bag free of the sand he’d kept in it, Harktoum scooped the gem dust in and cinched it tight.
“Well, you may not be as good a companion as Dante. But at least you can buy a year worth of room and board at the best inn…and I’m talking to a bag of gem dust….”
Shaking his head, He followed Blazer’s path out of the room, casting a single glance back to the empty chamber, thinking at the room, why him?
The room, as wise as its great age merited, didn’t deign to answer.

It was a quick pack up and then Harktoum was ready to go.
With a quick trot, Blazer hopped off the ledge and they were up and flying again.
Tied off, Harktoum drifted off to sleep, trying to make up for the sleepless night, and frankly bored to death. It was too much trouble to try to speak over the rushing wind.

His slumber brought dreams, as exhaustion usually does, but he noticed that things seemed to be more in focus than usual in a dream. Edges were almost too sharp, colors too vibrant. He looked around the dream world and didn’t see anything. The whole place was a perfectly flat plain of a nondescript grey stuff that gave a little under Harktoum’s feet. He flexed his talons, and the tips poked into the ground, but didn’t manage to puncture it.

With a grunt, he was tossed into the air, and landed hard, rolling over one shoulder to land flat on his back looking back at a huge rabbit.
“What the hells?”
At Harktoum’s voice, the rabbit lumped forward and said “good morning Mr. Carrot!” and pounced on him.

Jerking awake, Harktoum just barely managed to latch onto Blazer’s horn, preventing a fall and a quick stop at the end of a rope.
Panting, he realized that he had just dreamed that he was a carrot. A carrot!
“What the heck!” he blurted out in the middle of a chuckle that was gathered by the wind and barely managed to reach his own ears.

Grinning to himself, he settled back into a sit against blazer’s horn, and allowed himself to drift back into sleep. There really was nothing to do up on a dragon’s back.

He looked back over blazer’s rising and falling back to the barely visible mountain where the anchor perched. He fancied a glow along its edges. He followed an imaginary line up into the sky, following a ghost memory of the great tether. As in the vision forced on him by silver eyes, he saw the ghost image of the tether collapse in on itself, rumble to the ground, and dissolve like the fading of a sun afterimage.
He shivered.
The dragon thing that had cut the tether…
Genocide, an entire race wiped from the face of the earth by a single dragon.

He shivered again as he though of the damage a floating city would do if crashed into the ocean. Let alone the cloud of debris and the shock of such a massive impact.
He put the though out of his mind and tried to enjoy himself and keep himself awake.
True the clouds they flew through felt fantastically chill, making him alert and wide eyed, but soon as the wind rushed by his ears, his eyes grew heavy again, the lack of activity was getting to him.

His hand idly strayed to the heartsbond on his chest. Staring into nothing, his fingers traced the lines of the mark. Hard to believe that only weeks ago all he had known was torn from him. His memories flowed up again like some forgotten spring. Images of Linriel, dear dear Linriel, old and wise Born. His kinfolk reveling in death slaughter and destruction. Over and over, the memories played as the day passed slowly, the sun rising and sinking back towards the horizon, and still Blazer flew, ever onward. Once during the flight, Harktoum was jolted to awareness as the great dragon beneath him took an abrupt dive towards something large, feathered, and that made a terrible screeching when the reptilian fangs sunk into it. A burst of feathers and it was all over, and it was back to the monotony of travel.

They touched down before twilight and camped in the shadow of a massive mountain range, the largest peak jutted into high clouds, its top lost beyond sight. Harktoum rolled off of Blazer’s head and set up his sleeping mat while blazer started a cheery fire.
“So,” Harktoum looked up at Blazer, “I take it that huge hunk of earth is your clan’s home then?”
Nodding, Blazer replied “Indeed, The Patron Father is where we make our lair.”
”Then…if we were in such a rush as to merit flying, shouldn’t we continue on to it?”
“Well not really. First of all you. My clan is flame, pure and simple. There are no other creatures that lair there. No humans, no other dragons and certainly no draconians. Needless to say you’d be an attractant for the angry, hurt or simply xenophobic of my clan. And I believe that even I could not protect you from all of them.” He stretched his wings, and Harktoum swore he could hear the tight muscles creak against each other.
”Secondly, Pyros may have only summoned me casually, but he is still Shalkith and would expect a meeting as soon as I arrived. And frankly I’m dead tired from that flight; we covered the breadth of a small nation in two days time. That is no mean feat. I’d like a rest before I meet him.”

“Why would you need a rest? If he’s called you for a social call, wouldn’t you be able to relax a while there?”
Blazer snickered, “Well, with Pyros and I, a friendly meeting could easily turn into a sparring match. Not lethal, but utterly exhausting.” The dragon rolled he into a curl and laid his head down on the moss covered ground. Harktoum noticed that the moss began smoking and shriveling where Blazer lay on it.
Following Harktoum’s gaze, Blazer noticed the moss, and scuffed out the small tongue of flame that had sprouted from one especially dry patch. “Well, I guess I’ve built up a lot of heat from the flight.”
Blazer arched his neck back, as if to exhale a gout of flame, but hesitated at the last moment
“What’s the matter?”
Blazer settled himself down again
”A flame would reveal us. Bah.” Scraping away the earth, he left a large patch of incombustible rock and he promptly went to sleep.

Harktoum, having merely sat on Blazer all day tried to sleep, but was unceasingly restless. He tossed and turned for several minutes before giving up on it and sitting up, watching the guttering flames for a while yet. He didn’t bother gathering more wood from the forest and soon all that was left was a couple of angry red coals in a bed of black. The night closed in on him, the trees looming higher against the star studded sky, and the nightlife of the forest seemed to awaken and fill the darkness with small noises. He laid back and picked shapes out of the stars. Images of himself, holding his sword high, Blazer in full revenant, Linriel…. Flitted across the stars.

A slight glow muted the stars to the northwest. Harktoum rolled himself to find the glow was coming from the mountain Blazer called Patron Father. As he watched, a great shape, seemingly made of lava-shot rock, and only visible because of the glow the molten stone gave off, soared from behind the mountain, circled once, loosed a blast of flame into the sky and winged its way towards the eastern horizon.

Harktoum stared after it, was that Pyros? It certainly was bigger than Blazer….
The glow from the mountain wavered for a second, before guttering down to the faintest line of red.
Time to do some snooping, Harktoum though to himself. It had been a long time since he had done night scouting, and he had never done it when dragons were involved. He might not even get close to that glow. He took off all potentially noisome equipment. Sword, mail, pack, all went into a pile laid alongside his mat. With nothing left that he could think of, Harktoum skittered off into the night, headed towards the mountain ridge. The forest ended not too far away, but Harktoum’s blood was racing as he started the climb. Adrenaline pumped through his veins when he caught a trace of dragon smell on the rocks. He hopped across a gap and almost lost his footing on some loose scree. He saved himself, wincing at the noise of the rocks tumbling down. Was he already so high? The stone rolled for a good thirty second before it hit loam.

A rumble close to him plastered him against the wall, trying to smell as much as the mountain rock as possible.
Lazily, a red scaled head, crowned with panoply of black spikes jutting from a shiny mane of long grey hair.
“Mmmmff” The dragon rumbled something in the language Harktoum heard Blazer and the messenger dragon using, and with no response forthcoming, it pulled its head back into its cave, continuing the sound. Harktoum realized that it was grumbling. He had to put both hands over his mouth to stop himself from laughing.
Once he was sure the dragon had returned to slumber, evident from the great rattling snores from the depths of the cave, he moved carefully over the top rim and continued his diagonal path. He tried to pick out where Blazer and his possessions were in the dark, and thankfully, from this height at least, he could see the faint glimmer of magic on his sword and the books in his pack.
Sighing slightly in relief, it wouldn’t be a good thing to be found wandering about the forest in the morning, he climbed, winging his way for a large span, until he reached a small ridge of rock rimming an obviously cleared patch of land. His head barely peeked over the ridge before he let his wings fold and dropped like a stone. He caught himself a good ten feet below the ledge and promptly pulled himself into a small alcove in the rock. Peeking up, he saw a barely lit burgundy dragon poke its head over the ledge and peered around into the darkness, sniffing this way and that.
“What is it?” A voice slipped from behind the rock ledge, this one speaking in a common tongue that he could understand.
“I smelled something” Answered the one overlooking the ledge.
“Something? Something like what?”
“Something like what is not supposed to be here.”
A bit of shuffling, and another, larger head also looked over, sniffing experimentally.
“It was only a whiff, but I definitely smelled it.” The first one reasserted.
Grunting, the larger leaped from the cliff, his wings trailing flames, and lighting up flickering portions of the mountainside. Harktoum pressed himself tighter against the rock and tried to make himself as rocklike as possible. With a thump, the fiery light faded and the larger dragon positioned itself beside the younger
“Hmm…I smell it now as well, I didn’t see anything though, it was probably a rock lizard or what have you that simply rolled in something unappealing.”
“I guess,” The younger nodded slowly and a small bit of fiery saliva dripped from a fang, splashing down below Harktoum.
Both dragons turned and, for all Harktoum knew, vanished, because as soon as they were out of eyeshot, Harktoum had jumped away from the cliff and dove towards the forest and the safety of Blazer’s camp.

Blazer woke Harktoum just before dawn, the horizon visible from the forest trees was rimmed with the soft rose of the rising sun.
“Time to sup at the demon’s table.”
Harktoum clambered up onto blazer’s head and they took wing. They began to circle over the top rim of the mountains and Harktoum looked down. He saw the ridge where the two dragons were the night before, and sure enough there were dragons there, three of them, of varying sizes. One loosed a column of flame into the air in Blazer’s direction, and Harktoum thought they were to be attacked quickly.
Blazer loosed a returning blast and a smaller puff of flame as he flew over the ledge.
The watching dragons gave a simultaneous roar and lifted their wings high.
It was a greeting, Harktoum realized, Blazer was being welcomed home.

They scudded over the rim of the mountains and Harktoum found himself in a winding maze of knifelike cliffs studded with caves and ledges. Even this early in the morning, dragons were abundant, great red wyrms milled about in singles or pairs, enjoying the sunrise and the growing heat from the sun. Blazer was letting a continuous stream of flame from his mouth now, and all red dragons that he passed returned the fiery greeting with a blast of fire and the raised wing greetings. They crossed into what would be the heart of the maze and the reds grew larger and larger as the progressed. Harktoum was surprised to find that even great beasts, more than half again Blazer’s size, covered in magma and brimstone gave Blazer’s passing form obeisance.

Harktoum was nervous. Being surrounded by so many fire dragons, the smallest on he a seen was larger than he was, each one a deadly reaving figure, both excited him and scared him deep to the bone. If one of these massive creatures they were surrounded by now decided to attack, he couldn’t do much of any damage to the thing, and he believed that Blazer wouldn’t fare much better. And they were traveling to see the lord of these creatures? A creature so powerful that it had cowed these archons of flame and destruction into a semblance of order, Harktoum felt a shiver run up his spine. Above the flying pair, a beast of glowing red scales shot through with veins of glowing flame took flight and glided down to fly wingtip to wingtip with Blazer. Harktoum could feel the heat coming from the creature, and as the beast opened its mouth when its eyes passed over him he thought his life was come to an end.

Instead, the dragon let loose a small gout of flame and tilted its head to one side. Blazer nodded, and the dragon banked away, off to do who knows what. Harktoum wished he could understand what they were saying with all the fire. He had a feeling though, that he wouldn’t like what that big one said about him. Finally, they put down in front of the largest entrance Harktoum had seen yet. It stood at the end of a box canyon, the other two sides of the place had dens as well, but the center den was a quarter again taller and wider than the smaller ones. All around the entrance were great flowing formations of rock, like the hardened flow of magma from a volcano. A large semicircular pool of hardened stone filled that end of the canyon from wall to wall, making a convenient place to peer into the cave. Harktoum hopped down off Blazer’s head, and looked into the blackness, deep in the gloom there was a sullen red glow, though he couldn’t see very far in.

Behind him Blazer drew himself up, arranging his wings high above his back and arching his neck.
“Pyros!” He bellowed at the cave, “Lord Shalkith and Supreme Blood ruby! So you have summoned and so I have come.”
From in the cave, Harktoum saw the dull glow brighten slowly until it filled the entrance and was painful to look at.
In a rush, a wave of molten stone rolled out from the cave entrance to flow sluggishly towards Harktoum and Blazer. He danced backwards to get out of the way of the fiery stone.
A towering inferno of amber and orange blasted forth from the cave, sending out a blast of superheated air and making Harktoum recoil. He squinted his eyes against the glare and the heat.

From the cloud of inferno came an infernal beast at least three hundred feet long and well over a hundred feet tall when on its haunches. The body of Pyros seethed with pure fire, hues of red and gold shot through with angry yellows and oranges. His head, held high and proud sported a massive pair of horns hat split to end in four great points of flame, Fangs of pure heat peeked from the flaming lips. The fangs were as long as Harktoum’s sword. Flowing down from the crown of his reptilian head, a great ridge of blazing fire crawled its way out of sight behind the great flaming neck and reappearing on his back, running along the dragon’s spine to end in a wavering blade of flame at Pyros’ tail.

Drawing himself up to a comfortable sitting position, Pyros arranged his wings carefully, and Harktoum caught a glimpse of a second pair of wing folded underneath the great flaming pinions. As he watched, Pyros slowly sunk into the melting stone, his foreclaws, able to bury him completely under their flames, sunk up to the nails into the magma. Most stunning were the flowing designs of bluish flames that danced along Pyros’ limbs like tattoos. Eyes of green flame blazed from the infernal mask and mingled with a great mantle of fire that surrounded Pyros’ head like some elaborate symbol of kingship.

With a roar, Pyros spread his wings wide; all four of them, before settling down from what Harktoum assumed had been a formal entrance. He opened his flaming maw and gave an amused chuckle before speaking in a voice that shook the air and bespoke of destruction held in check.
“Blazer, greater Blood ruby, and cherished kith, welcome home…So you have found your spell then?”
Blazer shook his head, “No, not quite yet. I still search for a way to regress”
“So then some young upstart had defeated you? Hard to believe.”
Grunting, Blazer replied “I’m not as weak as that, you flaming fool. I haven’t been defeated since YOU.”
Obviously puzzled, Pyros cocked his head to one side. The humanesque action disturbed Harktoum for some reason, “Then how is it that you have come home like, this?”
Blazer shrugged noncommittally, “I said I haven’t found a way to regress, not that I haven’t found anything. This is a spell that lets me return to a younger body, though it takes constant power to maintain, and the further one uses the spell to de-age, the more power it takes to maintain. AT the moment I’m maintaining for the sake of-”
Pyros cut in with a snort, “Ah, Well then! Put away the thin guise, you’re home! Relax. I insist”
“I would, but as I was saying, I’m maintaining this for my companion. Harktoum, step back, I’m going to humor the old bugger” Blazer began a low chant that Harktoum didn’t recognize.
”OLD! HA! You’re the codger here!” Pyros laughed at Blazer, sharing the companionship of old camaraderie, he stopped mid laugh as Harktoum nodded to Blazer and hopped out from his shadow and across the stone canyon, “What is THAT doing here?” HE asked with a hiss.

Blazer, finishing his chant, exploded. Harktoum yelped in surprise and pain as a searing wave of flame flowed from Blazer, searing his skin and forcing him into a crouched form.
He looked up to find another great dragon of flame where Blazer had stood. The dragon held Blazer’s features, though they were wrought in flames, and a more elaborate mane of flames than even Pyros. Only slightly smaller than Pyros, Blazer ruffled his now flaming wings, sending a shower of embers down to the ground. To Harktoum’s dismay, he found that Blazer’s flames were just as hot as Pyros’ and had already begun melting the stone beneath him.

“Ahh,” Blazer sighed and stretched his wings as the sound of an inferno raged in the box canyon. Both Pyros and Blazer were using air at a tremendous rate and Harktoum had to gasp to keep breathing, it was like trying to catch his breath in a windstorm.
“What is what doing here?” he asked Pyros.

The great flaming beast waved a claw Harktoum’s way, “THAT. That Draconian. That foul perversion of our nature.” Waves of heat washed over Harktoum with every breath.
“He is my guest, is there something the matter with that?”

Pyros swiveled on blazer and for a second, Harktoum though that he was going to attack. “As if you even had to ask! You well know what happened the last time one of their kind was brought here. The cursed creature betrayed the young fool who brought him under good intentions and scurried back to his tainted warren with our knowledge.”

Blazer shot back, “This is not the same. This one, Harktoum, is not the same as the last draconian brought here, and I am not the same dragon.”
Surprisingly, Pyros flinched as if struck, but returned to anger quickly, “It does not matter, he is of their tainted race and destined to fall from any small grace he has gained. Forsake this path now, before he betrays you as Born betrayed me. Nothing of good can come of association with that race”

With a jerk, a huge puzzle piece fell into place, and Harktoum rocked back on his feet. Of course! Why hadn’t he realized it before? Born had even said that it was a dragon named Pyros that gifted him with the book. His hand slipped to the satchel where the book was sitting and he gripped the spine tightly.
“Pyros, surely emotion and hurt is tainting your judgment in this-“Blazer began, but Harktoum cut in abruptly.
“You knew Born?” He blurted

Pyros hissed harshly and arched his head down to Harktoum, forcing him back a couple of steps by the intensity of his gaze, let alone the heat, “You will only speak when spoken too, little maggot! I knew Born, much to my misfortune. I befriended him and thought him to be different than his bloodthirsty kin, I. was. Wrong. He took what knowledge I shared with him and then stole back to his filthy warren to taint the learnings I gave him to his own purposes, and you will do the same if I don’t stop Blazer now.”

Harktoum reached into the satchel and pulled out the book Born gave him, “He did not in fact do that.”
Pyros was visibly rocked by the sudden appearance of the book. Harktoum let the book swing at the end of his arm. “I stand here as proof that Born didn’t forsake you or your teachings of Gaia. He is the one who gave me this book, and the one who kindled the spark of virtue in me.”

“You lie. Your kin has always been self depredicating. No doubt you knew that traitorous scum, killed him and stole the book.” Pyros retorted sharply
“Be reasonable! Surely I would not be traveling in the company of such evil. On my honor as a Blood ruby, I have called his self into accountance and have not found him wanting” Blazer huffed from the side, “Do you doubt my honor?”

Pyros shook his head slightly as he looked back to Blazer,”Not your honor, only your means. It is well known that emotion can cloud one’s judgment, and frankly, you have long had an obsession with these creatures. Long enough to bring the validity of your test into question.”

“And your long hatred of these creatures, unjustly earned, taints your own judgments into simple racism. Your hatred brings you to the point of foolishness!’ Hissed Blazer, the fire crackling about his neck flaring to life.

Pyros eyes flashed literally, arcing blasts of green flame flew from his eyes as he deliberately walked to stand directly in front of Blazer. He looked down at Blazer imperiously, and almost whispered, “Remember your place, you speak above your station.”

Blazer drew himself up in response, though he still had to look up slightly to meet Pyros’ eyes, “I speak, as you well know, as one who has seen more years than most others, more even than you. Do not confuse insolence with wisdom for the simple sake of your pride!” Tongues of flame darted between the two elder wyrms, Physical manifestations of the mutual ire in both dragons.

Funny, Harktoum thought, but not really surprising, that their temperaments followed in suit to their home element. SO quick to anger and rage. It was almost ludicrous to believe that such a warlike species could build a workable civilization.

“At the least, speak to him with an open mind. Then, if you still feel the need, exact your pound of flesh.”