"Those creatures? Oh, that patethic group of trespassers" Neytiri's gaze hardened. "Those were humans"
"Humans?" Haku had never heard that word before. "How could they talk? I thought only dragons could do that"
"Oh, no, not at all" Neytiri replied. "There are many other intelligent species and races besides us. In the outside world, beyond the mountains, there are a lot of them, and they are all different"
Haku's eyes widened. Were there other intelligent creatures besides dragons? Other races with their own culture, knowledge, hunting techniques? And was that a good thing or not? Given what they had just experienced, he thought it was very negative. "So humans are..."
"One of those intelligent races, yes" Neytiri said. "From what I know, humans are supposed to be one of the largest and most prosperous races, as well as one of the strongest"
"I thought dragons were the strongest race!" Darbi exclaimed. Had their mom lied about that too?
"Dragons are the strongest race of all, but they are few. Taken individually, no human, indeed no member of any another race can do anything against a dragon. But many of them, united and together, can instead defeat it" Neytiri explained. "And like I said, humans are just one of many races out there. There are elves, beastmen, goblins, dwarves, orcs… loads of other races, all with a high population density. By contrast, we dragons are very few"
Haku could fully understand it. He had seen how the white wolves defeated the karkadann, he knew how much his and Darbi's chances against their prey had increased when they began to work together, and he had seen how easily the humans had caught him and Darbi. The number guaranteed the strength. "How many other races are there?"
Neytiri shrugged. "I have no idea. A lot. I don't know, I didn't travel very much around the world, and the few I've seen I've never interacted with, except for fighting. I don't know how many they are. We dragons don't see much difference between them, we just call them newcomers"
Haku understood that he wouldn't have gotten much out of his mother in this regard, which annoyed him a lot: he had learned that knowing his opponent was important, so receiving such little detailed information was really bothersome. "If humans and other races draw their power from the group, why don't we dragons also unite in a single front? You said it yourself, a dragon will always win against one of these... newcomers! So if the newcomers out there are so many, then we dragons should unite against them! We could defend ourselves much better!"
"And in doing so, our family would remain united" he thought without giving voice to those words.
Neytiri was silent for a moment, then she sighed: "I too asked my mother the same question when I was young and we still lived together. I will tell you the same story that she told me, and that she had heard from her mother at her time, who in turn had heard it from her grandmother, and so on" she said. "Many hundreds of thousands of years ago, the world was very different from how it is now. The flora and the fauna were much larger and stronger. With one single hunt, we dragons could find a prey large enough to feed us for weeks. We had all the food what we wanted and thanks to this we quickly became a lot. We formed clans, then kingdoms, then empires. We all lived together and defended each other. We didn't have to worry about survival and dedicated ourselves to family, arts, knowledge and much more. It was our golden age. And during this time, the progenitors of the newcomers lived underground, too afraid of our might to emerge. There was no one but us who could rule the world, and nothing on this earth could threaten us"
Haku's eyes sparkled as he imagined the golden age his mother described. A world where dragons lived together and they didn't have to worry about how to survive. He could almost see them, huge clans of dragons all stationed together on the same mountain. But from his mother's tone, he had already understood that that story wasn't going to end well. "And then what happened?"
Neytiri let out a deep puff from her nostrils. "I wish I could give you a more detailed explanation, but the truth is... nobody knows for sure. It was an event that had never happened before and never happened again. Maybe it was a natural event, or the will of some higher entity, or perhaps it was simply what fate had chosen... the fact is that the world met an unprecedented disaster. Death descended on the world in the form of a second sun"
Haku's eyes widened: "A... second sun?" he whispered, looking at the big round light in the sky and trying to imagine its twin suddenly appearing.
Neytiri nodded. "It happened all of a sudden. Without any signal, a second sun appeared in the sky and shone incessantly for about a month, heating the world to excessive temperatures and burning all existing plants. Countless animals were killed by the fires and heat, decimating the our food supplies all over the world. At first, our dragon ancestors didn't care about the matter, considering that second sun an interesting but fleeting phenomenon. They were convinced that they would be able to survive it without problems. But they were wrong, oh yes, they were completely wrong. While the second sun was still shining in the sky, suddenly it was as if the mana vanished from the world. The dragons lost all their powers. And while the dragons still tried to figure out what had happened, the situation worsened to unimaginable levels. Suddenly, everything that was exposed to sunlight started to die, and just going outside during the day became life threatening. According to the stories, it was enough for a dragon to expose his scales to sunlight, and he immediately began to feel sick, vomiting blood, covered in blisters, until he died. And even without exposure to sunlight, many dragons began to fall ill. It was as if the air had turned to poison"
Haku shivered slightly at that thought. Die just because you went out during the day? The air turned into poison? It must have been terrifying...
"But the catastrophe didn't end there" Neytiri continued. "Countless calamities swept the world one after another. Lightning storms devastated everything, hurricanes and cyclones of continental proportions swept away what was left, clouds covered the sun cooling the world until it was covered in snow and ice. Basically almost everything that existed died, reducing life to a few lucky survivors underground. For thousands of years, the entire world was a hostile and deadly place, and without their powers, dragons were exterminated. To survive, some of our ancestors took refuge in deep underground caves and hibernated there. Only a few of them managed to survive, almost exclusively babies. And even when the dragons awoke and discovered that the disaster was over, they had to work very hard to be able to find enough food, since the ecosystem was still recovering. This caused the dragons to split up, since there wasn't enough food for them all. This is how our philosophy was born, which is that every dragon thinks only of himself. There was so little food that many of us didn't even disdain cannibalism... and when the world's ecosystem was finally restored, it was already too late"
Neytiri seemed to be homesick as she spoke. Which was odd, since she wasn't technically born at the time. "The elves, the humans, the dwarves... all those we collectively call newcomers had already multiplied so much that they outnumbered us many times over. As soon as they realized their advantage, these creatures launched a crusade against us. They didn't want to risk that we regroup. They killed thousands of us and the few survivors retreated away from their cities and villages. In doing so, the space and food available to us became scarce and over time they became even more restricted, so we dragons were forced to remain solitary and maintain our violent lifestyle"
Haku listened his mother with incredible attention. It was the first time he had heard such a story, and he was fascinated by it. So the coexistence of dragons wasn't an impossible event; simply the current circumstances prevented it. He almost felt angry, even though he didn't know with whom: if it hadn't been for that ancient catastrophe caused by that mysterious second sun, maybe he and his siblings now wouldn't have had to fear for their lives... "Then why do we continue to remain separated? If we get together we can..."
"Aren't you listening to me? We missed the opportunity" his mother immediately interrupted him. "There are now too many newcomers than us. Even if you managed to convince all the surviving dragons to unite in a single front, a task far from simple, we would still be defeated; perhaps we would take many newcomers with us to the grave, but we wouldn't be able to obtain a victory. The disproportion of forces between us and them is too great, and although I know that even newcomers often have conflicts with each other, they wouldn't hesitate a single second to unite against us if such a thing happened. They fear us too much to allow us to live together again. Stop dreaming, Haku: we dragons have already lost the battle. The world is no longer ours and there is no way it will ever return to us again. All we can do now is keep each other apart by newcomers". Neytiri shook her head. "That's why I tell you to drop now the idea of keeping your family together. When you'll be an adult, to have enough food to support all your brothers and sisters you'll need a territory at least twenty times larger than this, and there are none. You will inevitably end up including a city or a village in your territory, and the newcomers will come to kill you and all your siblings. You may win some battles, maybe a lot of them, but you will be overwhelmed in the end. So, Haku, forget about the silly idea of protecting the family and think for yourself, like all dragons do: trust me, you'll have already enough trouble like this"
But Haku wasn't going to listen to his mother. Her arguments were logical, but Haku could retort with the same logic: if newcomers multiplied so rapidly, then how much time would have they needed to colonize every available territory? The dragons would have only ended up dwindling in number and having access to less and less food, until they disappeared altogether. No, withdrawing and surrendering might be a good idea in the short term, but it wasn't at all in the long run. The dragons were just postponing their extermination. If no one did anything they would have been condemned.
No, there had to be another way. And if there wasn't, Haku would have created it. Only the weak bowed, and Haku didn't want to be weak. He preffered to die strong and for something he believed in, rather than live the life of a weak outcast hiding on some mountain waiting to be found and killed. "How many newcomers does it take to take down an adult dragon?" he asked.
Neytiri shrugged. "I have no idea. If they're all like those guys who came before, then it would take at least ten thousand. But I've heard a few stories in my life of some newcomers who had reached an extraordinary level of power, and that in just five or six was enough to slay a full-grown dragon"
Haku shook his head in disappointment. That information was too vague! They were of no use to him at all! He needed more! He wanted reliable, secure, verifiable information!
And he would have gotten them, whatever the cost. He had to be able to discover exactly the strength of the newcomers, or all his efforts would be in vain. And his calculating mind had already devised a plan to obtain them.