Haku looked up to observe the sky, where he saw a huge shadow descending towards them. However, it was immediately clear to him that something was wrong. That dragon wasn't descending as Neytiri would have done, circling until she landed on the ground; on the contrary, they were flying in a straight line. And they were way too fast! If they continued at that speed, as soon as they landed they would have created a gust of wind that would sweep all the little dragons onto the beach!
Rather than land, that strange shadow seemed to have launched from a distance with all their strength straight towards them!
The speed of that shadow was so fast that soon Haku was able to see them more clearly. That body was different from his mother's. The scales had an exclusively reddish color. The horns were longer. And there were many other details…
It took his brain a few seconds to connect all the pieces, and when it did his blood froze and his heart seemed to explode in his chest. A primal fear that Haku had never felt, even when he was captured by humans, seemed to possess him and strangle his soul directly.
That wasn't Neytiri... it was another dragon!
And he was attacking them!
**************
Kalos had waited even too long for his liking.
Staying near the territory of another dragon, and a bigger one with two domains to boot, wasn't safe at all. He had to be very careful when hunting and had to make sure he hid his scent and was never noticed. He knew that if Neytiri found out, she would have killed him without a second thought. The little time they'd spent together meant nothing to the ruthless dragons' mentality.
The life of Kalos therefore had become hard and difficult. He just wanted to finally be able to leave that place and return to the territory he had occupied and defended for all the long decades he had lived. In the end, however, what he had been waiting for had happened: Neytiri had taken her children and had brought them out of the cave, so that they could have some experience in the outside world.
That was his chance.
He could have simply waited for Neytiri to chase her children away and kill them when they were no longer under her protection, but in the future the baby dragons would have became much more wary and difficult to track from above. Only now that they were inexperienced enough to remain exposed near the lake he had a chance to attack.
If he had missed that opportunity to kill the male babies, if he hadn't managed to eliminate them in that short period in which they hadn't yet learned how to hide well, he would hardly have been able to get rid of them in the future. And consequently within a few years his own children would have became his opponents in the struggle for reproduction, and he absolutely couldn't allow that.
His plan was simple but effective: wait for Neytiri to leave and then attack from above. Since the baby dragons were exposed on the lakeshore, away from obstacles or places where they could have taken refuge, he could have lunged at them and grabbed them as if he were a bird of prey. For this he had perched in a crevice hidden in the middle of the mountains, from which he could keep an eye on the situation, and then he had waited.
Unfortunately, however, Neytiri hadn't let her guard down. For some reason she didn't seem willing to stray too far from the place where she had left her children. Indeed, more than hunting it seemed that she was looking for something. Kalos suspected that some adversary must have entered her territory and threatened the baby dragons; this would also have explained Neytiri's outburst the day before, who had set fire to a patch of forest as if she were trying in every way to incinerate someone. Kalos imagined it was some stupid newcomer.
Kalos didn't care which creature would have been foolish enough to challenge the wrath of a mother dragon; what interested him was that this made it very difficult for him to carry out his plan. He couldn't risk approaching if Neytiri was so wary! If she had seen him she would surely have attacked him instantly!
In the end Kalos had decided to bet everything on his speed. He was, after all, smaller than Neytiri and consequently faster. If he timed it right, he could have attacked, killed the troublesome spawn, and gone away before the mother dragon reached him. He'd waited for hours and finally, when Neytiri ducked and attacked some prey in the forest, he decided to act. Like an arrow shot at maximum power, he had flown in a few moments towards the lake. The air around him shifted with such violence that birds within a hundred yards of him were blown away and some even had their bones shattered by the force of the impact and fell.
Neytiri's roar came shortly after: the dragoness had already noticed him. However, he was already too far away and flying too fast for her to reach him in time. He could have eliminated at least one of the baby dragons!
He had already identified his target. Strangely, there was only one male baby dragon on the lakeshore, playing with a small snake. He didn't know where the others were, but he didn't care: at the moment, one was enough!
His claws spread, ready to strike. A single swipe of his paws and the baby dragon would have died instantly. He could have used his fire or some other magic, but given the distance he could have missed, or worse, he could have risked killing his daughters too, and that wasn't what he wanted. Therefore, the best choice was to rely on his deadly claws. For the baby dragon, even just being brushed by them would have been like being hit by a sharp rock hurled from a catapult!
The young dragon had remained motionless, but he had stopped playing with the snake and had looked up, observing the dragon in the sky, probably thinking he was his mother. However, it didn't take long before he realized that something was wrong. After a few moments he started running towards the trees, looking for shelter, and the other little dragons did the same: they understood that what was coming wasn't their mother. Kalos ignored his daughters running in all directions, focusing only on his son; the little dragon was running desperately, but there was no way he could outrun Kalos' wings.
The claws were ready to strike. Kalos could hear the rush of Neytiri's wings behind him, but he was too fast. He would have killed the baby dragon and escaped long before she could intervene. The distance between them kept closing. One hundred meters, fifty meters, twenty meters… ten meters… now his son was basically under him… just a little more!
The claws came within half a meter from the escaping baby dragon, so close that Kalos could almost feel the texture of his son's skin. An instant before his paws struck him and cracked his spine, however, another little dragon appeared out of nowhere and struck the other with the head in the side, sending both of them rolling to the left.
The sudden change of direction caught Kalos completely off guard; before he knew it he had already outrun the two baby dragons by at least a hundred meters and his claws were slicing through the ground. He was going at such speed that he was unable to stop, not before hitting several tree trunks, which shattered to the ground with a bang.
"Damn! Why did the other child intervene!?" he screamed in his mind as he shook his head to recover from the impact. A dragon that risk his life to help another dragon? He had never heard of such a thing!
Moved by anger he was about to turn around and kill them both, but he quickly realized that he had missed his chance. Neytiri was now much closer. After he saw her, Kalos regained his reason and understood that he had to leave immediately or he would no longer have been able to distance her; he didn't have time to get to the children and kill them. He had to flee, and quickly.
So he swallowed his pride and took off, heading for the mountains. Kalos was furious, but he consoled himself that he would have other chances in the coming days. He would have tried again soon, and this time he wouldn't have been taken aback.
The baby dragons saw the new dragon fly away and their mother pass over their heads like a fury, so fast that even though she was more than fifty meters high they could feel the movement of air from the ground in the form of a wind so strong that some bushes were uprooted. The two huge predators soon disappeared into the sky, headed who knows where.
Everyone's attention was drawn to the two young dragons who had been the protagonists of the attack. One of them was Haku, and he was the one who had rushed to save his brother in danger. The other, the one who had nearly been mowed down by the claws of Kalos, was Rhaegal, the only male baby dragon left at the lake. Both had ended up on their stomachs from the blow and appeared to have become unable to move.
Haku for the first time in his life wasn't thinking about anything. It almost felt like he was in a dream. His mind seemed to have shut down in shock and he could hear nothing but the furious pounding of his heart. He couldn't remember ever having felt such a sensation before. Not when he'd feared the white wolves would have smelled him, not when the newcomers had caught him, not when his mother had gotten mad at him. He felt as if he had become an ant and had just dodged a tiger's attack.
So was that the real meaning of the word 'terror'?
Through his eyes he could see Darbi saying something, but his hearing seemed to have shut down. He couldn't understand what his brother was saying to him. His sisters also started yelling at him, but he couldn't hear them. He felt nothing except his pounding heart and wheezing.
Then, without any warning, one of his sisters (Kialandì) pushed the others away and bit his neck. Haku barely felt the pain, but he still managed to notice it. But Kialandì didn't stop: he lifted him up and started shaking him violently.
This was enough to reactivate his brain. Suddenly, Haku was able to think again. Maybe it was for the pain, or maybe for the shaking, or something else entirely, but he was able to regain his consciousness. And with the thought, his senses also returned. Finally he was able to hear again, and almost instinctively he shouted: "Okay! Now stop!"
Kialandì looked satisfied. "Finally. I was beginning to believe you were dead" she teased him, though with a lot of worry in her voice.
Darbi looked him straight in the eye. Haku didn't remember ever seeing so much concern in his brother's pupils. "Haku, are you okay?" he asked apprehensively.
"Yes... Yes, I think I'm okay". Haku pulled himself up, trying to stay remain stable on his unsteady legs, and he looked at Rhaegal. His brother didn't seem to feel much better than him. He had no physical injuries, of course, but it was clear from his wide eyes and heavy breathing that he had just seen his entire short life flash before his eyes. However, he didn't seem to have lost his mind. Probably Kialandì or another of her sisters must have given him the same 'treatment' they had reserved for Haku, and therefore he was able to think again. "Haku, you... saved me..." Rhaegal barely managed to mutter.
Haku didn't answer. He didn't even know why he had done it. Rushing to the rescue had been completely foolish and illogical; he hadn't planned it, he hadn't even thought of it. For some reason his body had moved by itself and rescued his brother in need, as if he had forgotten the instinct of self-preservation.
"Don't thank me. Get up instead" he scolded him. He decided that at the moment it was better to think about something else: after all, he didn't know if they were out of danger. It wasn't the right time to have an existential crisis. "Listen to me, everyone! We'll hide until our mother will come back. Follow me into the forest! Find some trees with very thick foliage and cover yourself with bushes and branches. Don't move, don't talk, don't make a single sound! Don't even breath if it is necessary until our mother will return!"
"But... how will we know if it will be our mother, and not the other dragon?" his sister Serengal asked.
"She'll call us. We'll recognize her by her voice" Haku replied. "Hurry now! We can't waste time! Everyone in the forest!"
His siblings didn't make him repeat it again. They didn't know what was going on, who the other dragon was, or why he attacked them, but one thing was certain: they weren't safe in the open. Hiding was the best option right now. They ran into the forest and hid under the ferns, trying to resist the urge to shiver. Even though the other baby dragons weren't nearly killed by the new dragon like Haku and Rhaegal, in fact, they were still scared to death.
For the first time in their short lives, all of the young dragons were experiencing what the true fear was.