Dracoa coiled up in the corner of a dimly lit room, feeling her scales burn with heat as she hid her head under her wings in embarrassment.
"I'm not mad," a small voice said from in front of her. "I was just a little surprised, is all."
Dracoa only coiled deeper into the corner. "That's not it," she mumbled.
Dracoa could almost hear the confusion in the room. She could hear Draiken, the owner of the voice, move around the room a few times, as if pacing, before starting to eat something.
Dracoa lifted her wing enough for one of her eyes to peek out. Sitting at a small rock serving as a table a little ways away was a small black dragon with large gray fangs sticking down from his upper jaw. He had an innocent confused expression on his face as he munched on a few small strips of meat he had found lying around on the ground. His clever black eyes were staring aimlessly at the wall behind Dracoa, occasionally glancing at Dracoa with a tinge of worry. Dracoa's stomach growled. One small bird creature after almost three days was not enough to satisfy her.
Draiken flinched slightly at the sound and looked at Dracoa.
"You should eat something," he said.
"I'm fine," Dracoa mumbled back.
Draiken finished chewing and swallowed, before picking up a curved plate of metal that was sitting on the table in front of him. He put it on his face, covering his eyes and most of his snout. He then wandered over to Dracoa and lifted her wing with his small tail. Dracoa squinted up at Draiken looking curiously at her.
"You look hungry," he said. "You should eat."
Dracoa gave him an irritated look. Draiken ignored it and shoved a piece of meat in her mouth. Dracoa kept giving him a look of irritation as she greedily chewed the meat and swallowed it hungrily.
"Did I do something wrong?" Draiken asked.
"No," Dracoa grumbled.
"Why do you look so irritated?"
"I'm not irritated," Dracoa snapped.
Draiken looked even more confused, but seemed to decide that it wasn't worth much thought and wandered out of the room.
"Well, come over to the forge when you feel better," Draiken said as he left.
Dracoa curled back up in the corner, feeling the embarrassment rise to heat up her scales again. She had wandered into Draiken's cave in a trance due to hunger, in a state halfway between sleep and waking, and curled up around Draiken to sleep as if he were her child.
"He's not even dead," Dracoa mumbled, berating herself for being so doubtful of her own eyes. She glanced around the room briefly, seeing the pile of leaves Draiken slept on, a pile of leaves that seemed to be stained with recently dried blood, a few random pieces of meat lying around, and a suspiciously pulsing black lump sitting in the corner.
Dracoa lifted herself up and ate another piece of meat. Her hunger was lifting itself. She could think clearly now.
"It wasn't a dream," she murmured to herself. "He really is alive."
But how? Does he have multiple lives or something? Dracoa thought to herself.
She had clearly stabbed Draiken through the chest, killing him. The memory caused a twinge of pain to flash through Dracoa's chest. She quickly pushed the thought to the side. I should apologize to him for that, she told herself. After Draiken had died, something strange happened to his body. It lifted itself into a shape similar to a wyvern, albeit smaller and more draconic, surrounded by a miasma of black smoke, sporting Draiken's signature pair of fangs and metal mask. Ezarik called it Shadowfang, and it was a monster that took every single gem keeper, the Overseer, and Ezarik to defeat, at the cost of both the Overseer and Ezarik's lives. They had killed that monster, wrapped its remains in wind, and cast it into the void. There should be no trace of Draiken left after that, yet here he was, alive and well, the same small dragon obsessed with blacksmithing that Dracoa knew.
Dracoa took a deep breath. I should talk to him.
Dracoa nodded to herself, affirming her resolve, and slowly uncurled, leaving the dim room and following the rocky tunnel out to where Draiken's forge was.
As she approached, she could hear the steady clang of metal on metal, and the crackling of a roaring fire. As she rounded the corner and ducked through the low archway leading into the forge, she caught sight of a small dragon facing away from the doorway, pounding away at an unfinished sword with a small hammer shimmering with magic, illuminated by a flickering yellow fire illuminating a dark, roughly carved stone room. Dracoa slowly slithered up, gradually approaching until she was standing directly behind him.
Dracoa's breath caught in her throat.
"Um…" Dracoa said hesitantly, immediately losing the courage to speak.
"All good now?" Draiken asked, briefly glancing back at Dracoa before returning to his work.
Dracoa nodded, but immediately realized that Draiken couldn't see her.
"Yes," she mumbled.
She paused, thousands of thoughts piling up at the tip of her tongue, which one by one cowered in fear and retreated the moment they were about to leave her mouth.
"I'm not mad, by the way," Draiken mumbled in a voice that was barely audible over the clang of metal on metal and the crackle of the fire.
"About what?" Dracoa asked.
"What do you think?"
Dracoa paused.
"Still, I shouldn't have done that."
"It's fine," Draiken said. "It just surprised me is all."
"I see," Dracoa said quietly.
"You would be surprised too if you woke up and found your old friend wrapped around you like a nest."
Dracoa stiffened and coughed.
"That… wasn't what I meant to say," she mumbled.
Draiken stopped hammering long enough to look Dracoa in the eye.
"Oh. That's what you meant."
"Yeah," Dracoa said quietly, averting her gaze. "Sorry."
Draiken sighed and put down his hammer.
"Hey, Dracoa," Draiken said.
Dracoa slowly turned back to look at Draiken. His soulless eyes stared at her through his mask.
"Did you forget our promise?" Draiken asked quietly.
Dracoa hesitated.
"You haven't forgotten, right?"
Dracoa nodded.
"If you ever go insane, I need to be the one to kill you," she mumbled.
Draiken nodded. "So why are you feeling sorry?"
"I hurt you, and… killed you." The words were hard to say, as if they were stuck in Dracoa's throat.
Draiken tapped his chest. "I'm right here, aren't I? Do I look dead to you?"
Dracoa shook her head. "It still feels wrong."
Draiken chuckled darkly. "You'll get used to it."
A brief thought crossed Dracoa's mind, a remnant of their last conversation. She looked at Draiken curiously.
"Weren't you… going to go kill the Elder Dragons? What are you doing here?"
Draiken kept hammering the sword he was creating.
"Well," he said quietly, "I'm not sure anymore."
Dracoa recoiled slightly. "What? I thought you wanted-"
"I know," Draiken interrupted. He fell silent, continuing his work as he struggled to put what he wanted to say into words.
"I… had a bit of time to think," he finally said, his voice barely audible over the clang of metal, "and I don't think I really need to take revenge on all of the Elder Dragons. Just the Dragon Queen. No, I shouldn't call her that anymore. She's not the queen anymore. What was her name again?"
Draiken paused to dredge up a memory of a time that history itself had almost forgotten.
"Mylu. That was her name. I'm only killing Mylu. Not any of her children."
Dracoa blinked in confusion. "Why? Didn't they-"
"Let's clarify something," Draiken interrupted, pausing his hammering to fix Dracoa with a cold, sidelong glance. "The one who killed my parents was Mylu. I'm only going to kill her. No one else."
Dracoa's blood boiled at this words as memories began to flash through her head. Vile, bloody memories filled with dust and darkness as she and the rest of her kind fled and hid from the tyrannical rule of the Elder Dragons.
"Also, I don't particularly feel like challenging all seven at once," Draiken said, turning back to his work without noticing Dracoa's rage.
"But they're evil! Every last one of them!" Dracoa snapped, unable to withhold her fury. "Did you forget how many creatures died because of them?"
Draiken let out a long sigh and put down his hammer. He turned around and looked straight into Dracoa's furious eyes.
"If that's your definition of evil," he said quietly, "then what does that make me?"
Dracoa opened her mouth to retort, but no words came out. The rational part of her mind wanted to answer, but her emotional side, which had been taking the reins more and more, held it in check. Dracoa could only stare blankly at Draiken, before dipping her head.
"Sorry," she muttered.
Draiken turned back to the anvil. Noticing that the metal he had been working on had cooled, he put it back into the fire.
"I get where you're coming from, though," Draiken murmured, "but my revenge is with Mylu and Mylu alone. I don't intend on killing anyone else on the way."
Draiken's voice came in a quiet whisper that blended into the crackle of flames and the scrape of metal against stone as he pulled the now red-hot piece of metal he was working on out of the fire. "I'm done killing. Doesn't matter how bad they are, I'm not killing anymore."
Dracoa looked up at the little dragon, framed in the gentle orange glow of the forge, hammering away in silence. An image suddenly appeared in Dracoa's mind; a lonely dragon, roaming around a dark cave in a land devoid of life, crafting weapons nobody will use, eating the same food day after day, staring blankly into oblivion as his body moved on its own, following habit ingrained through centuries of practice, all while the guilt of murder and the isolation from losing almost everyone weighed down on his shoulders, pressing with a persistent, cold force. Dracoa was suddenly filled with regret at her outburst.
"Sorry," she said again. Draiken did not respond, but continued to hammer away in silence.