Mosaic

The river ran backwards when the Queen vanished. She was the last human. Eventually, they were nothing more than pages in history books.

“The Humans of the past believed Dragons asked for female sacrifices in order to eat them, but in truth the dragons used them for procreation. Death of the Human female however, was always a necessary end result. The Dragon is as particular about the female he breeds with as he is about his hordes of treasure. If the female sacrifice which the humans provided did not satisfy his procreational instinct he would kill her to preserve the secret of his nature. If the female sacrifice was the correct match, and should she survive the actual procreation and childbirth, she would at that point still be killed to continue the secrecy of the Dragon nature.” Lucion had forced all that out in one breath and now finally inhaled, his gaze moving from the ceiling to David’s face, “are you satisfied, or do I really need to continue?”

David was sitting back in a brass chair, while Lucion slouched and rolled his eyes in the middle of the brass and gold room, filled to the brim with books, with brass and gold covers. David was forcibly pounding history into his younger brother’s head and he wasn’t sure which one of them was tortured more by the process.

“Continue” David said, rubbing his left temple with his middle finger.

Lucion narrowed his muddy-green eyes, his mouth tight for a couple of silent seconds. Then he restarted in a stupidly elongated monotone.

“A number of exceptions to the above rule led to the near extinction of the dragon kind, the most notable being that of Ishmael. Ishmael confused his Dragon desire to own treasure with Human love, and forced a woman named Oliana Castillo into marriage.” Lucion snorted and continued, “keeping Oliana locked with his hordes he produced a number of viable offspring with her, until the day she lost her sanity in the captivity…All the gods, beasts and humans, I know this shit, and who cares anyways!?”

“Fine. Stop the monologue. Give me the summary.”

“The Human woman died. The idiot Ishmael’s treasure was stolen.” Lucion stretched out to his full, lean height and groaning let the scaled wings rip through his greyish-black, human skin as it turned in on itself to reveal dark, blackish-green scale.

David rose to a similar, though bulkier, greyish-black height, and snarled for Lucion to get back into human form, otherwise he knew the lesson was over. Lucion let out a laugh, throwing his head and waves of black hair back as he chucked his white and gold robe aside. His laugh now sounded somewhere between a human mocking and an animal growl as his fingers and toes stretched out into claws and his eyes elongated into green slits.

“All pure Humans now exist in some bullshit, mythical, parallel world because of the dumbass hags and I have to go to a dumbass backwards river for a pointless, decennial ceremony serenading non-existent human simpletons. The end.” As Lucion spoke, his form change completed and with it his voice changed, starting out human and ending in a hoarse, growl of barely distinguishable sounds. He jumped out the open wall and flew off.

David breathed out slowly and stood up. He stepped over to the open wall as well, which he had been sitting beside, and which faced out, over the edge of a cliff. He watched Lucion fly down to the water below, diving in for a quick and brutal hunt; Lucion style. David briefly considered going after him and dragging him back, but decided he wasn’t mentally up for it. He needed a break from Lucion more than Lucion needed a break from history.

Lucion’s long, lean head partially peeped out of the water and looked up towards David. David shook his own dark head down at him and waved his arm in a sign of defeat. Lucion’s mouth stretched out into an annoying, and all-too-common grin, which looked stupid enough when Lucion was in human form but just made his dragon head look absolutely imbecilic; stretched out, with fangs sticking out the sides, like a deranged dog.

Seeing that he had won his freedom, Lucion’s long, slim body burst out of the water, his wings spreading like canopies of gold and green and causing large waves to hurl themselves in every direction. He soared up, doing flips as he did so and smashing into an unsuspecting bird. The unlucky creature flew sideways, half broken. Lucion twisted mid-air and grabbed it in his jaws, swallowing it with a single crunch.

David watched him. He thought of the Procreators. How do they do it with all their offspring? First I suffered through twenty-five years of babysitting him as a scale-less, humanoid toddler, then another twenty years not being able to leave the house because I had a teenager blowing up everything around me and switching forms mid-fart. And I did that so…what? So that I could put up with a 50-year-old dip shit who thinks he’s a man?

“I can hear you” Lucion’s voice laughed inside David’s head.

“Good, you little asshole.” David thought back and heard more laughter. He closed off his mind.

The Procreators had live mothers. That always fascinated him.

Maybe that’s why they don’t lose their minds raising their siblings. He sometimes pondered how it would be to have a mother always around you...or any woman. A woman could be nice…a human woman, if she actually looked like the depictions in the books, without scales, taller than my knees and no random limbs… all soft and adorably squishy in just a single, unchangeable form…although I still wouldn’t trust her...Even something squishy and cute can kill, as history clearly shows.

He ran his hand over the ice-white scar running diagonally across his face, in the precise shape of a long knife. For once Lucion was right. Ishmeal must have been an idiot.

***

“In another decade you’re going to be strong enough to take on your brother and eat his heart,” James said, taking off his red, over-robe and throwing it at Lucion, “and can you start remembering to carry your clothes with you when you fly over? You know I wear layers just so I don’t have to see your naked ass when you change forms.”

Lucion put the robe on and tied it around his waist with the red belt. It was his length and size. James was both slimmer and shorter than Lucion so he must have worn his father’s robe just for him.

Lucion sat down on a bench under a slanted tree near the edge of James’ gardens. They had known each other since birth but territory was still territory.

He eyed James. James had brought up him eating David before. And every time he did so, he looked a little too happy. Lucion could tell James was trying to cover up the glee he felt at the thought of either one of their families being exterminated by keeping his pale mouth tight and serious. But, his transparent blue eyes always gave him away.

“David raised me. So again, why would I eat his heart?”

Not all of David’s lessons were about useless, human crap. David had taught Lucion that Warlocks were great at lying but Vampyres couldn’t resist showing that they knew, or could think of, more than you. Since James had a bit of both Warlock and Vampyre in him, Lucion learned that when asked the same question repeatedly James couldn’t resist adding something extra to each repetition of his answer.

“He ate your father,” James said.

“So that our father wouldn’t eat us. Everybody knows David’s the only reason I’m alive.”

“Sure, but if he wasn’t alive, you wouldn’t be beneath him, forced to act like a political do-gooder. You’d be the One. The only one, dragon, and we could seriously rule.” And that’s when James’ eyes lit up again.

They were both forced to act like political do-gooders by their apparently one-step-genetically-better superiors. James had his father Sean; purple eyes and smooth, long brown hair from the Warlock side. Long slim body and alabaster skin from the Vampyres. Smooth charm and cunning from somewhere.

Lucion had David: the anti-violence-even-though-I-could-kill-you, uber-dragon-lord. David was so calculated he didn’t have to kill (much) to have everyone’s terror.

A marble-sized ball of fire flew out of James’ ear and he swore in pain. Grandma shouldn’t have banged a dragon, Lucion always thought whenever that happened. Of course, his brother David’s explanation was more lengthy – he would start with how magic needs to be precisely, genetically balanced with something neutral and he would eventually get to the genetic usefulness of the long-gone-humans.

“So what would you do if the river ceremony actually ever worked?” Lucion asked, changing topics.

He could see why James would prefer to have his father disappear from existence. It would suck to be looked at as the genetic fart of the family. At least I’ve got the looks of our family, Lucion looked at James’ more pallid than alabaster skin and stringy, black hair. Even forgetting the looks though, it was just different between David and Lucion than between James and his father. David and Lucion shared a bond that James and Sean had never had, so he could never understand. No point discussing it.

“Can you imagine?” James said, finally distracted from the topic of familial assassination. He grinned, his thin, long canine teeth showing, “The old, leftover hags would die of explosive joy. And do you even get it? All this shit about the humans stabilizing genetic magic because they were pure of it? Why the hell would you want to procreate with something magicless and talentless? That’s why our ancestors got rid of them in the first place.”

“Plus, apparently they were a threat to every being’s existence. I heard they were like poisonous cockroaches.” Lucion added, stretching out his legs on the bench and grinning over at a decent looking ware-witch, with only slightly too much hair on her face.

“That’s bullshit too.” James said and noticing the ware-witch staring at Lucion he took out his wand and pointed it at her in warning. She ran off back to her gardening work, which consisted of sniffing out garden bugs like a wolf and then evaporating them with her stubby wand.

Lucion grinned. James was always visibly irritated when someone checked Lucion out and not him…which was generally the case. David had told him not to be cruel about it, but why not? James had no issues with being vicious about whatever he could, whenever he could.

“The staff’s here to garden, not stare at your ass.” James said, composing his face, which was turning red, meaning a large fireball would hurt the crap out of him, flying out some bodily crevice.

Lucion shrugged, “I don’t get this crap about the humans being a threat either. Without any magic, there’s no power. They’re gone for a reason. They were useless.” It was good to have something to agree on with James sometimes.

“Except I heard their blood tasted like a drug from the heavens. That’s what one of the ancient Vampyres told me once. I guess I’d drink them first and then I’d I kill them. What about you?” James’ canines were dripping in desire as he spoke of blood. It was like watching a hairless dog drool. Lucion looked away, searching the shrubbery for the ware-witch.

“Get rid of them. What else?”

“Well then let’s hope this decade they do pop out of the water. It’ll give both of us something fun to do.”

“Yeah, we don’t usually share hobbies.” Lucion said, taking off the robe again in preparation for his change. It was time to go home and get ready. He saw James throw mini lightning bolts at a tree with his wand, as more fire came out his ears. The ware-witch ran out from behind the tree, shrieking, but still staring at Lucion, now standing naked, while she ran. Lucion grinned before his skin flipped over into scale and his wings began to lift him up again.