# Chapter 2: Eat.
The first thing I did after roaring out my True Name was sweep the cave for the culprit.
Cute. Somebody in this cave had heard my first-ever roar — a landmark vocal performance, in my professional opinion — and filed it under cute. I had a reputation to build from minute one, and I needed a face to attach this grudge to.
The second thing I did was take a proper look around, and immediately regret it.
The cave floor was studded with dragon eggs, and whoever had arranged this clutch had apparently been going for variety. Red eggs, blue eggs, green eggs, black eggs, white eggs — the full chromatic set, all five colors present and accounted for, like some kind of demented holiday ornament collection.
That wasn't the bad part.
The bad part was the five hatchlings who had clearly broken out of their shells before me and were now surrounding my eggshell from every direction, bellies low to the ground, creeping closer inch by inch.
One red. Two blue. One black. One green.
Four of them were doing the whole cautious-predator crouch, which would have been flattering if I weren't the prey. The fifth one — the red one — wasn't crouching at all. She was just walking over, one claw in front of the other, unhurried, like she owned the floor she stepped on.
The four crouchers scooted backward to clear her path — fast, quiet, not one of them looking up.
Interesting.
Apparently this red hatchling did not consider me worth stalking.
She stopped in front of my shell and lifted her head. A pair of crimson slit pupils locked onto me.
"Sylvaros Veyrn, was it? Come out."
Her voice was young and clear, and it carried that natural chromatic coldness, a voice cold as deep cave water. Her head was held high even though she was currently the shorter one, and somehow those red eyes still managed to look down at me from below.
I looked at her body, roughly twice my size. Then I looked down at my own scrawny little frame, one size smaller than hers.
Fine. No point arguing with a lizard who could bench-press me. I was an adult, mentally speaking, and adults pick their battles.
I climbed out of the egg obediently and set all four claws on the cave floor. Dry, dusty earth. Not damp at all. I sat down properly, like a well-behaved office worker at a morning meeting.
Across from me, the red hatchling sat down too.
Face to face, the size gap became even more insulting. She was a full head taller, and the claws she planted on the ground had visible muscle definition. Muscles. On a newborn. Normal hatchlings didn't have muscles at this stage, not even red ones. This one had clearly been drawn with a different character sheet.
"Remember my name," she said. "Vesperra."
From the back of the cave came a small, synchronized rustle — four hatchlings pressing themselves even flatter against the ground, as if the name alone had added fifty pounds of gravity to the room.
Just the one name. No family name, no titles, no seventeen-part draconic genealogy. When you're the biggest thing in the room, one name is the whole introduction. Madonna rules.
Then she looked away from me, stood, and walked past me toward my eggshell.
My eggshell. Which was, apparently, the actual point of this conversation.
See, there was no dragon mother in this nest. No one was bringing us milk or reading us bedtime stories. And a freshly emptied eggshell, it turned out, was premium baby food for a hatchling.
I watched her red back as she walked off with my breakfast and thought, very calmly, several things.
Robbery is robbery, lady. You didn't need to introduce yourself first.
But fine. Vesperra. Noted. Filed. Laminated.
You're bigger now, so you make the rules. Enjoy it while it lasts. Give me a few molts, and we'll revisit this conversation, heh heh heh.
***
I turned my head and scanned the cave. The other four hatchlings were still pressed flat against the ground at a respectful distance, not daring to come closer. The reason for their excellent manners was currently eating my eggshell.
Which meant even if Her Red Majesty left me some scraps, those scraps were probably never reaching my stomach.
Crunching sounds filled the cave. The sound of a shell being chewed into pieces.
Not by me.
My mouth started watering on its own. No input from management, just pure body betrayal. My stomach was an empty pit and the smell of crushed eggshell was doing things to my hindbrain that no amount of adult dignity could override. This was the dragon in me, I was learning — hunger wasn't a feeling, it was a boardroom coup.
So hungry.
To distract myself, I let my gaze wander. There were still plenty of unhatched eggs around the cave, none of them showing any signs of cracking.
If only one of them would hatch right now.
Then I could...
My emerald slit pupils narrowed slightly.
Look. Conscience-wise, I didn't want to bully a newborn. I really didn't. But circumstances, you know? Life pressures. The economy. This was a structural issue, not a moral one.
A scraping sound pulled me back. Something being pushed along the ground in front of me.
The remaining two-thirds of my eggshell had been shoved in front of me by a red claw.
I followed the claw up and found Vesperra looking down at me.
I will admit, in that moment, I was confused. This was the one who'd robbed me. And now this same one was pushing most of her loot back to me. What was the angle?
"Eat."
One word. Young, cold, non-negotiable.
I looked at the shell. I looked at the lizard twice my size. My mouth was now producing drool at industrial speed, my body filing urgent requests directly with my jaw.
Eat it is.
I steeled myself, opened my snout, and bit down.
Crunch.
The shell was crisp, and I mean genuinely crisp, with the exact structural integrity of a potato chip. It even tasted like one. Salty, savory, and chemically engineered by nature to be impossible to stop eating.
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Whatever this red lizard was plotting, my fully awakened stomach had exactly one policy: eat first, interrogate later. Even if I got beaten up for it, at least I'd be a beaten-up dragon with calories. Better fuel for waiting on the next egg to hatch.
***
The four waiting hatchlings watched me eat like a starving ghost and collectively lost their patience.
She'd eaten her fill, and now she wasn't going to let them eat either?
"Vesperra, what is this supposed to mean!" the louder of the two blues burst out. Young voice, clear voice, also female, also furious.
The other three said nothing, but the looks they were giving Vesperra and the way their bodies dropped into pre-lunge positions said plenty.
Vesperra rose to her feet.
A body twice hatchling size unfolded itself and radiated pure pressure across the cave.
"The rule," she said. "Stealing food is fine. But no one takes more than a third of any eggshell."
"You have a problem with that? Challenge me."
She put one crimson claw forward.
The four hatchlings felt that weight and backed up a step without thinking — then froze mid-retreat. Chromatic pride does not allow a second backward step. They hadn't wanted trouble while Vesperra was huge and they'd assumed she'd leave them their share. But now she was blocking their meal entirely.
This red hatchling was managing way outside her job description. Times four.
I slowed my chewing.
With some shell in my stomach, the hunger had downgraded from emergency to background noise, so I could properly appreciate what I was hearing. I looked at the red back standing between me and four angry dragons, and I'll be honest, my professional assessment of her ticked upward. Office bully, sure. But an office bully who shared snacks.
However.
*Fight. Fight. Fight. FIGHT.*
My dark green eyes lit up with anticipation. You can't have dinner without a show, that's just bad hosting. My only regret was the lack of a tiny stool to sit on.
"There's one of her and four of us!" the loud blue one roared, and charged.
The second blue went right behind her. The black and the green were half a beat slower, but they charged too.
The first blue reached Vesperra and slammed her head straight into that red belly — a full-power hit that actually shoved Vesperra back several steps before she dug in. The cold crimson eyes gained a layer of genuine anger.
Vesperra's claw came up and came down on the blue head still pressed against her stomach.
BOOM.
The blue hatchling's head got planted directly into the dry earth. I cannot stress enough how hard you have to hit someone to install them in the ground like that.
Dust exploded upward.
I stretched my neck out, trying to see through it, and saw nothing. My pupils could ignore darkness, not perform X-rays. From inside the cloud came a roar, another roar, a heavy thud—
Then silence.
I lifted my head warily.
No way. That fast? I hadn't even finished half my shell.
I stared into the settling dust while my mouth kept working at full speed, shoveling shell. Priorities.
Somewhere in that cloud, one silhouette was still standing.
My honest assessment: Vesperra had size and the red-dragon top-dog buff, but four was four. I figured she'd lose — while taking two or three of them down with her, leaving one, maybe two, wobbly survivors standing between me and their lunches. Which I would then graciously confiscate. My hind legs had already quietly loaded themselves like springs, ready to pounce. My body had done that without asking me. The dragon in me loved an ambush the way the corporate drone in me loved a Friday.
A dragon-shaped shadow walked out of the dust.
Here it comes. Just one—
A crimson claw stepped out of the haze.
I quietly unloaded my springs.
That was a result I had not seen coming. Vesperra had won. Four on one, and she'd won.
She did not look good, though. Her scales were scuffed and askew here and there, one ear-frill had been bitten red and folded at a wrong angle, and something dark was seeping from one nostril. She was breathing hard, and when she put weight on her right foreleg it wobbled — but she put weight on it anyway.
I looked her over slowly.
She was hurt. Wobbly. Running on fumes and spite.
So... if she happened to keel over in the next minute or so, would anyone object to a certain green dragon helping himself to an extra share of shell? Purely hypothetically. As contingency planning.
The happy little thought popped up, and I shot it down at light speed. Separate ledgers, separate books. Yes, she robbed my shell — but she'd also fed me two-thirds of it back and personally removed the four dragons who would have taken everything. Without her, I'd have been lucky to lick the dust off the floor.
Fine. I'll just mug her for food some other day, like a professional.
For now: dinner.
***
I turned my back on her and went back to my shell. Still crunchy, still fragrant, still weirdly potato-chip. One problem.
The more I ate, the drier my throat got.
I really wanted water. Judging by the bone-dry cave, water was not on the premises. Getting a drink would mean crawling out of this cave entirely and finding some outside.
Behind me, I felt Vesperra's puzzled gaze on my back. She'd clearly noticed my brief flash of hostility, and just as clearly noticed me drop it. She didn't comment. She picked her way toward an empty patch of cave floor, stiff-legged, and lay down.
Her injuries were minor by dragon standards, apparently. What mattered was that her stomach was full — her share of my shell plus whatever she'd confiscated from the other four. A full belly meant she could enter her first slumber, and a hatchling's first slumber, taken on a full stomach, had a higher chance of awakening something useful.
That was the Draconic Legacy talking. Whether it was true, even she didn't seem to know.
Her heavy eyelids slid shut.
I put the last piece of shell in my mouth, crunched it down, and swallowed past the dryness. Inventory check: about sixty percent full.
So. Should I do my first slumber now?
The thought had barely formed when a line of crooked, wobbly text materialized in my vision. Draconic script — familiar because I could read it, strange because I'd never actually seen it before.
*[A hatchling's first slumber is best taken on a full stomach. Doing so may grant you a more useful ability — or several — upon waking. —— (A green dragon who wishes to remain anonymous)]*
This time the Legacy came with a signature.
The text hung there for a moment after I finished reading, then dissolved on its own.
Honestly, it would have been better off unsigned.
Sign it with any other color and I might have believed it. But a green dragon?
I was a green hatchling. I knew exactly what green dragons were. Natural-born fraud artists. Con lizards. They schemed and lied to greedy, fog-brained sapients for fun. It was such a known problem that every green dragon contributing to the Legacy was legally required to label themselves. Publishing rights, yes. Trust, optional, buyer beware.
My head said the tip was garbage. But what if? What if it was real? What if, just this once, the anonymous green was genuinely being nice?
Damn it. The agony.
I sat up straight, plopped my rear on the ground, and scratched my round head with one claw in pure frustration.
And that was when my wandering gaze landed on the scene beyond the settled dust.
***
Four hatchlings were planted head-down in the dry earth, rears in the air, tails up like flags. The dust had settled over them and painted everything the same dirt-yellow, so they stood there like a very weird art installation.
Oh right. Almost forgot about those four.
Chromatics fight, but they don't kill their own under normal circumstances, and Vesperra was no exception. She'd planted them, not ended them. Dragonhide being dragonhide, they'd wake up in a few minutes, nothing worse than dizzy.
Which meant I needed to do something first.
I walked over and looked at the four upturned butts pointed at me. I lifted a hind leg and, without hesitation, kicked the nearest one.
That's for trying to steal my shell.
The kicked hatchling toppled sideways, her head popping out of the earth in a puff of yellow. I waved the dust away. Blue.
I considered the remaining three butts. One kick each would be satisfying, but the first kick had also fed me a lungful of dirt, and satisfaction has diminishing returns when seasoned with dust.
Instead, I grabbed the tails of the three downed hatchlings and pulled them out one by one, dragging them into a pile.
Hatchling tails are long. Really long.
So.
I gathered all four tails together. Loop, twist, cross, weave, rotate, tuck, and — voilà.
One minute later, four hatchlings lay facing four different directions, their long tails fused into a single magnificent knot in the middle.
I admired my work. In my old life, I'd seen professional cable-management guys spend whole afternoons achieving less. The complexity of that weave would make a grown electrician weep.
I put both foreclaws on my hips. Another day of improvement in the fine art of tail-knotting. Still got it.
And it wasn't just for fun. More eggs were going to hatch soon. When these four woke up, they'd absolutely compete to "care for" the new little brothers and sisters — and by "care for," I mean rob. Unacceptable. Looking after baby siblings was a job for a mature dragon.
Me.
I left the four of them sleeping in their daisy chain and strolled among the eggs, scanning for a target.
It didn't take long. One egg caught my eye and refused to let go.
A red egg. Just slightly bigger than the others.
Red dragons were the undisputed top dogs of the chromatic hatchling stage. Choosing to stake out a red egg was choosing violence against my future self. I chose it anyway. I believe in chemistry at first sight.
As for whether I'd be able to beat whatever came out — please. I'd hatched once already. I knew exactly how weak and wobbly a newborn felt. Fresh shell-break was the single most vulnerable moment of a dragon's life, and I planned to be there to exploit it lovingly.
I lay down in front of the slightly-larger red egg and raised my head toward it.
"Listen up in there. You're a red dragon, the ace of the chromatics. Have some pride. Dig deep. Come on, hatch before the others do. I'm rooting for you."
A hatchling's prayer, delivered with total sincerity.
The egg did not answer.
I waited. Nothing. Not a wobble, not a peep. In there, apparently, somebody had decided deadlines were a social construct.
Suit yourself, egg. Hatch on your own schedule. See if I care.
I turned in a circle, folded my legs under me, and settled down right there on guard duty. Sixty percent full, warm, off the clock. My eyelids were already sliding shut when, at the very edge of my vision, something moved.
In the dimmest corner of the cave, half-buried in a drift of old shell dust, a white egg rocked. Once. A small, quiet, almost apologetic little wobble.
I squinted at it. It sat perfectly still.
...Nah. Trick of the light. Newborn eyes. I was hallucinating from malnutrition.
I put my head down on my foreclaws and slept.