# Chapter 3: The Name Game
I woke to a sound like tearing cloth.
The red egg in front of me — my red egg, the one I'd prayed over before passing out on guard duty — had split a silver crack down its shell. The crack widened as I watched, and split wider with another rip.
I leaned in, sleep forgotten. This was it. My investment was about to pay off. I'd picked this egg with my own eyes, prayed over it with my own snout, and now the slightly-bigger red egg was about to deliver me a slightly-smaller red dragon — the ace of the chromatics, freshly hatched, weak, wobbly, and completely at my mercy.
The shell heaved. Something inside took a breath.
"Verra Lynthel!"
The True Name roared out of the eggshell, and the whole egg shuddered. A pair of hind legs kicked off the shell floor for leverage. A pair of front claws — both clearly still mending from some pre-hatching fracture, the little talons curling wrong — hooked over the broken rim. Then a small, round head squeezed its way up through the cracked top, wiggling left, right, and free.
A green head.
Not red. Green.
I stared at the egg. The egg stared back, being an egg. I had ordered red. The egg had delivered green. Apparently egg color in this cave was decorative, like a misleading bag of chips, and I'd just learned my first lesson in draconic product packaging.
Fine. Green worked too. Arguably better. Solidarity pricing.
The moment her head emerged, it came face to face with another round, dark green head.
Mine.
Four eyes met. I leaned on the shell rim and looked down at the freshly hatched little green dragon. Female, judging by the voice. Small, soft, still dripping, eyes blinking against the light like she'd just been woken from a very good nap in a very wet room.
I split my snout into a friendly smile.
Great. Greetings exchanged. Diplomacy complete. Dinner time.
My right claw shot out and seized the scruff of her neck — the handle of destiny every newborn comes equipped with.
The instant my claws closed on her neck, her whole body went stiff. Hatchling instinct: when something grabs the scruff, freeze. Then the brain caught up and overrode the instinct with pure, undiluted fury. She thrashed, stubby limbs windmilling, and glared up at me with outrage in her emerald eyes.
"Hey! What do you think you're doing?!"
I glanced at the angry little green lizard. Made eye contact, briefly, the way you acknowledge a car honking behind you.
Then I lifted.
And tossed.
Talking wastes time. Eating is the job. The obstructing hatchling sailed away in a neat, low arc, and I turned back to the shell. A faint scent drifted out of it — clean, woody, like a forest the morning after rain. My mouth instantly started watering, completely unprompted. The dragon body does not consult the brain about food. It files the paperwork after.
I stretched my neck down into the shell.
At the bottom sat a small pool of clear egg fluid, gleaming in the dim cave light like spilled glass.
Oh-ho. Egg fluid.
My snout split into a huge grin. What a windfall. I was parched. My own shell hadn't held a single drop of the stuff, and after a full meal of dry eggshell, my throat had been one degree away from actual smoke. This wasn't food. This was beverages.
The fluid sat at the very bottom. To reach it, I'd have to chew my way down.
I opened wide and bit into the shell.
Crunch. Crunch, crunch, crunch.
***
Behind me, the round little green hatchling hit the ground, rolled several times like a runaway cabbage, and finally flopped to a stop. She sat there, dizzy, shaking her head side to side — then the crunching reached her ears.
She looked over.
She bounced off the ground like the dirt was lava.
Her eyes went from dizzy to horrified in half a second flat: the green lizard who'd thrown her was eating her eggshell. She didn't even bother dropping to all fours — she just ran upright on her hind legs, churning the air with her front claws, straight at me.
I heard the footsteps and paused mid-chew. Side glance.
It was her, charging back. And here's the funny part — she was copying me. Running upright on two legs like she'd invented the concept. Self-taught bipedalism, out of pure spite. Flattering, really.
She lunged.
I stepped left, pressed one claw onto the back of her conveniently exposed neck, and pushed down. There was basically no resistance. She went flat against the ground like a tent in a hurricane, all four legs splayed, tail slapping the dirt in protest.
She popped back up and lunged again. I stepped right. Same claw, same neck, same result. Some clients need the demo twice.
Done. I planted one thick hind leg on her back.
Interrupting a dragon's meal. Rude.
Ignoring the murder in her upturned eyes, I used her as a footstool and opened wide again.
Chomp.
She tried to rise — all four claws braced against the dirt, whole body trembling with effort — but the leg on her back was simply, structurally stronger. She twisted her head up to glare at me while I kept eating her childhood home.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
"Stop eating! Stop eating my shell! I said stop, you horrible thief, are you listening?!"
"Stop it!"
Her voice was young, milky, urgent — one notch away from tears.
Ignore. Ignore.
Like I was going to obediently listen to that. I tuned her out the way I used to tune out notification pings, and chewed a channel straight down the shell wall until, finally, the way to the egg fluid was open.
The fluid gleamed. I lowered my head slowly.
Then a thought occurred to me: technically speaking, this was her bathwater.
My head froze mid-descent.
Why did this suddenly feel like a deeply perverted thing to do.
Right on cue, my throat stabbed me with that familiar dry burn — the fresh shell I'd just chewed had made everything worse. My throat was actively smoldering. Somewhere in my chest, the dragon part of me growled its opinion: *drink or suffer, pick one.*
Okay. Decision time. Chromatic dragons don't need morals. And I happen to be a green dragon.
Speedrun persuasion, complete. I looked back down at the fluid.
It was crystal clear, about the consistency of egg white. Safety first — taste test. I split my snout, extended a little pink tongue, and took one careful lick.
A floral fragrance bloomed across my palate. Cool, faintly sweet, and the burning in my throat finally, finally eased.
Oh, that's nice.
My emerald slit pupils dilated with pleasure. It was like finding a spring in the desert. There was only one correct response to this, and it was drinking.
I buried half my snout in the fluid, throat working, and gulped greedily.
"Stop drinking! That's mine! It's mine!"
Irrelevant background noise. Ignored.
I drank until my throat stopped hurting, then slowly surfaced. The pool was nearly dry — just a shallow film left at the bottom.
I licked a satisfied circle around my snout. Pretty good.
A sidelong glance at the little green dragon still pinned under my foot, glaring fire up at me, fangs out, chest heaving.
Fine. I'd leave her some. Chewing dry shell with a sore throat is a genuinely miserable experience, and I wasn't a monster, and anyway, I wasn't thirsty anymore. I shook my head and tore my gaze away from the dregs with visible reluctance.
Belly inventory: eighty percent full.
I lifted my foot off her back and stepped away.
The instant I let go, she sprang up and threw herself protectively over her shell, arms spread across it, eyes locked on me with pure distilled hostility. The way she was looking at me, I could practically watch the vow being notarized — someday, somehow, this little green dragon intended to viciously repay me.
I wasn't bothered in the slightest. This was how chromatics worked. The strong eat, the weak seethe.
But watching her bare her tiny fangs at me in a continuous silent snarl, a wonderful idea occurred to me. My snout curved.
"Mad about it?"
"Hmph. Don't get cocky. I will get my revenge!"
Exactly the line I was waiting for.
"Remember my name," I said. "Vesperra."
Across the cave, in the drift of settled dust, one of the four planted hatchlings whimpered in her sleep.
Interesting. The name did that even unconscious. Noted. Filed. Weaponized.
"If you're not convinced, you're welcome to challenge me. Anytime."
Name delivered, I turned and strolled off, elegant as an executive leaving a meeting two minutes before it ends.
Maintain the stride. Do not look back. Executives never look back.
Inside, of course, a full audit was running. Had the delivery been too casual? Too rehearsed? I'd been aiming for "bored authority" and there was a real chance I'd landed on "hatchling doing a voice." My tail tip flicked once, betraying nothing, and I reeled it back in.
Don't check whether she's buying it. If you check, you're a fraud. If you don't check, you're Vesperra.
Behind me, the little green dragon glared holes into my departing back. I could feel the rematch being scheduled against my scales, right down to the venue.
Then she lowered her head and began sullenly chewing her shell, eyes never quite leaving me.
Thanks for the loan of the name, Vess. I'll bring it back slightly used.
***
Hop-hop-hop. Hop-hop-hop.
Four paws on the ground, spring in every step, a little bounce every third step.
I felt magnificent. At this rate, one more hatchling's worth of shell and I'd hit the full-stomach condition for my first slumber. The early bird gets the worm, and the early dragon gets the eggshell. Nature rewards hustle.
The anonymous green's tip was looking better by the minute. Full stomach, first slumber, useful ability — the whole onboarding package. I'd already started drafting my wish list. Fire breath? Classic, but off-brand for a green, and the insurance premiums must be murder. Flight came pre-installed, presumably. What I really wanted was something with compound interest: an ability that made other abilities better. A talent for talents. Middle-management magic. The kind of thing that looks unimpressive in the demo and runs the whole company by year three.
A hatchling can dream.
Then I stopped mid-bounce. Voices up ahead. Hatchling voices. Plural. Strained.
"That's not how you untie it. Pull THAT way." The louder of the two blues, naturally. Some hatchlings are just born middle managers.
"Do you not understand Draconic?"
"Yell, yell, yell, that's all you can do! If you're so smart, untie your own side first!"
"My side is the knot's fault! You're pulling against me!"
"What is THAT supposed to mean?!"
"What do YOU mean by what I mean?!"
Four round heads — blue, blue, black, green — were pressed together in a glaring circle, fury visible in every slit pupil. Chromatics were not known for their tempers, and four chromatics sharing one tail-knot were not known for their problem-solving.
So. They'd woken up. And they'd discovered that "Vesperra" hadn't just beaten them up — she'd also, while they were unconscious, tied their tails together.
Worse: the knot was hard. They couldn't get it undone. Every time one of them found a loose end and pulled, three other tails tightened, and the negotiations collapsed back into shouting.
Who knew where that Vesperra had even seen such a weird tying method in the Legacy. Probably some obscure knot-enthusiast dragon's contribution. Very irresponsible publishing.
Behind a white egg, one emerald head peeked out.
From a purely professional standpoint, their technique was appalling. Four dragons, four loose ends, zero project management. Nobody had appointed a lead. There was no agenda, no rotation schedule, no designated knot-owner. If they'd asked me — and nobody was asking me, on account of me being the suspected culprit — I'd have had them untied in minutes.
I did not volunteer.
Watching the four of them radiate tension at each other, each one one bad word away from lunging, I felt my dragon heart start pounding.
I recognized this feeling. It was love.
*Fight. Fight. FIGHT.*
Right then, the green one — who had her back to me — whipped her head around.
Four eyes met.
"There's another dragon."
The other three snapped their heads around immediately, following her gaze.
Four pairs of slit pupils locked onto me simultaneously.
Hiding was no longer an option.
Although — wait. Why was I hiding?
I walked out from behind the white egg, openly, head high, tail up. Even without looking I could feel four stares glued to my scales. And inside, I was perfectly calm.
They'd said it themselves: the one who tied their tails was Vesperra. What did that have to do with me, Sylvaros Veyrn?
Besides.
I looked at the four of them, tails cinched together in my masterpiece, radiating synchronized outrage at ankle height.
They looked exactly like four little angry puppies tied to the same post. All that was missing was a wooden sign.
*Four vicious dogs. Do not approach.*
I'd have carved the sign myself, but my Draconic penmanship was still at the "raccoon with a crayon" stage, and honestly the visual was doing fine on its own.
I grinned, raised a foreclaw, and waved at all four of them.
"Don't mind me. Carry on. Just passing through."
Greeting delivered, under eight watchful eyes, I resumed my walk — bounce every third step, the single most arrogant stride ever performed by a newborn dragon — and sauntered right past them, in full view, close enough that one of the blue ones actually strained against the knot and got yanked back by her own tail.
Not me, sweetheart. Wrong green. Complaints about knot placement go to the red department.
They watched my back recede into the cave. Then, slowly, four heads turned to look at each other.
"I don't know why," the black one said, "but I really want to beat up that guy."
The other three nodded in perfect unison.
"Same."
"Same."
"Me too."
"So once we get this undone... we go beat him up together?"
"Together."
Consensus reached, just like that. Four little dragons lowered their heads in renewed solidarity and went back to picking at the knot with their chubby front claws, united at last — not by friendship, not by blood, but by a shared HR grievance against one specific green colleague.
Somewhere ahead of them, a green hatchling bounced along the cave floor, humming, belly eighty percent full, blissfully unaware that he had just organized the nest's first labor union — with himself as management.
My tail tingled.
Probably nothing.