Chapter Text

Part One: Dragons

A Pink Rathian flew above them, disrupting the clouds with its wings. 

Lear looked up at it; a hand covering his gaze from the sunlight. Goggles sat atop his head which he could have easily used to stare, but their red frames would have washed the dragon out.

“Master Lear, we should keep going,” Sawyer suggested. He and Rachel stood ahead of him on the path, waiting for his attention to return. There was a fork in the road, one led to their camp and the other deeper into the wilderness. “Unless you’d prefer to hunt.”

A hammer hung off of Sawyer’s back; Lear had often found himself staring at the thing, wondering how he could carry it so easily. It was made from Pukei-Pukei, a local wyvern which stored poison in its body. Sawyer was the strongest of the three of them. 

Rachel wasn’t so special. She specialized in the insect glaive, a weapon which could catapult her into the air and gave commands to the insect harbored within. Her armor was light in comparison to theirs. He’d never found himself lingering on either of their combat styles for more than a few moments.

They weren’t his friends, he reminded himself. They were just retainers assigned to him by his father to ensure his son didn’t die alone in the dragon-infested land he’d run away to.

Lear himself was a master of both the heavy bowgun and dual blades. The latter were what he’d spent his childhood being trained in by tutors; the bowgun was a recent development he’d been teaching himself, to Rachel and Sawyer’s mounting anxieties. His armor was accented by the bright, hot pink scales of a dragon. It was only coincidence that he sometimes blended into nearby coral patches, but, with his retainers’ dull and uninteresting choices in armor sets, the advantage was never of much use.

“Let’s leave it alone, we have enough rations for now,” he decided. Lear stretched his arms above his head and groaned, equipment rattling as he performed the action. “We can visit the camp, then keep looking for the prince’s group. They’re focusing on ecology, right? Where would they make their camp…”

The Coral Highlands had three levels, though they all felt quite similar. The lowest level was where non-flying dragons tended to live. Water flowed down from the higher levels and pooled down there. Smaller monsters like the Kelbi and Raphinos—both herbivores low on the food chain. Monsters like the Tzitzi-Ya-Ku tended to haunt the area and attack any humans it saw there, so Lear avoided the place on principle. Rachel liked visiting it though, probably because she loved seeing the Coralbirds fluttering around the water. She always talked about taking some back home with her.

The second floor was Lear’s home—or, at least, he’d made it into one. All kinds of dragons loved to fly overhead, claiming whatever dared to set foot out in the open as their prey. Anytime he went there, Sawyer was always a step behind with eyes to the sky.

But, the third floor was where the dragons slept. Their nests, and their eggs, were there.

The Hunters’ Guild loved to send people up there to steal them. Lear never had the energy to try and stop them; the dragons were usually able to catch them, though their eggs always ended up broken. A shame.

“They’d, like, be totally interested in that Pink Rathian,” Rachel chimed in. They were walking through the open area of the second floor, approaching one of Lear’s camps. He refused to use any of the two created by the Hunter’s Guild. “Should we, like, race them to its nest? Wouldn’t killin' one of the strongest predators in the locale show your, uh, superiority or somethin’?”

Lear laughed as he caught up to them. “That would be interesting.” He considered it, but knew there would be nothing to gain but gore. “No, we should focus on finding them outside of battle.”

Sawyer grabbed his shoulder when he came into reach, not-so-subtly looking over his armor. Lear rolled his eyes. He hadn’t battled a dragon in days; there wasn’t even any blood to clean off his scales. Lear and Rachel continued to toss ideas back and forth about what the prince’s group could be doing, though Sawyer kept silent. His steady hand on Lear’s shoulder continually pushed him forward.

After they scrambled between the collection of dead corals guarding his campsite, they discovered two people waiting for them there. The two looked like twins; both with dull blue hair and matching eyes. They looked young, too, which was odd. Lear had always been the youngest person in the New World for the decade he’d been here. Maybe, a new fleet had come in?

“Hiii!” Rachel called out to them, waving a greeting. So overly familiar… and Sawyer was still holding onto him tight, as if expecting him to bolt at any moment. “So, you two are the new hunters, right?”

“Yeah!” the girl twin grinned wide as she faced Rachel, but anxiety flashed across her features when she looked at Lear. “Uh, hello, Lear. I’m Bettie, and this is my twin brother Scottie. The admiral said you’d probably have… no idea what’s going on,” she laughed awkwardly. Lear let his gaze rake over them. She had knives on her back and a piece of paper clenched in a fist. Scottie’s shoulders were relaxed against the weight of a bow, glancing between Lear and his sister with no obvious emotion guiding him. His extra supplies were laid against the wall behind them. “But, he said you’d be willing to help us.”

“He did?” Lear said. There was no violence or anger in his tone or demeanor, and yet everyone stiffened up—almost in spite of his efforts. “What else has my father decided for me, then?”

Rachel’s smile dropped. Sawyer’s grip was as tight as one would use on a misbehaving animal; punishment before the reward. 

“He just said that you’d give us some hands-on teaching for our weapons!” Bettie hurried to say. “And, show us around the Coral Highlands. He said you’re the person who knows this place the best. You know, since you…”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Rachel advised in a quiet tone. As if he couldn’t hear. “Please.”

Lear huffed like the feral dog they were treating him like; he almost wished he was one, just so they could see his fury in a whipping tail instead of narrowed eyes. “No,” Lear spat, “I’m not. I won’t just take his scraps. You two turn back around, go back to him, and tell him to find you a real mentor.”

Scottie scowled at him, grabbed the note from his sister’s hands, and slapped it against Lear’s chest. The sound echoed. He couldn’t feel a thing through his armor. Sawyer’s presence curled like a collar around him; it was no substitute for a muzzle.

“You think you’re so strong, don’t you, kid? Have you even seen a dragon that isn’t already dead? Seen its eyes burn with hatred—for you?” Lear laughed obnoxiously loud as he pulled the letter from Scottie’s hand. If it didn’t meet his eyes, well, it wasn’t like any of them were looking. “Got tired of dissections? Wanted to prove to mommy and daddy that you’re something to be proud of?”

Bettie was still, eyes welling up with hurt. Scottie looked like he was going to blow up and start using the bow on his back for target practice. They didn’t stand a chance against him—even without a weapon, even without armor, they were nothing. Why had his father even bothered granting their request? They obviously had nothing going for them if they were out in the wilderness picking fights.

Lear, the letter read.

According to the researchers, the Elder Crossing will be happening in twenty days. Be careful. Train these two—they have a mission to hunt a Pink Rathian and Paolumu—then come back home. Don’t chase after stupid dreams.

Your father,

Rowan Falstelo.

Before he realized it, Lear’s teeth were bared in a growl. He shoved the letter into his pack, leaving it to rot with potions, antidotes, and a useless map of the Coral Highlands (courtesy of his father). His hands balled into fists; the only thing which kept him from clawing open his own palms were his gloves.

“Fine.” Lear fumed, clawing his way out of his retainer’s grip, purposefully bumping shoulders with Scottie as he passed. “Rule one: listen to your superiors. That’s me.” He plastered on a fake grin. “Rule two: don’t be a coward. Have you ever faced a monster before?”

They nodded.

“Thank god, because I would’ve—” Lear interrupted himself, shaking his head. He hastily put together two packs of necessities. “Never mind. Take these. Let’s go hunt your Pink Rathian. Have you fought one before?”

“One attacked us while we were researching, and we worked with the only hunter there to protect everyone else,” Bettie said. She rolled her shoulders; it took him a few too many moments to recognize it as a shrug. “It’s why we got promoted by your dad.”

“Do not call him my dad.” It came out instinctively. Cheeks a shade darker, he began to shove his way through the small gaps of coral leading back outside. “He’s my father.”

“Sure, okay,” Scottie butted in. He grabbed Lear’s wrist before he could escape, filled with all the furious forth-right self-righteousness of youth. If it was aimed at someone else, he might even have found it endearing. He held out his bow to Lear with an aggravating scoff. “You’re gonna pretend you’re nice now—sure. When are you going to teach us to use these?”

Lear paused as he reached forward and plucked at the string. “You draw it back… and release. It’s as easy as that; aiming’s the difficult part, or so I hear.”

Scottie groaned and looked to his sister for help. Lear made his way through the tight crevice with the twins hot on his heels, retainers lingering far behind. When they broke out, Bettie’s gaze was drawn to the sky. Lear only allowed himself a passing glance to the familiar sight, but… it really was beautiful. Small animals flew up above—almost mimicking clouds. Larger monsters would fly up as well, the Pink Rathian the easiest example. Lear always loved watching them fly.

“I expect you two already know how to fight,” Lear said, finally serious. He watched as the two’s eyes brightened at the idea of actually being taught by him. If he were someone else, it might have convinced him to do the task effectively. As it was, he had other priorities. “I also expect you two to know how to survive and depend on each other. That’s all you really need to know out here. Never go alone, and you’ll probably live until retirement.”

They nodded seriously; perfect little soldiers. Hadn’t he been like that once? Lear rolled his eyes, and began to pick up the pace.

A roar rang out above them. The green glow of scoutflies surrounded them; someone had caught a monster’s trail. The collection of bugs were stored in capsules on every hunter’s waist. The twins’ flooded out of their container at the slightest hint of the Pink Rathian’s trail. Lear watched them encircle a track left on the dirt, and allowed the two a moment to gape at the show.

He’d found it mesmerizing once, too.

Rachel and Sawyer begrudgingly marched ahead of them. Lear stayed back with the twins, face twisted up in something between envy and hatred. They looked so innocent chasing after scoutflies; he wondered if his father had looked at them and seen him… or whoever that man thought Lear was.

“You’re only here as delivery boys for my father. I hope you understand that,” Lear said. “You aren’t special.”

“Why do you make him do that?” Scottie snapped. Bettie moved along, following after the trail. Her dual blades crossed over her back; Lear carried them on either side of his waist. “He told us that you’ve stayed out here for years now, refusing to go back home, and that’s why he sent us here first instead of anywhere easier. He’s a good man, and he doesn’t deserve this treatment. Your dad—your father’s worried about you, Lear.”

“I don’t care.”

“Why not? You have someone here who clearly loves you, and wants you around, so why aren’t you—”

Lear’s shoulders shook, eyes blurring with an emotion he chose to name anger. Hands gripped the handles of his blades. “You don’t know anything about me or my father. Just because you met him once, and he was kind of nice to you doesn’t mean anything, idiot!” He drew in a sharp breath and glared at Scottie. “You wouldn’t survive a day as his son.”

Scottie stared at the sheaths of his weapons, uncertainty clear as day. Lear didn’t let go of them. The boy backed off and jogged to catch up with his sister. He followed with a slow, unhurried gait.

He watched the two run in-step; one with a bow, the other a pair of blades. Lear’s pairs of both weapons felt all the heavier. His father had probably given it to them just for the comparison, so he could have something to teach them. He was cruel like that. He’d be a fool and an idiot if he dared fall for it, so it would be the best for everyone involved if he just… hunted the two dragons down with them, then pretended like they’d never met.

Hatred was the only kindness Lear could comprehend.

They found the Pink Rathian after a few hours of following its tracks. It had flown up to the higher levels of the Coral Highlands. Lear would have wrapped a coil around one of the larger birds—a Raphinos—and flown it up, but Rachel and Sawyer glared at him when he’d brought down his goggles.

Instead of the measly twenty or forty minutes it would have taken him alone to hunt down the beast, it took the group three hours. What a waste.

They could have been hunting down that other group right now, but no—his father had just had to drop a random pair of fools on him. He’d perfected the art of wasting his son’s time.

“Look! There it is!” Bettie said to her brother. Her smile was so wide it could be compared to a waning moon. He wondered if he’d ever stretched his lips that far before; only when he was a child, he was sure. “The Pink Rathian.”

The beast slumbered in its nest. They stood in the open winds, so high up breathing became difficult. Lear had dealt with it for a number of years and was thusly unaffected, but he prepared himself for the moment mid-battle when it would make the twins stumble and falter. He would need to intervene. 

There weren’t any eggs in her nest; he was thankful. Her scales were a similar pale pink to the ones imbedded in his armor, but just a few shades off. Oppositely, Rachel and Sawyer’s armor were made out of only a creature’s bones. Every time they faced off with a Pink Rathian, Lear wished one of them would notice,—scream their fury at the world, barrel into the two with a new desire for vengeance—but they never did. 

He hoped the creature whom he wore the scales of would recognize him when the time came, but wasn’t so delusional as to believe it.

It drew in a deep breath as Bettie turned toward Lear. She gestured, as if to say aren’t you supposed to be doing something?, but he stayed still.

“It’s your mission.” Lear crossed his arms. “So, kill a Pink Rathian. I’ll give you some tips as we go.”

“What?” Scottie whisper-yelled. “No, we are not, we don’t have antidotes for its poison, and we don’t have the best armor, so we can’t. You’re obviously experienced with killing these things, so just… lead us, Lear.”

He walked past the group. The dragon’s exhalation ruffled his hair—it almost felt like flying in the clouds. He turned to face the twins before drawing his lips back into a grin. “Don’t get hit then!” he yelled.

Lear didn’t turn around; the poison-tipped tail whipped in an arc around its body as it stood up. The Pink Rathian screeched its furies at them. He thought it was probably more annoyed at their presence in its nest than it was over hunting rights—that’s what most dragon-on-dragon spats were about—or territory. Its wings rose up high above its head as a display of aggression.

The twins were shaking.

Scottie drew his bow, and shot at its face; from the lack of a response, Lear presumed he’d missed. He stood just in front of the dragon, grin unchanged. A part of him wished his father could be here just so he could show him just how realized his dreams really were.

Bettie screamed as she rushed forward with her dual blades, one in each hand. The steel of the weapon was as big as her torso. Smoke filled the air as the Pink Rathian lifted itself off the ground. Its wings drummed a violent song; Lear danced to it. He hopped from one foot to the other, laughing like a little kid, as fireballs spat from the monster’s maw. Bettie screamed.

“If you’re on fire, put yourself out before going back to fight!” he advised. As he twirled through a turn, he saw Scottie’s look of fury; a new height of anger! He had his bow aimed at Lear. “Aim at the dragon, not me! What do you think you’d get from killing me, anyway?”

He turned and fired three shots, two landing on the dragon’s wings. “The satisfaction,” Scottie spat.

“Better earn it then.”

Bettie ran to her brother’s side, body shrinking in on her. It contorted her into something small and vulnerable; it defined her shape into one only predators could identify. She said something to her twin that Lear couldn’t catch. 

Easy prey, the monster thought. Lear could taste murder deep in his throat, one he’d committed before and one he’d be forced to commit again. But, these weren’t dragons he was looking at. They were people… but how much did that really matter?

How human was a person, and how human was a dragon? Who deserved to live more?

The Pink Rathian was a truly beautiful thing. Her scales told a story; she was young, only just nearing the age of bearing her own children. Perhaps, she’d only left her own nest a few years ago. An adolescent—just like him; the only difference between them was the addition of scale and wings, really.

The Pink Rathian roared before performing a tail flip—aimed right at two idiots who were too busy looking at each other to see it coming.

Lear’s smile dropped. His eyes focused. He stopped breathing.

He dug his boots into the ground as he broke into a sprint, and between one stride and the next disappeared from sight. His retainers watched on with an air of unease, too far from the action to intervene. Lear re-appeared a few feet from where he’d begun, and with the next stride completed the same arc. His body slammed into the twins’ seconds before the Pink Rathian’s tail.

The two’s faces sunk into stone, scraping them up. Lear prevented himself from meeting the same fate by pushing down on their shoulders. 

“Never look away from a dragon!” he snapped, digging a boot into Scottie’s leg as he got up. Lear grabbed his Bowgun off of his back. He settled down a few feet away from them—aiming and firing at the dragon’s face. It roared, stunned. “You’re fine?”

Fat tears ran down Bettie’s face. Small scraps tore up her cheek, and a part of her hair was still on fire, but besides that she looked fine. Scottie wasn’t hurt at all.

“You’re fine. Get up. This isn’t over until someone dies.”

Rachel and Sawyer ran over; Lear nodded to them and stepped back. He stood back and watched as his retainers assisted the new hunters with an ease Lear knew he’d never possess. They often claimed to strangers that he “wasn’t a people person”, and that held its own strange truths.

Lear had never felt comfortable around people. Not his father, not Rachel and Sawyer, and especially not Scottie and Bettie. His mother had been easy enough to be around, but she’d been stolen away from him a decade ago—and then, the creature who’d shown him the most kindness after her death had been stolen from him too.

Even when he begged with all might, his father never faltered. He hadn’t allowed Lear to return to the Coral Highlands until he’d forced the issue by running away and refusing to return. Maybe, the note was just another ploy to lock him up away from danger. 

But, it could be true—and if it was, then it would all be worth it. Even if he had to return to that place his father called home.

The capital of the New World had never been much of a place to live, let alone to thrive, for Lear. His father was always managing some kind of political game there. There was always a dragon laid out in the center, pumped with so many drugs they wouldn’t wake even for death. He tired of that senseless violence, of their dissections and searches for answers they would never understand. They’d asked him so many questions and called him insane when he spoke the truth.

It was a city of cages and chains; Rachel and Sawyer were an extension of it, and his father guided their hands just as well as any other puppeteer. Lear was so tired of being locked away.

Eventually, the Pink Rathian released its final, desperate scream as Sawyer’s hammer battered into its skull. There was no family to save it. Everyone else huddled around it and pulled out carving knives to find their own trophies to bring home. Rachel and Sawyer took the meatiest parts, leaving the scales and teeth and claws for the new hunters. He took no part in this cruel showmanship.

Lear cast a cold look upon the corpse of the monster they’d felled and, as Bettie’s knife sunk into its chest, said, “Have you ever wondered if they had a family, too? We could be cutting apart someone’s mother.”

Scottie and Bettie looked at him in abject horror. She tore her hand away from her weapon to hold them both over her chest; it was as if she believed if she didn’t touch it, then the blood would never be on her hands. Their shoulders shook as they both seemed to consider whether to continue their desecration. Or, at least Bettie did. Scottie just looked angry. It would have lasted longer if only Rachel hadn’t laughed.

“He always says stuff like that, don’t worry!” she assured the twins. “It’s nothing personal, he’s just…” He was still staring at the dragon’s unseeing eyes, Lear realized. If he let his vision blur enough, he could almost see someone else. “Different.”

Lear rolled his eyes, and turned away from the group. It was silent save for the sound of skin and sinew tearing away from the corpse. 

His sight lingered on the beauty surrounding him. Coral jutted from the ground, creating their own walls around what was… or perhaps could have been the Pink Rathian’s nest. The sky was a deep blue—an alien shade compared to the one everyone else knew. The Coral Highlands were special in this way. They sat above the Rotten Vale; a heaven to its hell. Monsters crawled into the vale to die, and the highlands used their energy in its recreation of paradise.

Twenty days until the Elder Crossing, Lear thought. It can’t come soon enough.

The Elder Crossing was a cataclysmic event where an elder dragon—one so strong and with powers so grand no human could ever hope of killing them—would trek from the Old World to the new one. Competitors and decomposers alike followed in its wake. The last time the event had happened was a month after the First Fleet arrived in the New World. Lear had only just begun his lessons for the dual blades, and his mother was making her first friends in this new place.

Dragons overtook their home. She hid him away in the darkness—so deep he could hear nothing but his own breathing. She promised to come find him once safety came, but never did. Lear dragged himself from the cellar after what felt like days of piercing hunger and potent terror only to find her gone. 

When he discovered his father, he’d gotten the briefest touch on his shoulder before being sent off with strangers. Learn to fight, his father had asked of him. It was one of the only of his requests Lear could recall completing to the man’s satisfaction. 

The group he was sent away with had been hunting the exotic creatures drawn to the New World, but their eyes were set on one in particular: a pink-scaled dragon whose scales could induce teleportation. They had wanted to kill it and skin it; they’d failed their mission to a gross degree, and yet Lear was thankful for it.

He hoped the dragon would follow the next Elder Dragon back to their home.

“What’s up with your armor? You disappeared when you tackled us,” Scottie asked. Lear did not turn to face him; mind amongst the clouds. The words he would need settled on his tongue but did not escape his lips in time.

“Its made with the scales of a rare dragon,” Sawyer responded. Lear heard his retainer walking over the dragon’s body, identified by the quiet crunch of scales. With an unwarranted amount of pride, he continued. “The young master wears the armor of a wyvern who has only been spotted in the New World once a decade ago, which is why you’ve never seen anyone else with it! Wearing it allows Master Lear to teleport short distances when he wishes to.”

His shoulders ached, Lear noted. He tried to roll out the tension, but it stayed ever present. He allowed himself to reach up and touch the dull pink scales sewn onto his armor, lingering upon the memory. It tasted like burned meat.

“What monster was it?” Bettie asked.

Lear turned to glare at them and shut them up, but the sound of nearby footsteps distracted him. “Who’s there?” he yelled. The wind carried his voice so far it echoed; so did the response.

“Did you kill that Pink Rathian?!” A voice demanded, clearly infuriated. A man with long, green hair raced into view, wearing a bright tunic and pants instead of a hunter’s uniform. Behind him followed four others, only two wearing armor. 

Lear’s fury turned into fervor.

“You’re N.” He moved toward him, feet barely touching the ground. “The prince.”

N was exactly as he’d been described: a gaunt figure cut by white clothing, scruffy hair tucked into a low ponytail, with royalty dripping off of his very skin. The prince looked at Lear as if he was a bug to be squashed. 

Lear grinned at him as he approached. His teeth shone like a threat, and N seemed to realize that. He watched as the man’s anger receded into something he’d call fear on anyone else. The man’s two hunters looked at him with unease. His reputation preceded him; his past was marked by many run-away attempts and cries for attention. He’d stopped in the last five years since his father had allowed him to live in the Coral Highlands. 

The only thing Lear needed was N’s cooperation—he hoped it would be easy, but it had been a decade since he’d made a good impression on anyone. He knew he wasn’t easy to love. He knew it was an even more Herculean task to like him, so he didn't dare expect either of them from the prince. He only wanted N’s support—and nothing else.

“Yes,” N responded curtly. His voice was stern yet lacked any edge. His eyes ran over Lear with an unsettling frenzy to them; he acted as if he hadn’t expected to find him in the Coral Highlands—Lear’s home. The prince stepped away from him, closer to his group. They curled around him like kin. “Now, answer me.”

“They did.” Lear threw his thumb over his shoulder, pointing at Scottie and Bettie. Rachel and Sawyer were probably still on the corpse too, and he didn’t really care if it indited them in this incident. He turned on his heel to look at them. They looked more confused than angry. “Those two are Scottie and Bettie, they killed your dragon. They’re here on orders from Rowan Falstelo.”

“Your father,” the prince said the words as if they were on a scale, measuring them out to see how many pounds of truth could be garnered from Lear’s word. He didn’t bother to nod. Their family resemblance was, unfortunately, uncanny. “We’re on orders to maintain the ecological balance of the Coral Highlands—and that dragon was a key part of it.”

Lear clicked his tongue in an attempt at sympathy; his father would have snapped at him for his disrespect. “A shame.”

Rachel and Sawyer hurried over. They flanked Lear’s sides, though it only served to entrap him further. At least N had real bodyguards, all Lear had were his useless retainers. 

After briefing them on N’s issue, Sawyer spoke up. “We all have conflicting orders… perhaps the admiral intended us to consult each other before doing any hunts. Our apologies for this great error, your highness.”

Sawyer and Rachel performed bows; Lear crossed his arms. He didn’t get why they believed his father incapable of error. In Lear’s opinion, he was capable of every error.

“Those two are new hunters. They still have to bring back a Paolumu before they can go home, so want to help us send this Pink Rathian back? Then, we can discuss all the other details.” Lear waved his hand dismissively, as if their issues were a cloud of smoke in front of him, and yawned. They wanted to move past this too, didn’t they? “Sorry, hunts are just so exhausting, aren’t they?”

N stared at him like he was a freak. 

”Are you insane?” One of his guards asked; he was one of the two hunters. He had short black hair, and it looked like it had been chopped by a dragon. He sounded more baffled than insulted. ”Like, clinically?”

Lear laughed off the comment as he tried his best to keep casual. He’d expected Scottie’s furious response, declaring how he’d attempted to “help” them, and his apparent assignment as their mentor more than he had expected… that. He hated how sincere it came off—as if an insult like that could ever be a curious, kind little thing. It could only ever be a bludgeon to an unsolvable problem.

His smile began to slip. If the situation were different, he would have punched this stranger; Lear was still tempted, even if he knew he couldn’t. “Would you say yes if I was?”

“It would make your words less insulting,” the girl hunter said. She had her hair up in a high ponytail, and what looked like a sword on her back. They all had thick accents, he noted, except for the prince. “I’d ask if you know who he is, but you clearly do, so really, insanity is your best answer.”

“He’s not insane,” Sawyer butted in. “And I'm sure you are all quite aware of that.” He kept his words slow and spiked; like a warning growl before a blast of fire. “But yes, we could always use more hands for sending the parts of the Pink Rathian back to base.” He sounded tired. “Once more, we are deeply sorry for the error. If we could speak to the admiral I’m sure we can ensure this never happens again." Lear’s retainer sighed. “Though, there’s no reviving the dead.”

Lear didn’t speak up, even though that had all been exactly what he’d said moments earlier! Yet, no one was calling Sawyer crazy. Was there something he hadn’t been taught happening here?

Lear didn’t look away from the prince, drinking in every slight narrow of the eye. Every weakness the man permitted to dance across his body needed to be caught and studied in order for Lear to get what he wanted. He saw the tension bleed out of his shoulders—not at the apology, but at Sawyer’s final sentence. Theories ran across his mind for ways to play the prince. He just needed the perfect piece, and then it would all work out.

N looked chagrined as he was forced to look at Lear once more. He drew a deep breath before deciding his fellow prince’s fate, though it wasn’t like anyone but his retainers cared about that particular title. Would they treat a prince how they treated him—like an attack dog to be kept in a cage and released only when useful?

“We will help you with the… disposal,” the prince radiated distaste. “But in response I demand you all stay with us, run your missions by us before beginning, and” — his glare landed squarely between Lear’s eyes — “stay in our camp.”

Lear agreed to his terms readily, and, as he turned to assist with the dragon’s dismantling, he heard one of N’s guards ask him, “Are you sure? Who’d want to share a tent with him?”

It turned out: no one.

Lear settled into a tent for the night, listening to the wind’s battering. They’d settled on camping in a part of the forest unfrequented by dragons. It was the safest option, but he’d wanted to camp in the Pink Rathian’s nest. 

The tents were set up in a circle, Lear on one end and N on the other. There was an unspoken distrust woven into the tapestry of this treaty. He laid down in the center with all his armor and weapons shoved to the side of his tent; only wearing a tattered dress-shirt and threadbare pants. He laid under a thin blanket. 

Across the way, N and his companion’s murmured his name in disgust. The door of his tent was half-open; the wind carried their words to him.

“There has to be something wrong with him, did you see the way he just waltzed up to N? No respect at all!” A woman he didn’t know said. She seemed outraged on the prince’s behalf—as if he couldn’t defend himself. “If we were back home, he would have been knocked down from his high horse. You should have allowed me to do it, Cheren!”

“You would have only embarrassed N,” the same man who’d called him insane said. Cheren was his name, then. “He just wants to be normal, so you need to stop getting offended by people acting like that. That’s how normal people get treated.”

Lear gripped the blanket and wrapped it around his head.

Through it, he just barely made out Rachel’s voice. “That boy is hopeless.”

19 days until the Elder Crossing

Lear woke with the cresting sun, as he always had. Outside, he heard the Coral Highlands beginning to stir. He wanted to be a part of it. However, when he opened his eyes to look out at the rolling shadows, he found a shape blocking his view. He glared up at the person sitting in front of his tent with groggy, unfocused eyes. 

They had black hair and armor—with weapons on their back. He was forced to blink a few times before the intruder could come fully into focus. Cheren looked down at him, hands folded over his legs, with an odd expression.

“Go back to sleep. You’re more tolerable that way.”

Lear sighed, letting his body return to its unwound state; legs curled back, one hand twisted around the blanket while the other pressed against the floor. “How long have you been…”

Cheren closed his eyes and slid his head from side to side as he considered the question. When he came up with it, a sharp smile crossed his face. “Ten… maybe fifteen minutes.” Sharp blue eyes glinted with an unnamed accusation. “I thought you’d wake up when I walked over; I wasn’t trying to be quiet. For someone who’s lived out in the wild for years, you sleep like the dead.”

He blinked before glaring at Cheren. “So?”

“There are rumors about you.” Lear rolled his eyes; what could he know? “They say you got kidnapped when you were nine, and when you came back you were different—causing problems, refusing to go out on hunts, cursing your father. All of that.” Cheren leaned further into his tent, arms curling around his knees and neck stretching forward, like a dragon sniffing out its next meal. “I normally wouldn’t believe in anything like this, but yesterday I never would have thought someone could behave like you did, so let me ask…

“Are you a fae?”

Lear sat up. “Are you ten years old? No, I didn’t get replaced when I got—no!” He sat up, abandoned his blanket, and snarled at this imbecile. “Oh my god, get out, leave me alone.”

When he got close enough to touch, Lear grabbed the other man’s collar and attempted to push him out. Cheren held strong. He looked at him as if he still wasn’t quite convinced of Lear’s humanity, like he was some dragon who needed to be identified. How insulting.

Lear wanted to bite him. Surely that would prove his humanity.

“Lear,” Cheren said cool and collected, “don’t start a fight you can’t finish.”

“Oh, I’ll finish it, thank you very much.” 

He lunged over to the side of his tent and grabbed his dual blades. It wasn’t worth bothering with his armor over something that would be over faster than he could think, Lear thought. Cheren pulled himself out of his tent, dodging back as Lear lunged at him. 

With a movement as smooth as a dragon’s tail swipe, Cheren pulled out his own weapon. Ugh. The man was a specialist in dual blades, too, what had happened to the world since Lear’d left? It had been a rare specialty back then, but now everyone seemed to be just as—if not more—proficient as him.

Lear swiped forward, leaving the comfort of his tent. His bare feet pressed against the corpses of coral which made their ground. Cheren was a fair bit taller than him, which would make getting good hits challenging. Lear swung one blade high and the other low; the first had far more power behind it. Cheren stepped back to avoid the lower, but attacked with both of his weapons into the other. 

It would be embarrassing if this random hunter could disarm him so easily, so Lear held it as tight as he could before going for a counterattack.

They exchanged a number of blows, walking further away from the camp as they did so. Cheren didn’t say anything. He only watched Lear’s movements, probably waiting for him to mess up. Neither had gotten a true hit on the other yet. 

Lear needed to prove how strong he was, so he threw himself forward into a reckless dive. He ended up by the other man’s side, both blades spread wide in preparation for an attack. 

It left his body wide open to attack; he never had to think about it when fighting dragons. The other man’s eyes were cold and blue. So human Lear hated them. 

Cheren didn’t even bother to react to the clear threat of Lear’s weapons. He flipped one of his blades around and seconds later slammed the butt of his weapon into Lear’s throat. Immediately, he gagged and dropped both blades as instinct took over. 

Before he could even attempt to draw in a breath, Cheren had a grip on his collar. The hunter pushed Lear to the ground. 

“You really are feral,” Cheren laughed. His hand was a collar around Lear’s throat, holding him down as his body squirmed. His weapons laid near but out of reach. “Everyone talks about you like you are, but I really didn’t expect for it to be true. Picking fights like this is stupid, yet you do it!”

Lear clawed at the man’s glove, tears spilling from his eyes as his body fought to regain air. He glared and growled at him. If he could breathe, he’d be cursing him out. 

He lifted his leg up to try and push Cheren off of him, but the man retaliated by sitting down on his thighs. With his only remaining hand, Cheren grabbed Lear’s elbow. “You’re a hunter, and a decent one from what I’ve heard, so we’ll have to work together. But, that doesn’t mean I’ll tolerate any of your… feralness” — he spat — “around N. He’s my friend. He doesn’t deserve to deal with more stuff than he already has, so I’ll offer you a deal.”

With what sliver of air he’d been able to gather, Lear managed to ask, “Wh… what?”

“You act like a normal person around N, and I’ll make sure no one gives you trouble.” Cheren smiled then, like he thought this was a nice favor. “Your father has been making plans to force you out of here; he tried to recruit us. If you’re good for me, I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Of course. It all came back to Rowan Falstelo.

Lear considered what was being offered for longer than he probably should have. Cheren’s body heat bled into him, soft and slow; it felt weird. His grip on his throat was gentler than Lear would have expected, and the hand on his elbow was almost—caressing, maybe? It just… held him there. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had done that—out of malice or not.

His face felt hot.

“Fine,” Lear spat. “G—get off’a me.”

Cheren got up, flipping his hair back as he did. He took a weird amount of care to remove his hands gently. Lear rubbed his throat, still sitting on the ground. It would probably bruise. He’d have to claim a dragon attack or… stupidity.

“I’m sorry.” Cheren didn’t look apologetic, standing all high and mighty with his armor and his victory. “I didn’t want to hurt you. I still don’t.”

“Leave me alone,” Lear’s voice was meek. He refused to look up at the other man.

Cheren went back to his own tent.

It only took a few minutes to put on his armor and leave the camp. Clearly, no one else was awake so no one was going to notice his absence.

His hands didn’t shake as he climbed down walls of vines, and neither did his breath constantly hitch. Lear moved with pride. His eyes took in the world he’d carved a home out of, looking for a place he wouldn’t be found. Not by his retainers, not by Cheren, and not by any roaming dragons. A safe place.

He kept close to the “walls” of coral as he left N’s campsite; from the outside, it looked more like an egg sack inside of a spider web than a home, but who was Lear to judge? It wasn’t like any of his campsites had ever been much better. He’d holed up in small caves and in the corpses of coral before. And, before Rachel and Sawyer had arrived he’d been sleeping near dragon nests.

Lear found his way to the rope lift with little effort. It made the descent to the lowest floor as easy for a human as it must be for a dragon; all he had to do was hold on and, for a few moments, he could fly.

He came back down to Earth upon his landing. His throat ached fiercely, and Lear chose to interpret it as an expression of physical pain and nothing else. His face was hot, but it was just because of the ambient heat of the Highlands. He wasn’t thinking of a hand around his throat, or a body on top of his, or any of the promises torn from his throat.

It only took him a few minutes to find his way to the watering hole. The path was burned into his bones, it felt like. So many hours he’d spent trekking down and up, whether it was to clean his clothing or provide a drink for a meal, or just to get away. Water was the center of life; this watering hole was the heart of the Coral Highlands, and it beat a deadly rhythm.

Lear stalled his gait when it came into sight, staring at the monster already drinking its fill.

It had deep blue scales similar to the sky of their home. If it were evening, he knew the beast’s jaw would disappear into water as it drank. As of now, there were too many shades of difference between the two. Its front legs hovered awkwardly in the air, claws twitching intermittently. Thick frills hung off the sides of its head like the strangest eyebrows he’d ever seen.

The Tzitzi-Ya-Ku stopped drinking to stare at him.

Lear leaned his head back, one hand pressing against his bruising neck and the other on his waist. He opened his mouth in a yawn. Air rushed into his lungs, and a familiar disappointment flooded him when he felt no difference in the air. Dragons could smell the difference between prey, predators, and peers. All he could smell was air.

The dragon shook its head, flinging water off of its scales, before losing interest in him. Lear scoffed as he walked to the other side of the watering hole. Tzitzi-Ya-Kus were never much of a threat to him or any other human; they only liked to attack their fellow dragons. 

Lear went down to all fours, lowering his head so he could drink in the same monstrous way. He kept his gaze on the dragon as he drank. It was out of focus, seemingly having two heads and four sets of frills, but he could still read it well enough. The Tzitzi-Ya-Ku looked at him like he was a child—but not in the way humans did, in that derogatory way. It was almost an affectionate expression it held in its narrowed eyes and relaxed posture.

We should really make those damn things go extinct, a hunter had complained once. He was one of many men Lear’s father had sent with messages. They’re so annoying! Always getting in the way of our hunts, the New World would be better off without them.

With water wetting his lips and tongue scraping against his teeth, Lear felt like a Tzitzi-Ya-Ku. A beast with no place in the world—except for what it carved itself.

After a few minutes, the dragon stood and left. He wondered what it might have said to him if he could understand it, and, if he were here, what N would claim it said.

Lear took his own leave eventually, wandering past coral trees into a closed-off area. It looked like it was impassable; the sole reason no one else had found it. He pushed back the corpse of coral to reveal his old home, stumbling inside and dropping it back down behind him. It was almost pitch black in the cave.

But, in the center, there was an outline of a nest. Everything soft in the Coral Highlands had been gathered to make a bed large enough for two, and he had slept there for so many weeks. Sometimes, Lear found himself curling up in it—almost too large to fit, now. Small, pink scales littered the nest, and the cave around it.

Lear’s scoutflies spread out slow and easily, retreading the familiar path. He walked around slowly. Their green glow lit up the outcropping; if he didn’t think about it too hard, they reminded him of his brother’s eyes. They were as curious as he’d been, too. They had both adored the Coral Highlands and all it offered.

He sat down in their nest, knees pressed against his throat. A whimper echoed in the enclosed space. Something wet ran down Lear’s face—nothing offered him any comfort, not the worn-thin kindness of his home, not his scoutflies, and definitely not the pain Cheren had left him with. 

If his brother was here, would he comfort him? Lay a head atop his, play a joke on him, make a home out of him?

Lear sniffled pitifully. He wiped a glove under his nose, and over his cheeks, and around his eyes. Tears didn’t stop falling.

If Hoopa were here, everything would be better. 

Cheren wouldn’t think he had enough power to just threaten him, and N wouldn’t think he was as much of a freak, and Rachel and Sawyer wouldn’t treat him like a feral dog. He’d be enough for someone. Lear wouldn’t spend his days clawing at the precipice of inhumanity—begging for scraps of kindness from hands who never dared feed him.

A scoutfly landed on his limp hand.

Lear stared at it through blurry eyes, pretending it was something it wasn’t. The others began to settle down around him as well. They did not lead him anywhere—they had no greater clue as to his brother’s location than he did. But, if Hoopa ever came back they would react in an instant; with the Elder Crossing’s approach, that was all he could depend on.

When Hoopa came back home for him, Lear would be ready.

Chapter Text

He returned a few hours after dawn, a clump of white fur in hand. Lear took the walk at a slow pace. Birds sang their greetings to the sun, and to him, and the predators of his home awoke to that ever-familiar hunger. If he thought too hard about it, he would feel it as well.

As he climbed back up walls of vines, Lear heard the mutterings of the group he’d left behind. Rachel’s voice was clear amid the singing of the world, but N’s voice faded into silence.

“We can’t just let the young master wander off. I’m sure you understand as you’re royalty as well,” Rachel was saying. “But, he’s, like, important. Sure, he’s completely clueless when it comes to everything, but he’s—” She paused, probably throwing her hands around in dramatics. “He’s ours.”

Lear rolled his eyes as he lifted himself fully into sight. Rachel and Sawyer stood in front of N’s group, looking like they were negotiating about something; they were more than likely trying to demand they form a search party for him. They always freaked out when he dared leave their sights. He wasn’t certain whether they were worried about his safety or the dragons’. 

Cheren and the girl stood by N’s side again, but the other members of his group were scattered around. Lear knew the bruise wouldn’t form until late in the evening. Still, the skin itched when Cheren’s icy eyes caught him. He smiled with a hint of teeth and called out Lear’s name.

The familiar trap sprung itself, Rachel and Sawyer’s protective grips entangling themselves in his being. They approached like dragons on the hunt. Sawyer grabbed his shoulder and looked him over like a mother fussing over her young; Rachel was softer in her approach, yet no less restraining. 

“Where did you go?” she asked with all the harshness of a sister. At least, Lear presumed that was where the emotion came from—he’d heard it from his father enough over the years. Her voice was hushed. “You know you can’t just wander this place alone, you’ll get killed, and then we’ll get killed.”

“I got water.” Lear shrugged noncommittally, trying his best to avoid the gazes tearing into him. Two familiar to him—and so many not. “And I found some Paolumu fur.”

He held out his palm like an offering but neither took it. Rachel sighed and turned away. Lear shoved it into his pack, hidden away with poison antidotes and various notes from his father.

Sawyer’s scowl was unending and uncompromising. “Next time you think to do something like this wake us up. I know you’ve lived here for years, but that doesn’t make this place safe, Master Lear. Your father would kill us if anything happened to you.”

He drew his lips back to snarl at the mention of his father—but before he could, footsteps approached. Lear froze up, expecting to see dual blades and the same cool, confident expression which had hovered above him mere hours ago, but the gaze he met was… unfamiliar.

The prince’s eyes were a softer teal than Cheren’s, and he carried them with none of the superiority of his group. N looked at Lear like he was a rabbit stuck in a trap. His pity was palpable; like cruelty, it carved a second expression onto his face. It created warmth out of the cold, a smile out of a frown, and an enemy out of an ally. Lear didn’t grab his hilts.

“He’s an adult, isn’t he?” His voice was soft, too. Gentle in all the ways Lear hated the most, a kindness that only proved demeaning. “He can do what he wants, it’s your job as his retainers to keep up with him.”

Sawyer stuttered through a response to the prince, but Lear refused to listen. He stared up at N. He was significantly taller than him, forcing Lear to crane his head back to meet his gaze. The prince’s pity didn’t stop when his conversation with Rachel and Sawyer came to an end and they left to go collect Scottie and Bettie, nor when he met Lear’s gaze again.

“I’m sorry if any of my friends were unkind to you,” N murmured. His arms were limp by his side; no weapons to hold onto. “I’ve been looking for you for quite a long time, and none of us expected you to be…” He hesitated before twisting his lips into the smallest smile Lear had ever seen. “How you are.”

Lear narrowed his eyes. “Feral, you mean?”

N didn’t laugh, though the gasp from the back of the man’s throat sounded similar enough. The prince glanced across the camp. If they were alone, Lear could have gotten away with pointing Cheren out. But, the man stood only a few feet away. 

“I’m curious how spending five years in the wilds without ever visiting home has affected you,” N explained. He pitched his voice higher as if it would change Lear’s opinion of him. Or, maybe he meant it as a joke. “And, how it affects how dragons treat you.”

“They treat me just fine.” Lear rolled his eyes. “They don’t react any differently to me than they do normal hunters.”

N’s gaze was cool with consideration. Lear had never been a part of a scientific study before—the most he’d ever helped with the ecological research for the area was to tell them what monsters he’d killed recently. They’d only asked once or twice, so they probably disliked working with him as much as he did them. But, the prince’s gaze felt similar to the looks he’d garnered back then; he looked at Lear like he was a specimen.

“How do they treat a normal hunter?” the prince asked.

Are you as stupid as your bodyguard? Lear nearly snapped, only managing to clamp down on his tongue at the last second. “Are—they… they usually just attack. It’s a matter of territory to them.”

“Then, they attack you when you’re in their territory?” N repeated back to him, words falling off his tongue at a quicker pace. He looked at Lear as if he were spouting scripture, wholly engrossed in their conversation. It was unsettling. “Is it the moment they discover you? Or do they wait to discover your intentions?”

Lear resolutely did not think of the many nights he’d spent sleeping in a dragon’s nest. Hoopa’s and… others’.

He shrugged noncommittally. “I don’t really pay attention to those things.” Lear crossed his arms over his chest and looked away from the prince’s prying gaze, face unexpectedly hot. Probably from the long hike. “If you’d like, you could accompany me the next time I go out hunting. For research.”

Lear didn’t catch whatever slight changes happened on N’s face at the offering—whether it was disgust or excitement, he didn’t care—and thus was only able to catch his verbal response. “I’d be happy to.”

N was smiling. It met his eyes.

Lear glared up at him, only just barely holding his own demands back. Why do you care so much?

Scottie and Bettie got up closer to lunch-time than dawn, which meant he spent a lot of time lingering in a camp that wasn’t his… with people who wouldn’t stop staring. He expected it of Cheren, but other people he didn’t know kept looking, too; some faces darker than others. N hovered near him, always within reach. Lear’s skin itched.

At one point, a blonde-haired girl in researcher garb walked up to him and introduced herself. Bianca made odd claims about his scent and their struggles to track him… she said something about their research, but he didn’t bother to listen to any of it. Whatever they wanted from him, they’d find him lacking. It was the way people worked.

When they departed, Lear gave the Paolumu fur to Scottie and Bettie. They split the small collection of hairs between them and placed it in their scoutflies’ container. The bugs buzzed around, some flying out to land on the twins’ shoulders. Bettie gawped at the tiny creatures; such innocent glee had no place in the New World. 

Instinct urged him to stomp it out where it stood, but Cheren’s threat echoed in his mind. Normalcy… how was he supposed to mimic that?

He considered the question as they walked. His retainers took up his sides, and N found himself with his own guards encircling him. Scottie and Bettie ran ahead with that same stupid glee. Words were born in his throat and died before they could touch his tongue; little offerings of conversations about dragons, about people, about the Coral Highlands. All of it was too… him.

Lear knew he was a freak—knew it better than he knew anything else, so of course anything he’d want to say wouldn’t be normal.

Rachel bumped shoulders with him, sending him a look when he didn’t react. Her eyes were narrowed. His retainer turned to face behind them, her gait turning into a skip. She smiled but he doubted she could mean it. Who could?

“Sooo, N, you said there was something with the ecology here, right? Why’re ya lettin’ us kill this one, but didn’t like us killing the Pink Rathian?” 

Rachel walked so oddly, spoke even more differently than everyone else, yet no one dared call her a freak. What was the difference between them? What was so different about him?

“The Pink Rathian hadn’t had a clutch yet,” the prince explained. His voice came out sharper than it had in their conversation, his tone guarded and wary. Was it a message aimed for Rachel or Lear? “This Paolumu you’re tracking is a father of three separate families, so he has already been used to better the gene diversity of the population here. He doesn’t have a use to the Hunters’ Guild anymore… he was going to die whether it was you or someone else.”

N didn’t sound happy about it. Lear wanted to point that out and find the reason why, but knew he couldn’t. He looked stubbornly forward as his question pried at the seams of his mind.

“The Pink Rathian could have lived on for decades more,” N continued. Lear wanted to argue that eventually it would have been killed by another dragon, that they didn’t live in as perfect harmony as the man claimed. He sounded so bitter and angry. The prince was so stupid, and Lear wished someone else would point it out. “If people didn’t chase them out of their homes and steal their eggs, they would have no reason to hurt us! If the rest of the guild could understand that…”

Lear’s teeth dug into his tongue.

Cheren lingered on the intersection of their groups, physically in the lines of N’s party. He knew if he turned around, he would find the man’s eyes on him; he watched Lear like a hunter watched their prey. His skin itched.

They continued to chat amicably. Rachel walked like she had no worries in the world, hair bobbing up and down as she skipped. Even the twins spoke up from time to time, asking about the dragon and the prince—they were allowed to ask about anything and everything. 

Lear’s posture was loose and relaxed, but his fingers were tight around the hilts of his dual blades. He kept his eyes on the distance and ears in the wind. The conversation didn’t matter to him—shouldn’t matter to him—so all he had to think about was the habits of dragons. The path they were walking wasn’t often the victim of a dragon’s feet. That didn’t mean he could relax, at least not to the level everyone else was. It was unsettling how much they seemed to depend on each other, how much they all seemed to trust this place… and each other.

He’d never had such a privilege.

When they found the Paolumu, it was in the middle of eating a meal. A Kelbi—a deer-like creature—was splayed out on the ground. Its head was cracked open, and blood stained the ground. The dragon was too busy breaking open the corpse’s ribs to notice their approach.

It was a thin, fragile-looking thing; like a pet. Paolumus bore similarities to bats with their large ears, pale white fur, and naked face. Their eyes were nearly always in a squint, so Lear wouldn’t be shocked to find out they were blind too. With their scrawny, bony wings the dragon was quite obviously one who preferred flight. However, Lear knew from previous experience they weren’t nearly as proficient in flight as their body boasted.

Scottie marched toward the beast without any of his previous hesitation. His sister wandered behind him, choosing to stand a step away from Lear. Bettie’s lips were drawn into her mouth. He wondered if she was biting her tongue, too… or maybe she was afraid.

Hadn’t he been afraid of dragons once?

Lear thought about it for a few seconds. The answer murmured in the back of his head an affirmative, yet… it couldn’t be right. He remembered Hoopa, and its kindness, and his father’s cruelty. No, he couldn’t have been afraid of dragons when one had been so kind to him. What a stupid thought. 

“You’ll be fine,” Lear forced the words off of his tongue. They were carefully neutral. No one would find any fault with them, he hoped. “Aim for its neck.”

Bettie nodded jerkily before finally following her brother’s lead. Lear felt stares on his person, but did not look to find out who they belonged to. It could have been anyone or everyone. 

The twins gathered the Paolumu’s attention; Lear covered his ears when the dragon let out a roar to scare them off. Scottie aimed ranged attacks at its neck. Bettie batted blindly at its legs, only seeming to hit its most armored features. Scales only covered its legs and face with a soft fur on everything else, yet she wasn’t going for that. Was she stupid?

His retainers abandoned their post over the course of many agonizing minutes. Sawyer crept toward the twins’ battle, holding his hammer in both hands. Rachel had her own weapon drawn though she lingered by his side longer than her coworker did. He felt her last lingering look claw across his skin, and felt relief when it finally eased.

Lear watched Bettie with lowered eyes. She moved in jerky movements, seemingly unsure of where to go. He thought it obvious. Every time she moved, she stumbled straight into a whipping tail or a blast of air from the Paolumu’s strengthened lungs. Thankfully, Scottie was not nearly so accident-prone. Lear knew it was solely due to his placement as a ranged fighter that he was not getting battered, but still—at least he wasn’t bleeding all over the place like his sister.

“You aren’t going to say anything?” Cheren asked. Lear’s shoulders tensed, and his blades got halfway out of their sheathes before he remembered himself. “I thought you were here to teach them to fight.”

He kept still; he presumed the Kelbi had done the same before being torn open. “They need to learn how to fight their way.” Lear kept his voice low, hoping if he spoke wrong no one else would hear. “That’s how I was taught to fight.”

Something warm pressed against his shoulder. Lear couldn’t resist the pressure and turned to look at the object, and stared when he saw it: Cheren’s arm dangled over his shoulder, the entire limb filled with an odd kind of lethargy. When he turned his confusion onto the man’s face, Cheren frowned. He didn’t move his arm away—instead pressing it against the exposed flesh of his neck.

“Relax, Lear,” Cheren commanded. Lear held his breath. “You’re doing good so far, there’s no need to be so afraid of me.”

All the threats in the world could not have held back his response, nor could they stop the glare he shot at Cheren.

“I’m not afraid of you.” He lifted his nose into the air; old instincts sunk their claws into him. “I simply don’t do well with people. It’s better not to speak to one who won't understand,” Lear tried and failed to shrug Cheren’s touch away. “Don’t you agree?”

The man watched him with a cold expression, blue eyes wide open and unsettling. Lear refused to recoil at someone who was so—so—so below him. “I think you need someone to tame you. Since you think of yourself as an animal, shouldn’t someone treat you like one?”

Lear stared at him like he was a freak, not daring to say anything more. In spite of his wants, his throat tightened as if preparing to vomit.

Cheren seemed to grasp something in what he’d said was wrong, so he twisted his expression into that same smile he’d shown Lear while he’d had a hand around his neck. “Is your throat feeling okay? I’m sorry again about that… it seemed like the only way to get you to calm down.” He twisted his arm around so that his fingers could search for the bruise, but Lear shoved him away the instant skin met his.

Lear bared his teeth in a snarl before abruptly remembering that wasn’t normal, returning to a frown. “It’s fine.” He took another step away from Cheren and crossed his arms. “Don’t touch me.”

He forced his attention back to the dragon—why had he allowed it to slip away?—and watched Scotti get blown away by a burst of wind moments before Bettie got hit in the ribcage by the Paolumu’s tail. They really did need help, didn’t they? What idiotic hunters… he hoped they would go back to their previous job.

“I’m sorry,” Cheren said, and it sounded genuine. A warmth sunk into Lear’s face, and he was overwhelmed by the urge to look at the other man and smile. His voice sounded distant, though—like it was an echo of an apology meant for someone else. Lear allowed himself a split-second glance—and found Cheren looking at N instead of him. 

An unquenchable fury rose up in his stomach at that, and it demanded a pound of flesh. Not just for beating him, not just for pushing past Lear’s barriers, but for daring to put someone else above him. He deserved an apology after everything Cheren had done and—and he dared wave it in front of him and not even mean it?

Anger removed any idea of normalcy from his mind. Lear lurched forward to grab Cheren, to push him to the ground, to force a real apology past his lips.

But, before he could grab the man, Bettie screamed. Both of them twisted to look at her only to find a new monster had arrived on the scene: an Odogaron.

It looked like someone had already cut their pound of flesh from its body, scales the color of meat. Its face was defined by its mouth. Its teeth and claws were the same color; the specks of white were the only thing which made it look alive. Even its eyes were red, beady and unnoticable as they were. The Odogaron’s nose flared as it approached the (surely) wounded Paolumu.

The bat-dragon flapped its wings with a terrified screech, flying away without another word. Bettie stared at the new monster with a similar fear but no wings to take her to safety.

Odogarons were rare even on the lowest floor of the Coral Highlands, but their habitat was in the hell far below Lear’s home. They survived off of killing weakened dragons, small monsters, and even humans. If there were not more horrific beings in its habitat, he would have given it the title of an apex predator. But, an apex predator had to understand their placement in the hierarchy. It was a shame, then, that Odogaron would eat anything.

“Bettie.” Sawyer’s voice was barely louder than the monster’s growls. “Bettie, you need to walk backwards. Don’t run. It can smell your fear; you need to calm down.”

She wasn’t doing any of those things. In fact, Bettie looked one strong wind away from crumbling to her knees from fear alone. If it was just the two of them, he would have laughed at her stupidity. As it was, Lear felt the teeth of responsibility digging into his skin. He knew too well if he let it linger, it would eat him alive. 

Lear didn’t sigh when he took his first step toward her. He didn’t curse at her for getting into this situation. He didn’t tell her to stop being a coward. In his opinion, he was being the nicest he’d been in his entire life—though, Cheren probably just thought he was doing a remarkably good impression of a person. He walked slowly as if there were other things on his mind; the Odogaron only had eyes for Bettie.

Every four steps Lear made was met with one by the beast and none by Bettie. Faintly, he heard other people speaking, and knew he should pay attention to it.

The monster bared its fangs at Lear’s approach, growl growing to higher and higher pitches. Its tail swished back and forth like a whip preparing to strike. He held his blades in both hands, thumbs wrapped securely around their hilts. Lear knew he could draw them without initiating a fight (probably), but it was more fun to wait until the final moment. 

He walked until he was beside Bettie, breathing in its breath. The smell of decay lingered upon its skin and cut into Lear’s own. He only just held back a smile.

“Run,” he commanded softly, hoping no one else could hear. She followed his order without complaint. Lear grabbed his goggles with an errant finger, pulling it down over his eyes. “Go. Cower with your brother.”

Lear drew out his blades and lunged toward the unruly beast, a grin escaping his grasp as it reeled back with a wide jaw. Fully outstretched like that, he realized it could fit his entire body in its mouth without a struggle. A breathless laugh filled the air in the seconds before the man-made weapon met a nature-made one. 

A normal person would be scared… right? No one had to know he wasn’t, especially N and Cheren. Surely, no one would look at his exhilarated expression and toothy grin and think he was enjoying himself!

Cold metal sunk into gums. The Odogaron’s jaw contracted like a crocodile’s; a death sentence. Lear felt his skin try to vibrate off his bones as the scales of his armor glowed yellow. His weapons teleported with him and escaped the cruel fate of being forever trapped in a creature’s jaw, taking its skin with him. Blood dripped from his blades.

The dragon howled its pain to heaven and hell, though neither came to its aid. No one had saved Lear; no one would save this monster either. 

The sound encircled him like a death knell. The Odogaron’s eyes burned with such profound fury, Lear wasn’t sure if it was aware of the cry it had made. It sounded defeated but looked impassioned…

It lunged toward him with bleeding gums, teeth stained by its own lifeline. The Odogaron wanted him dead more than it wanted to live.

He smiled at it—like friends running around in a schoolyard, like brothers play-fighting, like family. His own had never treated him in such a way. The only violence he’d met wasn’t faked; his father could never be anything but the metaphorical monster. Lear could accept being mangled by the teeth of a beast who didn’t know better, could forgive it for its misdeeds, but how could he accept a slow death from a man who claimed to know better than him? How could he dance to a song scripted by a man who’d never given him a second choice?

Lear had carved his fate with his own teeth, so he couldn’t fault another monster for choosing the same.

I forgive you, Lear wanted to say. I hope you’ll forgive me, too.

He teleported out of harm’s way and began a flurry of attacks against the beast, cutting scale from skin and skin from sinew. Every flick of the tail and slash of its claws was expected and dodged without fanfare. None of the researchers who claimed to want to protect dragons intervened, nor did his retainers who claimed to want to protect him. The only people who didn’t disappoint him were the twins as his expectations of them already were rock-bottom.

It usually took hours to wear down a dragon enough to kill or capture them, yet Lear had the premonition it would take far less time to kill this black sheep. Weakened from time away from home, starving from the long journey, oh… how easy it could be. If Lear was a crueler man, he might have done it just to prove he could.

His father would have.

It only took a few minutes of clawing at its ribs for the beast to fear him. The Odogaron dug its claws into the ground and pounced to a position further from him, a growl reeking in the air like poison. Its tail positioned above its head like a scorpion’s; a position of total terror.

Lear held his weapons, blood coating his body. The sticky substance laid in stripes across his face. A damnation of a different breed; what did it mean when a monster was afraid of you? What did it make you when you slaughtered it?

The Odogaron heaved out a final cry before turning tail and running from the real apex predator of the Coral Highlands.

A part of Lear wished he could give chase.

After he drove off the Odogaron, it didn’t take long to hunt their intended victim back down. No one seemed enthused to speak to the man covered in a dragon’s blood. It was good, because Lear didn’t want to talk to them either. The silence gave him time to bury the sickly feeling in his gut.

Scottie and Bettie killed their dragon without any more help from their tutor. Lear watched on, skin stained and soul sutured. He was the one to offer up a feast of the dragon’s body; no one dared argue against him.

Once they returned to camp, Lear’s group all hauling meat over their shoulders, a fire was lit. The sun had set on their walk, so only the flames illuminated the camp. As he set about cutting meat from bone, N sat next to him. He felt no less than five pairs of eyes settle on him at the prince’s choice.

Since the battle, Lear’s chest had been empty of emotion—yet they all decided to return to him alongside the prince. Anxiety crashed over him like a delayed hurricane, waves crashing against the soft shores of his psyche. His hands twitched and fingers dug into meat. It bled just as easily as it had when it was alive; Lear couldn’t even feel the liquid rushing over his gloves. They were already so soaked it would be impossible to tell if a few more droplets joined the lake. It had long-since sunk into his skin and morphed his muscles, or at least he liked to think so.

Violence against humans changed people, so why shouldn’t his violence against dragons change him? Why had his father stayed stubbornly stagnant in spite of this rule? Did Lear not count as a person in the man’s eyes? Cheren obviously thought not, and he’d spoken to Lear’s father more recently than he had. To be inhuman was to be less-than, but humans weren’t the apex predators of the world. There was something better to strive for—a hope for inhumanity.

Was he human to his own reflection? A dragon? Or, something worse?

Lear bit his lip and tore his fingers from the holes they’d formed. People wouldn’t want to eat that, so he’d save it for himself. His teeth felt ill-fitting, a size too small for what he wanted inside of his mouth. Canines too dull, molars too wide, front teeth too blunt… it just didn’t fit. He resisted the urge to shove fingers into his mouth and run over the grooves. It would be rude—at least, he assumed it would be.

“You smell like a dragon.” 

N’s voice was soft and contemplative, and right next to his ear. Lear’s shoulders twisted back before returning to their prior position. He barely held back a snarl, the sound half-formed in the back of his throat.

“I do?” Lear responded a few moments too late to be polite. “From… my armor?”

N laughed at him like the scientist he was; superior in the face of Lear’s stupidity. “No. Armor doesn’t do that, but…” Amusement died, and its murderer rose up from the ashes. An interest all too similar to the flames of obsession fanned to life in the prince’s voice. “All the dragons in the Coral Highlands call you a dragon. An adolescent one, but a dragon nonetheless. So, you must smell like one to them.”

Lear’s eyes turned to N. His gaze was wide and fixated—like an arrow about to plunge into a bullseye. He looked ashamed, too—and his gang of peers stared at him with matching expressions of shock.

N paused, as if waiting for Lear to ask something specific—perhaps something Lear was expected not to know.

The moment passed, and N continued on:

“Why else would they call you one of theirs?” He sounded frustrated, Lear thought. Maybe… annoyed at what he viewed as a mistake? His expression didn’t fully fit that, though. Perhaps, it was just a scientific curiosity like that girl Bianca. She’d ranted for too long about the ecosystem and his supposed place in it. “How did you earn that, Lear Falstelo?”

He pried a bone out of a slab of meat, dropping it on the ground. In his hands, flesh fell into filets. Lear handed the cut off to his retainers to begin cooking, ignoring their disapproval at the state of the meat. His blades laid on the ground—twitching with jealousy at the small knife he used for this job. 

Pretending to ignore the prince’s tone, Lear rose from his seat and grabbed another portion of meat. He sat back down with a sigh. As his knife slid into soft tissue, N spoke once more.

“How can you eat them?” he asked, an undue amount of bafflement in his voice. The prince paused and adjusted his tone. N spoke quickly, impassioned and angry. “They’re living creatures, they love and live just the same as humans do—yet, they’re eaten, not mourned. For someone they view as one of their own…” Lear refused to meet N’s gaze; he knew exactly which emotion he would find there. “I don’t understand how you could do this and not hate yourself.”

The only one who dared speak was the campfire, crackling with laughter.

Lear stabbed his knife into the slab of meat. He drew in a deep breath, holding it as he stared into roaring flames. Trapped in the flickers, Scottie and Bettie sat across from him, watching as the prince fanned his temper to life. His glare found an unworthy victim in them.

“I don’t understand what would compel you to abandon your life to come here,” Lear spat the words like venom. “You had the perfect, easy life, and you chose to come to this dying world where the only way to survive is to be someone else’s soldier. You didn’t even bother to learn how to fight, did you, N? You think this life is so easy—just living around dragons, enjoying every second of freedom. But it isn’t!”

Someone was moving toward him, but Lear couldn’t look away from N’s face. It contorted with strange emotions, lips twisting, eyebrows furrowing, and pupils dilating. Orange light colored his face and darkened his eyes. Short, violent bursts of air defined the prince’s breathing. He looked like a deer in the jaws of a monster; a creature too unaware of its place in the world to be anything but a victim.

“You chose to enter this hellhole,” Lear pointed his bloodied knife at his fellow prince. His voice was cold—an artificial re-imagining of his father’s tone. “I didn’t.”

N met his eyes, not giving the weapon a single glance. “You chose to come out here, didn’t you? Live amongst the dragons—when you could have an easy life with your father. You wouldn’t have to eat dragons, wouldn’t have to camp out every night. You don’t need any of this.” Lear’s wrist ached, but he refused to put it down even as it began to shake. The threat of metal hovered between the prince’s eyes. Whatever bustle he’d heard had stopped; he was too afraid to take his eyes off of N to turn and see the differences. “You’re a prince, Lear. We have all the choices in the world… don’t we?”

Lear twisted his grip on the weapon, flipping it around to face himself, before blindly cutting into the meat once more. It didn't matter if it was good anymore. Nothing mattered more than being right. Even if he had to sacrifice Cheren’s goodwill and potential warnings for whatever his father was planning—it would be worth it.

“You don’t know anything about me,” Lear said. He forced his vision away from N, meeting Sawyer’s emotional gaze instead. His eyes were wide and features stretched out oddly; some odd emotion lived in the extra space provided. Lear held out raw meat and exchanged it for cooked. He spoke with drawn-back lips, teeth showing. “Don’t be stupid. Eat.”

N took the meat from his hands, but refused his command. Underneath the cloak of heat and smoke, he watched Lear eat; teeth tore into meat, making a mess of his mouth. Small sounds of pleasure hummed through his bones. Faint conversations filled the fire. Lear couldn’t decide which was more pertinent to ignore, the prince’s prying gaze or the idle conversations of strangers.

“So, you’ve completed your mission,” that girl hunter of N’s exclaimed to the twins. Her hair was tied up in a high ponytail still; everyone else had removed their armor and let down their guards, but she hadn’t and neither had Lear. “What’s the plan now? You two heading back to home base?”

Scottie’s gaze flicked toward Lear, so he looked toward the flames instead. Lear tore a bite from his food. “The admiral will want a report about him, so we should leave tonight. Both the Pink Rathian and the Paolumu have been carved for resources, so there’s nothing left for us to do here. Except for, you know…”

Lear looked up toward Scottie, flames consuming the kid from his vantage; from the twins’, he was certain the dried blood on his face looked like a war cry. This time, Scottie was the one who looked away. 

“Is he still recruiting people for his little task force?” she asked unceremoniously. 

Bettie turned her body in a complete one-eighty to look at her, and murmured a barely audible: “How do you know about that?”

She laughed like it was some kind of joke to her. “You think he didn’t ask us to join too? The man is desperate. Listen, I know it sounds awful, but if you join he’ll give you two the attention you need in order to succeed in the New World. He’ll sponsor your new armor and weapons, and give you the important missions.” Her strong demeanor seemed to fall away like armor. “Scottie, Bettie, let me be honest with you. If you’re really serious about becoming hunters here… you’ll need Rowan’s approval. Without it, you’ll probably end up like him.”

Lear met her gaze head-on with a scowl. She glared at him and tore out a bite of her own food, teeth glistening in the fire. 

“Thanks, Hilda,” one of the twins murmured. 

Before it could go any further, there was a delicate hand pressing into his shoulder. N’s body contorted itself to sit closer to him. His smile as soft as starlight, he nodded toward a man steadily walking over. Lear was aware of him, of course, but his status as a researcher had left him to obscurity. 

“Lear,” the prince whispered his name with a weird croon to his voice. He wrinkled his nose at it, and N’s demeanor shifted back to professionalism. “This is my friend, Hilbert, I don’t believe I’ve actually… introduced you to any of my friends.”

“You haven’t.” 

Hilbert sat down beside the prince. He wore a similar coat to N, though his was buttoned-up completely. Bianca wore the same thing… maybe it was their uniform. He hadn’t seen a group of researchers like them since he was a kid, so it wasn’t like he was aware of what the group did. N’s friend had short brown hair, ragged at the ends like he’d cut it himself. Lear had done the same for years. 

He looked like he’d lived out in the wilds for years—just like Lear. There was only one problem with his appearance, one flaw which made the entire act fall apart: he wore a hat. It was bright red and black and entirely out of the scope of colors which helped in the Coral Highlands. 

He’s gonna get all of us killed one day, Lear thought with a scowl as the man in question settled down by the fire. His eyes were dark as the night sky, like an odd mirror to N’s. His stupid hat darkened his face even further.

“Lear, it’s nice to meet you!” Hilbert said as he reached across N’s body to offer a hand to him. His smile was small and forced so Lear didn’t bother to look at him nor shake his hand; what was the point of doing something you didn’t want to? “Ah,” he muttered, then presumably dropped the hand. “N’s told me a lot about you.”

“Has he?” Lear shot a glance toward the prince who… wasn’t looking at him. His hand instinctively drifted toward the handle on his waist and hugged his hip and weapon in the same grip, bone and blade unyielding.

The two of them were looking at each other, and some strange kind of communication had to be happening too because the next words out of his mouth didn’t fit the formation of his lips. “Nothing you don’t already know, I’m sure!” 

Lear blinked, and all he could see from the darkness of his eyelids were burning flames. “You’re lying to me,” he said only loud enough for the two of them to hear. When he opened them, Hilbert was frozen with a half-dropped smile on his face. He looked offset. Lear was tempted to smile and bare his fangs, mocking the other man’s humanity.

But, there was blood on his teeth. Humans took that as a threat.

N had given up on any more meetings after Hilda and Cheren had both started needling him seconds into their “introduction”. Lear’s retainers had dragged him off not much longer after that, so here he was: in the middle of the only lake in the Coral Highlands, naked, scrubbing blood off of his skin. It was an aggravating endeavor but at least Rachel had taken the task of cleaning his armor and goggles for him. They typically forced him to clean himself up every few days, though they’d never let the blood dry as completely as they had today.

Lear dragged his hands across his skin, skirting across scars and digging nails into stubborn spots. Thumbs pressed into the hollows of his hips as he heard slow footfalls. Boots scratched against the perforated floor; the ground only became thicker and more dependable the closer one got to the lake. 

A waterfall fell behind Lear. Its constant scream was, perhaps, the only thing that kept his retainers from hearing the other man’s steady approach. 

He sat on the shallowest part of the lake, the water up to his chin. Small specks of blood lingered on his lips. Lear watched, with a tight grip on his bare legs, as N walked out into starlight. He didn’t look any different than he had during dinner, save for the absence of a smile. His gaze cast upon Lear’s form with no care for his nudity nor the beauty of the andromeda all around them. N cast off his boots and jacket, leaving him barefoot in a long-sleeve shirt and dress pants.

The prince waltzed into the lake like the water was an illusion. His pants darkened into ink, his shirt stuck to his skin, but his gaze never refocused. N looked somewhat like a dragon; like the Tzitzi-Ya-Ku who watched him drink his fill. 

An unfamiliar fear flooded his lungs, and Lear’s heel slammed into thick corals without his input. His body rode the wave he’d created into the deeper waters. Legs kicking idly, he floated with the crests. N continued to march forward. Every step created his own tide; it drew them to each other, and Lear fought against its pull with every kick.

Lear was not stronger than nature nor a man who understood it far better than he ever could.

N grabbed his wrist and anchored him, dragging him back to the shallows. “We need to talk,” the prince murmured. It was barely louder than the waterfall. Lear was sure no one else in the world could hear him—it made him feel uncomfortably warm.

“Okay.” Lear found his voice a shaky, pitiful thing. Like a dog who’d forgotten how to bark. His toes grazed against the ground, and he forced himself to stand fully even when the water attempted to reach his ears. N lifted him back up with ease; Lear was forced to settle for standing on his tip-toes. “What about?”

The prince looked through him and seemed disappointed by what he found. “Tell me about your childhood. Before you came here—to the New World.”

Lear spent the few seconds before he spoke trying to understand N’s motivation; what was he after, and what did Lear need to do to keep it away from him? Was it his vulnerability the prince was after? Or, was he after something from his past? Could he have some long-harbored hatred for Lear’s father which he could only act on against him? It all felt so complicated and so wrong, on a genetic and predetermined scale, when he thought of N. Some part of him screamed that the other prince would never do such a thing.

He forced himself to trust that voice, even if he knew better. It was the only thing he had to listen to.

“I was born in my father’s kingdom, set to be the heir once my grandfather died and my father was crowned. I don’t… recall a great amount of my time there, but I remember spending most of my time being taught about my duties and being given an education.” N’s grip was gentle but unyielding around his wrist. His gaze was just as soft—like a knife twisting into his guts. It felt cruel to know N would never hurt an animal like that, yet he felt little doubt the man’s opinions on harming humans. Or whatever Lear was. “Then, my father decided to abandon everything we had and bring us here.”

“What was your mother’s name?”

“Is this a quiz?” Lear spat, trying and failing to jerk his arm out of N’s hold. “What do you want from me, you stupid prince? Let go!”

N didn’t. With the softest of sighs, he asked, “Do you really not remember?” He pulled Lear forward, wrapping his other arm around his back. He kept still against the prince’s body. He hardly dared breathe; fear of ruination wracked his body. “We used to be friends… our fathers knew each other, and mine… well, we spent a lot of time together as children. While they made plans, we studied together, and played in the gardens, and… your mother was so kind.”

N was crying. What an asshole. Crying over things he’d just made up.

Lear lifted his hands to shove him away, but the other man just held him even tighter. His feet kicked at N’s knees and his hands clawed at his arms. Guttural cries escaped N’s mouth, and he had no choice but to sit there and listen.

“I’m so sorry. I should have come sooner, I should’ve left—come here, made sure you were okay.” He was babbling now, and Lear wanted nothing more than to tell him to shut up, but his throat was too tight to speak. His struggles slowed until they came to a complete halt. “I’m sorry she died. I’m sorry you got kidnapped by a dragon, and I’m sorry I wasn’t here for any of it. I didn’t even send a letter.”

“I have no idea,” Lear cried out, literally, with tears running down his cheeks, “what you’re talking about. We’re not, and never have been, friends.”

N really looked at him then. Not like he had been before, like he was gazing upon an illusion, but really looked. He saw the person-monster-thing that everyone else saw, and probably only barely held back a recoil. He saw the pale tint of his skin and the scars along his muscles. He saw the exhaustion which could only be harbored in an adult’s body. N met the gaze of a stranger who had not and would never be his friend.

He smiled, a sickly sweet little thing. Lear didn’t want to see the pity, so he refused to look at N. “What’s your mother’s name?”

His whole body felt weighed down as if the prince had been sneakily tying rocks to his ankles. “I can’t…” his voice wavered and finally broke. A whimper echoed across the water. Lear could almost see her face. “I can’t remember.”

N nodded. “It’s only natural after living through so much when you were so young. Your brain blotted out your youth to avoid thinking about those traumatic memories, I suspect. Your mother’s memory got caught up with everything you couldn’t bear to remember. I don’t mind you forgetting me, Lear,” he spoke. His assurances reached deep into his heart and pried his ribs open. The only man Lear could remember with a similar skill was his father who only used it for cruelty. N packed kindness into a kiss, pressing lips against metaphorical flesh in the softest maneuver humanity had invented; his father would have chosen his fists. “I’m happy to remember you, since you can’t remember yourself. Just promise not to forget me again?”

Lear was crying too hard to respond, but he nodded fervently. N covered his body with his own; their matching knobbly knees collided, Lear’s toenails dragging against his pant’s leg, and N’s clothes-covered body soon seemed to envelope more of Lear’s body than his own. His skin itched again, something uncomfortably clawing from his insides. This time, he didn’t let it control him. Lear sat in the other prince’s grip; it felt so odd… to be held and to know someone viewed him as a friend.

“You know,” N said with his lips pressed against Lear’s shoulder. “You used to be terrified of dragons. Your mom had me introduce smaller ones to you so you wouldn’t be so afraid once you moved. I suppose that didn’t work out, though?”

Lear blinked at him, still teary-eyed but determined. “I love dragons.“ Instinct demanded he stop there and go no further, but… he wanted to test how good of a friend N truly was. “I want to live with them. Forever.”

N didn’t call him a freak, or even look like he thought it. He just smiled, that same soft look he seemed to save for Lear. He faintly remembered it on another, smaller face. “Me too.”

Chapter Text

18 days until the Elder Crossing

The next day Rachel and Sawyer escorted the twins out of the Coral Highlands, leaving Lear alone with N and his group. The other prince had eventually left him alone to finish scraping blood from his skin. It should have been a relief, yet he felt the absence of the other man’s warmth with every pass of his hands. He returned to camp in his underclothes and closed his tent without the thought of listening to anyone’s conversations.

Lear slept and dreamed of boys who picked roses and the women who cultivated them. He woke with a long-lost grief on his tongue; it tasted like the bile he’d never been brave enough to throw up in his youth, always too afraid of making a mess for someone else. His tongue scraped against dull teeth. It didn’t feel like the mouth of that child N remembered, did it? His felt dangerous, like a jaw full of canines, while he was sure N’s friend could smile without it coming across as a threat.

His best friend was a person, after all.

Once, his father had informed him he’d inherited his mother’s eyes. Lear had his doubts about the validity of this scrap of information; no photos of her had survived the initial attack a decade ago, and no one else had ever commented on the shade of his eyes in a similar manner. Unfortunately, he found himself wanting to believe the patently untrue. It felt as if he hadn’t inherited anything from her shade—not even her memory. If his father knew, Lear was certain he would be furious at him for daring to forget the woman who’d died for his survival.

N knew. He knew he’d forgotten his own mother’s name, forgotten his; how could he sit back and hold such a traitor? How could he forgive such cruelty? N was so kind it made Lear nauseous. A part of him theorized the other man was only playing his part of an elaborate act, being the immovable lead to his fellow prince’s damsel in distress. But, what happened to damsels if they didn’t want to leave the place which caused them such grief? What would happen to Lear if N asked to leave with him, and he dared refuse?

Lear swallowed saliva and turned on his side, cracking his eyes open. There was no shadow in front of his tent this time, but he could hear the murmurings of others in the early morning.

“It’s an order then,” N was saying. His voice was cold and unforgiving; it sounded eerily similar to what Lear’s mind said a ruler should sound like. “Until we’re able to figure something out, ensure Lear doesn’t leave the camp alone. I don’t want anything hurting him… or him doing the same to others.”

Lear pushed himself to sit up, squinting through the morning rays at the figures. There was N, obviously, then there seemed to be… five others, so his entire party. How weird. They hadn’t seemed to be morning people before—except for Cheren, he adjusted as he thought about it further.

“Fine, N.” He didn’t recognize the voice who spoke. It was on a deeper register and wasn’t N or Cheren, so he presumed it was Hilbert. “We’ll protect him as much as we can, but… please be careful around him. He’s obviously not the person you told us about, so just… don’t get tricked again. Alright?”

“He isn’t tricking me. He has amnesia,” N said adamantly. “If I can help him recover some of our shared memories, would that be proof enough for you?”

Lear zipped open the front of his tent and stretched his arms over his head. They shut up quickly after that; Cheren and the yellow-haired researcher (Bianca?) walked off quickly, and Hilda dropped to sharpen her blade. Hilbert was the only one standing still when Lear finished his exaggerated little act.

His eyes flicked to nearby movement, tracking N’s quick approach. As soon as he was within reach, the prince dropped to a knee in front of his tent. His eyes were wide with worry. Lear’s body instinctively cowered; legs curled into the fetal position, and his hands froze mid-air with no weapon to hold. He wore no armor, only the tattered outfit he called a nightgown.

“I’m sorry,” N apologized immediately. Lear’s lips opened immediately with a lie on his tongue, some claim about having not heard anything, but was interrupted by the other man’s speedy speaking. “You didn’t announce your return from the lake yesterday, so I got quite worried. I thought something had happened to you, so…” A crooked smile crowned N’s face. His face looked redder than it had, even back in the lake; Lear was tempted to reach forward to assess the heat for himself. “It was quite embarrassing to discover you sleeping soundly after hours of finding and tracking your footprints.”

He took up barely a quarter of his bed with how small he’d made himself, so Lear could only find an answer equally as pitiful. “Oh. I didn’t think you wanted anyone to see us together.”

N, the most patient and forgiving man Lear had ever met, stepped into his tent and wrapped his arms around the hunter’s back. “I don’t care who knows about our bond, Lear. If they would hate me for associating with you, then they would hate me regardless.” He was much taller than Lear—by an overwhelming margin. It felt different than it had on the lake. 

There was no water to gently hold him, no forgiveness for their difference in bodies. All that remained was cold reality, an elbow digging into his arm, a face against his neck, and fingers gripping his sides as if he would try and leave the embrace anytime soon. Lear searched for words to convey a similar enough emotion, though they didn’t come as easily for him as they did for his father. They always came out jumbled and lacking depth. 

“Ah,” Lear murmured. He forced his eyes to stay focused on the storm of green hair, not on the man watching from the campfire. “I, uh… like you too, N.”

“Good.” N pulled back suddenly—grabbing onto one of Lear’s hands as he did. He offered Lear the softest of smiles, something reserved for rabbits and does. “Let’s spend the day together.”

How could he refuse?

N’s hand ran through his hair with the slow, practiced movements of a man who’d spent more time around animals than people. Anytime it ran into a knot, multiple fingers descended upon it with the gentlest brutality, one holding the strand down and the others tracing through the tangle until they were undone; it seemed simple, but Lear knew the prince was going through a great number of calculations. 

Lear’s head laid in his lap. His limbs were contorted tight against his torso: legs bent into a sideways kneel, arms crossed over his ribcage in pseudo-sacrilege. With his goggles laid on the ground in front of him, Lear found himself robbed of a familiar sensation. N’s fingers were… odd against his scalp. He didn’t really like the feeling of nails that weren’t his own touching him—it was just so weird. 

“Who’s your favorite dragon?” N asked. A finger looped Lear’s hair around it, holding it above his head; in the corner of his vision, it looked like a cloud or a halo or something equally ethereal. 

Lear looked up at the prince through it, and found he looked too much like an angel to stare at for long. His expression was serene and beautiful. The hunter’s fingers gripped his own flesh in a death grip, one saved for the necks of small animals. Somehow, he’d never felt this small before—even in front of dragons thrice his size.

“I don’t know its species name,” Lear murmured. He looked down at the other man’s hips; they held less judgment than his gaze. “He saved me a long time ago, though. So if I ever saw another of his kind… I think it would have to be my favorite. It’s the only dragon I’ve ever searched out.”

“Did it save you from that dragon that kidnapped you?” 

“No,” the words came out as a spat. “Hoopa is that dragon. He saved me from those awful people,” his jaw extended as he spoke, as if he were attempting to bite the words before they could reach N’s ears, “saved me from this whole world. He made me realize what I really am… so I owe him and his kind everything.”

“I’ve… never heard of a creature named a Hoopa. Is that a name you gave it?” Lear hummed his answer into the prince’s lap. A hand carded through his hair and found a new knot; as he undid it, N asked him to describe the dragon.

Lear only hesitated for a breath to speak further about his brother. “His scales are bright pink! They only really blend in down here in the Highlands, so it would make the most sense for this to be his home… but I haven’t seen him here since then. We met when he was an adolescent, so he was closer to the height of a Tzitzi-Ya-Ku. He’s got the body shape of a Rathian or a Diablos, though.”

Nails dragged from his scalp to behind his ear, and a pleased sound escaped his lips. Lear went still from embarrassment. “Tell me more, please.”

“He can teleport,” Lear mumbled. “And breathe fire. And fly.”

“Like you?”

“I wish I could fly and breathe fire, but yes, I can teleport like him.” Lear tilted his head back to follow the prince’s wandering hand. Their gazes met in a clash of wills: a caged animal and a man poking his fingers through the bars. Etched into N’s eyes was fascination, and he could read the word how? in his pupils. He’d met men like him before—he knew N would only be satisfied once he sunk his teeth into the truth. “You see these scales on my armor? They’re Hoopa’s.”

Lear shifted, shoulder pushing forward to show off the dull pink scales decorating it. There were less than a dozen in total on him but they’d never failed him in spite of their small number.

“You killed Hoopa?” N’s hand gripped his hair, seemingly accidental from the horrified expression he made when Lear bared his teeth. The prince lifted his limbs away from him—as if he were some kind of monster. He didn’t lift himself from the other’s lap, keeping his claws as close to himself as he could. “But… it sounded like you loved him?”

“I didn’t! I couldn’t kill Hoopa even if I wanted to. I was nine.” Lear rolled his eyes and scoffed to hide the prickling of pain in his chest. “He shed his scales a lot, so I sewed some onto my armor. It lets me teleport.”

N looked down on him, eyes raving over his armor with an unsettled edge. He reached out to the wild animal. Fingers grazed the once-serrated surface, now dull and unthreatening. The scale was once hot pink but had faded into the dead-pink color of coral. They sat in a heavy silence as the prince dragged fingertips over the remnants of Lear’s brother, likely tossing the word murderer around in his skull.

Lear wasn’t a murderer. At least, he hadn’t killed Hoopa. And if it was dead, it hadn’t been on purpose. If he said those things aloud, though, he knew N’s doubts would become certainties.

“When he teleported, his scales would glow yellow like little hoops… it’s why I called him that,” Lear admitted. “It was beautiful.”

N’s thumb rubbed over Hoopa’s scale. Teal eyes met Lear’s. “Your scales shine like that too.”

Lear swore he felt his heart thump against his ribcage at the phrasing—the mixture of the possessive with noun, oh, fuck. He forced himself out of the other man’s lap and up to his feet, unsteady as they were. 

N was smiling when he turned to look at him.

He didn’t allow him a chance to speak, to comment on his messy (but straight) hair or his sudden awkwardness. “Have you seen the Tzitzi-Ya-Ku’s nest before?” Lear blurted out. At his N’s lack of an argument, he continued. “I can—I know it’s dangerous, so we could go there together. They don’t attack if people don’t attack them first.”

The prince stood slowly, never looking away from him. His face twitched with what Lear could only interpret as varying, warring emotions. His warmth never faltered even in the face of suspicion or anger; Lear thought back to their first meeting and the man’s fury before he’d seen him. 

Was his constant patience a tonic designed for his fellow royal, or were the deaths of dragons the only thing which pierced his armor?

In the course of a blink, N went from standing and watching to bent over and snatching an item up from the ground. “Hold still,” the prince commanded as he walked up with Lear’s abandoned goggles in hand. A hand on his chin, the other on his forehead; without breath, Lear followed the other man’s implied orders. 

N put his goggles onto him much slower than Lear would have. The hunter didn’t much care if he felt a temporary sting when he put them on, but it seemed N had opinions about hurting animals. He dragged his tongue against his teeth while he waited. It didn’t help with his dying patience, but it distracted him long enough.

“There.” The prince gave him another smile; the expression touching his eyes and turning them into something soft and generous. His hand lingered on Lear’s chin. “And yes, Lear, I’d love to go see the Tzitzi-Ya-Ku nest with you.”

He was sure N could feel the heat on his face, but Lear nodded anyway. “Let’s, uh… go then.”

Hours passed without his say-so, sun crawling across the sky and the moon chasing after. Lear saw none of it. The Tzitzi-Ya-Ku had four young children, two of whom were brave enough to approach them. Their mother watched them with suspicion, but N spoke reassurances into the air which seemed to affect her.

The flock descended upon Lear with the speed of animals unfamiliar with humanity’s cruelty. They were small, only standing up to his stomach. Their nostrils had flared as they approached, bodies low with fear, but soon began to headbutt him like a sibling. Lear held out a hand to them and found one of their snouts against his palm before he could even consider what he was asking for. 

“They think you’re an adolescent dragon too,” N reminded him. It sounded like he was laughing at him, but before Lear could snap at him for it the other Tzitzi-Ya-Ku rammed into his hip. “Mm… they say you’re a dragon, but don’t smell enough like them. Fascinating, isn’t it?”

“Don’t smell—” Lear turned to glare at the prince, all snarls and teeth, but before he could even meet the teal gaze, both of the little rascals dug their front legs into his stomach and sent him falling to the ground. “Argh! What do you mean by that?”

One of the adolescents curled its body around his head, legs laid across his chest and cheek resting upon his forehead. Darkness crowded his vision; his only relief was the shine on the Tzitzi-Ya-Ku’s blue scales. He felt the other one settle over his lap, face pressing into his stomach. 

“Dragons imprint their scent on their young by rubbing their faces against them.” N’s voice sounded closer than before, like he was standing over him. Lear lifted a hand toward him, hand opening and closing violently. The prince, shockingly, did not grab it and save him from the two young Tzitzi-Ya-Kus. “I suppose they think you’re a young, orphaned dragon in need of a family. Are you?”

Claws dug uselessly into his armor as the lower dragon rubbed its face against Hoopa’s scales. N would probably find that interesting, but Lear had no intention of saying anything more than half-hearted demands. He’d been too much already. 

“Lear.” A hand sunk into his hair; the Tzitzi-Ya-Ku around his head shifted forward to smell it. He felt the growl reverberate through both their bodies. With his eyes closed and mouth open, it almost felt like his own. “We both know this isn’t normal for dragons—or for hunters. So, please, tell me what you did to yourself. Or what your father did to you. Or… or just anything.”

“Princes aren’t supposed to beg,” Lear recited his father. N’s hand stilled in his hair. “Nothing happened.” The Tzitzi-Ya-Ku rubbed its cheek against his; a painful drag of skin against scale, but one he tolerated far better than skin-to-skin. He closed his eyes and murmured, more to himself than to N, “I don’t owe you anything.”

His hand started to fall from its useless outreach, finally descending back down to his own side where it could be used to pet one of the wyverns—but before it could arrive, N grabbed it from midair. 

“Lear.” Fingers weaved into the gaps between his own, a thumb pressed into his palm. His glove kept it from being anything more than an idea of a touch. “Don’t you remember? Your father hates dragons.” Instinct carved a flinch into his flesh; N held tight and began to drag their hands back to himself. “He came here to try and wipe them out, and if that didn’t work… enslave them. He wants humans to be the apex predator—or at least he did back when he was working with my father.”

“My father doesn’t care about dragons.” Lear sighed. “He’s too afraid to leave his home to go hunt them himself, so don’t think of him as some mastermind. He’s a coward.”

“Did he act like that before your mother was eaten by one of them?” One of the wyvern’s legs kicked against his knee as it lifted itself up to curl over his chest—next to its sibling. It was getting harder to breathe between the dragons and the man trying too hard to be one; Lear’s air came out in smaller and smaller puffs. “Or was it after you got kidnapped by one?”

His hand was drawn further away still, pulling at his shoulder painfully. Lips pressed against his fingertips.

“Or… was it after you ran away to live with them?”

Lear twisted his hand away from N’s grip, hiding both his hands under the backs of the Tzitzi-Ya-Kus. They preened at his attention—preened for a fifth sibling to love and be loved by. “Stop being so presumptuous.”

“I’m sorry.” Lear hated how genuine the bastard sounded. His voice was as soft and silent as the wind. “I just—I need to know what you remember, and… why you don’t remember me. I’m sure you wouldn’t have done it on purpose… yet…”

“If I could forget you, I would,” Lear spat. “An annoying, presumptuous, perfect prince like you… you’re stupid if you ever thought I could be friends with someone like you. The only home I’ve ever had is here.”

“Lear.” A hand in his hair. Dragon claws dug into his stomach. Fingers slunk down and curled around his throat. Finally, with hands framing Lear’s head, the prince sounded aggravated. “You’re so stubborn.”

Lear’s smirk was all teeth. 

When they left the cave, it felt like he was a different person entirely. That little boy who’d curled up with dragons, maybe, so when N looped their hands together he didn’t bite.

And when N let himself into Lear’s tent and curled up behind him, he let himself fall asleep to the sensation of another body pressed against his. It wasn’t Hoopa, but it was alive... and that had to be good enough for now.

In times of silence, all he could think about was the unwillingness of flesh and the weakness of skin. The bare skin of his arm dragged against the softness of a blanket, yet it felt like a knife dragging through bone. It felt like he was being prepared to be someone else’s dinner.

It felt personal, and cruel, and so slow—all things Lear hated far more than something as casual as ‘violence’. Blood and pain were his daily melody. Yet this itchy, non-pain and its overwhelming sensations were an unknown. His tongue dragged against his teeth ceaselessly, agonizing over the sharpest corners he could find.

The arm around his stomach tightened for a breath before relaxing once again.

A sharp inhale clawed through his lungs. His hands lashed forward and nails dug into the thin flooring of the tent. It required a painfully slow exhale in order to relax his limbs, yet in spite of his work his stomach stayed strained. 

Alien fingers dragged against the bare skin of his middle. A sleepy sigh warmed the back of Lear’s neck; he didn't react save for a shiver in his shoulders.

Lear’s eyes were wide open despite how little there was to see: the closed entrance of the tent, the darkness of night, and the faint image of his own arm laid out in front of him. How he wished it could be anything else—that he could be anything else. Inhuman, untouched by societal sensibilities, free from skin and muscles which chained him to the ground. His fingers stretched out as wide as this body would allow him.

Could a dragon go further? Twist their toes so far apart that the bones threatened to break? Feel the air between their scales and know they were better than the homosapien? When they ate them, did they think of how small and useless humanity was? Or were they just a meal?

Were Lear’s emotions closer to the humanity which he’d been born into or the dragons he idolized? If given the choice, would he accept scales in place of skin? Abandon this farce of personhood, even when another so-called person had finally accepted him? Now, with another man’s body holding him close, daring to fall asleep with arms tucked underneath the hunter’s shirt, could he continue on the path he’d started on so many years ago?

N’s body curled closer around his in sleep. Lear glared at the entrance.

Yes, yes he could. Easily, in fact.

11 days until the Elder Crossing

The week passed by in a blur. N kept hovering around him, his touches more prominent since their night spent together. His retainers took great notice of this but for whatever reason kept pushing the two of them to spend more time together. It aggravated Lear’s already-frayed nerves.

Anytime he dared leave the prince’s camp—which was often—he was tailed either by the prince himself or one of his guards. Cheren would talk at him relentlessly about whatever small detail of his personality had aggravated the man that day. Hilda was far more quiet, though she let her annoyance with whatever larger mistakes Lear had made that day known. Between their dislike of him and N’s antithetical liking of him, every moment was one of overwhelm.

So it wasn’t much of a surprise that he wound up snapping.

“You never answered my question,” N said, seemingly idly. He walked slowly through the open landscape. Hands held in his pockets, a skip in his step, he looked like a happy child who had yet to see a live dragon. Anything short of kindness was a cruelty to such a creature. “What did your father do to you to make you hate him?”

“Why would the why matter?” Lear tamed the flint-and-steel anger sparking behind his tongue out of courtesy… and because of his retainers’ sharp gazes on his back. They weren’t alone on their trek, even though N made his yearning for such an event known. The man’s own retinue left them alone but Rachel and Sawyer refused. “Fathers and sons could never get along. It’s just the way it is.”

“If you could remember such things, I’d agree with you. But I have my doubts on your remembrance of the, ah, why.” N flashed him a secretive smile before returning to his previous stance; his elongated legs forced Lear into a jog to keep up, but he didn’t bother with such activities now. “Rachel, Sawyer… do you know that Lear doesn’t remember his own mother?”

And there went any real reason to try and keep pace with the prince.

“You… what?” Rachel sounded from behind him, sounding nothing like herself. She was not the strong, reliable hunter and guard he’d come to know but a little orphaned girl who—

How did he know that? He’d never met Rachel before she’d been assigned his guard, and she’d never offered any information about herself to him. Lear… he’d never…

“You know what she looks like, Master Lear,” she accused. He faced her with a grimace. “The queen was a wonderful, lovely mother to you; every breath you take is one given to you by her blessing! Don’t you let this prince insult you and her by implying that you would dare forget her!” Rachel stepped closer to the point where she could overpower him, weapons be damned. Her face fell and despair crept into both of them. “Master Lear… no. Please. Say her name.”

A hand in his hair, pressing against his forehead, held him together as his mind tried to split in two. As his head turned from Rachel to N to Sawyer, it felt as if Lear’s world was re-aligning. 

Her name… her name was…

“How long has it been this way?” Sawyer asked. “You should have told us… or we should have figured it out.”

N shrugged. “I knew as soon as I arrived and he didn’t recognize me.”

“Recognize you? Why would he?” Rachel asked with an insulted scoff. She’d always been jealous as a kid, hadn’t she?

“We were friends, once. I presumed to think he’d remember his friendship with a fellow prince, is all.” N sounded giddy at getting to verbally spat with her, with Sawyer, with the only people Lear had. He’d always been so weird, but all his rough edges had been smoothed out once…

All Lear’d had to say was—

“You knew for over a week and didn’t tell us?” his retainer sounded furied on his behalf. Normally, Sawyer held his emotions back effortlessly. “Master Lear, we’re taking you to the king. I know you dislike being near him, but if you’re struggling to remember basic details—”

It felt like he was going to die. His limbs were distant, and his skull was going to implode. Lear was convinced blood was coming from his ears with how much they hurt. “‘M not going back to him.”

“We aren’t giving you a choice.”

Lear bared his teeth. “Neither am I.”

N clapped his hands with a political smile. “Then, let’s stay here! You two can tell Lear all about the memories he’s missing, I’m sure? I’ve been trying to fill in the gaps myself but he’s too stubborn to tell me what they are.”

Rachel and Sawyer looked at Lear, and something shattered inside him.

7 days until Elder Crossing

Apparently, Rachel and Sawyer had known him since he was young—which was news to him—and only briefly left his side in the wake of his mother’s death. They’d even told him they’d been present for Hoopa’s “kidnapping” of him.

They said it was brutal and terrifying: Lear had been consumed by the dragon during first contact, and once he’d been settled in its jaws it had disappeared before they could save him.

He knew it was a lie. Hoopa wouldn’t have hurt him, not even if he was small and prey-shaped. Lear remembered the excursion having far fewer people than they recollected, three hunters and him, not a group of six. 

“The dragon seemed to come straight for you, y’know. It wasn’t really possible to protect you from it—it knocked us aside with its wings and horns, and while we were fighting it off, it ate you. And then it teleported far away,” Rachel had described. “We didn’t find you for three weeks, and when we did you looked like a feral kid, not a prince.”

The most vivid of any of his memories were those weeks spent with Hoopa, using his minimal hunting skills to tear open the dragon’s prey and cook it enough to be edible. Most of their time together had been spent with full stomachs and warm bodies. Lear remembered skin-on-scales. It was the most alive he’d ever felt, his body twisting to try and fit in the dragon’s too-large embrace.

Hoopa had only been an abandoned pup at the time, an animalistic reflection of the prince without a kingdom. Lear had found a knight in his brother.

What had Hoopa found in him?

With a hollow rib cage and cold stomach, Lear buried these questions as deep into his throat as he could muster. No one needed to know about them, not Lear and especially not Hoopa… if they ever saw each other again.

6 days until the Elder Crossing

The Coral Highlands was a paradise of passion; flight encapsulated all the creatures who made their home here. Lear had crafted a childhood from riding rope tied around dragon’s feet. It felt like sleeping in someone else’s shadow, yet it was the only life he’d been afforded.

The life Rachel and Sawyer claimed him to have lived sounded far worse than one marred by the occasional starvation. One of them left him with a family who only tolerated him, friends who could not be seen to like him, and a fear of dragons. Hoopa was the asymptote of these two worlds, of these two Lears they claimed existed, one could not exist with Hoopa while one could not exist without his brother.

The concept of him without Hoopa felt like a tragedy; a boy with lavender hair, all alone in his room, crying at the mere idea of being near a dragon. Lear wouldn’t loan that boy his name. He refused, no matter how much N rebuked it. The prince seemed to love that boy more than he liked Lear.

It suited him fine. He’d never wanted anyone to like him—merely tolerate him for two weeks. 

Lear didn’t have the urge to leave N’s camp anymore, his life-long restlessness abandoning him when he needed it most. Their food was bland and uninteresting and didn’t bleed, but it was sustenance. The day had only just begun yet it felt as if his part in it was already gone.

N was off talking to his people, not haunting him for once in his life, and so it left Lear to sit idly in the center of camp. Rachel and Sawyer weren’t awake yet. He dragged an old whetstone across his blade. No sparks flew; no stained blood flecked off. 

He was utterly alone… up until Cheren sidled up next to him, and said: “Let’s spar. I’ll teach you how to actually fight a person, and you tell me more about your fight with the Odogaron.”

4 days until the Elder Crossing

His restlessness returned, but now they weren’t allowing him to leave. Before meeting N, he’d been on a permanent expedition. He’d been in this campsite for two weeks. Rachel and Sawyer knew him, and thus surely knew he’d go stir-crazy. His escape would not be unexpected nor unplanned for.

Lear pried N’s sleep-heavy hands off of him, maneuvering them so he held nothing but air. His breathing remained the same. He crept out as the sun crested the sky, grabbing but not donning his armor or weapons as he did so. Once he was out of the cloying comfort of the cave, he put his real skin on.

Scales didn’t touch his body through the leather but he pretended. He breathed through his mouth and ran through the collections of coral with his head low, eyes wide, a grin stretching his face, and arms nearly at the same level as his legs. 

Footsteps of dragons were left behind, as were scales and dung and blood. He followed in the former and stared after the latter. Lear could have followed them, easily, and charted their course as had been his hobby for years now. Weeks ago, he could have known instinctively where the Rathians and Tzitzi-Ya-Kus and Paolumus were at any time of day, but N had robbed him of his inhumanity. 

Lear needed it back.

He was running out of time; it wouldn’t be long until the Elder Crossing occurred and Hoopa finally came home. They would fly into the sky together, hunt together, and Lear would tell his brother all about the other dragons’ habits. Hoopa would make use of it, he knew—for hunts or for games. 

His family would have a use for him, even if the dragon was the only one who could see it. Lear could track their hunts and cut them up into filets once they were done. Things his father viewed as a basic skill were magical to Hoopa. Dragons liked to hoard abandoned things.

Lear supposed he was one of those, but Hoopa was too. Two orphaned creatures searching for the warmth of family. He still craved what the dragon had given him; he could only hope Hoopa did too.

Shaking his head as if there was dirt in his scales, Lear prowled forward. The air felt heavy with prophecy. All he had to do was follow in his kin’s footsteps, and everything would end up how he wanted it to.

Everything was going to be okay.

Hoopa was going to come home.

Lear stepped into the imprint of a dragon’s claws, and it felt far more comforting than N’s skin ever had.

He spent hours following various dragon’s footsteps, shedding the skin of humanity, and feeling better than he ever had as a prince. The sun shone on him as it did for all of its most precious subjects. A god could not feel its halo, so Lear was left only with the promise of it. An idea of warmth; it elicited the same reaction as that word—"mother". In spite of how many conversations he'd had surrounding the woman, no memories of her were forthcoming.

Scales and satisfaction decompose at the same rate, and they catch him in their undoing.

Lear walked under an outcropping of coral, and any ideas of halos or holiness were dashed from his mind. Three hunters were in the middle of combat with a dragon. A lance kept his brethren on their toes, constantly dodging back to avoid sharp edges. One had an electric trap on the ground, already-sprang. The heavy scent of tranquilizer bombs met his lungs. It affected him just as it affected the dragon fighting for her life in front of him: not at all.

The hunters called out a warning as the dragon's antennae spread, though only one of them managed to avoid the blinding flash of the Tzitzi-Ya-Ku's stun attack. The other two were quickly knocked down by the her strong legs. Lear watched as wounds decorated bodies, unmoving and uncaring. It was only right that humans should lose to a dragon like them.

His tongue pressed against a canine tooth, mind made soft by fantasies.

"You!" The lone survivor screamed, and Lear found it staring at him with the desperate look of a lamb amidst the slaughter. "You're a hunter too! Help us!"

The human wore scales like a trophy. They glittered upon its body like an unearned blessing, only serving to anger any dragons it encountered. A chemical reaction began in the center of Lear's being; an anger which did not belong to his flesh burned inside of him.

"You're the admiral's kid, aren't you? Help us out, man!"

Lear blinked, mind suddenly disjointed and undone. His hands pressed against the handles of his blades. He tore them away and began a slow stalk toward the battle. Someone had once told him to be a protector, and of course he'd protect Hoopa… but this weak hunter needed him too.

Just as Scottie and Bettie had required his help, these poor fools needed someone to appear and save them. How stupid of them to be wandering in the Highlands so close to the Elder Crossing…

"Hunter Falstelo!" a voice called out as he dove into the fray. "Thank you for your assistance!"

Lear met the Tzitzi-Ya-Ku's eyes, and felt a sense of horror rush through his body. How uncanny to see a human body through the reflection of draconic eyes. How lovely, how taunting.

He lunged forward and forced metal between her gums.

Blood didn't taste so different from saliva. It coated his tongue, hiding the lies of vocalization. A calm feeling had long-overrun the body's instinct to panic. Lear had followed both as a worshipper, crawling into a crevice like a wounded animal and awaiting his death.

He'd died before, he thought. Not in the literal sense. Of course not. But there was a man named Lear who was no longer alive; he'd worn the same skin as this Lear, once. But if he didn't exist anymore then he was dead. And there were dozens of people mourning him, in spite of the lack of a funeral for him.

He'd died quietly in the back of a stranger's mind. Lear strived to die just as softly.

His chest ached and it had nothing to do with as seamless an emotion as grief. There was no point grieving that boy when so many others had put themselves to the task—but grieving the current Lear was a task only he could be given. No one else knew him, no one else loved him.

That wasn't quite right, though. One being loved him and knew him, but he would never be here to know of his death. Perhaps this Lear could exist as a person in his brother's memory, spared the pain of death. Perhaps he would fly in Hoopa's memories. Perhaps he could dream and make dreams come true. Perhaps he was a dragon in a dragon's memories, the way human's remembered the other Lear as one of their own.

Blood dried along his brother's scales, and Lear mourned his inability to spare him the indignity. His pointer finger twitched but did not move. His body was twisted into a fetal position, and his hands laid limp in the locale between legs and torso. Blood stained him an inhuman color.

An old memory of colored nails crossed his mind, a flicker of that prince's smile lashed across neurons like lightning on a dead field. Lear opened his mouth and allowed air to graze his tongue; there was nothing to taste in the air. He quietly discarded the memory and replaced it with memories of playing games with Hoopa.

Death was a quiet embrace until it wasn't.

"Lear?" That prince's voice echoed in his casket—too early to rob the grave. His lungs did not halt their endless march. His blood pumped ceaselessly; the heart unaware of the brain's concoctions. "She said you… oh…"

He did not look away from the last twitches of humanity in his fingers. They twisted toward the man's approach, but the limb did not come with a mouth to speak such emotions into being. The opening attached to his skull did not consider things such as humanity or emotions or connection. Those were for the dead prince, the one buried in a bed in a far-off kingdom, mourned and missed.

The one, laying here to not be buried at all, did not care for N. He was simply another human in the way of a lost dragon's quest for companionship. Another meal to be had, if only he were brave enough.

Flesh pressed against flesh, and a hand encircled his dying humanity. The nearly-dead clawed against fragility and found himself unable to break it. A strangled sound slid from between his wounds to the body crawling into his own.

Nails pressed into blood as the prince positioned Lear's skull in his visual field. Red stained his teeth, yet Lear still attempted to compose a message for the other: leave me to rot.

N held an item between his teeth and tore a smile out of the remaining skin. His Hunting Horn was large and unruly, yet he offered neither of his hands to it. A healing song echoed between bodies and flesh and open wounds, and they all knitted back together at his pleading.

Lear met N's gaze with a snarl before reforming it into a mimicry of the other prince's smile. It had some depth to it which he cared not to identify.

One of their hands were soaked in blood, and it wasn't Lear's. N pressed a hand to his neck, fingers trailing across once sensitive skin. Nothing hurt anymore. Cheren's bruise didn't spring with pain at the touch of another, nor did N's eyes alight with concern at the sight of it. It must be gone too.

"All better. Please, don't die on me." N's fingers twisted newly-scarred skin into the air, looking at the dichotomous colors with a fascination Lear had only ever found himself the victim of. "Do you remember the day you ran out of the gardens while we were playing there together? I hadn't noticed you leaving, neither had your mom, and so they sent out a search for you. Those hours you were gone were enlightening; they made me consider living in a world without you."

N looked down past his healed shoulder and pushed his torn jacket off his shoulders. Then, he pulled Lear's shirt up off him. N's palm pressed against the flat of his shoulder, tracing the newly born scars there.

N pressed a kiss against it, pink to pale. "I need you to let me take you home with me. It doesn't matter what has happened to you here, what nightmares haunt these lands and these people. You don't need those memories to survive; if you come with me then we can pretend none of this ever happened." Lear couldn't look away from his fellow prince. He could still taste blood. "You'd never need to think about dragon-hunting ever again. You could be a researcher like me."

Lear opened his mouth—not to do something so banal as vocalization but to spit the blood from his lips. N recoiled when it landed on his cheek. It splattered back onto Lear's scar.

"I'm sorry, I didn't heal you enough…" N began murmuring through another set of healing chants, and once he was done, continued in his efforts. "Can you please promise me you won't do this again?"

Lear stuck out his tongue as if to taste his childhood friend's desperation. Lear squinted at him, and drew his lips back to reveal a canine tooth, and thought: what was this exactly? Trying to kill a dragon? Saving such a useless species as a human? For crawling into the nearest cave to die in privacy?

Lear twisted his head and it jerked back violently. His new perspective met the gaze of a Tzitzi-Ya-Ku with a gored mouth; a missing tooth was only the beginning of her pains. He felt a strike of empathetic pain in his gums. After his attack… she'd led N to him.

No, the only mistake he'd made today—and everyday before that—was hurting a dragon. One who'd even dared welcome him into her clutch. One who had led N to his deathbed in order to save him.

Lear could make that promise.

"I… pr—promise."

N held him in a tight embrace and smiled with the wide grin of a satisfied dragon.

2 days until the Elder Crossing

After spending the last few days allowing his body to rest after a near-death experience, Lear decided to spend the evening and most of the night training with Cheren. No one else knew how soon the Elder Crossing would begin, so it would be his job to protect them all from the dangers implicit.

Dew flavored the ground. The air had long-since gone still as evening crept to night. The full moon cast thick rays of reflected sunlight onto them, creating a stage for their dance. Violence became something beautiful in the other man's hands.

Bodies were plagued by a briny sensation; their skin ceaseless in its creation of sweat. Their spar ended with Lear on his back with a blade to his throat. Cheren spread him out upon the ground just as easily as the rain claimed dirt, and he was beginning to see it as the fixed ending it had always been.

After a few moments, Cheren laid down beside him. "You get better with every lesson." The man smiled, his voice taking on an unnatural warmth. "I'm a little ashamed, I thought you'd be incorrigible about this."

"About sparring?"

"About being less than someone else. Everyone we asked about you said you had an ego the size of the New World… and they told us you were the best user of the dual blades in the area."

Lear hummed and pressed cheek to greenery. It sunk into his pores; his muscles loosened as if to become fertilizer. "And what does that have to do with me?"

"Nothing. That's the point." Cheren laid himself opposite Lear, cheek wettened in solidarity. He was even smiling. It was stupidly charming. "No one here knows you. Not those people at Astera, not your retainers, not even N. You're a being no one can predict, and they all hate you for it."

Lear found his hands balled up into fists, thumbnail pressing into palm. Cheren's face was red along his cheekbones. He knew his own was likely a mimicry; perhaps the mixture of overexertion and wet grass was a poor one.

When he realized Cheren was waiting for an answer, Lear replied. "What do you think?"

"I think you're my favorite being on the New World, Lear. Far more interesting than the dragons N loves so much." Lear's lips twisted into a smile, flat along the edges. His teeth stayed hidden. He felt the urge to look away from Cheren's gaze but found himself unable to; it felt as if looking away would prune the strange emotions blooming in his chest. "As an apology for everything that has happened in my time here, let me give you what we agreed on."

Lear's smile didn't settle, even as context passed him by. His face felt flushed. His entire body was warm—was he developing a fever?

"Your father will come to take you home a few days before the Elder Crossing."

His face shrouded under a cover of blankness. A fist gripped his heart, and all the warmth was replaced with the discomfort of drying sweat. His tongue shivered as if it had been cut in half.

"Thank you for warning me," the hunted beast replied.

He couldn't sleep. His father was surely only hours away from arrival, and there was nothing he could do to escape. Running would only incur a chase, and disappearing was impossible with N's unconscious body draped over him as it currently was.

The fabric of his tent was as thin a barrier as skin. Nerves screamed at him with the answer he knew: home, you're home. These humans who wore faces similar to his weren't human; not in the meaning of the word which he derived. Human did not mean homosapien—it meant him, it meant his, it meant family.

Human was a collection of pink scales sewn to a jacket, not the man with arms underneath Lear's shirt.

It would not be moral dilemma to betray the trust of something inhuman, would it? It would not be worth debating if he were to walk away from a sheep in a meadow, nor a person in their encampment. Lies were a means to an end to use against something unworthy of the title of human.

Those words didn't sound like his own, did they? Someone must have taught him that. Perhaps a teacher or tutor or retainer or… parent. Lear hoped it was not the latter; to have such a man's words ingrained in his internal monologue would be an unnecessarily cruel fate. Wouldn't it be a blessing to forget just a few more words? Couldn't he walk into the forest and pretend, just one more time, to be a monster and not Rowan Falstelo's son? Or were the two synonyms? How could the spawn of a man who'd—

Who'd done what?

Lear's lungs constricted painfully, and he grabbed N's sleep-weak wrist as he contorted and coughed. The human woke between bursts of breath.

"Lear? What's wrong?" Fingers encapsulated his shoulders as he was positioned into something more befitting a human. His instinct had been to go to all fours and cough with his head pointed down, but N made him sit down and look straight ahead. Once his fit ended, the other man's hand traced along his jaw. "Are you feeling better now?"

"I need" — saliva muzzled him — "I need to get out of here."

N flipped his hand around and ran the back of his fingers over his cheek, soft and sweet and too much like petting a dog. Lear twisted his lips back into a snarl, but the prince didn't recoil. His expression softened into something Lear still had trouble identifying.

"You want to get out of here?" N asked. The nail of his pointer finger traced the sagging flesh underneath Lear's eye. It wasn't until after its removal Lear considered the possibility that N would hurt him. "Then we'll go. Is there anywhere specific?"

Lear leaned forward as if chasing an embrace, and N followed the script perfectly. His arms settled around his neck like a fox trap. Lear rested his cheek against the prince's, and whispered into his ear, "My father is coming for me. He's going to kill me."

N's hold was not so tight as to confine him; Lear did not try to escape it.

He drew in another breath between spread teeth. "I expect it will be tomorrow or the day after," Lear continued. As this could be his final moment with the other, he allowed his hands to slide down N's shoulders. His thumb rubbed at the bones he encountered along the way; he played make believe the way any child would, daydreaming about a world where he could hold his brother like this. "I want to see a dragon fly, one last time."

"Yes. Of course."

Lear had been expecting resistance of some kind, and his tongue had been primed for it. Without a task, it sat idle and useless. N held him close as he lifted them both to standing, refusing to end their embrace. Even as they walked through the silent camp, the prince kept their hands entwined.

As they left everyone the prince trusted behind, N turned and smiled at him—wide, toothy, and inhuman. "I want you to be happy, Lear. Can you promise me you won't forget that?"

Lear's pointer finger slipped away from N's iron grip, but as the wind caressed it he found himself giving the whole of himself to N for nothing more than a smile.

With a sickly-sweet metallic taste on his tongue, Lear returned the inhuman grin. "Of course, you make yourself quite hard to forget."

N's smile became bittersweet.

The two of them laid on the highest peak of the Coral Highlands, wind whipping through their hair. Three eggs laid in a nest behind them; their mother would be returning soon.

N's fingers imprinted themselves on Lear's bones. There was only one point at which they were connected, yet the prince was determined to leave both their hands bruised and aching once the night was over. N believed Lear would live long enough for that to happen.

Lear didn't know what to believe. He'd felt confident he was going to die just a few hours before, but now it felt like a lie. His mind was like a sandbox; memories slipped out of his grip when he participated in excess.

He dragged a nail through the soft flesh of N's palm. Lear used the anchor to drag himself atop the man, hips to hips, soul to soul. Inhumanity met through their bodies, and it felt unfamiliar, untrustworthy. Bones and flesh gave way to inherent cruelty, yet neither of their bodies were folding. Lear wished he could push N's shirt up to reveal scales—it would make everything easier if the man were a person.

Meeting his gaze was like looking into the uncanny valley.

Sharp pain stabbed through his knees as they touched N's ribcage. Lear wanted to snarl at the humanity, at the indignity, at the prince playing dead under his weight. Instead, he tucked his canines away and manipulated muscles into a different sort of smile.

"When you look at me, who is it you see?" Lear asked. The moon shone behind him, illuminating the adoration in N's eyes. "I know you aren't seeing me."

N mimicked his smile once more; though some quirk of the lips implied an emotion Lear couldn't catch. "She was my only friend for most of my life, is it such a crime to see her in you?"

"Some would say it's an insult to see humanity in something decidedly not."

"Are you insulted?" N asked, politeness a balm and instigator. Lear could feel both on either side of his skull, playing with his neurons. "I apologize… I'd hoped you'd have remembered her, is all."

With a huff, Lear squared his shoulders and glared at the prince. "What was her name?"

"Lear," N chastised him. He was still wearing that stupid smile. "You're a lot like her. You love very easily, and you're loyal to those who love you back. She once told me—"

"I don't care about your girlfriend, prince."

"She wasn't—"

"I want to tell you a secret before I die," Lear said. N went silent at last. "There's no one in the Coral Highlands I can trust more than you. You know what I mean?" He smiled cruelly, yet N didn't seem to get it. Lear dropped the act. "The Elder Crossing is happening in two days."

A hand held his hip. "What?"

For the first time, an emotion Lear had never heard from N's lips showed itself; fear froze his facilities.

"My father is coming to take me back to his home so I can't reunite with Hoopa, but I'm going to refuse to go. If you see my brother once the Crossing begins… tell him I didn't leave on purpose."

N held him as if he were a body to buried. Grip so tight, it felt as if the only thing which could corrode his touch was rot itself. Lear wanted to feel his fingers dip into it; his expression of horror would be the truest indicator of his humanity—or its lack.

Lear laid down and let himself be bruised. He smiled into N's shoulder. "Would you do that for me? A final request."

"Yes," N gasped out. "But won't you run away? Hide?"

"I'm not a coward, no dragon is."

N pressed lips to Lear's cheek, a soft gesture made only for skin. His voice cracked. "I suppose not."

The sky began to cry as the Rathian returned home.