The summons came with he wind.
Not sound. Not scent. Not even thought in the way my mother spoke with me. This was older.
It pressed against the marrow of my bones and vibrated through the iron (maybe?) in my blood. A commend that did not require language because it was woven into what we were.
Return. Serve. Burn.
I stiffened where I stood near the mouth of our cavern, snow hissing against my scales as the pressure intensified. My internal compass that had always pointed north like a bird's swung to the South, a shift as drastic as gravity changing directions.
My mother rose slowly from the cavern's depth. She had felt it too.
Her pale eyes slowly closed. For a moment, I saw something sorrowful inher expression that I had never seen before.
Recognition. And resignation.
"He calls," she said quietly.
I did not need clarification on who "he" was. Morgoth.
Even thinking his name felt like swallowing ash.
The Master of the North. The corruptor. The shaper of dragons. And the Greatest Evil Middle-Earth would ever know.
The will behind the gathering beyond the horizon. The pressure came again, stronger this time. Not an invitation or persuasion, but expectation.
Dragons were weapons and weapons answered when summoned.
My claws dug into the stone, my agitation clear. "We don't have to," I said.
Her eyes opened and found mine immediately. There was no fear in them or wavering, just raw determination.
"We will not," she replied.
The Words were calm. Final.
But the pressure did not fade as time passed, it sharpened. As if something vast and distant had turned its attention towards us.
Far to the south, the clouds churned ominously. The sky began to darken not with a coming storm, but with smoke. And ash.
War was coming. And we had just chosen a side.
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It took three days.
Three days of oppressive silence and rising tension. The summons didn't fade but did not sharpen either. The wind no longer felt free, it felt watched.
On the third night, the horizon burned once again. Not smoke from a village or a drifting haze. True flames.
A distant red wound opened across the sky.
My mother stood beside me on the ridge, her frost blue scales catching the reflected glow.
"He comes," she murmured.
I felt him before I saw him. A presence like an anvil pressing on my body. Then he broke through the clouds.
The same dragon I had met before – iron-black, scarred, vast. But now there was no curiosity in him or testing or circling. He came with purpose.
He descended towards us in a controlled glide, landing on the frozen peak across from us with enough force to fracture the ice beneath him. The wind stilled.
His head lifted slowly. "Little gold," he called. The words carrying a new weight. "You were summoned."
My mother stepped forward, placing herself in front of me.
"We refuse."
A rumble rolled from his chest. Not laughter, but displeasure.
"You do not decline the Master."
"We have no master."
That made his wings flex, a reaction to his irritation. The air started to grow hotter.
"You are his weapon, forged by him."
"I may be born a weapon, by I choose now to be a mother."
Silence. The black dragon's gaze shifted to me.
"You smell wrong," he repeated from our first encounter.
"He smells like freedom. And choice," she replied evenly.
I did not speak. My instinct was screaming at me to run. Or show my dominance and fight. But neither option would let me live. Not without sacrifice.
"You refuse the call as well," he said flatly.
"Yes."
"Then you refuse your design."
"Yes."
His jaw opened slightly, steam pouring out. "Then you are both defective."
The attack came without roaring or warning. He surged upward, wings snapping open in a blast of wind that hurled snow and ice into a tiny storm.
My mother launched to meet him before I even registered what was happening. They collided midair.
The impact sounded like mountains colliding. Claws met scales. Horns scraped. Fire burst forth between them clashing in a molten red.
I drove into the sky to join her. She was my mother; I would protect her.
The black dragon twisted mid-grapple and caught my flank with his talons. Pain exploded across my side as I faltered in the air.
I hit the ridge with a resounding crack. Before I could rise, he abruptly disengaged my mother and dove towards me.
"You were commanded," he snarled. His jaws opened to take a bite out of my smaller size.
A blast of freezing flame struck him as my mother barreled into his side. She tore into his shoulder, ripping scales free, with a savagery I had never seen before.
They rolled across the ice, shifting snow and crushing rock.
I forced myself upright and launched again, slamming onto his exposed back. My claws sank deep. Heat scorched my face as he twisted to throw me off.
My teeth punctured through the membrane of his wing. His roar thundered, not from pain or fear. From rage.
Fire ripped through the air, pushing my mother back.
Now with room, he rolled trying to crush me. I jumped away as soon as I realized what he was trying to do.
The black dragon settled back as he gaze landed on us, side by side once more.
He smiled.
It was not a friendly expression. It was the look of a predator who was thoroughly enjoying the hunt.
"You are weak," he said. "You will die. IN AGONY!"
He lunged. The sky shattered.
We collided with him midair, and the impact knocked the wind from my lungs. His claws grazed my side, tearing into the scales free in a spray of gold. I twisted, barely avoiding his jaw snapping shut inches from my neck.
He was targeting me.
He was stronger. Older.
Every movement was efficient like a killer. No wasted motion. No hesitation.
I slammed my horns into his ribs and felt his scales give slightly – but he didn't falter. His tail whipped around and struck my face. Something popped as pain flared across my vision.
My mother was rabid. She did not roar. She did not hesitate. She simply struck with fury.
The tempo of her strikes beat against him, deeper than mine. Heavier. Brutal.
She struck him with enough force to send all three of us tumbling. We crashed into a mountainside in an avalanche of snow and shattered stone.
The black dragon recovered first.
Of course he did.
He tore into her with a fury no longer measured. No longer a predator hunting prey.
This was a war beast.
"Traitor!" he roared, flames exploding from his jaws in a torrent of molten fury.
She met it with frost.
Steam exploded outward as cold flame met molten magma. The mountainside cracked beneath the temperature shift.
I tried to stand.
My vision swam.
Pain screamed through my body as I forced myself upright anyways.
He had her pinned. His claws digging into her chest. His jaws tore into her neck. Blue scales shattered beneath iron-black talons.
She did not cry out. She only looked at me.
Not with fear. Not with regret. With love.
"Run."
The word struck me through dragon-tongue like a blade. I froze.
"No–"
"RUN!"
It was plea. A begging desperation.
He tore deeper.
Her blood spilled across the snow in a bright, terrible contrast. Something inside me broke.
I charged.
Not with thought. Not with humanity. WITH RAGE.
Fire exploded from me in a blast of concussive pressure I had never summoned before. Not a breath – an eruption. It engulfed him.
He roared in pain.
When the flames finally sputtered out, he was scorched but standing.
Mother was still.
Her body lay broken beneath him, one wing twisted, frost already creeping over the wounds like it was trying to preserve something that couldn't be saved.
He looked at me through the smoke and pain. And he was furious.
"YOU INSOLENT WHELP!"
He lunged again.
This time I had no back-up.
He was going to kill me.
Claws shattered rock as I dodged. Or I thought.
His jaw clamped onto my wing and bit down. Bone cracked.
I screamed. The world spun as he hurled me into a cliff face. My vision went black at the edges.
He advanced slowly this time.
"You were both given a chance," he said. "We were created for a purpose."
He glanced back at my mother's still form.
"And this is what comes of disobedience."
I tried to rise. My body refused to obey.
He lowered his head, preparing to finish me.
I hated it. I hated my own weakness. I hated a world where my mother had to die. I hated she chose to be better and was punished for it. I hated that I cared.
The first sign of change was a subtle shift in the air. Like a storm on the horizon. Something immense was building.
The black dragon paused.
Pressure started to leak out of the whelp.
From inside of me, I felt it. The hunger, except it wasn't.
I realized now what it had always been, disguised by my own misunderstanding.
Power.
And I let it go wild.
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Third Person POV
Light erupted from the smaller dragon.
The black dragon screamed in agony as it seared into its already mangled flesh.
This was an attack not of the physical plane, but an attack on the soul.
Ethereal flames burned away the sad excuse of a soul the dragon possessed.
And as it collapsed, dead, the light receded. Leaving a small dragon, thoroughly spent and consumed by grief.