Not bothering to glance at the younger blackscales, Thauglor gnashed his old, yellowing fangs once, yawned, and turned to his other kills. His hunger was sated, but the King of the Forest Country deliberately cracked the skulls and feasted on the entrails of the two remaining bodies, gorging himself. As he did so, he cast an errant eye at the young male who waited like a quivering statue at the clearing’s edge, wide eyes recording Thauglor’s every move.

There were more like this Kreston every decade-black dragons of his bloodline whom he did not know personally. It had been at least a hundred summers since he’d last visited all of his descendants, children and grandchildren combined. Most of his own brood were properly deferential, as were their children. But these latest pups were almost insulting in their presumption and the cute boldness of youth would be little protection as they moved into gangly adolescence. Thauglor would see to that.

Others would, if he did not. Perhaps another tour of his forest domain was in order, to put a little fear of their elders into foolish and arrogant young draconic skulls.

And he’d best be spreading more than a few tales of the ancient past, and, lessons on hunting as well. Thauglor almost sighed aloud. He preferred to hunt, though he knew of blue wyrms and reds who would settle for the scavenger’s life. But corpse wings-little more than scaled vultures-descended from his blood? Hmmph. Perhaps Casarial, who as youngest had always been spoiled, was remiss in training her young. Thauglor bore no qualms about eating creatures he hadn’t slain, but he’d sired a family of hunters, not corpse buzzards.

Yet that was a matter for another day. The summer sun was glimmering brighter in the cloudless blue sky, and already black flies were swarming about the cooling carrion. The young dragon waited his turn at the spoils, shifting no more than one errant talon in his growing impatience. Thauglor thought of carrying off the remains as a lesson or burying them in dust, but relented. A hungry hunter hunts poorly.