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"Nimbus... are you in there?"

The voice disturbed me from my slumber-- the first one in three days that had been without Kiven. Three days of pure solitude. Three days of nirvana. Three days without the being of hypocrisy that had masqueraded as a friend, as one who cared. I struggled in vain to cling to the restful world of sleep-- a lovely world, filled with soft colors and warmth --but felt myself grow more and more awake. The voice robbed me of this nirvana, it did.

Again the voice called to me. It was an unfamiliar, masculine voice that held a slight tone of worry. Had Celsko sent her mate to check on that crazy fuck up on the mountain? I opened my eyes and raised my head.

At the entrance of my cave stood a drake, his form, silhouetted black as the sun rose over the opposite ridge line.

"Yes, I am here." I growled, then, in a sharp, spiteful tone, "Who are you... and what brings you here?"

"I am Veexer-- You know me, do you not?"

My stomach tied itself in knots as I heard his words. I got to my feet and crept out of my cave with a fair amount of circumspect, wincing in the morning sunlight. It was the first time in years that I had gotten near enough to Veexer to truly get a good look at the drake. He had grown larger, having gone from the adolescent I had once befriended to a lean, sleek looking creature. He was still rather small for a male, being no longer from snout to tail than I, and yet the drake seemed tremendously larger than myself. His scales were a ruddy red no more, instead being a beautiful shade of deep copper.

I regarded him with a cold glare, before asking, "What do you want with me?"

"The Provider wants everyone to come to the meeting grounds. I was instructed to spread the word." He paused, eyes widening, "Dear Sephive, what happened to you?"

His stare traveled from the gash on my foreleg, which had painfully swollen over the past days, to my head wound.

"Myself." I growled, flexing my claws.

A look of surprised shock crossed the drakes face, and he took a step back.

"Well," I snapped, growing more and more annoyed with the drake, "Are we going to this meeting or not?"

Not waiting for an answer, I pushed past the drake and began to walk in the general direction of the of the meeting grounds. I hoped ever-so dearly that he would not follow, but I soon found the drake trotting alongside me.

"We could've flown..." He mumbled after an awkward silence.

I eyed him, seeing only the creature I had watched upon that summer day.

"Landing," I growled, "Landing hurts my leg... makes the cut bleed." Then, after a pause, "Do you have no other drakes to rouse?"

"No, you're the only one over here... right?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, I just thought--"

"You thought what?" I accused, stopping and giving a threatening glare.

"I thought..." He gulped, "I thought you had a mate... most drakes do..."

"Well you thought fucking wrong." I snarled menacingly.

"It's just that... Roaz told me that whenever she sees Celsko, you're always there... I just thought that you and her where--"

"I don't give a damn what your precious Roaz tells you." I spat, picking up my pace once more.

The drakes jaw dropped in surprise. Yes, the audacity! The fucking audacity Nimbus has to address you like that, oh Veexer the terrible!

I left the shocked drake standing beneath the maple trees, the sun glinting off his copper scales. The drake was not Veexer. It was an impostor, impostor I say! Just another hypocritical grin scheming against me! It wore a mere mask the resembled my long gone friend, it did! The ugly fucking hypocrite!

---

"Friends, comrades..." The Provider began over that crowd's spasmodic noise, his voice possessing an air of kindness over its coldness.

He sat atop the large boulder in the center of the meeting grounds. Two Trilslet drakes stood proudly at the base of the great stone, with more of the large drakes forming a large circle around our leader, keeping the onlookers back. The morning air was heavy with moisture, causing my scales to itch and prompting premonitions of rain. The mountains above glared down upon me through an opaque veil of haze.

"Friends, comrades..." The drake began again, this time louder, colder, "As you all know, we are equal, we are one in the same. Our colony is a single being-- a single being made up of hundreds of individual drakes and dragonesses." He paused, tail slowly raising then thumping back down against the hard granite. Raise, thump, raise, thump-- as if a constant, everlasting motion, as regular and periodic as winter and summer.

It was only then that I noticed something peculiar. Something subtle-- a mere trifle to the untrained eye-- yet something so queer and out of the ordinary unto me that it made me tense up suddenly. Cobalt, the high commander of the Trilslet, was absent. He who stood beside our dear leader was gone! I scanned all about the crowd and yet still, the midnight-blue drake I saw naught. When had I not seen the drake at a meeting? Never once could I remember.

"You see, dear friends," The Provider churred excitedly, "in the night, I had a vision! Great Sephive himself came to me-- in a dream, he did! Yes, friends, Sephive came to me..."

All throughout the crowd sets of ears perked up with great vigor, mine included. Great Sephive, the drake who had all but abandoned the drake who loved him so, had chosen our dearest of leaders to speak to. Only the brightest drakes does our Sephive chooses to speak with. Only the greatest of leaders does he choose to come to.

"...And friends, Sephive spoke to me!" Our leader was now visibly excited, sitting back on his haunches with his silver, frill-tipped tail lashing two and fro behind him. "He told me that our colony shall prevail! That it shall prevail if we do but one simple act..." His voice suddenly grew much calmer, "He told me that, in order to prevail, we must be as pure of a species as possible."

Three hundred-odd-some sets of ears strained in suspense-- waiting for the drake to continue.

"Now, as you all know, the great Sephive works in mysterious ways. But I believe his message is oh-so clear! I believe that our great Sephive-- much like I-- has seen the faults within this great colony. He has seen that we are are nothing of the once-great species that drove back he who tried to destroy our very existence-- Cortez the Wicked."

A whelp, who stood, perched atop a boulder next to me, sucked in a sharp breath at the name of the tyrant who had slew our kind so.

"Yes, my fellow comrades, if Sephive was here would he not admonish us for our impureness? Our uncleanliness? I say of course! Of course the mighty drake would! It is through him that I have come to the conclusion that our species must become pure-- for the good of the colony! That is what his greatness would surely want, a pure species." He sighed, looking down, "A species free of half-bred drakes. That is what our great Sephive would truly want, friends. A species of but the purest drakes."

All was silent in the crowd. Above, a woodpecker jabbed at long-dead wood with its beak. A breeze rustled the trees. For some unknown reason, I thought about the strange little man, Louis Bekker, for a moment.

"...And I have decided that, for the good of the colony, we must stop this... this sheer insult to his Greatness." The silver drake's tail was now lashing, his voice, trembling with excitement, his wings, strained and tense-- as if ready to take flight. "Yes, my dear friends, my loving comrades, it has been far too long that we have ignored such problems!"

He suddenly leapt down from the boulder, with such grace he did.

Pacing about in front of us, the drake, voice at its most excited, tail lashing at its fastest, trilled, "And friends, do you want to know what our great leader wants us to do? Do you know what would truly be for the good of the colony? Great Sephive wants us to end the crossbreeding between drakes! Yes friends, was it not decreed that, in the beginning, there were only but the purest of breeds? The days when forest drakes were with forest drakes? When mountain drakes mated with mountain drakes? No, friends, it seems not that we have grown careless. We have become impure, we have! There is but one solution, and one solution only to such a problem-- We must put an end to crossbreeding!"

My eyes widened at this. End crossbreeding? How would one do th-

"And where better to start..." The Provider roared, preventing me from finishing my very thoughts, "Then to destroy the newest generation-- that that is yet unborn. Yes friends, crossbreeds are a disgrace and a threat unto our colony! As dangerous as traitors!"

From behind the boulder shriek suddenly rose up. It was shrill, feminine, and possessed such an animalistic fear to it that it sounded more akin to that of a cornered beast than a dragon.

A sky smile spread across The Provider's face.

"Yes friends, I present to you, the final solution to our hardships! The final solution-- that which will allow our colony to prevail!"

It was then that a great brute of a drake appeared from behind the boulder. His powerful jaw, holding firm to the neck of a much smaller, bluish dragoness. A bluish dragoness that seemed oddly familiar.

"Eve!" A roar erupted from amidst the crowd. My brother's maroon scales flashed in the sunlight as he charged forth towards his mate. Before he had made it within ten paces of her though, two Trilset drakes had thrown him to the ground, pinning the creature beneath their weight. Still he struggled, still he roared her name-- all of which in vain.

The Provider regarded him with a look similar to that that a mother might give to a misbehaving hatchling, but said nothing.

No, The Provider said nothing to my brother, nor to Eve, nor to the onlookers. He simply pawed over to the dragoness, who was sobbing and calling to her mate. Eve, the beautiful hypocrite I so despised, was shrieking and oh-so desperately trying to get to him. In that moment I felt something, something that rarely came to me. Sorrow.

Our leader nodded at the drake that held her, who dropped little Eve at his paws and stepped back. It was then and only then that I noticed something that made me gasp. Something that, when I had spoken to (screamed at!) the dragoness nary more than a week ago. Eve was carrying a clutch of eggs. As I saw her egg-heavy underbelly something clicked in my mind, and the veil was cast down.

I felt as if I was going to vomit. And, a second later, when our _(horrid, egg crushing, tyrannical leader's?) _dearest of leader's tail whipped around and slammed into Eve's soft underbelly, and I heard her shriek in pain, and Selkut roar in rage, and the sickening sound of ribs cracking, and the burning sensation of bile in my throat, I felt not the hatred for her I had felt for oh-so long. No, that hatred went elsewhere, having been replaced with a sorrow and a sadness that brought a tear to my eye. Young Eve doesn't deserve to be hated.

"You see, my friends," The Provider roared at us, "You see what we must do! For the good of the colony! For the good of dragon-kind itself!"

Eve's cry had been reduced to a slow, wheezing sob of pain. No, not pain, I thought as I felt a single tear run down my cheek to one of the small spikes that adorn my jawline, where it would hang, suspended in a strange peace for a moment, before falling into the grass. Eve's cries were not of physical pain, but rather a sheer, heart-wrought pain that only a mother can feel at the death of her own whelps. Eve's eggs, something that most precious to every female, were gone. Robbed they were, smashed within her by the very leader that said he loved us.

No, Eve, creature of my torment, you do not deserve to be hated. Whelp killing, malign, tyrannical leaders are but the sub-beings that deserve my seething hate.

They are but the creatures that deserve death.