CHAPTER TWO: QIBLI
Snakebites hurt. A lot. But not as much as the disapproval on his grandfather's face.
"You barely beat your record!" Vulture snarled. "You must try harder than that!" Qibli flinched.
Rattlesnake and Sirocco laughed at him, both of them having outlasted their younger brother by a large amount of time.
The treasure layered around the compound shone in the bright sunlight. Qibli wished he had that much treasure. He'd seen the poor dragonets in the Scorpion Den. He wanted to help them, but of course, he couldn't.
After what felt like years more of "training," as Vulture called it, they finally went home. Qibli managed to snatch a small mouse on the way, pretending to stumble and fall so he would be far enough behind his family that they wouldn't notice him eat it. Naturally, as Qibli had expected, none of them stopped to see if he was okay.
The next morning, Cobra kicked them out of the house and slammed the door in their faces, saying, "I have an important client to meet. I don't want to see your ugly snouts back until sundown, if you have to come back." The old, younger Qibli would have found a way to make that seem like she loved him. The old Qibli would have believed she loved him. But the dragon he was now knew that she didn't.
There was a circle of dragonets huddled around an opening containing a large mouse and a cat, which Qibli figured must've been the pet of someone important, otherwise it would have been eaten by then. "What's going on?" hissed Rattlesnake.
A dirt-covered SandWing glanced up at her and answered, "Taking bets on how long the scritter lasts. Winner gets those." He nodded towards a pile of five coconuts. Five! Coconuts!
Qibli glanced up at the sand buckets lining the walls.
"Slasher!" roared the dirty SandWing, diving towards the spot where the cat had been buried. Everyone was glancing up at the tops of the walls, but Qibli was already among the confused dragonets. He trodded on the talons of a dragon prone to hysteria, and, as he'd hoped, they started shrieking, disrupting the crowd.
"Where'd the mouse go?" yelped someone. "That way!" Qibli pointed down an alleyway, and the crowd scrambled down the streets. Qibli managed to snatch two of the coconuts in the chaos, running away to a dark corner to eat them in peace.
Unfortunately, Rattlesnake found him. "Used your super-big smarts to grab a snack, eh?" she mocked. "I'll take that, thank you very much." His sister snatched the coconut right out of his talons, licking her lips with her dark forked tongue. Qibli snarled at his sister.
"Give it back," he said, his voice squeaking. Some of the old Qibli was shining through, evidently. "What was that?" his sister replied, her tone warning. "Give it back!" cried Qibli.
Rattlesnake grinned evilly. "Finally decided to stand up to me, now have you?" Qibli jumped at his sister, but she just whacked him out of the way with her wings. "Too slow," she teased, and then she did something Qibli would never forget. Something that would change his life forever.
Rattlesnake stabbed her venomous tail towards his heart, but he dodged out of the way at the last second, and it grazed his back instead.
It immediately erupted into pain, and he arched his back as he screamed. "Bye-bye," his sister sneered, strutting away. Qibli barely noticed this. He looked around desperately for a stall of some sort, for any sign of brightsting cactus, but he saw none. And he knew he would never make it to the market in time.
Qibli was going to die.
