"You're still thinking about that horse?"

"I hate to admit it but he was quite sexy for a slave"

Mithriel sighed : "so you don't want to talk about it?"

"I don't.. and before you say anything : yes it was my fault.. MY plan backfired on him and Greymos had to do it so he isn't to blame.."

"At least you're not thinking about your gold"
She joked only to be met with a sheepish look. She sighed again..

"Look! the mountain!"

"Bro.. we've been walking towards it for hours, you hadn't seen it before?"

He paused..

"I... I don't know maybe I don't have as good an eyesight as you" he spat.

"You need to train your eyes, bro.. watch at the furthest point away in the distance and try to get the clearest image you can get.."

He made an annoyed face before he told her coldly :

"Actually I don't, I am a dragon, I am immortal, I don't need to do anything"

She got annoyed too and did what everyone do when they are annoyed : a strawman!

"Ugh! You really want to spend your life doing NOTHING!?"

"That's not what I said.."

"what?! You said you didn't need to do anything!"

"And yet here I am talking to you.."

"What does it have to do with anything? Alright let's not talk anymore!" Now she was getting agitated.. She felt insulted and wasn't interested in hearing about what he wanted to say.

"You never hear me out! I'm doing something right now : talking to you! Going to the mountain! I agreed to let you teach me flight! All of these are things I don't need to do! Is it so hard to admit when you're wrong?!"

The words seemed to have hit home.. Her expression changed from annoyed to one more neutral but deep in thought.

She wouldn't say anything for a while.

…

Somewhere to the north, in Mordor a fortress was besieged..

Leading the assault, fought Captain Auruin and Elwen, the self-proclaimed hundred bull-troll slayers, a talented albeit very vicious forty-five meters long bulky golden male and his very stuck up elvish rider. Under him, among many others, was Calvar, the youngling. His red body was marred in scars, results of many true shots of enemy wind lances and horns licking at his body. He didn't look like he was as far from adulthood as he actually was despite the title bestowed upon him by his bully of a captain..
He even probably looked pretty old but in a good way, he looked strong and experienced and was pretty much around the size of the young combat ready alageasian dragons.

Sauron's force had found ways to deal with dragons. Trolls were bred with a changeling that was yet to be identified so that they became huge beasts with fireproof black fur and red eyes and were mixed with bulls to have a thicker skull and horns to kill the dragons with and powerful bull hind legs capable to help them jump higher and faster. This new breed now looked more like giant minotaurs or Balrogs than trolls..

Calvar didn't survive all these battles and all his scars by pure dumb luck : he was a capable fighter with a very functional and economic way to maneuver in the air despite his lackluster speed and ability to perform fancy tricks.
He knew what to look for, what to expect and how to twist his body at the right moment to have the potentially lethal arrows cut a few scales instead..

Auruin swoop down on the horns of a troll. The beast thought the golden dragon was silly and jumped to gore him in the belly, at the last moment however the glorious bully twisted his body and caught the horns with his talons.
The dark beast thrashed around and punched the captain in the neither region.
Auruin was a vengeful and sadistic wyrm but if you asked him, it would be for a practical purpose that he did whip the bull-troll in the groin at this moment. According to him it makes it easier to lift the trolls suddenly in mid-air. The point of it all was to use the beast as a shield against orcish dragon-lances.

The troll bellowed in pain only once, the three dragon-lances had one of his lung, his spine and his skull pierced. It stopped the bellow but merely made the thrashing more erratic.

One of the arrows' tip protruded from the gaping mouth of the beast and licked the scales of the vain captain.

A huge tongue protruded out of it too, but as it lolled uselessly from the dead beast barely touching Auruin's belly, it wasn't denting the beautiful golden scales of the dragon and thus its licking wasn't quite as annoying.

Elwen was known for his fancy and bad-ass 'jump from the dragon and kill everything' but this time he outdid himself :

Thanks to his trusty golden silk rope attached to the equally as golden saddle of his equally as trusty dragon, he jumped from the latter's back in an arc in the air towards the head of the beast and reached it just in time before his dragon threw the corpse into the enemies' lines.

Elwen had let go of the rope and jump from the head to reach for the ground before the corpse, free-falling, he cut the head of an orc dragon-slayer that was about to pull the trigger of a ballista.

The huge corpse of the troll crashed on the ground behind the bold elven captain, crushing many enemies on the battle field and bounced high enough to roll in the air above the elf's head without breaking the wind-lance or fazing Elwen, it then continued its course rolling, crushing many other enemies as Elwen took control of the ballista and shot another Orc dragon slayer in the head, the disproportionate projectile had the orc's head implode on contact before he could kill Auruin who was lying on his back after he has crashed as he wasn't able to keep flying after throwing a troll since it put him in the air in a position with his back towards the ground.

It wasn't such a bad thing because he knew he could count on Elwen to protect him while in this state and also had the benefit to crush even more enemies where the troll's corpse wouldn't hit.

It was an effective strategy to draw the shots, nullify them, break through the lines and allow the other dragon-riders to wreak havoc and cleanse everything.

They did just that..

Calvar saw a rather small troll lifting a huge ten ton boulder, preparing to throw it..
He dived and whipped a hand of the troll, the boulder fell on his head, dazing him. Calvar used the opportunity to try and blind the troll with his talon but an old and powerful looking warg, used the troll as a spring board to reach for the young red dragon's throat.. However, Calvar was a tough cookie and hammered his horned chin into the back of the warg, he hit nothing : the warg had disappeared.

What was that?! Magic?!

He tried to scout for the presence but the troll wasn't going to stay idly put forever.

I should take some height, it's not safe.. Tss! Could have been my first Troll kill!

As he cursed internally he flapped before the troll could grab his legs and prepared for the Gore jump as he had been taught : he positioned his hind-legs as if he was about to land and used the vertical momentum of the troll's jump to make taking height easier.

Piece of cake! Hehe!

But that was when something tore apart inside of him : it was incredibly painful and it paralyzed him, it was something powerful, magic and ancient and he recognized it instantly despite how different it was from his memories:

Father!?

He started to contort himself like a mad creature and fall..

The minotroll grabbed his tail, punched him in the guts and pinned him down. Then he realized the dragon he had at his feet was frozen as he didn't even try to defend himself..

He stomped his right hoof on Calvar's neck and grabbed his head, then he pulled and twisted..

…

In another place, at another time..

"So do you smell it?" asked the dirty purple dragon.

Mithriel had been waiting for that moment. She had prepared for it. She knew Aureye would be a tough opponent to bargain with but it was now or never.. She would get him tell her everything!

"What I smell is danger, Aureye"

"C'mon you agreed to come here for that reason!"

"Wait! Ow now I get it, you had me come here to verify your theory because I have better magic smell!"

She wasn't pleased.

"well yes.. I did.. okay, I did just that.. But.."

"There is no But! Aureye, You need to tell me everything!"

He sighed..

"Okay, I manipulated you, I don't have the ring, I just wanted you here, there and now, please.. I'm sure there is something!"

"I am going home!"

"Then I am going alone!"

He started to flap..

She heard it, she felt it, he as trying to carry his own weight and he was putting heart into it, they both knew he wouldn't succeed and she knew exactly why he was flapping..

"You.. YOU! How much of this did you have planned?!" It wasn't the first time she had stuttered in telepathy but it sure was a rare occurrence..

"What would you say if I told you that you'll help me, that I know you will help me, that I wouldn't be here if I didn't know you would help me.. that I am too good at knowing things to be wrong about you helping me?"

He kept flapping all the while.

She was silent for a moment.
"Okay I get it, you have too many ways to convince me to help you.. Even just me wanting to defend the honor of our mother and prove you wrong about our father.. I can't escape it, that was a very nice trap, Aureye."

Only then did he stop flapping and without even looking back at her, he confidently walked closer to his goal, he knew she would follow him.

Aureye was fake. He had learned to put on masks to protect himself. He hadn't learned to put them off.

He cared about a lot of things. His family one of them. But he would never show anyone exactly how much and for what reasons he cared for anything.

Aureye was fake.

Mithriel knew it but just realized exactly how much.
Thinking back to everything he said during their journey together : their encounter with Greymos, his outbreak for the horse as well as other discussions they had, about hunting, the right to claim territories and other political hot topics.

She had opened up to him, her opinions, her views on the world.. he had learned many things..

Now she was left wondering :
Brother, Is mystery the only thing I'll ever know about you?

After a relatively short walk following an unidentified magic afterthought, Mithriel finally picked up something as tangible as a name can be.

Her puzzlement didn't go unnoticed :

"Found something, Sis?"

"I don't know yet, I've never felt that sort of magic, it feels like a chain without identity binding a darkness using its own body, I can't find the root of neither the dark nor the chain.."

"its own body? You mean the darkness?"

The more she look into the abyss, the emptier she felt, she could barely breath anymore..

"It's.. intertwined in the aether.. this spell .. I don't think anything could ever break it.."

"Well I do have an idea.."

"NO! You really have no idea! Trust me! I know my stuff when it comes to magic! Whatever THIS is, it should never be tampered with.. The most powerful magic aren't the ones with a strong smell, they are the hardest to decipher, that's why we can't feel the gods!"

"Gods don't exist, magic is just a matter of will, someone just need to will it hard enough."

"Well NOOOOO.. like really.. what you describe is wild magic and it has never been able to achieve anything."

He chuckled a bit :
"Just follow me, you will soon be humbled.. the wild invented everything you hold dear"

"I agreed to come here to smell for a trace of the spell, going forward means death! I will not be manipulated into following you, I won't put up with your suicidal behavior, I will beat you up and lock you down before I see you kill yourself for pride!"

Sorry, Mith.. it's not gonna happen, I don't know about the consequences but at least I'm willing to face them.. I don't even remember why I brought you here, probably because I didn't have the courage to do it alone.. I am the terriblest brother.

He roared and it tore the sky. Within the mountain, a father stirred.