—Orion—

  I left the tent, my stomach churning with a vague sense of nausea—the scene I’d walked in on, and what that baby had been subjected to, it disturbed me. I didn’t know what to think anymore, what to want when it came to this world and its creatures. I didn’t want to be weak—at least not in the way my father described the word. I didn’t want to hesitate when faced with these challenges—I wanted to be able to overcome them. To overlook these drakes' intelligence—ignore that they could feel anger, fear, love and a breadth of other emotions.

  Because if they could, the difference between hunting them and… murder felt thin.

  At some point I realised that I was standing in front of the group preparing lunch, all of them staring at me like they were expecting me to say something.

  “Orion? You in there buddy?” Lee, the spearman, asked me.

  “Yes? Who else…?” I hesitantly responded, Lee laughing in response.

  “Yeah, definitely you. Just wondering if you wanted to have a seat?” He asked, gesturing to a rock that’d been shuffled into a part of the circle around the fire. I nodded and took the seat, adjusting it a few times before it felt somewhat comfortable. I took a look around the campfire currently warming the stew, and saw that Becky and Elio were right next to me, both of them staring at me expectantly.

  “Hello! Orion, Elio has something that he wanted to say to you.” Becky said with a positive tone, the hand she'd put on Elio’s thigh clenching as the boy took a second too long to pick up where she left off.

  “Si-Sis-Shiiiit, l-look, I just wanted to say that I’m sorry about the way that I treated you in that situation, I should’ve been more collected as the leader. It’s just hard to stay calm when someone shot near you in the dark like a maaaNI-AC.” He apologised, then undercut with a whispered validation, which in turn got cut off by Becky pinching him on the thigh again.

  “… Well it’s not your fault the situation forced me to do that.” I acquiesced for him, neither of us could've known how cunning the drakes were.

  “'Forced you to do that'? We were all stuck in the dark, it’s not like any of us could see, and I had the sunlight spell up again in a few seconds.” He rationalised, obviously not aware that the drakes could see in the dark.

  “No, they weren’t.” I corrected him, Elio giving me a funny look, like I’d insulted him.

  “The drakes. They had night-vision.” I explained, taking the pause in conversation as a request to elaborate.

  “And how did you know that?” He accusingly asked, to which I thought the answer was obvious.

  “They live in that cave, and can't cast magic for light. Therefore that darkness is a part of their habitat.” I elaborated, the man’s face slowly becoming horrified.

  “Shit.” He swore to himself, catching his head in his hands.

  “On to much more important things, when can we see her? The baby?” Becky excitedly asked, making me grimace internally.

  “They’re anxious and refusing to eat anything. I don’t want to introduce anything that could stress them more.” I tried to explain without mentioning the incident in which she tried to feed them a steak from one of their parents.

  “Aw, I was hoping to get to pet her soon.” Becky thankfully let go.

  “Speaking of that drake, you need to do something about her.” Elio added, both of them gendering the infant drake as female. I suppose that it would do for now, as quite a few species don't have enough sexual dimorphism to tell apart the sexes. A good number of birds lacked it as well, and it's incredibly difficult to figure out the sex of one without an invasive test. From what I remember of the pair of drakes, I couldn’t remember any features or distinctions that separated the couple in any meaningful way.

  “What do you mean? She’s just an infant animal.” I asked.

  “No, that drake is a monster, why else would it be in a dungeon? So either find some way to make her stop biting and attacking everyone, or get rid of her.” He continued, my hands starting to shake in tandem with his words. I just don’t get the context that he and the others in the party used when calling this place a dungeon, and the creatures in it monsters. It made it so easy for them to dismiss what they actually are.

  “I’ll… think about it.” I sighed, repeating what I'd learnt many of my teammates said whenever they were asked to start a task they couldn't even be bothered thinking about doing.

  Elio nodded at my response, like what he asked me to do was a simple problem to solve. I realised again just how little he cared about the creature, willing to kick her, like she was a pest to be exterminated, all in exchange for some XP. For the first time, I felt genuine disgust towards my leader, his callousness towards life nauseating.

  As I waited for lunch—it being the only reason I was still sitting next to Elio—I watched his [Fairy Lights] fly around. The upgrade he'd chosen upon maxing the level of the [Sunlight] spell had turned it from one giant floating ball, into a cluster of firefly-like lights that could cover the whole campsite. They were bright enough that we didn't need torches or lanterns anymore, the one inside my tent easily illuminating it fully. I don't think it's a coincidence either that you couldn't destroy the lights with one attack anymore.

  Then lunch was served, the meat from the drake hunt to be used for the next few meals. Everyone quickly ended up with a bowl in their lap, filled to the brim with a steaming broth, chunks of meat floating in the mixture, with a stick of bread soaking up the flavour-filled liquid.

  It… It looked amazing, but I couldn’t stomach the idea of eating it, my mind immediately recalling the scene of the drake with an arrow through their eye. After a few seconds of hesitating with the spoon in my hand, I gave up on trying to force myself to eat the food, and placed the bowl on the floor before standing up.

  I left the fire behind, still unsettled, and returned to the tent where the drake waited.

  A couple of people asked me questions about why I wasn't eating while I escaped, but I ignored them as I closed the flap to the tent, superficially cutting off the outside world. I walked over to my mat and sat down on the rustic sleeping bag, then stared at the sleeping baby drake, the embodiment of the mistakes I’ve made today. Before I let myself assume the wrong things, I took the information that I did have and mentally laid it out before me.

  The parents were intelligent, maybe not on the level of human, but enough to plan out ambushes, adapt, improvise new tactics, and problem solve in ways that involve critical thinking and tools. The only realistic comparison to them I could make was the octopus, but it lacks emotional ties to others to make them comparable to humans.

  These drakes both co-inhabited the same home and raised their young together. That and the look on the drake's face when I killed its mate made it hard to deny that it cared. But they could still be beasts, lacking that quantitative jump between humans and all other life.

  But were humans smarter than the drakes? They almost outsmarted Elio today.

  Did they feel emotions less or more than people? I couldn’t tell you.

  And after seeing the infant refuse to eat, even with Becky shoving a piece of one of her parents into its face it refused. Plenty of carnivorous species wouldn’t care and take it. But she didn’t, and after that it-no, she… started wailing. I could only describe the noise as despairing, mourning maybe.

  The sound was haunting, similar to a baby's screech in intensity, but distinctly inhumane. It reminded me of when the drake saw its partners dead body for the first time, the sound guttural and haunting. I could tell that it wasn't human in any way, but I understood what it meant better than any of my teammates' gestures.

  I might not be able to say that she’s above humans in whatever ultimately arbitrary standard I used to compare us, intelligence or emotions. Although I can't say that she’s lesser either.

  For a moment I wished that I could just go back to thinking that the drakes were wild animals, incapable of feeling, undeserving of empathy. But, I couldn’t. Now that I suspected, I couldn’t go back to ignorance—abandon the drake, to be killed and eaten by some other predator.

  Before I could continue to brood, the infant woke up again, roughly following the pattern of only sleeping for a couple of hours before waking again. I watched the drake raise her head towards the bowl of water and take a few mouthfuls of the water before resting her head on the blanket once again.

  It worried me how little the drake was moving. If the drake was stressed, worried or panicked she should be attempting to flee—if she was comfortable, then she would be exploring the environment. But she didn’t move at all, too weak to even stand up.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  If I made an educated guess, I'd say that she was either ill, or starving. I couldn’t see any symptoms of any typical disease, though this new world could have some strange new strains, there was nothing I could realistically do but assume that her hunger had weakened her to the point of helplessness.

  I picked up the previously ignored pile of rodent meat and brought it back over to her, placing it right next to her snout. She ignored it, moving her head so that she didn’t have to look at it.

  It was concerning how stubborn she was being, and judging by the freshness of the egg-shell in the cave, she couldn’t have been more than a day old. The lack of scraps in the cave most likely meant that she hadn’t eaten a single thing either—could she afford to go any longer without food?

  With a sigh I picked up a piece of meat and thought about force-feeding the infant the food. As I considered how to do it, the drake reared back, showing the most emotion I’d seen in it since her agitation earlier. She looked scared of it, fearful of the food.

  I held the piece of meat near her mouth for a few more seconds before my resolve broke, and I put it back down. Again I wished that I could just ignore her pain, the torture I was putting her through.

  I wanted to be able to help for once, instead of making the situation worse.

  Almost too conveniently—the Path showed me a way forwards, one that could possibly fix some of the issues I’d caused for the little drake. I read through it's explanation, reading that it could permanently bind the drakeling and I together, and make me her carer.

  I decided that it would be my last resort, in case the drake refused to eat anything. Binding her to me might be… cruel, considering I’m the reason she’s half-dead, but it was better than letting her starve herself to death.

  With a grunt I stood back up again, deciding to put off the decision until I didn’t have a choice anymore. I went back outside, this time leaving the bowl of meat within the drake’s reach, just in case she changes her mind about eating. With nothing better to do, I decided to busy myself with chores for the next few hours, putting off the decision until I had no choice but to make it.

  ***

  After doing most of the jobs I could, Elio cornered me, looking pensive and surprisingly hesitant.

  “Hey, I just wanted to apologise for, I dunno, the whole mess that happened today.” He mumbled, my enhanced hearing the only reason why I could hear him clearly.

  “It’s alright, I don’t blame you for what happened.” I accepted.

  “But there is something else that I wanted to talk to you about.” He said before I could run off, a pit of dread opening up in my stomach. I hoped this wouldn’t be another conversation like the one before going into the cave.

  “I recognised my… fault in the situation earlier. Now it’s time to discuss yours.” He continued, and I frowned, wondering what he could be talking about.

  “What was my fault?”

  “Do you remember the torch I gave you before we went into the cave?” he probed.

  “Yes?”

  “Do remember why I gave that to you?”

  “… No.”

  “Orion, that torch was meant to be a backup light source, in case something went wrong with [Sunlight].And you threw it at the drakes.” He explained, confusing me about the issue.

  “And the mistake was?”

  “That you disregarded the purpose of your torch and put us in a worse situation later on? Resulting in me almost dying because I had to recast the [Sunlight] spell?”

  “Well… in the moment that was the best I could come up with.” I reasoned, Elio frowning at the response.

  “Well, instead of throwing the torch, and leaving us vulnerable to the blackout, couldn’t you have summoned an arrow instead, and used that?” He suggested, which… would’ve been better.

  “That’s a good suggestion.” I agreed, and the two of us lapsed into an awkward silence.

  “Well…?” Elio prompted, leaving me a bit confused on why the conversation was still going. I didn’t have anything to say, so I decided to wait until he brought something up.

  “Orion.”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you going to apologise?” Elio pushed, and I was a bit perplexed as to why he wanted me to.

  “No.” I answered simply, seeing no reason to. While there was a better alternative to what I did, I did the best I could do in the second I had to think. Debriefing was important, but I didn't see a reason to apologise.

  “No? What do you mean no?”

  “I’m not going to apologise, because I didn’t do anything wrong.” I explained, Elio’s confusion quickly turning into anger.

  “But? What? You did though? Do you remember the last minute of this conversation?”

  “Yes, there are things I could’ve done better, but I think that I reacted well—given that I had to improvise.”

  “Oooh-my-god, that doesn’t matter now! Just apologise, then this whole ordeal can be over and done with.” He groaned, and for the first time since meeting him, I disagreed with his leadership.

  “I’m not going to apologise when I performed to the best of my ability.” I refuted, and he scowled at me. He then turned around to leave, obviously too frustrated to continue the previous conversation.

  “But… before you go, I did have something I wanted to discuss with you.” I interrupted him leaving.

  “What else did you want to talk about?” he sighed.

  “It’s… about the drake. Is it really necessary to get rid of her…” I asked, hoping that his mind had changed about the 'threat' she posed.

  “The monster? Well, we’ll have to get rid of it if you can’t get some guarantees, I’d hate to have to… y’know.” He tried to correct me, his insistence that these creatures were all dangerous monsters becoming exhausting.

  “Did you figure out what you wanted to do with the drake?” Elio pressed.

  “I would rather leave her… undisturbed until we can get to the surface, but I did get a skill today called [Animal Companion]. It allows me to bond with an animal permanently, but I can only do it once.” I explained.

  “OH! That’s cool, and a drake as a sidekick, I mean it’s not a dragon, but it's a pretty good substitute right?” He gushed, the anger from the previous conversation forgotten. He had a habit of becoming enamoured with fancy new skills he could micromanage.

  “So you think it’s a good idea?”

  “Of course! I don’t think you’ll get a better opportunity to use it. It’s practically fate that you got the skill the same day a baby drake fell into your lap.” Elio encouraged me.

  “So… The only way that the drake-”

  “-Stays alive is if you use the skill. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to let a little murder lizard live in your tent just because she's cute.” He interrupted me, leaving me confused. Before I could question his statement, Elio turned and left, this time not letting me stop him.

  After mentally recovering from the encounter, I prepared for what I had to do next. I knew that I couldn’t put it off any longer, not without something worse happening to her. I walked back to my tent, and inside I saw that the little drakeling had barely moved an inch, not even to escape or eat.

  I crouched by it—agh, remember Orion—her, and gently nudged her head. She didn’t even open her eyes when I touched her, and instead just listlessly rolled, too limp and lifeless for it to be nothing. My breath caught in my throat as I picked her up and then sat her down in my lap. After poking and prodding a few places on her chest—trying to find signs of life—her limbs tensed a bit and her eyes opened, just a tiny slit between her eyelids, but she had woken up.

  Well, this is it. No going back.

  I willed [Animal companion] to activate.

  “Yes.” I answered after reading the new skill it would give me, ignoring the risk of physical changes that [Soul Bond] could give me.

  I thought about it, going through all of the references, and vaguely dragon related names, like Dracis, Drago, Drakon or something else loosely related to Latin. But what came to mind was something a bit silly, a piece of my childhood I’d been told to discard.

  Sally the Salamander, a rather silly cartoon character that was a mascot of some wildlife program that I’ve forgotten the name of. I’d been interested in her when I was younger, for reasons I didn’t really understand until I was older.

  “Sally, she’ll be called Sally.” I decided, the Path’s deep, red-tinged screen disappearing, and a sudden onset of drowsiness overcame me. Within seconds I collapsed forwards into unconsciousness.