[Gift] GD1: Wrangling Snakes

By all accounts, Nova didn’t like people.

No, he didn’t mean his rider Flash, or Flash’s few friends. He meant other strangers, and that is why he was sitting at the race feeling incredibly uncomfortable.

Nova was like the guard raptor of Flash’s home. Any sign of danger and he would be jumping in front of it, hissing and flaring his feathers. Usually with a little intimidation the intruder would back off, but he was quite capable of making sure they never returned, too. But he couldn’t just go around attacking everyone he didn’t know, as much as he privately thought it would fix the problem of having intruders in the first place, so he was forced to do the next best thing: sit twitchily next to his rider Flash and fellow dragon Quake, and guard them with his large presence. (Let’s not mention that Quake is larger than he is, and was curiously tucking her wings in so that she would appear smaller.)

Flash had brought them to the racing competition near their home, part of a festival celebrating some deity or other, and honestly Nova would have enjoyed the show quite a bit had the dusty, open-air stadium not been packed with other riders and dragons. The stadium itself was carved into sandstone and rock, with long racing tracks on one side and framed by wildgrass on the other. The wind whistled through the stands, carrying pale dust and small rocks, but thankfully they already had Earth dragons on standby to do a little magic and no one was irritated by the sand.

But right now, he was eyeing up that female next to him in suspicion. She was a pale blue colour, with a raptor-like body like him and a large crest of feathers. He didn’t fear that she would be a threat, but the fact that her body seemed to leak a cool mist was… Interesting. He’ll have to keep an eye on her.

Flash petted his head to say, pay attention, and he turned to see the race already starting. Four dragon competitors ran with painted numbers on their backs, all of them seemingly bipedal or quadrupedal- it makes sense, says Quake in his head, because it would be unfair if a running race included legless dragons or fliers- and he soon forgot all about his worries and cheered them on with everyone else. Well, he would still occasionally glance at the gathered crowd because there was just so many of them.

Suddenly Nova heard a roar in the distance. It sounded… Not like a dragon. Like something else. A creature, perhaps? Is it friendly? Before he could process it further, a large snake-looking creature suddenly reared its head out of the sparse grass. It moved with lightning fast speed, something that he certainly had not seen other Earth dragons do, and lunged at one of the competitors- a Light dragon, judging by their pale colours and tufted tail- with maw open and fangs outstretched.

Nova’s instincts kicked in and without a second thought he hurled down the spectator stand, which was thankfully not far away from the race track itself. The other competitors looked frozen and in shock, and he ran past the competitor he noticed before- brown in colour, with swirls of white and icy-looking spikes- before reaching the Light dragon. By this time the snake-thing had already wrapped its body around the poor dragon, and was about to strike at their face. He rushed in and pounced on the snake-thing with a battle cry torn out of his beak, clamping down on the creature’s neck and wrestling its mouth away from the Light dragon’s head.

Now you may be wondering why he kept calling it a snake-thing and not just a snake. The reason is that although snakes are notoriously just a giant rope of muscle with some fangs at the front, no snake should ever be that strong. Earth dragons were the strongest of all the elements, but even one such as himself could not do anything more than keep the head away using all his strength.

Thankfully, there was another Earth dragon in the race. The brown-and-white female, the same one that he had noticed before, rushed over and started trying to untangle the body of the snake-thing from the Light dragon, who was now trying their hardest to physically run away from all their problems with no success. The other Earth dragon shot a surprised but thankful glance at him, and they got to work, one holding down the snake-thing’s head and the other trying to keep the long serpentine body from squeezing any tighter. It was working, and the Light dragon was getting free, but it wasn’t working fast enough.

Over at the stands, the audience was starting to come to their senses. Flash had flown down into the fray at the sight of Nova running in, and told Quake to stay here. Quake, who was now sitting on her talons while both her rider and her fellow dragon were trying to battle the snake-thing on the ground, was trying to think of a solution that wasn’t just ‘run in and try to pull it off Earth-style’. She spotted the snake-thing, however, and her antennae twitched as she came up with something. Idly, she asked the air, “could I try convincing the snake to let go? Or at least coax it to eat something else and loosen its body a bit?”

Quake forgot the icy-looking dragon was next to her, but the white and pale blue dragon replied, “I don’t see why not,” throwing an impressed glance at her. Plan set, she swung her metal-covered head towards the chaos below, reaching out with a bit of her magic to see if she could find the snake- aha. It was just hungry, and had thought the Light dragon was a regular deer or other prey. With a gentle nudge her magic arrived at in front of the snake, and she could see the surprise on the snake’s face when she told it that she would be able to find it some food if it let go. It couldn’t talk, but it could send her basic emotions, and she felt surprise and gratitude mixed with a bit of suspicion in there as she asked if it would like to accept the offer.

The snake struggled a bit, but ultimately agreed, once again through some feelings of agreement rather than words. Quake hastily called to the dragon sitting next to her, “it’s agreed to let go!”, and flew down to let the two dragons fighting the snake know. Eventually, it got through all the involved dragons that the snake just wanted some food if it would let go, and Flash ran out to buy some meat from a nearby vendor- thankfully this is a fair so there were plenty around- and eventually it was released a bit away from the fair clutching its mouthful of meat.

Overall, the two dragons saw more action than they had bargained for today, but none of them were complaining. Flash thinks they did a good job, and from the corner of his eye he saw the brown dragon with Nova and the white dragon with Quake say something to their riders before the three left.