Chapter 388 Tiberon Is A 7.5 (Thor’s Math)

DRAKENFELL — OUTER DRAGON YARD

Thor Crushturn was having the best day of his life, and the day involved a dragon and a rag, which was a combination he had never anticipated and was fully committed to.

He was polishing Styx.

The war dragon was sprawled across the courtyard stones with the boneless contentment of a creature being groomed, his massive head resting on his forelimbs, one eye open, watching Thor work a cloth across his scales with meticulous attention because he treated dragon maintenance the way other men treated religion: with devotion, with reverence, and with a complete inability to explain why it mattered so much.

“Looking good, big man,” Thor said, buffing a section of Styx’s shoulder plating. “You see how the light catches that? That’s a natural sheen. That’s genetics. You can’t buy this. People try. They fail. We were born with it.”

Styx rumbled. The rumble was warm, deep, vibrating through the courtyard stones with a frequency that rattled a water bucket fifteen feet away.

“We are the two most attractive beings in this kingdom,” Thor continued, working the cloth along a ridge. “And I’m including the royals. Dex is a solid eight. Tiberon is a seven, maybe seven-five on a good day. You and me? Tens. Easy. We don’t even have to try, and that’s the tragedy of it, Styx. We don’t even have to try.”

A sound interrupted the monologue. Small, warbling, the vocal equivalent of a foghorn discovering sadness.

Thor looked up.

The juvenile dragon was sitting thirty feet away.

Guinevere’s dragon. The one that had fallen from a portal and interrupted an execution and bonded with a woman who was currently in the dungeons. The juvenile was green-scaled, and was sitting on its haunches with its tail curled around its feet and its head bowed, producing a sound that was, by every biological and emotional metric, crying.

The warble came again. Longer. Louder. The kind of sound that made hardened soldiers turn their heads and stable hands stop working and every person within earshot experience the involuntary chest-tightening of a living creature encountering the unfiltered grief of another living creature that lacked the sophistication to hide it.

Thor set down the polishing cloth.

He walked toward the juvenile. His stride was unhurried and confident, as if he were not approaching a creature that outweighed him by a factor of ten.

“Hey.” His voice dropped. Lower. Gentler. A register that nobody in Drakenfell had ever heard from Thor Crushturn, because Thor Crushturn’s voice typically occupied the range between loud and painfully loud, and gentleness was a gear his personality had never previously required. “Hey, little man. What’s going on?”

The juvenile lifted its head. It looked at Thor with the particular misery of a creature that had bonded with a person who had been dragged away in chains and hadn’t come back.

The cry came again, quieter this time and directed at Thor. The sound of a young dragon asking a question in the only language it had: where is she?

“Yeah,” Thor said. He sat down on the cobblestones in front of the juvenile, cross-legged, putting himself at eye level, which given the size difference meant the dragon’s eye was approximately the size of Thor’s head. “Yeah, I know, buddy. She’s inside. She’s locked up. She did some messed-up stuff, between you and me, but she’s alive. She’s in there.”

The juvenile’s head dropped. Its chin hit the cobblestones with a thud that vibrated through the courtyard, and the warble turned into a long, sustained note of pure misery that was so pitiful two guards on the far wall actually stopped their patrol to look.

“There, there.” Thor reached out and placed one hand on the juvenile’s snout. The scales were warm beneath his palm, smoother than Styx’s, the texture of a dragon whose plating hadn’t fully hardened yet. “It’s alright, little man. She’s in there. She’s okay. Well, she’s in prison. But she’s alive, and alive is the important part.”

The juvenile pressed its snout into Thor’s hand. The pressure was firm, insistent, the lean of a creature seeking comfort from the first person who had offered it.

“You know what?” Thor leaned back. Looked at the juvenile. Looked at Styx, who was watching from across the courtyard with one eye open and an expression that could have been curiosity or judgment or both. “We should give you a name. You cannot just be ’the dragon.’ That’s no way to live.”

Thor studied the juvenile. Green scales. Green eyes. Bad coordination. A landing record that included zero successful attempts and one demolished building.

“Wrex,” Thor announced. “Short for Wreckage. Because you knocked an executioner off a platform and turned a building into gravel on your first day. That’s a résumé, little man. Own it.”

Wrex lifted his head. The warbling stopped. His green eyes fixed on Thor with the particular focus of a creature hearing its name for the first time and deciding whether the name was acceptable.

He chirped. Once. Short, sharp, carrying a quality that was distinctly less sad and distinctly more interested.

“There it is.” Thor grinned. The grin was enormous, genuine, and carrying the specific wattage of a man who had just solved an emotional crisis with a name and a head pat and was fully prepared to accept credit for both. “Welcome to Drakenfell, Wrex. I’m Thor. That handsome beast over there is Styx. Between the three of us, we’re the best-looking trio on this continent, and I will hear zero arguments.”

Wrex warbled again. The sound was quieter. Softer. The sound of a juvenile dragon who was still sad and still missing the woman who had bonded him and was also, for the first time since a portal spat him into a courtyard, being told he belonged somewhere.

Thor stayed on the cobblestones. He kept his hand on the dragon’s snout. He didn’t move.

Styx, across the courtyard, rumbled once. Low. The rumble carried the specific resonance of an older dragon acknowledging a younger one, and the acknowledgment was not warm, exactly, but it was present, and present was enough.