Yorna threw her hands in the air and leaned back to scream up at the incessant clouds reforming above. A burst of uncontrolled magical rage split the sky, and the sun shone down into the darken room, through the massive dragon's skull, if only for a few moments before mother nature had her way again.

  "Ahh man!" Bob broke the silence with reckless abandon, "Flux didn't even say a proper goodbye, just told me his stupid apprentice's name."

  Yorna turned to look at Bethany, who was sitting on the couch with Bob, basically in her lap. The air around the Dragon Scion rippled with magic, her eyes were glowing white with power. She started to lift her arm-

  "YORNA, enough!" Bob shouted, imbuing her name with magic; a discordant vibration along the flows of magic to 'ground her out', so to speak.

  She'd never been slapped with True Name magic before, so she reached out a hand like she was going to do something violent with magic, but for the moment she was just a lady, standing there with an outstretched hand... in the rain, which had just resumed, despite the sun still shining.

  "Yeah Yorna, I wouldn't try that for a couple hours at least. I twisted up your magic whatsits real good." Bob said. "You'll just end up taking longer to recover if you keep pushing."

  Yorna dropped to her knees and wept.

  The crew of the Chrysaora sat in shocked silence at what had just transpired. Bob resisted the urge to turn on the codpiece for some emotional music.

  And then... after a while, in the gentle pitter-patter of the rain and the occasional sob of the grief-wracked woman, the great stone eggs cracked.

  From within, two creatures emerged, each only a meter long and sharing the same basic morphology as Flux had, if a tad bit smaller. Two front legs, or arms maybe, what with the opposable thumbs on the front two hand-feet. Two back legs, and a long, thin body between them. Long in this case, is relative to the size and placement of their legs, There was a set of very dragony wings midway between the two pairs of down-facing limbs. They looked kind of like snakes with wings, and legs, but with somewhat cat-like faces that had little manes of different colored scales.

  One was green, with a shimmering gilded mane, and golden eyes with pupils slit like a cat's.

  The other was iridescent black, with a purple mane, struck trough with flecks of silver. Deep violet eyes blinked slowly at the room of assembled beings. When they locked eyes with the other dragon, both started chirp-scream-meowing at once.

  They instantly realized that if they took turns they could be louder and more annoying to everyone around, and started alternating screaming chirping meows.

  "Ohh babies! I bet they're hungry." Rex had already whipped out the half unwrapped F-Meat tube and started walking over.

  Yorna stood up and said, "Fronact, tuveirnet schwommb!"

  Rex halted, confused.

  "Damn." Bob said. "You guys ain't got translator spells no more?"

  "What did she say?" Sheena asked.

  "Pfft, I'm not gonna play translator, not when I can just ideablast you five's language into her head. That's the smart solution here."

  Before anyone had time to add their input about, perhaps, consent being asked... Yorna could speak Galactic Common.

  "AAAHHhhhhooowwch!" She cried, gripping the sides of her head in pain. It stopped a moment later, as abruptly as it started. "What the hell was that? Oh gods, what language am I speaking? Why do I understand this? What did you do to me?!"

  The infant dragon screams grew louder, and started to include magic to amplify their effect.

  "Which of you was Flux's friend?" The woman in the green dress asked in her newfound language.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  "Me!" The skull shouted. "And I did that to you, because you couldn't understand them, and they didn't understand you. I speak brainwords, so everyone always understands me."

  The baby dragons' piercing wails reached a painful level.

  "Are you going to feed them that F-meat or not Rex?" Sheena shoved him toward the two hungry infants dragons.

  "Yes, please do!" Yorna said. She was getting the worst of their cries and staggered away to plop down on the couch, right next to Bethany and Bob.

  Bethany froze. She tried to look at Yorna without moving her body, like a nervous little dog sitting next to a large, feisty cat.

  Rex squeeze the lowest grade 'meat' product legally allowed to be sold as food from a the tube. F-meat. All they could afford. He pulled a wad of uncooked 'meat' off for each of the newborn creatures.

  "They're going to prefer cooked food when they're older, I suspect." Bob said. "The last two that looked just like them did."

  They absolutely devoured the soft uncooked 'meat'. If Rex hadn't been wearing armor on his fingers, they might have had a bit of them too. After finishing their portions. They did not immediately resume the theatrics. Instead, each cocked their and looked up at Rex, studying the man in his armor, with the rest of the meat in a tube.

  "So, your name is Yorna." The Nuphidri said. "I am both a Nuphidri, and you may call me Nuphidri. That's Bethany you're sitting next to. The skull is Bob. The big man is Rex, and the little man is Lucas."

  "Hey! I'm regular-sized."

  "Fine. The regular-sized man is Lucas. The remaining member is Sheena, she tells us when we're wrong, and keeps us from fucking up too badly, morally speaking."

  "Great..." Yorna said.

  The Nuphidri continued. "Well, I suppose that means we need names for the two little ones. I believe they will eventually be capable of language, and thus should have proper designations."

  Everyone looked to see Rex, trying to hold off two rather ambulatory dragonlings. They had climbed on him and up one arm, held in the air, F-meat in hand. He dropped the meat to his other hand and the black one darted down his whole armspan to bite his armor in the wrist, forcing his fingers open just as they closed on the tube. The green one was right behind, and landed almost at the same time as the meat hitting the ground. Green ripped opened the package with a savagery wholly unexpected for something born only a moment ago.

  "Sweet Christmas!" Bob said. "They are lively!"

  Black landed next green, and the two dragonlings devoured the 'meat' faster than hungry dogs could have.

  "What's Christmas?" Bethany asked, the strangeness of the word Bob used knocking her free of her freeze response at Yorna sitting next to her.

  "Oh never mind, child. The Nuphidri is right. Someone should name these two noodly creatures."

  Yorna leaned forward and looked at the skull of Flux, gigantic and imposing. Her oldest friend. One of the first dragons; a name like his would do.

  "Flix." She pointed at the green and gold one. He stopped licking the scraps of the leftover F-meat wrapper he had, and looked up. He let a little happy chirrup sound out, and went back to licking up every last molecule of flavor he could get.

  "Flox." She pointed at the black and purple one. He dropped his bit of wrapper, looked at her, looked up Rex, and then used that big man like terrain. Flox bolted up the exosuit, and used his back feet to kick off from the face mask at the top. He opened his wings to glide over to Yorna. Trilling out a happy sound the whole way.

  Before Flox even made it to his target Flix was racing after him. His kick off Rex's head sent the poor man staggering backward until he too, was sitting in the recessed couch area, across from Yorna, Bethany, and Bob.

  The dragon scion caught each dragonling in turn, Flox on her left arm, Flix on her right, and lay back in her spot in the couch, holding them both to her breast. They began to purr.

  "Well they say time rhymes," Bob said, barking out a single 'HA!' before continuing, "But it's literally echoing for these two."

  "What do you mean Bob?" Bethany picked him up off her lap and looked at him. She casually flipped on 'The Vision' mode with her exosuit and practically flash-banged herself inside her helmet looking at the flows of magic. Bob was violently bright when observing with The Vision.

  "Oh, I wouldn't try to scan me that way." He said, as she dropped him on her lap to instinctively try to cover her eyes from the brightness. He rolled off her lap and hit the floor, "Yeah, that's what'll happen."

  Sheena walked over and picked up Bob, and sat on the couch on the other side of Bethany, and flipped her vision switch off from the outside. "What do you mean it echoed for these two?"

  "Oh, just that the original space dragons, the ones made by my maker. Were also named Flix and Flox. Flux came along, later when they needed a bigger dragon for dragon tasks."

  Flix and Flox both stopped their purring momentarily to look Bob's way at mention of their names.

  "I had long wondered if artificial souls could be recycled properly by the grand cycles of the cosmos, if it mattered at all to the metaphysical machinery of the universe that one was spun from the normal method, or the magical one. Well, seems I've finally got an answer. They've come back, at least at first glance, with even their names are intact."

  "While that is all very fascinating," The Nuphidri cut in, "Good news, the sensor relay is back online. Bad news, another signal has been detected in space. A vessel I recognize, has dropped out of warp in high orbit. The killitoot pirate frigate, 'Frexard', captained by Brup-targ."

  "Do you think he knows we're here?" Rex asked, stupidly.

  "Rex darling, that gigablast from the gargantuan space dragon that just died probably tripped every gizmometer within a hundred lightyears. I doubt they'll be our only company." Sheena said.

  "Oh... Shit." Rex said, verbalizing what everyone but Yorna had already realized. "We're in terrible danger."