Chapter 95: Tahr

A few hours later, thunder and lightning filled the sky. I'd never seen anything like the angry display of fierce weather. Then as suddenly as it began, all went quiet. A woman's harsh voice swelled within our heads until the pain was so great we fell to our knees. My eyes were tightly shut with my hands covering my ears. A female voice rang bitterly through my mind until I thought my head would explode.
The Goddess cursed us and we could do nothing. One-hundred-thousand years for the sins of my uncle. Each word of the curse was more painful than the last. When her voice stopped, the sun shown for the first time since the death of our parents. We didn't fully understand the depth of the Goddess's hatred. After vomiting our guts up, we tried to appear brave by joking about her wrath. Love for some human bride was the least of our worries. It seemed minor after everything we'd lost.
Days later we all became violently ill again. The Goddess had told us to choose the first to claim a bride. We thought it ridiculous. Finally, Bastian spoke after another round of puking. "I will go first and leave tomorrow to find a bride." Our illness vanished as suddenly as it appeared and we knew we had no choice but to follow the Goddess's dictates.
There were no more jokes.
We flew with Bastian to a village in a realm that bordered the dragon realms. The villagers fought us with everything they had and many of them died. The four of us had had enough of death. Killing these humans was not what we wanted. Bastian flew off with a young, terrified female.
The first bride threw herself from the tower two days later. Bastian hadn't touched her. We were all virgins and had no idea what to do with a terrified girl. We knew that our fathers had each stolen a virgin and mated them. It required a female human virgin to transcend to dragon and produce offspring.
At our fathers' knees we were told what would one day be expected of us. First, our fathers shifted to human form and wooed our mothers to form a bond. The women had no idea that they would mate dragon shifters. There was no going back after our fathers felt the mating call with a particular female. The young women were eventually stolen away from all that they knew and brought to the dragon's realm.
Our mothers appeared happy and I never doubted that my mother loved my father. Dragons produce only male offspring, so the stealing of virgins was as old as time. I think if we were able to form a bond with the terrified brides before stealing them away, we may have had a chance. This wasn't the Goddess's plan for us.
We hated the curse. Bastian was devastated that his bride killed herself. It was twenty-five years before Laryn's turn. This time we decided who was next with a game of poker. Loser had to take the next claiming. We hadn't been back to the village in twenty-five years. Terror, death, and an ultimate bride were again the outcome. The screams of the burning humans stayed with us. It was Sarn who decided he would bargain with the villagers before his claiming.
Laryn's bride was kept locked away so she couldn't harm herself. Her endless crying drove us crazy. We all stayed together in Bastian's realm because we needed each other to keep the horror of our situation from eating away at us. We had no idea that the curse would eventually divide us and make us solitary beings.
When it was Sarn's turn, we flew to the village weeks early without Laryn. Even with how upset his bride became at the sight of him, Laryn wouldn't leave her.
It took weeks of diving over their homes and breathing fire before the human were willing to listen. During that time, we took care to harm no one. They knew we could and that made all the difference. One shaky old man finally emerged to find out what we wanted. Sarn spoke telepathically and we remained in our dragon forms. Our terms were virgins only, choice of the bride, help for the village in lean years, and no killing of humans unless they breached the contract.
They had little choice but to accept; we made sure of that. A young female was sacrificed and we flew away lighter of heart.
During the next twenty-five years, it was hard to hide our jealousy after Laryn and his first bride fell in love. The urge to steal her began sneaking into my and Bastian's thoughts. Sarn's bride went crazy and was subdued at all times for her own safety. It didn't stop Sarn from caring for her even when it would have been better to let her jump from a tower like Bastian's bride.
Bastian and I spoke of our longing away from the other two hating that we wanted what our brothers had. A woman, a bride, a companion. We finally decided to go on a treasure hunt and leave Laryn's bride alone. Earth was not yet civilized, but it had great treasures.
We didn't meet Dmitri, for hundreds of years. Dmitri wasn't such a great guy when we first came across him. But for some reason, he wanted a group of humans rescued. We agreed and brought them to our realm as servants. They were starving and in deplorable health. After they crossed, their health improved. The only side effect was their inability to speak and later we discovered their inability to pro-create. We knew deep inside our hearts that the failure to create children was so that we couldn't use them as brides. The Goddess was holding us to her rules.
But, the story of Dmitri's humans came much later.
We learned a lot in the first hundred years, or at least we thought we had. Even though a Goddess brought us to our knees-arrogance, stubbornness, and thinking we could somehow cheat the curse kept us from understanding what we had to do to break it.
I always knew it was me who deserved to suffer and my brother dragons were brought under the curse to cause me greater pain. The four of us went through so many stages of grief for the family we lost-anger, depression, and revenge kept us from seeing the truth. And, we also blamed our brides. We held them responsible for loving us and making us care for them. We did almost everything we could to push them away. Rape and terror became our way. I'd like to think we did it because we knew no better. But that isn't true. We all remembered our mothers. Women who also had no choice and were stolen by dragons to be mates. Our fathers were no longer alive to tell us the ways of dragons. We could have changed and allowed our mothers' remembered love to lead our hearts. We chose the path of the dominant species with the power to rule worlds.
We took.