One of my favorite scenes is this debate between the dragon Basalt and Kira.
Basalt glared at us. After what felt like an eternity, he grunted, sending smoke rings drifting over our heads. “It seems I have little choice. But as long as the betrayer holds even one of my children, I must obey the call to fight.”
A Dragon Problem, by Rick Rossing
Kira sighed. “How many innocent lives are worth theirs?”
“Would you not kill to protect your children?”
“I would kill any who threatened my child. I would not cooperate with them.”
“Are you certain of that? Your child is being tormented. You’re given a sword and told to attack a village full of people you don’t know, or your child will suffer.”
“I would use the sword on the one who gave the order.”
“You have two children, being kept in separate locations. You may be able to save the one, but the other will die. They will not just die, they will die slowly and painfully. I have more than twenty. I had to watch, to hear, to feel two of them die. I will not watch any others die.”
“Then I would kill myself.”
“And leave your progeny in the hands of monsters?”
“Okay! I get it! You have no choice! But if someone tells me that people are working to free my children, I’m going to stall for time, and as soon as I know they’re safe, I’m going to make their tormentors sorry they were ever born!”
Basalt bowed his head and touched Kira with his snout. “Now we understand each other. Save my children, and I will reduce the betrayer, and all of his armies, to ash. Fail, and I will not stop with the armies. I will keep burning until my grief is sated.”
Kira reached up and touched Basalt’s head. “I won’t blame you if you do. All I ask is that you remember one thing.”
“What is that?”
“Almaz loved some of the people you’ll be destroying.”
Basalt, the most fearsome and second largest dragon I’d ever seen, wept.
