Chapter Text
There’s a moment, when you’re facing the end, when you realize that there was once a beginning. You didn’t know then that it was the beginning because it was not yet a story, just a cluster of coincidental happenings. There were dragons all around that saw the end, rapidly approaching with a fearsome roar, but few knew of the beginning.
This is the beginning.
*
Prophet was a Water Guardian, his lineage sculpted from the Tidelord’s own hand, his parents’ clan residing in the Spiral Keep itself. His clan was affluent; or, at least, the treasure changed hands easily and flowed with the currents and the Maren around them. He was raised with two goals in mind: becoming a great oracle, and finding a Charge.
He achieved both at once.
As a hatchling, he was timid. He suffered from frequent nightmares, the Tidelord’s moans piercing his sleeping thoughts. He dreamt, always the same, of horrific weather events, of eyes turned black and soulless, of giant creatures rising from the deeps to swallow him in their gaping maws.
He was friendless; too: too intimidated to begin his Search, he was rejected by the other Guardians of the clan, treated as a freak for his disinterest. He still deeply loved his clan and longed to fit in. He tried to take interest in other dragons, pretend to have Charges, but they would inevitably fall by the wayside, forgotten.
It was a wandering nomad, an old Guardian made more of skin and bones than flesh, who enlightened the young dragon. He attracted the hatchlings from their lairs with toys and flashing loot; he proclaimed and he shook and put on a show; he shivered and pointed to a young Chargeless Guardian in the crowd,
You there! You could become great and powerful, if only you learn to love. And love will bring you great power, and respect! And the respect you possess will earn you greater still…
And as the wet nurses shushed their wide-eyed hatchlings inside, still eyeing him with distrust and now something new, fear; and as the warriors roared the old bag of bones away from their territories; and as the nightmares came again more frequently and urgently, calling him into the cascade of events that would dictate his destiny; a spark was lit.
He faced the fearsome beast in his nightmare. He stood his ground, and he understood the nomad oracle’s rantings. He felt a blossom of love when he looked at the creature: if he harnessed it, he would gain the respect he deserved; his Charge was worth protecting more than any other Guardian’s. He understood: his Charge did not exist yet, but he would begin his Search, calling it into existence. And when he did, he would be unstoppable.
A plan began to hatch in his mind, and he brooded quietly over it into young adulthood.