Chapter Text
I was always told I had my father’s madness and darkness. Although I was born looking like a copy of my mother, with white fur, long ears, and bloodshot eyes, something about me made people assume I was going to end up exactly like the king.
I saw how my father’s eyes lit up when he saw the burning orange and yellow of hell. He was entranced by it, by the fire. He used it in any way he could, ridding himself of letters he couldn’t care less for, lighting up the halls, lighting up traitors…
No one understood him, and I believe he held animosity toward my mother and me because of this. He was frustrated that no one could envision his ambitions and would take it out on us frequently. One night, we were at dinner together. He was sipping his ale and being obnoxious. He explained to my mother and me how we never encouraged him in any of his little projects and how it made him mad.
Madness, ha! He was driving me mad at that table. My 13-year-old ears couldn’t bear to hear another slurred word of his incessant ramblings so I left. I slid my chair out from under me and left the castle for the night.
I can’t recall how long I rode my horse up the mountains surrounding the kingdom, but I do recall where I ended up. A big clearing behind the snowy peaks…I saw them.
Three scaly beasts, dark in color, ginormous in size. Their heads were as big as the carriages my father would ride in during festivals…and they were gorgeous.
One noticed me and stopped its feasting to focus on the fresh meat that just entered its domain.
I stepped backward in fear, my dress getting caught in a broken rib of an animal I did not recognize which made me fall onto my back. The horse ran away long ago so my last chance of survival was extremely low but then, something happened that changed my life forever.
The winged beast came up on top of me, it sniffed, then did nothing. I made eye contact with it and we were just staring at each other…a rabbit and a dragon.
It bent its head down at me and sniffed, blowing my fur back, then backed off from above me and went back to eat with its siblings. I got up, pulled my dress from the bone and stared at the gorgeous beasties for a while before finally paying attention to where the sun was positioned then ran back home.
My mother and father scolded me. They asked where I was and what I was meant to tell them. I couldn’t speak of my beasts, so I lied.
I couldn’t stay away after that. Every evening, after dinner, I would ride a horse up to the mountains to look at my beasties. I started differentiating them…and also naming them. Oh, I was such a child.
Melville had longer horns and a short temper, Kuro had these white eyes and moved slower than the others, and then there was Izzy, the one who came up to me. She was kind and her scales were raven-colored and lighter than the rest…My favorite.
I would watch them every night and then come back home before it got too dark and before my parents would say anything. None of my behavior of my youth would ever be considered princess-like but that didn’t stop me.
Once I came up to visit the beasties more often, I started bringing “gifts”. I would sneak a cow and walk myself up those mountain tops and give it to them if they didn’t have dinner already. Soon enough they started to warm up to me and I discovered that one of them was having babies which got me excited. I would sneak into my father’s study and find any books about dragon anatomy and anything about them, myths, stories, etc.
They were the only things keeping me from going mad.
Months after that, my father was murdered by a Luzian spy, and in her grief, my mother declared war against the kingdom of Luz. She decided that our military wasn’t enough and needed more able bodies so she created child soldiers, me included. I was neither a princess nor a prince, so mother made me the only thing I had left, a general…little did my allies and enemies know that I had a weapon of my own that guaranteed victory.
A year passed, I was 15 and war had struck out. The amount of bloodshed and gore I saw on those battlefields for months made me sick…this needed to end now.
When both sides fell asleep, I wasted no time running from the front lines and up on a horse.
I would talk to the dragons, they never knew what I was saying nor could they reply but I had a feeling they had an understanding of what was happening on the ground. I visited them more frequently after magic and fighting lessons with my mother. They smelt the darkness inside me the more I unlocked my magic so I believed they understood that I needed their help at some point in this war.
Once I made my way to the mountaintop I let my horse free so it could make its way back to the fields…I didn’t need it to get down anyway, I had a faster way down.
The cape I wore had scales much like my beasties. It made them more comfortable and liked seeing me appearing more like them. Izzy spotted me and immediately, somehow, understood what I was there to do. She crawls her way to me and bows her head down, she never did that before…I nodded my head and climbed onto her back.
I never rode on any of the dragons before but it somehow felt natural for the both of us. I grabbed onto the shorter, smaller horns that hid behind the bigger ones and it was almost like they were reigns on a horse, like she was always meant to have a rider.
I heard the screams and shouts of catastrophe in the distance and that snapped me back to reality. With my loudest battle cry, Izzy runs to the edge of the mountain and takes off.
We landed in the middle of the battlefield and the real fight had begun.
I think that was when I began to see my father’s fascination with fire.