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This is a story of survival.
It is your story,
even when you feel like that word
does not belong to you.
When Crystal Palace came to the royal court, she agreed to his marriage with Prince David because she thought that it would be to her benefit.
Well, clearly, it is not.
Crystal is willing to do much to defend herself and her line and even gain a bit of power, but she would not commit the cruelties that David has.
Now, though-
Crystal needs to end those cruelties. She needs to stop David from destroying this place.
She needs to make it out of here.
She needs to escape.
But not just escape- she needs to win.
She needs to not just save herself and her own skin, but those of the little girls who David might take advantage of, the subjects that she agreed to foster as her own when she proposed marriage to this demon of a man.
She doesn’t give a shit what she has to do in order to get out of this place. To fight on her own.
Crystal is not of the Palace anymore. She is not of any sort of noble line, with a civil war destroying the realm.
But what she is still is the descendant of dragon riders.
Once upon a time, her aunts and grandmothers rode dragons. They carried the fire of the world in their veins.
And Crystal will not let the end of the world and the hand of a man with more power than her stop her from claiming her legacy and protecting her people.
There are two dragon keepers, down in the Dragonpit. Edwin Payne and Charles Rowland, the scholarly son of a lord and the honorable son of a smith, respectively. Not of a dragonriding line, like hers, but Edwin speaks the language of the dragons, having taught it to himself from books, and Charles is kind enough to get the dragons to respond to his touch and the meat that he feeds them, even if he himself cannot ride the dragons.
But there is only one dragon big and powerful enough for Crystal’s needs, and it is one that neither Edwin nor Charles could come close to claiming.
No one knows how the dragon made its way into the pit. None truly know how long it has been in here, just that it is said to eat everything that falls within the pit, human and animal alike- save, curiously, the cats.
Crystal collects a lantern from Charles, who is always prepared, and a book from Edwin regarding the history of the dragon in question- which might have been useful, if Crystal had time to learn about things, but David is planning yet another cruel raid on the lower slums today and Crystal cannot let that stand.
So despite the fact that none of her line have claimed a dragon in two generations, Crystal takes a deep breath, steels herself, and then she descends into the shadows of the Dragonpit.
The first thing she hears is the groans and grumbles of the dragon. The sound of a creature so large that it seems to defy the laws of physics breathing and the sound of its hot breath filling the air with the smell of sulfur.
The creature is so large that she can only see flashes of it at a time, but from what she can see of it, she thinks that it is elegant. Made of gleaming golden curves and the sort of flair that most wild dragons lack.
And yet, it is still wild. It is still feral. Filled with grit and sharp teeth and a willingness to eat any creature or human foolish enough to descend into these depths.
It is a suicide mission, to try and reach it. Even with the blood in her veins and her aunts’ words in her skull, there is all likelihood that it will devour her whole.
Good.
Grand, even.
If it is hungry enough and powerful enough to devour her, it is the sort of monster that Crystal is happy to ally herself with.
If she needs teeth and claw to destroy this place, then she will take them. She will make them hers, if the dragon is willing to make her its.
"So why does a girl come to ruin my ennui?" the dragon’s voice comes grumbling from the shadows, so low and full it echoes through her ears and into her skull.
But Crystal does not waver. “I need your help,” Crystal declares, “I need a dragon to protect all of those little girls-“
“Tell me in truth,” the dragon asks- or, rather, demands, “Why do you really wish to ride a dragon?”
It is as if a spell has fallen upon Crystal’s lips. As if golden magic has spun itself past the shadows of the Dragonpit and onto her lips.
“I want a fucking dragon to claw this world back, in fire and in blood,” Crystal declares, “I want to have a world that is mine. I want to kill the Prince and claim this castle as my own, so that I can defend it, yes, but so that I never have to answer to any cruel men ever again-“
“You fascinate me, little girl,” it says as it moves forward, and as its glorious golden head comes into the light of her lantern, Crystal does not tremble. She does not shake. She cannot. She has to be brave. She has to be strong enough.
She is ready to make a bargain.
She is ready to- not tame a dragon, she wants something a bit wild, she wants something a bit outside of the norm.
Clearly, those who have no teeth do not survive against Prince David. And Crystal has no desire to defang a creature as glorious as this.
Rather, Crystal finds this dragon beautiful, both in its brutality and in its elegance. In the golden hue of its cat-like eyes, in the flash of its ivory teeth, in the almost feline curve of its dragon claws.
“You fascinate me, too,” Crystal says, and the truth spell on her lips compels her to admit: “You’re a beautiful thing."
The dragon's laughter is a low but powerful thing, echoing in her ears. "You're going to make quite the dragonrider, aren't you, sweetheart?"
Crystal smiles, this thing of sharp, bloodied teeth. She doesn't care what she has to let the dragon feast on- sheep, lambs, the blood and bone of David himself- as long as it lets her ride it.
And sure enough, when she makes it onto the dragon's unsaddled back, its scales warm between her thighs, her hands clenched tight to the ridges of its spine, and they soar out of the roof of the dragonpit, climbing into the sky outside of keep, they end up bursting into the palace and devouring David whole, the dragon's teeth clamping right around his little legs.
No matter how much of a demon David might have been, Crystal's dragon is a monster and so is she, and David is, at the end of the day, pure human.
So David the Dreaded falls, and in his place rises Crystal of the Palace and her dragon, the King of Cats, the dreadfall, the trickster's crown.
And with the help of her ancestors' blood in her veins, her own stubborn bravery, and a golden partner in wings, Crystal of the Palace is going to fly free.
Your heart beats in time to the turn of the planet,
and you
are a force of nature
simply for making it this far.