zannad's Clan

　
Once long ago, before the time of man, at the beginning of dragon-kind, there lived purple dragons. Sarainio, a deep royal purple four-legged winged drake. His mate Annazira, a soft lilac wyvern queen.
The time of myth approached with the increasing infestation of men.
Sarainio sensed danger ahead, turmoil for all dragon-kind. "Annazira, my love, together we must come up with a plan. Man is a plague upon the land. Nothing and no place is safe from them. What to do, what to do?"
Annazira's long thin tail flexed as she coiled it around her mate. She felt great tenseness in his neck and shoulders. "Sarainio, I have not your ability to see the future. Explain why you worry, so that together we may find a path to fly through these perilous times."
"I will try to think of why I am so troubled. Time will show whether this is a true concern, or just my overactive brain and dislike of men crowding us."
Sarainio thought, for three decades as he gathered gold, silver and gems. He contemplated as he hunted elephants, deer and boar. Sometimes he sat in the sun for weeks at a time, thinking.
Annazira prepared a cave in the side of an active volcano, hunted, ate, and worried about her mate. The decades passed in almost a blink of an eye, for dragons live 2000 years.
Again Sarainio tried to express why he was so worried. "Man encroaches more and more upon our land. Just the other day as I was hunting, I saw them not even a full day's flight away from here."
Annazira's head swayed on the end of her long neck as she watched her mate pace up and down the river valley below their cave. She was startled to hear man was that close to them. "I have seen no men. Tell me why they would be a problem for us. Are we not the masters of air, earth, and water?"
"My love, they will not stop there. I have been watching them for some time now. They creep across the land like the shadows of clouds on a rainy day. Within a few decades they will be even here at our cave. We must find a weapon to use against them before that time or we will be overrun."
"Are not our claws and size enough to protect us?"
"Against one or two yes, but men hunt in packs like wolves. You have seen wolves hunt. They are dangerous but unintelligent. Now imagine cunning, intelligence, and the tools of man with pack tactics."
"I have confidence in you. You will find a way. Now quit pacing or the river will change its course to the groove you are wearing in the ground."
"Yes, love." Sarainio went hunting so he could think without bothering his mate.
Annazira watched him fly off, but she had other things on her mind. Her time was near, and she must finish the preparations in the cave. Soon she would fly off to hunt herself and then the mating flight would begin. Sarainio had managed to gather an adequate hoard of glitter. She was pleased. If only she could get the cave a little bit hotter. The clutch would not hatch if the temperature was not right. Maybe she could sink a vent directly into the magma of the volcano, she thought as she entered the cave.
After Annazira hunted and ate enough for a long flight, she came back to the river valley and trumpeted her challenge to her mate. The aerial ballet the two dragons performed that mating week drew the attention Sarainio feared. Man saw and came.
Annazira turned the eggs on the hot sand in the cave as her mate brought her a deer to eat. She counted 15 eggs, a nice clutch. Now the long wait for the hatching began. Man was far from Annazira's mind over the next several months as the eggs needed her attention. Sarainio was also too busy to notice how close man had come to their home. He was hunting for two full-size dragons and laying in a stockpile for the dragonettes. When they hatched, they would be starving.
Man had not forgotten the purple dragons, though. It had taken months to reach the river valley. Once they did the glittering pile of raw gold, silver and gems drew them nearly as powerfully as it attracted dragons.
Man came in large numbers with long sticks topped with points. The fear of dragons could not outweigh the draw of the hoard. Sarainio saw the thieves as he flew in with a large boar in his claws. Roaring he flung the boar towards the cave where his mate lay, then turned to protect his hoard.
Annazira could not leave her clutch of eggs, so Sarainio was left to protect the hoard . From the mouth of the cave Annazira watched as many small men hit and pricked at her mate. Each blow caused his blood to flow until there was no more blood and Sarainio fell dead.
That instant Annazira went crazy. Her heart turned to ice, even as her eyes burned with a heat to rival a volcano. Pain ran through her body and the poison of her loss exploded out of her tail creating a vast stinger. She turned white, as all the color left her world.
When her eggs hatched, a third of the dragonettes held her fire to breathe as a weapon. A third possessed the ice and acid from her heart to freeze and burn man. The last third grew stingers of poison. The dragonettes were blue, red, gold, silver, brown, white, black, green and bronze. Never again was there a purple dragon and never again were dragons without a weapon to hurt and kill men. Always and forever after would dragons hide their hoards and hunt man.