NovaDawn's Clan

A clan, once free and wild, sat in the chilly depths of a prison. Dragons paced, alone and despondent, isolated from one another. Innocent dragons. Innocent except for one.

That had once been the clan of Alkai, a family of peaceful artizans in the Highland Scrub. It was a good life, quiet, warm, and full of loving stories told under starlight in the vast expanse. They welcomed travellers, trading both tales and goods. Kore was no exception. She was a strange dragon, of no breed they had ever seen. Her scales were dark and smooth, and seemed to hold galaxies beneath them if you stared too long. She was always masked, a metal face betraying no emotion, but her actions and voice were animated with passion.

Kore came on the night of a full moon, and told the clan a story of a time before dragons. The next night, she continued it. During the day, she would sleep in the sun, her scales reflectionless even in the brightest noon sun. At night, she would regale them with a tale. She never drank, and she never ate, but as the moon waned the light beneath her scales grew brighter, and her story grew ever more fascinating. On the night of the new moon, she ended the story.

Then she removed her mask, and everything went wrong.

She had no face, but without the mask the colors beneath her hide shown brightly, shifting and twisting as she stood to her full, unimaginable height. She spread wings that covered the sky, and reached out with claws of light and shadow. Everyone she touched was scarred, somehow, her final gift to the clan. Light which burned within a dragon and shifted their form with the turn of shadows, bodies made of crystal that shown in the sun, limbs which shed leaves like autumn maples. And then she shifted, her work done. She became a dragon among them, though after the night of confusion and change they could not recognize each other, and so she stayed.

No more travellers came to their town, the first few fleeing at the strange things they had become. They were found, eventually, by soldiers from the Southern Icefield, sent to contain these infected beasts. A precaution, they said to them. Only until they could find Kore.


They lied. The clan sat miserably in the Fortress of Ends, ice creeping up their legs and stinging their skin. They cried out for help, frightened at first, and then desperate, then out of habit. They were not answered, merely fed by the lumbering wardens and paid no more heed.


That was, until there were those who could no longer take it. A pair of Gaolers whose hearts were soft, full of love and pity. They were Glacier and Frostbite, new to the ranks and undaunted by the generations before them. Quietly they conspired, intent that no innocent should be imprisoned for the crimes of one alone among their number. In the dead of night, in the midst of a blizzard, they acted. They split the chains, hid dragons in their fur and beneath their bodies to shield them from sight and from the cold. And At the change of the guard, they were gone. Out into the unforgiving mountains, not used to the cold and the wind, to not being able to see the stars. They carved out a home for themselves, a place to hide and recover. A place to take in those who found home nowhere else. A place where, despite their otherworldly appearance, they could again be family.

And despite all this, they knew. Deep in that cavern with them was Kore, resting with her head on her claws, a new name of her tongue. Persephone.
-Written by JourneyThePanda-