“The Occidanian Incursion refers to the wars fought between 1003 AC and 1050 AC. They were the bloody culmination for the violence that was wrought on the Occidanian continent, usurpers rose up in arms to lay claim to the legacy of those who went before; the Scions. One would’ve thought standing against a greater evil, a thousand years afore would’ve forged greater bonds, but greed, it seemed, was a curse that humans had to contend with in spite of prevailing circumstances. What folly. Civilization was once again, plunged into a continent spanning war, serving naught but alienating humans from other races.” By Unknown Historian, Records of Kingsfell

There was one side to her story she didn't know. Everyone else was like that. Some like that human even moreso; however, his, was only because he was a victim of circumstances. Aeskyre? She'd survived fate.

Her origins began with the unlikeliest of events. Dud. Her egg was a dud; the reject in every clutch of eggs born of a female dragon. Perhaps dud was an overstatement of facts, and too harsh a word.

It was more like something had gone wrong with her incubation. For a dragon, there was one in a million chances that it'd happen in a clutch of six to eight. Often, it was the runt of the clutch that would not survive. Unfortunately, Aeskyre rolled bad dice and got the unlucky number.

Bad eggs got eaten. Not a metaphor. Dragons ate their duds. It seemed barbaric to some but no one knew. But dragons were more pragmatic than anything. Their eggs? They contained some of the most potent magical nourishment for their young. Rather than waste it, it would be used to feed the rest of the clutch. Nothing got left behind, not even the shell.

Besides that, dragons were prideful creatures. They were loath to leave such a store of essence for would be scavengers. For the monsters of Eryth, it was how the weak got stronger; by consuming the essence of their prey.

Also, they had an image to maintain; perfectionism was in every facet of their lives.

Her egg was an almost dud. Close but not quite. One of her two hearts, her Arcane heart,was underdeveloped due to an incubation mishap. For dragons were not monsters and therefore did not have monster cores.

And though her other heart beat just fine, to her father, she might have as well been dead. For what was a dragon without their magic?

But for her mother's mercies, she would not have lived. Therein also lay the reason why she only inherited half her heritage.Her father was stubborn, to the very end, prideful to imprint on a defective offspring.

Meanwhile her mother still remained hopeful that the last of her clutch would hatch. But it was not to be. Something happened; dragons left.

One egg was left behind. But what could have caused such great beings to leave the realm? Where'd they go? No one knows. But something they deemed even more precious than their coveted hoards of treasures was left behind.

And so, there was an abandoned dragon egg. A valuable find , if someone were to chance upon it. It housed a fledgling dragon, teetering between life and death. To her kin, she was dead... to others alive. A stark difference in moral philosophy. Arthur would've likened to the quandary of the kitten in a box. Schrodinger's cat.

The circumstances of her hatching seemed, more than anything, a satire of stochastic machinations. Threads of fate? tangled and looping on themselves. Oonaris, it seemed, was playing a game of cosmic cat's cradle with her destiny.

Then to cap it all lightning struck her egg, not one...or twice. Thrice. Borne of a mana storm, arcane lightning struck at her egg. Rather than kill her, it saved her. Her arcane heart started beating for it was not mundane lightning but a magical discharge. Aeskyre hatched.

The rest that followed after breaking through an egg shell tougher than deep stone was just that. A nightmare. But she fought through and survived. Barely.

Thus a whelp grew. Fortunately, her Arcane heart kept going, gathering magic fuelling her growth. The circumstances of her hatchling became a boon, granting her some sway over the wrath of storms. And life was good. Right?

She would have gone on living in the wilds, a naive dragon who knew not the ways of the world, half a legacy and nothing more left to her. However, meeting a runaway prince, saddled with a ruler's burden seemed like the start to another chapter of her life's story.

Two children, one impetuous weighed down by their legacy, another trying and fumbling to live upto a the broken parts of what was left to her. A tragedy made in heaven and truly, one for the children's bedtime stories.

The unlikeliest of friendships bloomed. Of course it had happened before, mere centuries hence. A dragon and a prince. Both grew up in castles, though one was empty, almost haunted.

Back then, she had no name with which to call herself. Her appellation was just one syllable. Ae, a last gift from her mother. Skyre came later. But what were those words again?

“You remind me of the sky Ae." He said, grinning impishly. He met his heterochromatic gaze with his grey ones and added,“ One side is gold, the colour of lightning...stormy skies…”

The girl snorted, biting into an apple. Her frilly sundress, her first gift from the prince after their scandalous first encounter rumpled in the breeze as her hair blew into the boy's face. Apple juice dripped down her wrists.

“Ugh,Ae! Are you even listening?" The boy sputtered and spat out locks of her silver hair. The wind had blown it into his face. “Seriously, you gotta listen.” The prince was red in the face. His cheeks were puffed up. Teenagers.

She never got to know the rest of the boy's words until many years later. Two decades and then some. It was then that they stood on a battlefield. Both had grown wiser with age. The strapping young man on the horse? He'd finally grown into the trappings of his power, and shed frivolities of youth.

Whatever had turned a runaway prince into a king beloved of his kingdom? Perhaps a story for another time. But on that day, the two stood on the battlefield against a great host.

“ Ready Mage Ae? “ the King’s baritone voice called. Ae, the young woman in mage robes nodded silently. Her eyes were faraway, watching the opposing army from atop a hill. She had no horse because she hated the damn things, who needed a horse when you had a movement spell like [Levitation]? The mages of the era would have tutted to see such brazen use of magic.

Four hundred and seventy years ago; that was the last she ever saw of his smile. After that, the King grew weary with the rigors of war over the next decade. Creases were sculpted onto his face, worry lines brought about not by time but fighting a long campaign.

The war was long and protracted. The armies from the mainland kept assailing, breaking against their army to get to the coast. They were part of the rearguard and they held, thanks to Ae’s magics.

She pitted the stormy weather against them, time and again, they dealt them debilitating blows, ambushes in the fog, crippling their charge by creating mires with heavy cloudbursts.

Setting fire to their caravans using lightning. Things were going well. Just one more campaign and they would have left the war torn continent behind, to head for better land. To Alkerd.

Things were going too well. Betrayal came too quickly and too fast; They’d grown complacent and as a result, their position was given away. One thing about war was, it always pushed progress. That was the only upside. People levelled, new classes emerged…magic grew.

The last campaign before the last of the Occidanian refugees escaped across the Straits of Hyacinthe, waylaid by sahuagin ahead and being pursued by Occidanian armies behind, things went wrong.

Of all the times, her Arcane heart began to act up; it could not keep up with the drawn out battles she’d fought. The day when the third moon, Hy’acinthe the blue, made its appearance their camp came under heavy fire.

While their army had grown overbold, their enemies had been sharpening their fangs and the result was the unleashing of their new magics. [Lysbringer's Skyfall] made its debut. Her barrier failed against the onslaught of rocks larger than a house, peppering their bulwark from the sky, like heaven’s wrath wrought on the land. For quarts at a time, her heart strained until finally, her magic petered out to a trickle.

“ Prithee my fair madame,” Despite the arrow shot between his gorget, he still joked around. He always heated the court diction. She choked a sobbing laugh. Ae didn't know any healing magic. She scorned the discipline that failed to heal her heart. The abrupt battle had bled their reserves of potions dry and none were left, even for the King to use.

The army was already lost, save for the two people on the battlefield, covered in a shimmering barrier of gold. long range spells kicked up clods of dirt and gouged furrows on the battlefield. Some battered against the lone spell barrier. She watched as her friend bled his life into her palms.

“Tis not proper for a maiden such as you to weep for me,” he rasped. Blood flowed from the sides of his mouth; he was already drowning in it. Yet, he had the energy to wipe one last tear from the woman haunched protectively over him even as the offensive continued. His hand smeared blood across her cheek.

“ I never got to tell you the rest of what I wanted to say. Ae was silent. His gauntleted hand in her small palms. His expression brook no interruption. “ I don't know where you go off telling yourself you’re lacking. You are more than a legacy Ae.” He looked at her blue irised eye.

Ae’s cheek began to crack. The tether to her Arcane heart was failing. Another volley broke against her barrier, cracking the scintillating panels. She caught an arrow to the back. Yet both remained unfazed, trapped in their little moment of time.

“All these years, I didn't know. I hope you forgive me Ae. I hope you deem a name from a king a worthy parting gift. Live long my friend, Aeskyre Storm dragon.” he mumbled with the last of his dying breath.

The light went out from his eyes. An area of effect bombardment volley wiped them out. Man and simulacrum. Naught but ash and one set of bones remained.

Aeskyre came to. A tear rolled down her cheek. Both of her hearts ached.

How long had it been? Weeks? Months? A whole season? A dragon's sense of time was massively skewed...unless she was in her simulacrum form then her sense of time would regress to that of a long lived human at best or a half elf.

Forlorn. That was the feeling the dragon felt in that waifish body. It felt like something stuck in your throat, something you couldn't spit out or swallow or a pain in her breast that would not go away.

When the last of Arthur disappeared beneath the fallstreak and the clouds moved to cover the gap, she had truly felt alone. Truth be told though, she was loath to admit it.

Attachment to her hoard she could understand, but another being of flesh and bone? She shook her head at the thought, absurd. Yet it had happened, twice now

It had been quiet for sometime though, the dinner table was more desolate than usual despite the fact that the whole thing had been set up for the sake of her guest

It would have gone on forever, perhaps Arthur would've stayed in the keep for the entirety of his life...which meant a couple of centuries at the least because of her blood running through his veins.

In fact, he wasn't supposed to have survived the infusion of dragon blood at all, that he did meant that perhaps, Oonaris was on his side. Irony of ironies, she was the one with all the bad luck.

The goddess could be very fickle sometimes; unlike some she loved to play games too and long games at that. Aeskyre had no idea what the goddess was planning but she knew that there was a price to be paid somewhere along the line.

But alone, her? She had been in hibernation for the last five decades. That's how she knew much time had passed because her message spells were not getting through to the little whelp at the Mages guild.

Either the mage was dead, or the Relay had fallen. Though A dragon she was, the rune craft powering the confounded things was too convoluted she might as well break them.

While her [Message] spells could reach Aldmoor no problem, she wasn't going to get an incoming connection that way. Unless, she wanted the Mage's head exploding like an overripe Tangonian melon.

She could vaguely feel the connection to the youth; somewhere in the back of her mind, if she concentrated, she knew that she could tell where Arthur was. Like a distant beacon moving further and further away.

And the impetuous, mercurial nature of this body, even [Emotional Detachment] failed sometimes. You try shoving the pride of a dragon into a body many times smaller! She groaned.

But the mobility, and the power of her Arcane Heart concentrated into one fist, it was phenomenal. She could easily harry a weyr of wyverns without getting surrounded because being smaller than them, they mostly got in one another's way.

Or about that time she got buzzed on two bottles of Embercap Whiskey. Two! A barrel of the stuff barely stayed in her body for two quarts. The dwarves were good for something after all.

Despite the allure of it, it was so prone to sudden emotional shifts also a head many sizes too small meant a one track mind. Brash and brutish, even she realized that. But it was the only way to interact with the boy...boy, he was just a whelp a two decades out of his swaddling clothes.

To her, he was practically a baby...Her Scion. She raised him herself. No, she shook her head. He was not a pet project, not like those little wee Cat amphibian things, that she picked up from a smuggler's aership run aground.

They were too curious for their own good, practically harmless but kept her lair free of the bothersome insects. She chortled, imagining the shock the [Lost Worlder] got from their encounter. At least that's how she inferred he stumbled into her cave.

But she had to give it to him, the boy had some spine to stand up to her aura. If she hadn't sealed herself behind her own barrier—well, she had to give him some credit for even responding to her in her full form.

And her sense of possessiveness grew with every league he transversed, she itched to fly out and grab the youth. Gods, if only he knew how hard she'd restrained herself from just confining him into a gilded cage.

She was no [Ward Master] or [Aegis Caster], but she could have put up a barrier that kept him in the Keep. Where he was safe. But then again, she knew that if he wanted to grow, he would have to go out there.

Only levelling in adversity would make him truly strong. Staying cooped up in the Keep would make him too complacent.

She could even feel his tether to the World grow stronger with every experience. If she squinted hard enough, and brought the magic of her Arcane Heart to bear, she could just see the threads connecting every living thing to the world.

It was a little foolhardy , peering beyond the layers of veil that hid away the Arcanery of the system. It was like staring into the sun, you would sooner sear your eyeballs. She sighed, the same was happening to the little artefact she held in her hands.

There was nothing more. She wanted to go back into the cave, hibernate...recover her strength then practice her magic again. Or go down to the bowels of the aerlands, and check on the core that used to power the aerland's movement in the days of long ago.

She'd been leaching mana from it for a while, but time was running out. The Antecessor artefact would fail. She needed to make that dimension pocket. It was the only way to preserve her body. Time moved slower or stopped altogether. Then she could be anywhere she wanted with her simulacra.

That was the reason she couldn't go with Arthur. While he saw the powerful side of her, the Simulacrum powered by her Arcane heart, her actual body was anything but that.. The same heart that made flying for her Simulacrum flawless could not do the same for her actual body. She was weaker that way.

When she was smaller, younger it was easier but as she got older, well, it became too hard to fly. How else did people think dragons were able to carry their bulk?

Despite the size of their wings, they had nowhere near the amount of power needed to make manoeuvrability as easy as it was supposed to be. Or how else did people think dragons breathed fire, lightning or frost?

There were other creatures of the same, if not higher level of magic as her. And a weak dragon was a target. Thanks to the history with the scions, a whole continent knew there lay power in dragons. There were foolhardy kings and emperors who would stop at nothing to become [Dragon Lords] with the right consolidations. Therein lay the origin of the kingdoms that sprawled and later fell to be replaced by new dynasties across Occidania.

There was even a whole empire that worshipped dragons. The Draak Imperium. And they were constantly at war with those of differing beliefs. Rash orders of knights who believed their life's culmination was to slay a dragon. Fools all of them.

That was why she'd been a recluse, cut away from the rest of Eryth. It wasn't always like that however. Shortly after she'd woken up from the shock of having her simulacra obliterated, she had moved.

She'd found a way to move a whole island through an artefact. She was there when the transcontinental war broke on the beaches that became the Blood Isles.

She saw Kingsfell built, from a small fishing town by the settlers, to the bulwark against seven kings. Now? Aeskyre had little in the way of information on how the place progressed after that.

She saw the coming of aership and felt her turf encroached upon, even though she could not rule the entirety of the sky.

That was why she couldn't leave the Keep. She was vulnerable and she would make her Scion a target for unknown powers. She was powerless, just like back then. The one left behind each time.

Perhaps this time, she was close to her goal, sooner or later she would move around. Her dimension pocket didn't seem like a far off lofty goal...all thanks to Arthur's [Inventory] storage.