Chapter Text
Local rumors tell of a maroon and ivory beast in the woods, elusive and fast. It kills any biped it sees in it's circle, and spares local wildlife. Travelers avoid the area, and people tell of soul-fire eyes and sharp rows of teeth. Not quite human, not quite dragon. They say it's demonic, something of the nether, something of the end. Hunters that survived tell of charred earth, lit with a fire so hot it's cold. It was a rumor that made it to the citadel, passed between travelers, then merchants, the guards, and now the army. Now, it was the two golems at the door to the king's room, one lanky and diamond, the other a soft bronze.
The king turns his head to the open door, and with a smile, asks, "oh? Do, tell me more."
~~~
Seven years prior, a small, bright red dragon is curled up in his feathery bed.
The dragon wakes up from his nest to a scent he's known his whole life. Smoke. This wasn't his smoke though, this was bitter. The dragon snaps his head up, now wide awake and confused, and sniffs the air some more. The smoke was fairly thin, and if he perked his long, smooth ears he could hear shouting.
The tiny dragon got up and shook his feathers out, before shifting into human form. In the place of the dragon was a child, barely older than seven, with blond hair and striking blue eyes. His bare feet made almost no sound on the den floor, as he perked out of the cloth door into the grove. Other therianthropes- he was proud he knows that word- were peeking out of their dens with the same intent as him.
What was going on?
Their questions were answered as the grove guards ran through the brush with their backs to the grove, half shifted and weapons out. They were under attack.
The child felt arms around his torso before he was being picked up by his mother, his father rushing out of the den to help fight. His father, the boy was proud to say, was incredible. The therianthrope shifted fully, expanding nearly the size of the den they live in, and let out a roar.
His mother held him tight as she ran, whispering sweet nothings to the child in her arms. The boy struggled, he wanted to help!
"Tommy! Stop, there's nothing we can do!" His mother sobbed, before letting out a sharp cry and falling. The child, Tommy, let out a yell as he hit the ground, his mother whimpering as she gripped her leg. It was an arrow.
Tommy stared in horror as more arrows flew towards them, one grazing his cheek and another hitting his thigh. White hot pain shot though the boy, and in anger his mother stood up, before giving him a gentle kiss on the forehead.
"Go, Tommy. Run, run as fast as you can, as far as you can," she comforted him, as the sounds of the attackers grew closer. Tommy didn't want to leave his mother behind, so he hid behind some trees and peered through the brush to make sure she was okay.
His mother shifted fully, a bright blue tail whipping around like a snake. Her jaw opened wide, rows of teeth lining her maw, and she let out a heart-wrenching roar. The attackers, now on top of them, drew their swords and charged.
Tommy watched in horror as his mother killed attacker after attacker, before running out of energy and slowing down. The strange masked people noticed, and took advantage of it. A tall man with a black and orange mask stood over his mother in what felt like a second, and she swung her stained, baby blue arm at him.
He ducked, slicing her palm open as it swung over him, and feinted a swing to the left before, to Tommy's dismay, running his glimmering blue sword right through his mother's chest. His mother, despite being run through, snapped her jaws around his shoulder and shook him.
The man didn't make a sound, even as Tommy's mother dug her claws into his side and tugged. Long gashes ran down the masked man's abdomen and thigh, and as the boy's mother dropped him from her weakening jaws, he saw the ruined mess of flesh and fabric that was the man's shoulder.
With tears in his eyes, Tommy shifted and ran away from the two corpses, harsh sobs welling up in his throat, not only from what he just saw, but the arrow still in his thigh.
Making the mistake of looking back, the small red dragon gasped.
The whole grove was on fire, lit bright in red and orange and yellow and smoking that was his home, his family, his friends and future-
Tommy shook his head. His pale yellow feathers along his spine were stiff in fear, and the small dragon tried to flatten them, but to no avail. The dark red plates along his belly and neck itched, especially around his neck, and his wing-shoulders were getting tired with how tight he was holding his half feathered wings in.
Trying to run, he limped through the forest for what felt like years, until it was dark and cold and Tommy needed to find somewhere to sleep.
He could still smell smoke.
He thought about sleeping in a tree, but the fresh memory of his home being destroyed keeps him on his toes.
He walks all night, trying to get as much distance between him and the masked men as possible, and as the faint mist of the morning sun starts to dissipate, he finds a house.
Well, more of a decorated barn.
Looking around the property was proven fruitless, as the house that owned the barn was occupied. It was a nice house, Tommy thought, as he snuck into the barn. Maybe there was some secluded corner he could sleep in?
Turns out, the answer was yes. Well, kind of.
It was a rafter that dug into the wall, at the intersection of another rafter, that if Tommy could scramble up to he could be out of sight. His small, undeveloped wings hurt as he tried to fly up to the rafters he spotted, and thought back to when he would sneak out and watch the older kids practice flying. They, with their large, leathery wings, had crouched down, wings raised before jumping and pushing the air down with their wings.
Tommy, with his young body and mixed wings, tried the same.
With a grunt, he crouched, jumped, and pushed the air, and with a quiet cry of delight, it worked. Until he fell back down.
Oh, he remembered. Momentum. One of the first things therianthropes learned about flying was that, even with all the magic in their bodies, hovering was impossible. So was flying straight up. Y’know, gravity.
Tommy knew how to glide, of course! It would be silly if someone born for the skies didn't know how to glide, but he wasn't old enough to join flight classes.
With this, Tommy tried again. He crouched, jumped and pushed, but he jumped and pushed at an angle, and the stale air of the barn whipped his face as he flew a few yards up the wall. He dug his ivory claws in the dense wood and scrambled the remaining feet up, and collapsed in the corner.
His heart jumped out of his chest when a farm cat, about half his size as a dragon, jumped awake and yowled at him, before running away and out of the barn. Adrenaline pumped through the boy’s veins as his feathers stood on end, and Tommy’s body felt supercharged. His blue eyes were blown wide, and the boy pushed his body into the corner and tried to slow his beating heart. It took a while, but he did calm down.
By this time, however, Tommy could see the beginnings of the sunrise through the barn windows. The fiery red reminded him of his home, now burnt, and Tommy opened his now human jaw in realization when he remembered that he had literally been shot.
Sparing a glance at his thigh, Tommy made sure he was in his fully human form before he held his breath as he analyzed the damage.
The arrow had broken off sometime as he was running, and the arrowhead was jostled inside his skin so deeply that it tore through the skin more, lengthening the opening from a simple arrow wound to a gash about three times as long, from the front of his thigh to the side of his knee, and the arrowhead pinned under the skin.
Out of all the scrapes and bruises he could see, this was by far the worst.
He took a breath and grabbed a handful of hay, before shoving it in his mouth and pressing on the wound. He massaged the area below the arrowhead, and while biting back screams, slid it out the same way one would a wood splinter, except several times larger.
The wound started bleeding again when the arrowhead came out, and Tommy reluctantly took his sweater off and tied it around the wound tightly, like he had seen the healers do at home. The other cuts he would have to hope not get infected, as he had no way of un-infecting them.
The shock from the night and the adrenaline from the cat slipped away and the exhaustion finally caught up to the boy, and with a thin shirt and an injured leg, he fell asleep in the rafters of a barn.