Nights of Past Innocence

5500 years earlier...

Her paws quickly padded across the sharp stones and rocks that were scattered on the ground. Each of her steps caused some of lighter rocks to bounce off into the air around her, while some of the heavier ones simply shook slightly.

Darzarath quickly darted up the mountain's side, tongue rolling off her mouth as she began struggling for breath.

Her uncle Marthorax had challenged her to one simple exchange: reach the mountain's peak before sunset without flying or teleportation, and he'd teach her some of his rarer and most valuable tricks. The young dragon simply could not hold back her excitement as she accepted faster than she rationalized the extent of the challenge ahead.

When she began her climb it was just past the early morning. Now it was late afternoon and she was barely past the two-thirds of the way there.

The sun heated her black hide, adding to the burning of her muscles as she made use of every single drop of strength and endurance she had. She wanted, no, _needed_to learn as much as she could from her uncle. Several times he had promised her that one day he'd teach her some things, and maybe this was the day he was going to follow through.

Darzarath kept pushing forward, even when eventually the steep incline became proper cliffs and crevasses. Her claws dug deep into the rock, sometimes grabbing too deep and causing the rock to pulverize under her grip, other times not managing to scratch deep enough causing her paw to slip. She silently cursed her earlier eagerness, but she nonetheless kept pushing forward. She was almost to the top now, and she felt the air draw thin and colder around her as the wind began to pick up strength.

The sun's disc was almost touching the horizon, and still she was not as close to the top as she wanted.

She reached a small clearing atop a cliff, where she let herself lay down for a moment to recover from the exhausting climb. As her breath misted into the cold mountain air, she watched as the sun began setting. The disc was already descending past the horizon.

Darzarath felt the need to scream. She was so close and yet so far away.

Getting up on shaky limbs, she looked up. She couldn't quite see her uncle, but she was sure he was there.

She resumed her climb, her forelimbs hurting in the excessive exertion of helping her drag her whole weight up the mountain's side. Her tail felt numb, both from the cold and the continuous need to keep herself balanced. She tucked her wings closer as the mountain's cold air began to get even colder as the last of the sun's light made way for the darkness of night.

She was in proper sight of the peak. And she could see her uncle, his black scales contrasting with his white plates and metallic accents. He was looking down to her, an expression of genuine curiosity and judgmental approval marked his face.

She continued, her limbs beginning to rebel against her will as they began to seize up with cramps. She knew she pushed herself too hard, but she didn't care. She wanted the final reward more than she'd ever care about having to spend days whole recovering from this.

She put her paw up to the same plane where her uncle rested on, and she realized that it was late. The sun had already set.

She was about to give up, to let her limbs collapse, when she felt herself being lifted up, and a faint white glow emanating from her body. She rose, completely beyond her control, and was put gently down on her back near Marthorax.

Her chest moved up and down with incredible urgency as she tried to get much needed breath and rest.

"Hmm..." He hummed as he approached her and sat down next to her. "I'm conflicted. On one hand, if I were to take the challenge I gave you literally, I should just be leaving you here for the night. On the other, you've actually made it, without using any magic, not even once."

She looked at him with half-lidded eyes. Her head was pounding too much, her blood pressure was off the charts. Her breath was still short, and none of her limbs aside from her wings was willing to do what she wanted.

"Let's make it a compromise. I'll keep watch over you for the night, and if you do indeed behave, then the coming day I'll begin to teach you." He told her.

Whether she agreed to that or not, she was not in the position to argue against it, let alone refuse it.

She slept soundly throughout the night, but she could still feel how her uncle staid close to her, even covering her with a wing when a burst of particularly cold wind reached them.

Faster than she realized, morning came, and with it her uncle made sure to wake her up. With an ice spell.

She threw herself upright, flipping over in sudden pain as soon as she was standing due to cramps seizing up her limbs.

"Ouch-ouch!" She complained.

"Come on, sun's up and the day's ripe of opportunities!" He cheerfully poked at her.

She groaned as she wrestled her limbs into control, a deep ache making her movements slow and sluggish.

"I know you need yourtime, young lady, but the earlier we start, the better it gets." Marthorax kept teasing her.

He began poking at her side with a claw, which promptly gained him another groan of complaint.

"Fine, guess we'll have to start before you're even ready." He stated. He rose his paw and began a low chanting.

For a brief moment, Darzarath felt something wash over her like a breeze of warm air in the desert. The pain in her muscles faded, her limbs began cooperating again, and she got up.

"First lesson of the day." He explained. "Healing spells are rarely considered until one needs them. Forget that they exist, and you'll be in for a world of hurt."

"Ugh... Thanks, Uncle." Darzarath groaned as she properly stretched to get the last stiffness out of her limbs.

The day's lessons were many, and at first Darzarath was puzzled as to why her uncle was just having her begin with rehearsing the simplest spells she knew. Until he began showing her his simpler tricks.

"Alright, do tell me what happens when you combine Water and Air spells?" He asked her.

"Uhm. I... don't know?" She answered.

He took her answer in, raising an eyebrow in expectation.

"I mean, water flows, so does air..." She began reasoning. "I guess that they flow... better? Faster?"

He smiled. He wasn't exactly too impressed by her knowledge of magics, and he couldn't really blame her. Her parents weren't exactly good teachers when it came to the more complex nuances of magic.

"That's one way to look at it." He said as he rose a paw and summoned an orb of swirling water in his palm with a simple wiggling of his fingers. "Both water and air are symbols of flow. Flow of life, for water, and flow of will, for air. To manipulate water, one must understand how life and the world around it depend on it. To manipulate air, one must muster the will to shackle it to your whims."

He continued his explanation, ending with a simple trick that she couldn't have otherwise understood. He summoned another orb of air, barely visible in his other palm, and slowly approached the two orbs until they touched.

Darzarath watched in fascination as the two orbs not only fused together, but they became something akin to an orb of flowing ice.

"In time, my young niece, you'll see, learn and witness things that will shape the way you see reality in ways that you wouldn't ever dream just yet." He finished. "I and your father also had our fair share of special moments, unique experiences that have shaped our relationship as brothers, and our approach to the greater things in life. I cannot expect you to be the same person in one thousand years as you are now. But, I can at least uphold my part of being part of the family by being there to help you."

Darzarath looked at him confused. She was at a loss of words.

"Enough of my rambling, however." He said as he dispersed the orb of ice, which promptly turned into fresh, pure, snow. "The day is still long, as we have much to cover!"

Modern day...

She sat back at her terminal. Ascar had just left to return to his quarters for the night.

Darzarath wanted to trust the young man's new-found enthusiasm for helping her, and she gladly listened to the lengthy explanation he gave her on how to adjust her approach to politics. Something in the back of her mind, however, called for her attention. One of Ascar's points was appearance. To make one's appearance unique, formal, acceptable as a sign of trustworthiness. As she was now, she'd have struck terror into anyone that wouldn't know better.

She pondered for a moment on what she could do to alleviate that. She could not possibly conjure a formal dress for her true form. Not only it'd look ridiculous, but she just didn't have enough of those materials in her lair's stocks.

She left her quarters and headed deeper into the lair. Over the centuries she had made sure that her lair would be impregnable to any would-be attacker. Traps, glyphs, false doors, anything that she could fit logically, she got.

She walked for what would've felt like an eternity to a mortal, but for her it was mere minutes. Faint crystal lights glowing and fading as she walked past them. The hallway she was in opened into one of her older and largest chambers. Her old alchemical forge. Lined across the circular room's walls were several machines, most of which would be associated with a modern blacksmith, had they not been built several centuries ago, and to a scale such she could use them as-is in her real form and size. A large blue crystal at the top of a dome-like ceiling provided with the needed light to not trip on the first stray thing on the floor.

On the far end of the room, an old and very large cloth covered something that was almost as big as she was. She approached it, and after taking a deep breath she pulled the cover cloth off. Underneath, finally unveiled after much time, was an armor. A dragon's armor. Her armor. It had been forged by her in that very alchemical forge, using a combination of metals and magics that made it far sturdier than anything could've ever been even in this modern age. She examined it, searching for any defects that might have cropped up in time. The armor's metal was as black as her scales, inlaid and framed with a different but just as robust silvery metal. The headpiece was shaped such to fit around her head as snugly as possible, and was adorned with the same inlays as the rest. One of the accessories she was most proud of were the wing blades, huge attachments that fit over her wings and allowed her appendages to turn into proper lethal weapons. At one point she had in fact managed to sever limbs and fell whole groups of slayers in one single swipe of her wing.

She took a couple steps back, and with what would be interpreted as a whistle-like sound from her mouth, the armor began rattling. The inlays glowed with a dull silver glow as the pieces lifted of the stand, dusting themselves off from the long time of disuse, and flew towards her body. Each piece homed in to their intended place, interlocking with each other as quickly as they set into place.

By the time the armor finished assembling itself back on to her, she realized a small problem that wasn't the armor's fault, but her own. The chest, front, and hind leg plates didn't close fully.

"Dammit." She muttered. "I guess I should've expected this."

She walked to the old workbench and searched for the tools and materials she'd need. Thankfully she had left the place in order, because enough dust had settled that it was hard to distinguish one color from another, and the already dim light of the room didn't help things in the slightest.

She grabbed what looked like a forge hammer and some plates the same metal of the armor, and moved to the anvil right next to the bench. The motions had become almost foreign to her, as too much time had passed since she last did any work in the forge, but the know-how was not lost on her just yet.

"Too long, friend, too long." She whispered as she passed a paw to dust off the enormous anvil.

She set down the hammer and the plates on the anvil, and popped off the armor pieces that she needed to adjust.

That night, the people in the offices, labs and workshops at Dracotronics during night shift could all hear a rumbling hammering, deep vibrations shaking the foundations of the building, windows and desks rattling in time with the strikes of that unseen hammer. Some had called the local seismographic institutes to ask if there as an earthquake on going, only to be told that there were no signs of any activity in their area.