(no subject)

He practises as hard as he can, but it's never going to be enough. The blaze of his flame isn't hot enough- even with that furnace of the dragons lit inside him, his power isn't strong enough. He's strong, sure. But he doesn't have a name to it. His flame isn't honed yet, not enough to impress that woman. To have this power but be so poor with it makes him an embarrassment. He's not only an embarrassment as a mage, but one as a Dragon instead. He should be feared, should be renown for the white-hot scorch of his blaze.

So, he trains. He spends countless hours and days and months doing what he can to hone his blaze, and to back up his power, he opens the gates of Hell. The flames of Atmos burn plasma-hot, and to harness the powers of Darkness would only charge the heat of his power. His scythe cuts through the air, ripping corruption into the ground. His flames cover the area, licking into the hate-poisoned terrain. It's powerful, it's fearsome, but it's not enough.

He's a failure in the home of that woman, as well. He's captured and he's violated and degraded. Over and over again, he's beaten. He's forced to fight until his body can no longer move and until his mind can't work and he thinks that he's dead. He's forced to work for his power until every last drop of mana within his body has poured into flame and into darkness. Even if he's made the woman scream and cry and fall and bleed, he's never beaten her. He's locked up in that hellish castle for over a year, with humiliation and violation and pain and heat being his daily routine. But then, he's let go. With the circumstance of his memories of the past year being sealed away, he's let free to the world again. There's a catch, though, to the little bird's freedom- When he's called, he returns back to the castle.

When he returns, nearly a full year later, he lets his hellish captors know that there's no way this will go as it did before. He shifts, his lean humanoid body twisting and snapping and scaling. He becomes the fearsome beast that he's born to be, showing that woman that fucking with a dragon as she had before wasn't within the future of this story. And so, they train. Act two begins and the backdrop changes to the library. His abilities with flames and smoke and heat can't grow much further. Books, sacred tomes of the Occult lay across the table and the boy, now the young man, is told to become the darkness.

It hurts. It burns. Becoming the darkness sounds a crack down his spine as it battles for dominance with the flame that lives inside of him. He's told to turn his flame off, to turn off what he is and to quell the Dragon's fire within his heart. It's easier said than done and he's left gasping for breath and blinded by pain. Even if the advice he's given is from the wicked woman, the strong wicked woman who has combined magics of her own, he says Fuck it. He's different from her because he's a dragon and to turn off the fire within him and become only darkness means to give up his life.

So he trains by himself, away from that castle that would only house pain and death in his memories, had his memories of said castle been active. He has a purpose now, given to him through advice by his best friend- Instead of wandering and just wanting strength for the purpose of strength, now he needs strength to protect. The Crown has been placed in his hands and everyone around him seems to have unlocked their potentials. So on his days off, between patrols, when no one is looking, he closes his eyes and locks himself inside his heart and forces his powers of flame and his powers of darkness to interact. It still hurts. It's still as if he dies, every time the two energies within his body clash and fight.

But he can't stop. He's too hardheaded to seek out that woman and to ask her for help, again. He's way too hardheaded to seek out a stranger or anyone else that he'd know that can produce the power he's poured years of his life in trying to master. To produce this on his own accord, to be capable of creating those violet-black flames that scorch hotter than white and destroy destroy destroy everything around him would show that he's strong. Show that he's not just a weak little boy that can't protect anything. Show that he's a dragon.

He's out in the middle of the planes. This is it. He's promised himself, threatened himself that if he'll get it this time. If if kills him, if he burns into dust and sinks into Atmos itself, he'll keep trying until the black flames surround him. It's been hours. Maybe it's been days. He's lost track of time, how long he's been isolated from anyone, save pilgrims passing through to venture to Tilandre. His body is weak and it's dying. It's actually dying. This isn't the pain that he thought was almost death, so many times. The Flame inside him is too strong and the hate and doubt that fuels his Darkness is too strong and doing it this way, forcing them together when the heat lives inside his body and the occult lives inside his heart tears at his organs. On his hands and knees he coughs, his life's ruby-red liquid pouring past his lips and splattering onto lush grass below. Saffron eyes are unfocused and almost unseeing, and he feels his body falling to the ground.

And then he feels it crack. He feels his bones re-position and his nails and teeth elongate. The fearsome beast inside him takes over, ripping out of it's human shell in order to preserve the longevity of it. The beast reacts to the overwhelming combination of the flame and of the darkness. The flames that crackle and dance and burst in the air with a corrupted, a darkened blazing hot violet-black. The beast roars, turns it's head to the sky and bellows. When no more sound can be ripped from it's throat it sinks, shrinking down back to it's human container and falls to the ground.

He's weakened and his body can't move and he's just beaten death itself in a war within his very body but he smiles, a wicked grin cracking across a pale and bloody face before eyes slide shut and he loses consciousness.