Lost! Keen my emotions, and I turn my face to the cloud-covered sky, screaming my rage and pain to the heavens, death's dragon cowl flung back from my face. Gone! Taken! Stolen! My partner, my constant, my companion through all of the battles in my life, is gone!
Who did this? How can this be?
I look again to where warm scales had slept the night before, and the grief and rage redouble, as I bare my teeth in a snarl that has more than a little of the dragon in it as the cold winds blow around me.
My World Destroyer has been taken, and only I remain.
My world destroyer.
Who hatched from the Black Dragon Box.
As Fluffy hatched from the White Dragon Box.
Fluffy was not meant for ruin.
The dragon of the Black Dragon Box was meant to serve the dark.
As those facts come together I have my answer.
Caitiff.
Caitiff took my companion.
Caitiff. Must. Die.
And it will be so. Though destruction is no longer by my side, still I am one who is a fitting partner to my dragon of destruction.
I will come for Caitiff. I will destroy it. Blade of Doom it may be, but I will not die until it lies shattered at my feet, crumbled to dust, shatters on the wind. Then, if my dragon is beyond my reach, I will do what must be done.
We will enter Death's Realm together.
I grip the tooth left at my side tightly, feeling the edges dig into my skin, remembering happy licks to my face, and breath of sulfur and destruction when we were reunited after the ice.
Now I know what my scaled friend felt during my imprisonment.
Now I know the pain of loss deeper than failure to protect, deeper than a comrade fallen on the battlefield.
Rain begins to fall, the skies themselves reflecting my mood. I stow the tooth carefully away, before the last thing that remains be damaged in my grip, or washed from me by the storm, and begin to weep, tears mixing with the rain.
My darling little lizard is gone.
Lightning flashes. I scream once more, feeling it tear itself from my throat like a roar that once echoed across the sky, bringing fear to all evil in our path. Alone! I am alone!
The wind buffets at me, twists around me, as if the weather itself grieves with me, and attempts to ease my pain. Do the Avatars too grieve? Do they lament my loss?
I do not know.
Blood and ashes cover the fields by the walls, where so recently we fought a war, and Baron Valtrith fell before our combined might. The rain falls there too, and already the signs of battle are beginning to wash away.
The ache dims, but does not fade, simply grows less sharp. My rage grows more focused, cold, controlled anger, and I shape it into a blade, tempering it in grief as I raise a hand to my throat, where my Dragon Amulet hangs, and clasp it as tightly as I had the tooth minutes before.
Caitiff, beware. I swear on the tooth of my dragon, on the graves of my dead, by the amulet that bound my partner and I together, that you will die.
I come, with death in my hands.
A.N. A belated response to the release of Doomed. I've had it in my head since that Saturday, but this is the first time my wrists have recovered enough to type, and I can already tell my hands are going to regret this.