The Other Side
War. Fire. Lives destroyed. Bodies broken. Love ones lost. Death on both sides. Humans and Dragons, clashing in every way. Eight human heroes wielding weapons of incredible power lead Humanity to victory. The Dragons retreat through their own creation, which humans later call The Dragon's Gate. Many are lost in this exodus through space. Few arrive at their destination sane. However, the Dragons do arrive.
The War separates lovers. A female Ice dragon loves a young mage. She gives birth to twins. She is captured by murderous humans who seek to stop the departure of the Dragons, and eradicate them entirely. Their father is heartbroken, and leaves his children before the Gate, instructing them to enter if he does not return in ten days. Ten days pass.
Their mother is dead or lost. The father loses his memory, or part of it. He returns many years later, unable to remember what it is that he has forgotten. He decides that it was unimportant. Chaos ensues, and a father would kill his daughter and son for his twisted, maddened lust for power. Great wrongs led to this, and at many times it could have been prevented, but nothing was saved until a young man wishing to be much like his father became a person all his own, and fell in love with a young dragon girl.
Years later, in an unnamed world. A small colony. A desert in the northern part of a very much unexplored continent. They have seen some humans. They leave the humans be. They are not as dangerous as the humans in Elibe, and they have no power with which to cut down their race. The Dragons are weary of war. They stay in the desert, alone.
They have a somewhat larger settlement. Elders die, children come into life. They work together to sustain their race, to make their village a place to live, a place to call home.
Nils and Ninian are born. They live as Oracles. They open the gate, called back by someone they do not remember. Called back by their father. They are wronged. They flee, until they find refuge. They return to reclaim what is theirs, and to go home. Only Nils returns. He tells their story, a story filled with hope and majesty and wonder. And most of all, tales of their true home. He makes contact with a small human village slightly south of the desert, up in the mountains. He teaches them the way dragons teach themselves to live. The people adopt these teachings, and pass them on to their children. The tradition continues to this day. Many years later, Nils dies an elder, living a long and wonderful life, even for a dragon.
Seasons come and go. Lives pass, legends are born. Humans grow in numbers. Things change. The desert is no longer. Grass begins to come to the village of the Dragons.
More changes. Grasses become brush. Brush becomes trees. These changes take hundreds of years, although dragons change very little. The Elder of the Dragons still communicates with the elder of the human village in the mountains. They are close allies, and help each other in times of need.
History becomes legend. The names of those who came through the Dragon's Gate are now the greatest names, the most powerful and wonderful dragons of all. Thousands of years pass. Humans forget their legends. The Dragons do not.
Some strife. A war, or perhaps a sickness. Survival becomes paramount for the Dragons. Whatever this discord, few survive. Elders who survive slowly die. The young forget their past. Dragons forget to trust men, except for the constant, small little village in the mountains. Dragons forget about the sacrifices of Nils and Ninian. Dragons forget.
Humans grow in numbers. They overwhelm the Dragons by sheer multitude, and the Dragons dwindle to a small few. They live alone, deep in the forest, now haunted by the tortured spirits of the forgotten, of love that no one remembers, lost in a moment of pain.
A demon rises. The Dragon's Gate is destroyed in the following war. Dragons save mankind from sure destruction. One dragon. The last remaining descendant of Nils, the Forgotten One. He saves many lives. His wife gives birth to a son. The son gives birth to a daughter. Mankind forgets its debt. Dragons remember their war. Even fewer Dragons remain.
The Great Dragon dies. His son and granddaughter live on, not wanting to trust men. They isolate themselves. They grow weary of protecting the woods, now grown even darker with the demon spirit and the souls of the dead of the war. The Manakete continue, although they fade.
The daughter meets a young, confident human man. He would sacrifice everything to see his country and his sister saved. The daughter is impressed. She would help him to save everything he loves. They succeed, and trust between Man and Dragon is born once again.
And so ends, or rather begins, the story of Nils and Ninian. As Nils and Ninian trusted in men, so does Myrrh. Humans have a chance to save their trust. And so the saga continues, of hate, of judgment, of trust, of broken oaths, and of love. Love between a human and a dragon, the stem of all the chaos. Love between a human and a dragon, the source of hope for generations to come. Humans change rapidly. Dragons do not change much at all. Love never changes, and though a young man named Nergal made a fatal error the day he left his children, and though he made a great error when he allowed his mind to be lost to darkness, he did not lose everything. He saved many people from his mistakes. He allowed a world where Humans and Dragons could begin with coexisting to come about. He gave hope, which was what he sought to destroy in his madness.
FIN
The Other Side of the Dragon's Gate
By: Thorhammer17