Flashback

Fire and ash. That's all the little girl could see as her home was burning down around her. The once white and black contrast of the walls that made it look so vibrant with life now were burned and a deathly white in its wake. She was coughing and gagging as she turned another corner of a hallway. The little girl looking for her father, the only family she had left."Daddy!" the little girl cried in between gasps for breath. She couldn't see, the ash burning her eyes as she looked from room to room. Her lungs were burning, longing for clean air, everything in her entire being was telling her to get to safety, but she couldn't, not without her father.

"Dadd-" she coughed violently, all of the smoke she had been breathing in taking its toll on her small body, "Daddy! Where are you?"The girls body was about to give out. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't see, the smoke was too thick for her eyes to penetrate. Her knees were buckling from the house shaking and buckling around her, the floors creaking and moaning as she took each step. she was using all the her strength in her little body just to keep herself upright, as the weight of falling supports made the house shake even more violently. Just as she was about to give in and let exhaustion overtake her, she heard voices, mumbling incoherently, but very loudly, over the sounds of burning.

Daddy, she thought hopefully as she mustered up the last of strength and slowly trudged down a long hallway, using what was left of the wall to support her weight as her legs were all but dead, to where the voices were, her father's study. Her father's study was the only place in the house that she was forbidden to ever enter, this made the girl very apprehensive to enter as she took tentative(as tentative as she could)steps to the threshold of her father's study. However, seeing as this was quite literally her only option, she had no choice but to keep walking. Just as she had made it to the door of her father's study, a strong blast of fire sent the door flying, just barely missing the girl by mere inches, and the reverberating shock wave knocked the little girl into a near by wall... hard.

That was it, she had nothing left, being blasted into the wall knocked the rest of what little oxygen she had. The little girl could no longer move, her vision becoming less and less as she faded in and out of consciousness. What she could see, however, made her joyful and fearful all at once.

There on the ground, no more then ten feet in front of her, lay her father. He was clutching his arm and writhing in pain, the look in his eyes was one of pure fear. The little could not see what her father her father was looking at given her limited field of vision, but anything that can make her father fear for his life was something bad, really, really bad.

"Daddy," the little girl whispered softly, trying to get her father's attention as another string of violent cough reared it's ugly head and she slowly drifted into unconsciousness, as her eyes were closing she heard one final plea from her father, the last words she would ever hear him speak.

"CINDER!"

…..

She woke up with a start, her heart beating about a mile a minute. It was a dream that she had been having ever since the incident. Having to constantly relive one of the most nightmarish moments in your life would make anyone scared out of their mind. This is how it always was, like clockwork, she would wake up from her nightmare and, after getting over the shock of seeing the last member of her family for the very last time, she would always make the same dark joke in her head.

In a way, it was almost ironic; a member of the Onyx family dying in a fire, it was almost laughable, really. The tamers of dragons dying of the very thing they breathe, it was like a fish dying by drowning.

It was something the girl, now 18, couldn't wrap her head around, how her father, the Great Alexander Onyx, the best tamer and rider of dragons in Remnant, dies from a fire. The flames shouldn't have even been able to touch him. The Onyx family was given the Blessing of the Black Dragon; at puberty, each member shed their human skin and grew skin as tough as dragon scales and lungs that allowed them to breathe the hottest of flames. Yet there her father was when she had regained consciousness, as black and charred as the meat that fell into an open flame. The image of it forever burned into the back of her mind, it sent a chill down her spine every time the image popped into her head.

The girl was pulled out of her thoughts when something big and warm poked at the side of her head, both sides actually. The girl had lifted her head to see the face of two small dragons, almost the size of a large dog, one as black as night, the other white as snow, as they stared at her with worry written all over their faces. The white dragon growled at the girl softly, almost as if to say 'Are you okay?'

The girl rubbed the dragons nose affectionately. "I'm okay, Ivory," she said, as she scratched in between the dragon's scales, reaching the softer skin below it, "Sometimes you just have to relive the past to remind yourself of your future." the girl looked at both of her dragons affectionately, Ebony and Ivory, the last gift she ever received from her father(Ebony) and the only gift she had ever received from her mother(Ivory), seeing her pups always managed to bring a smile to her face.

The girl got out of her bed and glanced around her room. Ever since the incident, she had been living with her father's best friend, Taiyang Xiao Long, and his daughters on the small island of Patch. She had been living there for the last eight years, and today, sadly, was the last time she would be calling this place her home. You see, ever since the girl was twelve years old, she had been training her hardest to become a Huntress, and it sure was showing. Top of her class in nearly every standing at Signal Academy, Hailey Onyx, daughter of the famous "Dragon Tamer," Alexander Onyx, was considered a prodigy to everyone else, though she herself knew she had more training to go reach her best. And the place where she will finally get her last four years of her training would be the prestigious Beacon Academy. However, she wouldn't be going alone, for her adopted sisters, Yang Xiao Long and Ruby Rose, would also be going to complete their training. And today was the day they left for Vale.

As far as appearance goes, Hailey was quite gorgeous. Standing at 5'11 with short black hair and eyes blacker than Ebony's scales and having a tone body from years of training, Hailey was one of the most sought after girl during her time at Signal Academy by both girls and boys, second only to her sister Yang.

Taking a break from her thoughts, Hailey stretched and turned to her dragons with a smirk on her face. "Alright guys," Hailey said to them, holding out her left arm to her side expectantly, "You know the drill."

Ebony and Ivory roared at her, incredibly annoyed at what Hailey was asking them to do. "I know you hate it pups," she told them sadly, even though they go through this every morning, "But because of what with Zwei last time I let you roam free, Tai says that I have keep you with me at all times." Hailey was recalling the incident, Ebony, Ivory, and Zwei, the Xiao Long family dog were left in the house with no supervision for only about 30 minutes. However, when Taiyang, Yang, and Ruby had returned from the store, they found the house in ruin, and with Ebony, Ivory, and Zwei looking up at them happily.

The two dragons looked at each other and let out another roar of annoyance before, slowly, they started to disintegrate into mere ash floating around the room. Then, all of the ash began to separate and coil around itself as it flew toward Hailey's arm. The coiling ashes slowly began to burn into her skin, but she felt no pain, and slowly, a beautifully tattooed image formed on Hailey's arm. It was the image of her two dragons, both coiling around her arms in opposite directions, like Yin and Yang.

Speaking of Yang, just as Hailey's dragons were finished burning themselves into her skin, the door to her room was flung open, almost being knocked off its hinges, and a loud, obnoxious blonde came barreling in, a flash of red following quickly behind her.

"Wakey, wakey!" Yang yelled, as loud and boisterous as always, "Come on you lazy dragon, if you don't hurry up we're going to miss our airship!" Yang then pointed to the clock as to emphasize her point.

Hailey looked at the clock, irritation and annoyance written all over her face, but before she could groan to further express her annoyance, she looked at the clock with horror. 8:35 am. She had overslept, again! Now she only had 20 minutes to shower and everything else she had to do before they had to leave. Dammit! She scolded herself in her head as she bolted out of the room, toiletries in hand. She could already tell this was going to be a bad day.