A dragon is a powerful being, indeed. Razing acres of farmland with a single breath, wiping out cities with the swipe of a tail. A dragon could reduce a country to nothing if given reason.
And for all dragons, gold is the best reason of all.
Tomochi was a great, wealthy land. It had seen peace for so long that it no longer had a formal military, for its leaders saw no reason for one. Its borders surrounded by seas, the people of Tomochi felt secure, despite being so vulnerable.
They were caught fully unprepared when the greatest dragon of them all, The Original One, decided to set his sights on their piles of undefended gold.
Thousands were killed in the golden tongues of flame, more still caught underneath the Original One's long tail and powerful claws. The few who had survived by chance gathered within the walls of the City, their beautiful capitol that had been reduced to nothing but a refugee camp.
Unnoticed by all, a single woman with hair as golden as the sun approached the Great Dragon, knowing that if such a Dragon could protect Tomochi, they would no longer have to quake in fear for any reason, not even for the Dragon himself.
The Dragon had already taken all of the land's riches for itself, it had devoured the livestock and burned the fruit trees that gave the people life, what could the woman possibly offer him in exchange for Tomochi's protection?
She sang. It is said that the Dragon's great yellow eyes filled with tears at the sound of her voice, at the sight of her enchanting dance. She offered the only thing she could, her life in servitude.
"Sing me to sleep with your prayers, child, dance for me each day, and I shall protect your world."
The pact was made and Tomochi was regiven the peace it so craved. The Great Dragon spread its wings and protected the land, so long as the woman sang and danced for him.
But nothing lasts forever, and humans are fragile things.
The Great Dragon was filled with rage and resumed ravaging destruction upon the land. A new singer was needed to quelch his anger.
And so a new weaver of prayers was found, and the Dragon's anger was once again calmed by the songs and dances. The Dragon's singer soon became known as the Diva.
But the people knew that once this songstress died, the Dragon would once again wreak havoc on their land.
A new government was appointed to make sure that the Great Dragon was given a new Diva immediately after the last one died of exhaustion. An Oracle was given the head of this government, for the sole fact that he could supposedly see who would be the next Diva, male or female, in his bizarre trances.
For years, everything was perfect. The Divas were regaled as protectors of their country once they passed on, their names written in the Book of Heroes for eternity.
However, where light reigns, shadows soon follow. The line of the Oracle soon became corrupt, becoming more of a tyrant than a benevolent ruler and the names of the Divas were wiped from history itself, turning them into deities meant solely for the preservation of their nation.
A new military was brought up for the sole purpose of making sure that the youth chosen to be the next Diva was obtained without a hitch. More often than not, infants were ripped from their mothers' grasps to be trained as Divas, never to see their true families again, fated to die from exhaustion after only a few months of singing for the Dragon or to be killed by the Dragon itself when it tired of them.
And so the reign of Dragonism began…
...
Aerith gazed upon her twin boys in adoration. Twins! It was considered fortunate to even have one surviving child, but two! She felt like the luckiest woman in the world.
She kissed their shiny foreheads lovingly, brushing aside golden locks on the youngest, brown spikes on the eldest. She gently placed the musical pendants that had been passed down in her family for generations around their necks, a treble cleft for her golden boy, a bass for her cinnamon locked angel. The black painted metal shone stark against the infants' soft white jumpers.
A knock came at the door and she gently lowered her children into the cradle that they shared, walking across the one room cottage to the door with a blissful smile on her face. That smile dropped when she found herself face to face with two soldiers of the Oracle.
"We have come for your youngest male child," the taller and, as Aerith noted, probably the higher ranking of the two stated, holding up the scroll that no doubt bequeathed the custody of her child to the Oracle and, eventually, the Dragon.
"No…" Aerith gasped, her eyes wide and gaping mouth covered with her hands. "No! You can't!"
"We can, and we will," the soldier stated. "Demyx, restrain her."
Aerith screamed as the shorter of the soldiers pinned her to his chest with an arm around her neck. She reached out a desperate hand as the soldier picked up her baby boy. Both twins were screaming now. The soldier returned to the door way, the blonde baby cradled in one arm.
"We have what we came for. Demyx, release her."
The younger soldier released her and Aerith collapsed to the floor as the soldiers left, the one who had restrained her whispering a regretful "Sorry, ma'am" before running after his superior.
Aerith broke into sobs, her cries joining those of her older baby in the hushed light of the room. She screamed out her stolen child's name between sobs, in the way that only a broken-hearted mother has the ability to as her infant was driven farther and farther from her.
"Roxas!"