Well, I don't know about you people, but my other Diablo 2 fanfiction (that is discontinued and shall not be restarted due to… well, partly laziness and other-partly that it kills me on the inside to read it and think that I wrote something like that. My main character was called Darkness. I MEAN COME ONNNNNN! Really. Emo streak back then or what?
Haha, way back when.
Yeah, anyway, I feel that I need to introduce why I am doing this story.
I love dragons and I still like D2. Even though it's graphics make me giggle. Pixel men. Sick.
And even before since starting the original D2 story (whatever it was called), I wanted to do this. I wanted to have a character that was a dragon. I wanted to have weird shit happen. I wanted to write about morals, human nature, belonging, spirituality and beliefs, discrimination and all the choices, good and bad, that we make.
Of course, when you're thirteen/fourteen you don't generally have much of a way to go about doing this because of the lack of life experience. But I have a little more grounds now. I'm a little older (not much), and my writing skills extend past my nose now. Simplicity and eloquence can be the same thing now. A story doesn't have to end happily, and what could be morbid doesn't have to be; and we don't have to be emo about everything. Oh. My. Gods. Peoples. I mean seriously. People crack really bad jokes all through wars.
So now, rather than writing to get reviews, I'm writing this to please myself. If I get constructive criticism along the way, excellent, but I won't correct anything. It will be used constructively in my book.
The M'Iirai and their culture concept is my brainchild.
Jiraath is just another name for my dragon character with her green bits removed. Please do not nick off with my characters or my named culture. (:
That is all.
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PROLOGUE:
It was a cycle, a wheel of life and death, birth and rebirth that had no beginning and certainly no end. Each year was a turning; each new moon was the beginning of a cycle; and each cracking egg was the death of an ancient.
For them, upon death, there was not nothing; there was a chance to live again and learn again in their own skin or that of another.
Theirs was an old race, made in time immemorial from the same stuff as the mountains, the forests, volcanoes and skies. A unity of the four elements in a single body. Smooth scaled, the colour of deserts, forests or stone; huge membrane wings, and the breath of fire.
They called themselves the M'Iirai; the Free People.
Humans call them Dragons.
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Flight was such a beautiful thing. She thanked her ancestors who had discovered the wind under their wings as she soared and banked on the breeze. Her cousin was far below her, sweeping the field grass with his wing tips.
She blew at a low cloud that she soared towards her mountain home, an ancient and dead volcano that squatted over the Su'ari clan, her clan's valley. She pointed her sleek head east, towards the rising sun, and saw a foul black disfigurement marring the sky, just above the horizon. Something was ill with the world, and a cold feeling settled in her fire lung.
She felt a sharp pain in one of her chest muscles; she cried out in surprise, a sharp grating noise, and she dropped in altitude as one of her wings jarred against the pain.
The pain became agony as another bolt lodged near the first, and she dropped like a shot out of the sky. She saw her cousin speeding like a copper arrow towards her, fluting his fear. She saw the humans riding towards them with lances and crossbows.
An anguished scream echoed in her ears and the ground crashed into her neck.
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CHAPTER 1:
From Flood, Fire and Famine
'AWAKEN FIRE CHILD.'
Her vision returned, but she could not move, not even blink.
'I AM TYRAEL, YOU NEED NOT FEAR.'
A white light filled her vision before narrowing into a vague image of a humanoid stood before her. All else was blank. No light or darkness, except for that things glowing tendril-like wings.
'FIRE CHILD, RISE.' Heat ran through her body and she was jerked to her feet, her front legs trembled under her weight. 'YOU ARE NEEDED. TERROR JOURNEYS EAST AND HIS BROTHERS AWAIT THEIR AWAKENINGS BY HIM.' She stared at him, comprehension dawning in her mind. 'BUT I AM WEAKENED NOW. I CAN NOT SEND YOU BACK WHOLE. YOU MUST BE REBORN AS WERE YOUR MOST ANCIENT FORBEARS.' Reborn.
Reborn.
She was dead. The truth came to her even as did the memory of the ground closing in on her; her body shook, whether in fear, apprehension or anticipation, she could not tell.
'RISE, FIRE BREATHER, IN THE MANNER OF YOUR ANCESTORS, FROM EARTH AND FIRE; RISE AND SEEK THE WARRIORS WHO FIGHT THE DARKNESS. AID THEM.'
The white figure slowly faded from her vision.
She felt compressed, as if in a womb, except all around her was grainy and moist and smelled of rain wet clay. It was comfortable. She could perhaps just stay there; they did not really need her. She sighed breathlessly, the blood was still in her veins, her lungs did not breathe and her heart did not pump.
They did not need a M'Iirai-ki, a dragoness.
'THEY NEED YOU. THEY DO NOT KNOW IT. AND ONLY A FIRE CHILD CAN LIGHT THE DARKNESS THEY HAVE MADE.
'JIRAATH.'
Heat shot through her earthen-clay womb at her naming. With that heat, came life, and the will to live. Jiraath clawed at the earth above her, she knew the sky was beyond. Her heart began to beat, and the blood pulsed with her ji, her spirit fire, roared like pure burning life through her.
Forth from the ground she burst like the magma from the mouth of a volcano. It was raining outside of the earth-womb. The droplets of water washed the red sandy clay off her desert coloured scales; an odd contrast to the dull green and grey forest around her. Jiraath collapsed and breathed hard as she felt the ji slip from her body.
In the manner of her ancestors. That was what the white man-creature had said.
Jiraath struggled to her feet and coughed a growl; her voice, her words were gone. She was cursed with the tongue of the first M'Iirai, growls, snarls and warbles; not the lyrical words that her people used. With her ji gone, so too was her fire, the fire breath that her kind wielded both as weapon and way of life.
Jiraath coughed again. She glanced around, there was a deep hollow in the sand clay that she had come from, upon inspection she noticed what looked like glowing red veins lining its walls. She shrugged; there were similar things within the birthing caves of her home.
She checked for her dark brown wings and felt a great deal of relief when she saw that they were.
Smoke was rising in the distance, a thin column, probably from a campfire; she set off at a fast trot, her long legs carrying her across the moors towards a motte wall of speared trees.
She stopped by a river that ran towards the…the encampment, she spied her reflection as she drank. She certainly looked the same. A copper-brown dragon with darker brown colouration on her face and down her spine; green eyes gazed back at her, perhaps brighter than before. Jiraath continued on her way.
The wooden wall was pressed up against the river, a gateway like opening around the corner from her side, opposite the river.
Jiraath increased her pace and rounded the corner, trotting towards a dirt track that led towards the gate. There was a whirring sound in the air; Jiraath darted to the side in time to see the shaft of an arrow lodge itself into the ground. A stunned yelp escaped her and she dashed sideways and saw the archer. A woman with gold hair tied back in a horse tail, she was clad in red leather armour and more importantly, was drawing another arrow.
She dodged it again, but didn't expect the explosion that followed the arrow's strike at the ground. She was knocked sideways by the blast; Jiraath managed to catch her balance and jolt herself forward and away from the approaching footsteps behind her.
Stop! She tried to cry out, but it came as a humming growl. She spun to see the attacker and came face to face with a muscle-bulk of a man; she baulked and dodged past him, avoiding the swing of his club by a hair's breadth. Three more humans ran out from the forest, Jiraath could only catch the colours they wore, silver, black and a second figure wearing black. That was as much as she could notice before trying to dodge first anther arrow and then a second swing from the club.
'Vorak! Hold!' A male human's voice called across the moor. The huge man in front of Jiraath stopped swinging for a moment. 'Vorak, that isn't a demon! Cease your attack!'
Following that there was the sound of an argument, two males, the one who had yelled out – he had a rich and rhythmic voice – and another who had a slightly rougher voice but also held a slight chanting sound in it. She could not make out what they were saying; only that the arrows were not falling anymore.
Jiraath crouched and backed away from the man, standing her shoulder only came up to his waist; it was then she realised that she had diminished in size as well.
Thank you. Again this came out as a growl; she clamped her jaws shut when she saw the effect it had on the barbarian before her.
The club crashed down onto her head.
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End Chapter 1.
There may not be another of these for a while, so savour them ;-P
