A/N: I apologize, I didn't realize I never cleared this up, but Black dragons aren't some Mary Sue dragon species I made up. I was running off FE9-10's Laguz dragon races. Where the Black dragons are the royalty that the other dragons defer to (As in there's one royal family, maybe 4 members) and there are Red Dragons (physical type) and White dragons (magic type) who make up the rest of their population.

If any of this is wrong, it's been a while since I played FE10. And even when I played, FE10 the laguz were always difficult to use with their transformation wait time. They had to wait a few turns (while a weak, squishy unit) until a transformation gauge filled up before they could turn into their powerful and useful animal form. So I got to be particularly fond of Ranulf(a cat Laguz) whenever I had to use one because his gauge took the least time and he was wickedly fast. Ultimately, using the royal units(Lion, Black dragon, Raven king, Hawk King) was always the better idea if you needed a Laguz because they had no charge time at all and could stay transformed permanently. Dragons had pretty good passive abilities, like boosting the nearby allies stats while in range but they somehow picked up a weird thunder magic allergy in these games. Each different colour boosted different things. I remember Kurthnaga(The Royal Black dragon you get) being particularly good at beefing defense so that people didn't die.

All this reminiscing makes me wanna go dig up Radiant Dawn and play it again. It was a little confusing to me in the first run through since I never played the first one (Path of Radiance) but as I went on I picked up the plot and started to adore the characters. Soren, that snarky little pessimistic half-dragon tactician was my favourite(as a character and a unit)(Good lord, I've never seen a 'squishy' mage dodge so much and kill so many people, for you see, his starting skill Adept sometimes allows him to hit somebody before they hit him when they attack)(Preemptive striking!)(I don't know what the trigger rate for Adept is, but let's just say it was high)(He was also how I found out about the third promotion tier, 'cuz he kept killing people and I was preparing to be sad and bench him when he inevitably maxed out his lvl but he hit 20 and bam I suddenly had an Archsage and it was fantastic) and that's basically what triggered this fic.

I had planned for the 'new world' that the dragons crossed over to be Tellius. (FE9-10's world)

X

The Dragon chained to the Gate

Mark would like to say his duty was heroic.

He was the fierce guardian that protected the Dragon's Gate from anybody who attempted to use it to cross dimensions. He was all that stood between the rest of the dragons and the world of Elibe. Even though the Gate could only be opened by a dragon, Mark firmly believed that some dragons hadn't made it through. There was always a chance of one of them being forced to open the gate.

He'd like to say that it was a sworn and noble duty passed down through his family for generations.

He'd even like to say that he bravely volunteered amidst the worst of the war to stay behind.

The truth is far less bright.

And though now, Mark performs his duties as well as he can, for it is really all he has left, in the beginning he was full of bitterness and hate.

Because, in truth, he neither volunteered for this duty or even was forgotten when the dragons went through.

He was an oddity, born to two dark red fire dragons a few years before the Scouring was even a rumble of dissent. And despite his parent's colours, he had been born the pitch black of the Royal dragons, with only red edging of his wings to hint at his true parentage. His parents had been very confused but as they both carried black edging and stripes of their own, they put it down to recessive genes aligning just right or a bit of throwback genes from a distant black dragon ancestor.

The Black dragons were the royalty of the dragon world, terrifyingly powerful but few. They were highly regarded by the rest of the dragon tribes, fire(red) and ice(white) dragons being the most plentiful. Divine dragons had standing nearly on par with the black but were more spiritual leaders. They stood as the counterparts of the Blacks, keeping their generally aggressive approach in check.

The rest of the dragons however saw his colour as sacrilege and an abomination that a non-royal dragon was black. They cared little for him but that never meant much to Mark until his parents were killed early in the war and he was suddenly left with nothing and no one. They were one of the first dragons to fall to the human's new 'anti-dragon' weapons.

Heavy ballista, dangerous thunder magic and specialty blades.

The ruling class shoved him off to the side with a useless lordship but Mark could always feel their sleazy eyes on him, calculating how much he was worth to them and their cause.

The answer was simply, not much at all. He was too young to be of much use in the war but they kept him around for future breeding stock. After all, they may not like him, but fresh black dragon genes added into the already limited pool would be nothing but an asset in the future.

And eventually, he simply grew to be too much of a drain of resources and the moment he was capable of producing fire, no matter how small, he was sent out to fight.

Nobody used dragonstone those days, there was simply no need to remain locked in a human form to converse with humans anymore. It made one too vulnerable and no dragon wanted to hear what humans had to say anymore. Their betrayal had come as a horrible shock, the humans who had refused to turn on their draconic friends had been among the first victims of the bloody war.

Mark remembered the war with a distant sort of horror.

Of his throat always raw and dry from spitting fire. The constant throb of pain in his wings from dozens of arrows. His claws slick with blood. That horrid, horrid taste in his mouth and the perpetual scent of burning flesh. The gnawing hunger deep in his belly, because chances to hunt were few among the skirmishes. No matter how desperately hungry he was, there was little to eat and at the end of his rope, humans couldn't even be eaten because of their metal armour.

In human years, Mark guesses that he must have been fifteen.

He starved so often in those days that his juvenile growth spurt ground to a halt, leaving him as the smallest dragon in the army. Barely larger than a wyvern. Which, along with his dark scales made him perfect at ambushes and quick raids. Clandestine operations ordered by the Royal dragons themselves.

Above all the hunger and fire and death, he remembered Xan.

He remembered that huge hulking dork of a red dragon who had been his partner. Xan had been nearly a century older than him, more experienced and over twice his size. His effervescent cheer and optimism had help uplift his spirit in the dark and bloody times. The red dragon had taken him under his wing and had looked after him like a brother. He was the loud flaming distraction for Mark to slip by human patrols and strike at critical points. They spent decades living in harsh conditions together, curling up together at nights for warmth and hunting in shifts for what little food they could find. That kind of living in close quarters under extreme circumstances had forged a strong brotherly bond between them as neither of them had any other living family.

And then one day, they raided a route that had one of the Eight Generals guarding it. And that was that. They were met with firepower far over what any two dragons could, much less a pair of teenagers. They spat as much flames as was physically possible, jaws aching and chests cold, frantically scrabbling to find an opening to escape. When they finally managed it, clawing up into the sky after the archers were all dead, he remembered sprinting away quickly, his tiny frame much faster than the more heavily armoured red dragon. He remembered eagerly chattering at the perceived victory as Xan followed slowly.

And then there was a thundering crash as the world went a blinding white.

Mark could remember the resounding silence after the thunder of Aureola had struck down Xan with a very real terror that haunted him years later and still made him flinch away from Lucius when he used it, even if the man couldn't hurt a fly. The optimistic chatterbox, his brother, his friend, his family eternally silenced, cut off mid-sentence. The last scolding left unfinished. His massive frame crumpling out of the air, his eyes already dull and spirit fled. It rang like despair deep in his bones. The flame of terror and horror bringing tears to his eyes and bile rising in his throat. It ached like a deep and mortal wound in his soul.

It burned like rage, turning his vision red.

He rushed her, he knew he did. Absolute fury dying his thought processes to pure murder.

killkillkillkillIWANTYOURBLOOD

The crash of the mighty holy spell thundered around his ears as he flew fast, faster and faster still. Far too fast for her spells to catch. All the holy power in the world couldn't bring him down if it couldn't connect. He threw himself at her, but the closer he got, the harder it was to dodge. He couldn't advance and she couldn't hit him. He burned out his rage on her, wings straining with his maneuvers, until all there was left was an empty hollow in his chest.

He finally stopped, two hours later.

Perched on a mountain ridge, out of range of her nuke, he just stared at her. A frail human dressed all in white but with an iron conviction in her eyes. His dulled eyes, faded pale to the pink of dawn, slide from Xan's murderer to his body. It lay within her attack range, and he was far too small to carry the corpse away from human desecration.

He closed his eyes for a moment, blocking out the bloody and shattered form and keeping the image of his smiling and laughing brother in his mind. With numb resignation he took to wing again, catching a good gust of wind to give him the height he wanted. At the peak of his thermal, with the tattered human embankment a mere smudge on the landscape, he folded his wings. He tucked in his limbs, half-turned in the air, straightened up his tail and plummeted straight down. The wind shrieked across his wings sails in a heraldry of his rage.

But there was no rage anymore.

Just numbness.

For the tiniest second, Mark though about not opening his wings at all.

But the moment passed as the ground loomed closer.

He tilted his dive and angled himself. The Saint General looked to be preparing another Aureola, he could feel the gathering magic humming in his teeth. He rumbled, concentrating all the fire in his chest.

Xan's body slid into vision. Mark snapped open his wings and spat all the fire left in his gut, forcing all his magic in one concentrated burst. A pale blue fireball splashed against the body but Mark was already gone, sweeping out of range with his momentum, feeling the blaze of ozone warm against his tail. He circled around, solemnly watching as the splintered forest around Xan alit as the perfect pyre for a fireproof dragon.

It didn't take long for Xan's remaining magic, still lingering at the sudden death, to alight. The flames finally burned blue, cremating him from the inside. After that, it only took a few minutes for Xan's body to be reduced to dust. Mark lingered a moment more, pale rose eyes blankly staring at the startled saint, before he turned northward, heading for the nearest human city.

He had a sudden, detached desire to see red.

Whether fire or blood, he was not particularly fussy as to which.

Mark flew, subdued and aching, the burn of his own injuries and strained muscles barely registering. The memory of his fallen brother-in-arms gracelessly sprawled on the ground burned into his memory. He became detached from his actions, uncaring of the living beings that fell before him and the blood that splattered the ground indiscriminately, whether his own or the human's. The colour of his world was grayscale, lit up by the splashes of scarlet that remained him of Xan. The last of his juvenile innocence, already cracked and crumbling, finally shattered to nothingness. Following Xan to the grave.

And yet Mark still lived.

With several blackened scales and a black webbed scar to account for the fringes of the holy nuke that had clipped him.

Mark flew alone after that, no other dragon wanted to accompany him and he was less than amiable towards any who tried. A small black shadow in the night, mercilessly killing as many humans as he could in revenge. As he was drenched in more and more blood, the hollowness in his chest never went away.

Eventually he came to the dull realization that nothing he did, no matter how much humans he killed in vengeance, nothing would bring Xan back. At that point, his days descended into a dull haze of monotony. The dragon elders seemed almost disappointed when he returned from his blood rage, to receive new orders.

It was pure survival in those days, the humans seeking to wipe out all dragons and the dragons desperately fighting back. Like in all wars, morals were quickly throw out the window in hopes of gaining any advantage over the other side.

But then came the great imbalance, caused by the Eight Generals and their powerful divine weapons being used all at once, the laws of physics warped and reality protested. To deal with the backlash of the powerful energies, the Ending Winter struck across the land, sapping the potential magic energy out of the world. Both the dragons and the divine weapons lost a huge chunk of their powers.

It was like dying and pain and not being able to fit into your own skin anymore.

It burned like heavy exhaustion and lost freedom and fatal, fatal weakness.

In the end, Mark had been left lying naked in the mud, in a terrifyingly weak form of flesh instead of armoured scales. The older dragons, still doggedly holding onto their power as it trickled away, swept through the continent, snatching up their terrified kin and fleeing south towards the Dread Isle.

One of the Generals had stolen their sacred place out from under them and performed heinous dark magic rituals there. However, no matter how strong the general was, he was still lying on the main battlefield, weeks away by horse and by sea. The dragons, on their swiftest wings all fled to the Dragon's Gate that rested on the isle to decide what their next step would be now that they as a race were all but powerless.

The dragonstones, which had been used before to limit a dragon's power enough to turn them into a human was now being used as the only way a dragon could return to their true form.

They were lost and confused and powerless, with their power draining irreversibly away second by second. In the end, it was unanimously decided that dragonkind as a whole would concede defeat to the humans and retreat through the Gate to find a dimension that could still support them.

But the Gate was crumbled and old and the heavy dark magic of Bramimond had irreversibly corrupted the mechanism. Accustomed to the taste of blood, the magic greedily demanded more of it be spilled before it would grant the dragons' desire and open a path to a new home.

Mark was almost relieved when the dragons told him that he was to be the sacrifice to open it. His royal blood would carry more Quintessence than any other kind of dragon and they didn't want to risk any of the legitimate Royal dragons.

He was tired.

Many humans had fallen under his breath and claws and he had lost friends and family to the humans in turn. The endless cycle of death was exhausting and he was very willing to just stop.

There was no fuss or ceremony. The moment they figured out exactly what was needed to open the Gate they brought him forward. He remembered the moment clearly, no matter how many centuries it had been.

The air was cool and damp with heavy fog. Rough torches burned along the walls in a pale mockery of the fire they once commanded, throwing cackling shadows over the halls. The tiles had been oddly rough to his tender new feet. He remembered making eye contact with the black dragon who he would've been forced to mate to, and he remembers them looking away. And finally he was at the gate, the remaining dragons silently following.

And then then two dragons, Mark recalled them clearing, the picture of his executioners burned into his memory. A tall grim, red dragon and a shorter, scarred white dragon. Their grips were fire and ice as they held him by the wrists and pressed his hands against the gate. There was a moment, a harsh clear moment. With his hands against cold stone, his heart full of sin and a body full of scars.

He wished it hadn't come to this.

He wished his parents hadn't died in a salvo of shrapnel and ballista arrows. He wished his kin hadn't been shot down, Xan hadn't had to die like that. He wished this war had never happened, that he wouldn't have had to kill thousands of humans. And in the depths of his heart, some part of him cried out at the injustice of it all.

The pair raised two large pieces of shrapnel dug out of one of the injured dragons, silver metal fragments of a ballista arrowhead. They were crude and covered with enough filth to certainly cause an infection.

With a quick, careless motion they slit his wrists.

Initially, it stung sharply but that quickly faded to a slight ache as the other dragons began to pour Quintesessence into the Gate, using his body as a medium.

It was pleasant at first. Causing the pain in his wrists to fade and his body to feel light.

The supercharged blood splashed against the Gate and it drank up the offering eagerly.

But then his blood kept flowing and the energy kept crashing through him.

Again, and again and again and again.

Like a rock along a shoreline, the waves kept pounding and eroding at his being. And like that rock, he couldn't move away from the force destroying him. All he could do was stand up and take it.

The Gate opened, a swirling purple dimensional Gateway to a new home blooming beneath his fingertips. If the two guards hadn't held him up he would've fallen face first through the portal. For a second, in his mind's eye, he could see wide grassy plains, tall mountains and most importantly, air filled with magic untainted by the Ending Winter.

In the next moment, he was gone in pain.

Rip-roaring, mind-shattering, nerve-shorting pain. So powerful and so intense that he couldn't even black out. The pain reaching into the darkness to burn through him there.

After that, his memory was hazy and black.

Ah,

He thought at a brief ebb in the flow.

This

Is

how

I

die

He woke up amidst dust and long dried blood and heavy vines wrapped around his fallen body. His body was stiff and heavy with long sleep but he was bursting with energy. The drained and tired feeling that had been a heavy constant since the Ending Winter was all but gone. His body settled into the new shape and atmosphere during his time unconscious. As an act of mercy, someone had left a dragonstone behind for him in case he survived the ritual. He had never been taught how to use one which made it a cold comfort, but a comfort nonetheless.

He had been abandoned, thrown away by his people the moment he was of no further use. He wasn't even surprised or horrified by the final betrayal. His heart no longer had any energy to care but it somehow still didn't stop the unwilling bitterness that welled up in his heart at this final abandonment by his kin. If there were any dragons left in Elibe, and he was certain not all of them made it to the gate, he was certain he was the last black dragon. After all, the royalty had been the first calling the retreat, there was no chance any of them had gotten left behind.

Left as the last black dragon in all of Elibe,

Mark finally smiled.

He was free.

This of course lasted until he reached civilization (many years after he awoke as he tried to figure out how to transform and then tried to convince himself to leave his self-appointed guard post) and discovered what a thorough mess of a world humankind had created. The beautiful Utopia of dragons and humans that he could barely remember was a distant dream. Dragons themselves were seen as nothing but myth and legend as humanity's short lived memory forgot the massive beings they had once lived with. Murder and banditry and slavery and war abounded as with a lack of a common enemy, humanity turned on itself.

He had slept for six hundred years, hibernating, in the manner that all dragons can, his aging slowed down even further than its normally glacial rate.

The years had passed quickly as he traveled anonymously among humans, learning their habits and culture and knowledge but only for short bursts of time. He always quickly returned to the Gate, it made him very nervous to leave it for long. Every year, he would transform and fly over the continent, searching for any sign of dragons who had been left behind.

He eventually learnt how to use the dragonstone to suppress his power even further to cause his telltale scarlet eyes to fade to a tawny gold, that while still exotic, was less likely to get him hanged as a demon or witch. The beautiful chunk of blue stone absorbed his power like an external mana battery to give him a big enough boost to return to his former draconic form. Thankfully, after six hundred years of charging and his own sparse use, the stone in question had enough energy for him to remain in his true for nearly three decades straight.

And then, a few years shy of a thousand, close to the Nanbata Desert he smelt the powdery flowery smell of a Divine Dragon.

He descended to walk the earth for the first time in twenty years.

...And proceeded to get lost for the next six years

X

X

Mark has a poor sense of direction, how do you think he got into the middle of the Plains.

Okay, I hold no responsibility for Mark's backstory. I had maybe the first five lines planned and boy did he take it and run with it. Like wow, dunno what I was expecting but it really wasn't that, got a bit too dark with his guardianship. I always wrote it as a duty he proudly upheld and as an actual title instead of the dirty tarnished duty he gave himself from the ashes of his entire race leaving him behind. The tenses are all over the place, see-sawing between past and present.

Well There was no way Mark's story was going to be good anyway. For him to be Gate guardian he must have been involved in the war. I also didn't want to make him actually a Royal, cause then why would he have been left behind when there are so few Blacks already. (well that sounded slightly racist) He also needed a title since I had him declare himself Lord Marken Blackwood so dramatically in the first chapter.

Also I made the generic association of red dragons being fire dragons and the white being ice to make a crossover jump to Tellius's Laguz dragons possible.