Disclaimer: I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist.

Merry Christmas, dear readers! All the best of the season to you :)


"A Sorceror? But there has not been so dark a power on the land for-"

"Fullmetal," Roy interrupted, amusement colouring his tone. "Might I be permitted to continue my own story?"

Edward frowned. "But a Sorceror, Roy, wildcasters have long since faded into legend, no man has sought to command the wildmagics for hundreds of years!"

"Then you will appreciate the length of my memory. May I go on?"


The sun on his wings, an older sun, still as bright as it had been fifty years ago on that fateful day...Roy allowed himself a joyous bugle as he sped through the air, several fresh kills clutched in his talons; he had satisfied his own hunger and now bore the finest trophies of the hunt to his mate, rendered earthbound by the mighty clutch of eggs that swelled her belly. The golden wyvern had built a fine shimmering nest for their little ones in the years of their gestation, glittering spoils from raids of the dwarf mines, and Roy tended to her with fierce pride. Hawkeye had grown particularly restless and irritable in recent days, retreating to her inner sanctum and snarling a vicious promise to savage him if he drew near; she was soon to lay. His kits, with all the impatience of fire Dragons, clamoured for their birth.

The shimmer of golden light across the glassy surface of a lake, thousands of feet below, caught Roy's eye as sure as the glimmer of sunshine on golden scales, and he could not restrain a second happy bark at the thought of his mate, his precious, ferocious Hawkeye and her kits...Stars, he was grown as tiresome as Maes.

Amused by this thought, Roy dropped gracefully through thinning air, landing perfectly before the massive entrance to their tunnelled mountain home; a honeycomb warren of passages that he and his mate had formed from the living rock, the wyvern's powerful muscles and his flame combined to craft the perfect home. Within a heartbeat, the sense of wrongness overwhelmed him; there was a stranger here, the reeking stench on invasion, the crackle on his nerves of magic used and blood spilled.

Hawkeye.

Faster than thought itself, Roy pounded along the tunnels, straining to reach the hatching chamber, throwing every ounce of weight and strength into a thunderous charge that brought him crashing into the heart of his warren, only to hurl himself against a veritable stone wall ad the force of the magic that had been cast shattered over him like the breaking of an ice mountain. He reeled back, his lips drawn back in a snarl as gouts of flame tumbled from his mouth. Gritting his teeth in a growl, Roy willed his battered limbs to move, pushing against the torrent of untamed power with the furious strength of a fully-grown male fire Dragon, protecting his territory.

Every muscles trembling with the effort, Roy broke through the raging storm of magical energy, recoiling for a moment as that sense of wrongness intensified, springing to burning life like a forest fire inside him, and then he saw it...

"Pitiful, useless creature," a malevolent voice sneered, but Roy did not hear it; his mate, his golden mate, his starbright one, lay limp on the ground. Blood covered her dulled hide, lewd in is shocking redness, scarlet on gold, and the black Dragon hunched over her, gathering the body up in his claws to press to his chest. Hawkeye's head lolled as he lifted her, once-radiant eyes dim in death. The bulge of her egg-laden stomach, her prized clutch of their babies who must now perish inside their mother's corpse, pressed obscenely against Roy's underbelly, and he bowed his head over his dead love, knowing not even anger, only despair, only crushing blackness.

The owner of that malicious voice laughed. "And now, oh fallen one," he sneered, to the unmoving hulk of the fire Dragon, hunched protectively over his lifeless, pregnant mate. "Now, you shall become mine."

Roy nuzzled his mate's cold cheek, closing his eyes against her beautiful scales. "Hawkeye," he whispered, helplessly.

"Come, Dragon, will you not revenge her death? This meekness is unbecoming of so fine a beast of flame!" the voice taunted, igniting the smouldering embers of Roy's anger, and the Dragon raised his head to pinpoint it.

At the far side of the hatching chamber, his burgundy robes and hazel-bright hair being tossed by unearthly winds, stood a human. He was tall, by human standards, though a pitiful insect next to the Dragon's bulk. A cruel, triumphant sneer twisted his face like a crack in the ice, and he held a glowing staff in his hands. Large eyes, shining as golden as the dead wyvern's hide, burned with wildmagic. "What manner of monster are you," Roy growled, moving to lay Hawkeye upon the ground with tender care. He stepped over her, drawing himself up to his full height, wings spread wide, and glaring down at the tiny man.

His enemy was undaunted. Leaning casually on his staff, the human ran a calculating gaze over him, measuring him up. "You will call me 'master' in time, Dragon, but it is only polite to introduce oneself to one's, aha, 'host'. I am a Sorcerer," he said, dropping into a mocking bow. "Breigaw Ressylion is my name."


"Re- Re- Ress-"

"Yes, Fullmetal, Ressylion, ancestor of the man who founded the Ressylion Order of High Archmages. Contain yourself, or we shall never finish this tale."

"..."


"Breigaw Ressylion," Roy snarled, tail lashing, claws grinding the rock beneath his feet. "May those words be your last in this life!"

With that, the Dragon reared up, jaws gaping, and thundered white-hot flames down upon the Sorcerer. As he did so, he threw himself bodily on in the wizard, wailing his grief and rage as he charged his mate's killer.


"There is little to tell of the battle," Roy said, after a moment of consideration. "It would have been legend, had any witnessed it; we destroyed the entire mountain, you know. By the time I collapsed, weak from exhaustion and the terrible wounds Ressylion inflicted, that stone giant was mere rubble around us. As I lay, barely strong enough to breathe, the Sorcerer wove a spell of entrapment on my body and heart, imprisoning my mind, my will, and holding it captive to his own. He forced me into a deep sleep, and when I awoke, though my body was hale and hearty again, I could not even move without his instruction. I ate when he commanded, slept when he commanded, walked, flew, flamed just as he ordered. A puppet upon his strings."

The Dragon paused. Edward, utterly appalled, stroked warm scale once more. "He used your despair," he said, quietly. "Spun a charm to blind your attacks, subordinate your intelligence to base animal fury; that is why he k- killed..."

"Indeed. And once defeated, I relinquished my freedom to him, his right as victor." Roy's voice was bitter as he spoke, venomous with hatred. "A pet. He rode me, with leather reins from my mouth as if I were nothing more than a horse, a brainless, unthinking creature of burden. He used my fire to lay waste to hundreds of settlements, burning homes and families to bring their rulers under his yoke. And I could not but obey; you see, Mage, what part I played in the downfall of my species? From whence comes the myth of the evil Dragon, bent solely on destruction? I and my sin bear much of the responsibility."

"No!" Edward cried, leaping to his feet in a surge of indignant energy. "From the Sorcerer who stole your mind! Your only sin was to lose a battle you could not even hope to win!"

Roy's lips quirked at the outburst, something of a half-smile. "You have a compassionate heart," he said, softly, causing the Mage to blush and shuffle. "But the guilt is mine to bear, a burden of conscience that Ressylion took from me, and that I carry that I might know I am better than the monster he made of me."

Quashing the urge to argue this poinnt with difficulty, Edward allowed himself to sink back down against the Dragon. "And the chains? The castle?"

"Holding a Dragon's mind in your palm is no easy task," Roy responded, his massive body shifting as he made himself more comfortable. "Eventually, with so much of the land falling under his wicked rule, the Sorcerer could no longer devote his mental, magical and physical strength to containing me. Instead, he made me custodian of this castle and its people; he had me fly to this place, drew pints of my blood, and mixed it with the finest silver his wretched citizens could produce. Then he cut into my-" the Dragon's voice faltered; metal chimed on metal once more as he shifted. Edward leaned forwards, the final mystery of the mighty fire Dragon clamouring to be solved.

"He bound my wings with silver chains," Roy concluded, shortly, and with little ceremony, as casually as one might announce the sighting of a butterfly. "What better way to contain a Dragon than taking away his reason for existence? Without flight, and with no bridge strong enough to bear my weight, I could not escape this place, though my mind was now as free as a bird. The presence of a monstrous, fire-breathing brute kept the lord and lady of the castle firmly under the Sorcerer's yoke. Until, that is, they liberated themselves from him with a bravery I cannot even conceive of."

Here, Roy closed his eyes, perhaps seeing again the bravery of the castle's people. "The lord and his lady cast themselves into the volcano's heart, that they might save themselves from Ressylion's tyranny, and their entire household fled under the cover of night." The Dragon snorted. " And I felt little enough inclination to stop them. Following their escape, year upon year I wasted away here, dully responding to my body's demands for nourishment when the cart arrived from the nearest village; it is the Sorcerer's contract that still holds that village to its task, hence our visits from the carter. It has been so many years that to serve the Dragon of the castle is a tradition the people are proud of, and they will take none of my stolen treasures as payment."

"That...certainly explains the fellow's attitude." Edward's brow furrowed as the Dragon gave a wry chuckle, and he tapped Roy's side to catch his attention. "What happened to him? The Sorcerer?" he asked, tentatively. There had been nothing of such power in Amestris for countless decades, far beyond the reaches of current memory.

The Dragon's lips twitched back from his teeth, more snarl than smile. "He died," Roy said, and suddenly, Edward understood.

There is a myth about Sorcerers; that with their final rattling breath, as their life force fades, every enchantment, every spell they have ever cast unravels itself, becomes unwrought raw magic once more. It is a wonderful notion, worthy of all the oldest tales, but it is, alas, a myth. No wonder those terrible rings still shone on the Dragon's back. Iron would bind a Fairy or a Kelpie, copper might tempt a Dryad, but it took the purest silver to ensnare a Dragon. For, though they loved gold, Dragons were creatures of the Moon's pale delicacy and no Sorcerer worth his salt would try a metal more mundane.

"It gratifies me, Fullmetal, that you have no knowledge of my terrible enemy. He has been...so reduced, he who once walked the world as lord conqueror, his name worn away by the relentless passage of time. That is justice, of a kind."

Edward gritted his teeth. "If I could face him today," he said, his voice low with menace. "I'd beat the living daylights out of him, snap his staff, and stuff him in a cellar with chains upon his every inch."

"I should like to see that," Roy remarked, gently, and nudged the Mage with his nose. "You would find him a most terrible opponent, Quicksilver wizard, but I fear your star burns brighter than his ever did."

Quashing the emotion that threatened to swamp him at the Dragon's words, Edward laid a tentative hand on the softer scales of Roy's snout, moving his fingers in a hesitant caress. "I bet you say that to all your meals," he joked, weakly.

"Only the snack-sized ones."

"WHO ARE YOU CALLING SO TINY HE COULDN'T BE A MAIN COURSE?"