Ruby

Rubies have always been coveted by the humans. Desired for their color, their strength. When humans could no longer steal the red from the ground, they turned their eyes to the dragons. The creatures that had stood beside them, that had brought the Earth up with them, and humans betrayed them over the rocks that Earth had once offered freely.

Ruby had been one such dragon, born into one of the royal family of Dragons who carry the crystals on their bodies. It connects them to the Earth in a way that most dragons do not feel. She had been royalty, Printess to the royal line of her family.

And then human greed had taken over. Sensing the battle coming, her parents had tucked her into the hidden hole in their cave wall. It is the last act they could do for her, and the act that saved her life. She had watched.

Watched the humans storm, and cut and rip and flay the rubies from the very bodies of the creatures that had once been their loyal friends. They killed familiars, babies, fathers, mothers. Anything that bore the riches they were seeking, or anything that tried to save the dragons.

Rubies were not the only red the Moon had seen that night.

And she had been left, all alone, probably the last Ruby dragon of her bloodline. Her parents had laid dead, mutilated.

She had been too tiny, with no real knowledge of how to live. Even her familiar, her faithful crocodile, had been tiny. Both were merely just tiny lizards at the point.

She knew that she had to survive, if only to find a mate to pass on the Ruby blood inside of her. Right then, she made a promise to refuse to die, and to let the magic of the Earth die as well.

So she not only survived, she flourished. Almost as if the Earth itself had blessed her, she found every item she could have needed. Food, water, caves. And she grew, and so did her anger.

And she made another promise. Along with the promise of tiny Ruby babies, she promised to put an end to the tyranny of the humans.