Spirit

He grew up in the shadow lands, but he'd always been more interested in alchemy and learning than tricks and games. One of his early alchemical experiments exploded and crystallized on his hide, giving him patches of amethyst and opal all over that, over time, began to eat into his scales and skin to become an irrevocable part of him. It seemed to stop at that stage, for a while at least, then it began slowly spreading and turning him to gemstone. He panicked a bit when he found out about what it was doing and threw himself into his work and studies with a fervor that was very much warranted, but also quite surprising at the same time, and stumbled upon an account of an encounter with an onyx cobra and the resulting formation of gems on their hide, similar and yet completely different to what had happened to him.
The description of the gems was honestly confusing for him, since his were large patches of crystal (ever slowly spreading) that were beginning to impede his ability to move freely, and the dragon's gembond was small and scattered all over and didn't seem to have any ill effect.
He latched onto this new avenue of study and learned as much as he could about onyx cobras, their habitats, their venom and its effects that all seemed to be quite linear and stable. He began to wonder if, perhaps, this serpent could cure his ailment, could shatter the smooth surface of crystal into shards.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, so the alchemist went out hunting by his lonesome for this fabled creature. Now, naturally, he's good at formulas and recipes and note-taking - not very good at hunting - so it was no surprise that the onyx cobra found him first. He couldn't move very fast with the opal replacing his scales, so he was ensnared easily and coiled around, then the snake struck out with fangs like needles, piercing his gem-bound hide and injecting him with a full dose of venom.
It completely paralyzed him, each heartbeat sending the venom around his body in waves of exquisite agony, bubbling underneath the surface of his skin like magma about to erupt - --

He fainted.
He must have, at some point, because he couldn't remember anything after the pain. When he awoke, the cobra was nowhere to be seen and his hide glittered with newly-formed vibrant purple gems not yet scratched and burned. He carefully stretched his arms and wings and was delighted to find that he could move freely now, even though there was some lingering dizziness and nausea from the venom (he started seeing double if he stopped manually focusing his eyes), and all his scales appeared to have been restored to how they were before The Incident(TM), if with an extra little shimmer and shine.


This dragon's first familiar (Hydra Scorpion) has given me 2 gilded decorative chests. I'm pretty sure that's not supposed to happen.

Outfit complete 26/11/19