Holden

The third 'son' of his father, he is an immaculate creation - elegant, intelligent, and resourceful, with an alien mind perfectly interfaced with his draconid body. As he passed through the doors of the O.P.A.L, he first laid eyes on his father - tall and lean and smug, his claws still caressing the controls on the panel beneath them. He then saw his next eldest brother - identical to their father in every respect except for the color of his eyes, cold, unfeeling blue with no hint of warmth behind them. And then he spied his eldest brother - pale, pathetic, sprawled weakly in the corner with his head hanging low and ashamed - and he knew a sudden pain in his heart.

Like his father, he is tall, and lean, and pale, and clever - not the sort of clever that leads to real brilliance, but the kind of clever that lends itself to manipulating others and working through back doors instead of forging its own new paths. Like his next eldest brother, he is perfectly crafted - truly draconid, down to his magically-infused core, with all the right buffers built in to shield his alien mind from the biological discrepancies. Like his eldest, failed brother, he is gentle, caring, aware - something he keeps hidden from all of them, because he knows it will bring only suffering.

In the quest for knowledge his father sets him on, he falls in love with the planet on which he was born.

He falls in love with Sornieth - the magic that runs through it, fueling every living thing that calls it home. Its history, inscribed in ancient runes and pictograms, told from the mouths of its oldest living residents. Its beauty - barren and lush, dark and light, blazing hot and freezing cold, all in balance, all parts antithetical and harmonious with each other.

There comes a time when he realizes that he cannot do what his father asks of him, anymore. He cannot be cold, detached, calculating, a vessel for gathering information and nothing more. When his father has the knowledge he has come for, he will leave, and cast his children aside - this much is clear, to all three of them, though they all have different plans for how they will handle being discarded.

So the youngest child - full-hearted, drunk on the beauty of the world he has come to think of as home - decides to run away, before he can be thrown away and left behind like broken tool or damaged toy. He flees, to the richest, lushest part of the planet, and there he finds a home. There are dragons there that love the world and its wildness just as much as he does, and he settles among them. He forgets his brothers and his father (or tries to forget them, as they will always plague him in his dreams) and lives out his life as true dragonkind.