Nikki

There’s something odd about Nikki. You might not notice it when you first meet him, or you might credit his strange quirks to the fact that he is a hatchling. But the more you think about it, the more he feels off. For one, he speaks incredibly formally for someone so young, with his “may you please” and “perish the thought.” For another, there’s just something wrong with the way he does things. He folds apparel for older dragons, reorganizes the hatchery every day while the others tromp around and play, and is the first to volunteer for chores when the caretaker calls. He also eats his veggies and obeys all the rules – and even more horrifying, he even goes to bed on time!

Clearly, Nikki comes from a strange background, one not to be underestimated. The other hatchlings have speculated origins from the Forbidden Portal, or perhaps birth at the hands of a mad scientist (there are a lot of those around). Little do they know, the story is far less interesting (for an Arcane dragon, anyway). It goes like this: once upon a time in the Sunbeam Ruins, an aspiring archeologist realized the very real problem of not being able to investigate a giant buried ritual site by themselves. In a very arcane pursuit of a solution, they decided to create helpers to assist them in excavating the site. Not being particularly gifted in the art of, well, doing things that should not be done, the archeologist instead hired a team of Lightning and Arcane mages to create workers.

Those workers were called the hive children – magically created dragons that shared a hive mind.
Unfortunately, the archeologist did a silly. He might’ve been able to create a hive mind, but he forgot to make sure that the hive mind obeyed him. Thus, instead of being a group of efficient workers, the workers milled aimlessly about and continuously asked each other: “what do you want to do?” “I don’t know, how about you?” “I wouldn’t know, let’s go ask the others” “what do you want to do?” and et cetera. This could have ended badly, but fortunately, all of the workers were Nocturnes, so all the archeologist had to do was start working and the Nocturnes would naturally copy him. But it wasn’t a surefire way to do things, as the Nocturnes were liable to copy other things, too. So when a flock of migratory birds flew by the Sunbeam Ruins, half of the hive children upped and left with them. (The other half achieved enlightenment shortly after and became travelling psychics.) One thing led to another, and eventually, one of the hive children found himself with the Clan of Purple Embers.

And Nikki has never left since.

Thus, the reason for many of Nikki’s strange quirks has to do with the fact that he is a hive child. As such, he is used to accepting orders from others as well as commuting telepathically with the rest of the hive mind. By himself, he has difficulty deciding what to do, and therefore jumps at anything that suggests an order. Dragons have learned to phrase their words very carefully around him – in case he takes a death threat as a command and unleashes a bloodbath in the hatchery. Many dragons have wondered, though, how Nikki himself feels about being a hive child. Does he really want to follow everyone’s orders? Or is he somehow trapped in his own mind, unable to refuse commands?

Either way, Socks will have none of this “bedtime-obeying hatchling” thing, and so she and Starfall have taken it upon themselves to liberate Nikki. Currently, they’re working on helping him find things he likes. So far, they’ve only discovered that he does not like exploding blenders (much to Starfall’s dismay). But it’s still progress, no matter how little it might be. Other hatchlings have also attempted to pitch in. Some of them, like Chrestomanci, sincerely want to help Nikki with a pile of pillows and tips on finding the best nap spot. Others, like Terrell, are slightly more advantageous and eager to get Nikki to sort the translator’s entire private library.

(Starfall hit him with a blender for that one.)

For the most part, though, Nikki’s just a hatchling, eager to chase every small moving thing and nap until the sun rises (and sets, and rises, and sets again). He is friendly with everyone and while he might speak strangely, it’s not like the other hatchlings will isolate him for such a trivial fact. In fact, they rather enjoy playing with him. On the days when they can get him to stop obeying the adults (normally by shrieking so loud Nikki can’t hear their orders), the other hatchlings have a blast going on adventures and stealing snacks with the Nocturne.

After further investigation regarding Nikki’s magically created body, BlackSlime learned that not only is Nikki capable of deciding which of his eyes he wants to see through, his eyes all have a different perspective. One has X-ray vision, another can see UV light, and so on. The downside to this, though, is Nikki can only see out of two eyes at the same time. This unfortunately means he can’t combine X-ray with UV light vision, as the two eyes responsible for such are on opposite sides of his body. But nothing’s stopping Nikki from peering at one thing with one eye, and then doing a full 180 to look at the thing with his other eye.

This results in awkward shuffling as Nikki rolls and spins to look at something closely. The other hatchlings have coined it the “Nikki dance.” None of them are as good as Nikki at it, and the last time Primrose tried, she went flailing headfirst into Adevi, and the two ended up knocking BlackSlime’s cauldron into the kitchen, which knocked the cauldrons in there over, and… well, let’s just say, that renovation fee did not come cheap.

The “Nikki dance” has therefore been banned from all areas of the clan lair. Of course, none of the hatchlings follow this rule – not even Nikki.

Bio by MythicalViper