Thermia

Thermia

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When Thermia was a hatchling, thousands upon thousands of years ago, she watched both of her sisters, her clutchmates, die in front of her. The first one, the younger, was born with far too little magic in her body, and she could not sustain herself. She passed with a series of breaths in the night. One far too cold, one far too warm, and then none at all. The second one, the elder, was born with far too much magic in her body, and her magic devoured her and turned her into a winter wind.

And Thermia, trapped in the middle, did not go one way or the other. Both of her sisters passed by her side, and the event deeply scarred her. She vowed to never allow herself to die in the same vein, and from that day on, she worked to find a way to keep the magic that kept her alive running forever. She vowed to seek eternal life.

As she grew to adulthood, Thermia continued to work. She left her clan, and built her own lair from which to work. She kidnapped countless dragons, and infused them with differing amounts of raw ice magic. Some dragons received too much, and their magic devoured them, just like Thermia’s elder sister, and they too turned into the winter winds. Some dragons received too little, and nothing happened, and so Thermia would sigh and try again with a different dosage. And some dragons received more moderate high amounts, and were frozen from the inside out, turning them into ice statues with twisted faces of pain.

Well, Thermia was never going to be able to keep her trials going forever. As the authorities closed in on her, she became more and more desperate to preserve her life. Finally, when the Gaoler authorities found her and busted her scheme, she took a bold endeavor, one last attempt to keep herself alive forever. She infused herself with an amount of magic she had never experimented with before.

Right before the authorities’ eyes, Thermia could feel herself becoming young again. She laughed maniacally in their faces, and her magic surged with power. She could feel it: the eternal life she had sought for so long. Finally, she had found the amount of magic that would sustain itself forever, that could constantly regenerate. She would be immortal.

And then she found herself staring up at the guards that she had stared down at just moments before.

Her magic infusement had worked, there was no doubt about that. She was indeed immortal, and she would indeed live forever. Her magic would never run nor burn out. But she was trapped at the size of a hatchling. This size made her easy to nab, and the guards quickly apprehended her.

Thermia was placed in a particularly notorious ice prison, frozen as a block in time as she had done to so many in the past. And there she stayed for thousands of thousands of years. Watching. Waiting. Conscious. Aging. For thousands of years. Not even allowed the privilege of insanity. And indeed, thousands of years passed. The prison passed its ownership down many times, the deed changing claws many times.

Until one day, a particular assistant to the Icewarden dropped a prisoner’s file under the desk, and thusly forgot to check on her. And this brief lapse, just one day without her being checked on, was all she needed. She focused all her mind, and melted a hole in the ice. Her small size meant she didn’t need much room to do so. Finally, after thousands of years of waiting, she escaped.

That assistant was horrified and ashamed, and fled for his life. And when Thermia caught word of this, she decided to trail him. He was a symbol of her torture. He was one of her wardens. She chose to trail him, and torment him for all his days. Not because of what he directly did, but because of what he represented.

That assistant was Emperor. Thermia trailed him to the Clan of the Striking Bolt. And when she got there, her small size made everyone initially mistake her for a hatchling at first, which infuriated her. She didn’t endure thousands of years of torture, thousands of years of age, to be mistaken for a child. They quickly noticed her wrinkles, her archaic language, and signs of age exhaustion, and realized their mistake. And she has refused to give them the opportunity to give them that mistake again.

Thermia has settled well into life in the Clan of the Striking Bolt — well, of well into life as you can settle when you’re a fugitive and an all-powerful immortal ice witch. Her new clanmates know she’s an ice witch, but not that she’s The Ice Witch who kidnapped and tortured so many innocent dragons to fuel her own eternal life, The Ice Witch who faded into mythology, who became a warning to young Gaolers about venturing into strange places on their own. She’s quite a harsh and bitter old lady, and is usually snapping at someone or calling everyone “whippersnapper” or “youngin”, or complaining about how dragons just don’t respect their elders anymore, or lamenting how things have changed while she was “hibernating” (the cover story she has given her new clanmates). She’s thousands upon thousands of years old, is from a sect of Gaoler society that nobody can even remember, and operates on a timeline nobody can even grasp, and nobody will forget that fact on her watch. Even the oldest dragon in the clan is an infant compared to Thermia.

And Emperor…Oh, how Thermia loves to torment Emperor. Her former warden, her former tormentor, and yet also her reason for freedom. If Emperor opens his mouth and tells everyone who Thermia is, they’ll know of his greatest mistake. And Thermia enjoys torturing Emperor far too much to ever let him live a life of peace. Sometimes she just stands in his doorway, grinning, and he can do nothing about it but stand there with his back to her and shiver.

Eternally elderly, eternally the size of a child. And eternally a terror, a witch who has tortured so many others for her own sake. Thermia’s search for immortality has left her with a curse, a curse she intends to take full advantage of.

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