Asala

On the day of Asala’s hatching, there had been a surge in power in the area that had disturbed the clan, though it was dismissed quickly at the excitement of more hatchlings. Out of his siblings, Asala proved to have a distant personality. He preferred spending time on his own, and he liked to play with his prey for much longer than the other clan members, which no one worried about because it was quite normal for hatchlings to have tons of energy.

Energy was one thing Asala did not lack. He dug holes in the ground and searched for treasure, and one day he found a thick, dirty, and old grimoire buried about a dozen feet below the ground. He picked it up in his mouth and stretched himself out of the hole. With his paws, he wiped away the dirt and found read “Spellbook For The Ones Who Can’t Do Magic” on the cover. That applied to him, so he opened the first page and began reading.

For hours he read out of the grimoire until the sun started to set and he was required to get home. He took the book with him, carrying it in an arm and flying home to the clan. There, he showed it to his parents who were shocked and angry about it, for reasons he didn’t understand, so he hid it in his sleeping area under a small hoard of items. His parents assumed he threw it away like they asked.

Asala hid the grimoire in his bag when he went out on his own. He started off with simple things, like making objects float in the air. He started with a sparrow skull, and he followed the directions, but it was challenging for him when he wasn’t born into a magical bloodline. He sighed in frustration, laid on the ground of the Scarred Wasteland, and sighed, loud and agitated. This had been going on for days; he spent a few hours a day trying to do anything.

His paw moved up, his thoughts were visualizing the skull floating, and the skull shook for a fraction of a second. His head perked up. But was that him or just the wind? He tried again, and again, until he got the results that satisfied him, and he played around with the skull, throwing it around without touching it, until he felt comfortable. Then he opened to another page.

He stared at the object, strained his thoughts, until it started flickering, losing more and more transparency until it no longer could be physically seen. The spell to bring it back was easy, too.

To set the skull on fire? He could not. No matter how hard he thought, it would not work, and another cycle went on. Asala looked over the instructions until he could tell anyone what they were by memory. Then he looked it over, one more time, just before he was ready to go home.
Then he noticed the little note in the margins. “Tip: Start with objects that set fire quickly and easily. If you are not a Fire element dragon, there are limits to the temperature of your fire. Reference page 495.” Asala held the page with one paw and looked for the page number in the back of the book. There was a little table with a list of common objects and the temperatures they burned at, and he screamed, letting out his frustrations into the air. Skulls burned at too high of a temperature! All those wasted hours.

A dragon heard his cries of frustration and flew down to him. It was an Imperial with Arcane eyes. This dragon noticed Asala’s frustrations and offered to help him grow his skills and become a better warlock. Asala declined initially but when the dragon lit the skull on fire, Asala changed his mind.

When Asala went home that evening, he felt on top of the world. Until the world knocked him down several notches, as the cruel world often did when you reached the top. He walked past a group of clan members talking, and heard his name uttered along with “freeloader”, “disappointment”, and, worst of all, “too old”. He was young, verging into his young adult years, but the clan moved through members quickly. They either went to serve the Plaguebringer or sent off to live with another clan. No one offered money to take him away and his parents decided to keep him in the clan for now.

Yet his parents were becoming increasingly hostile toward him, picking on him for playing with his prey too long and asking too many questions about where he went during the day, why he wanted to alone all the time, and why he didn’t want to spend the day with his parents. Asala was slowing becoming more withdrawn every day, spending more time with the stranger dragon than he did with the clan.

Once, when a clanmate abugged him about where Asala disappeared to every day, Asala set fire to their hoarded items. They screamed and attacked, but Asala was larger and cheated with spells against the vicious Skydancer until they were bruised and bloody and too weak to move. There was a numbness inside himself when he saw what had happened. A lack of remorse, even. It was shortly after this that the clan exiled Asala, and he was truly on his own.

It wasn’t long after this that Asala’s Imperial friend stopped coming to visit him, so he was learning on his own, and he had gotten quite good. Now Asala was able to do more complicated magic and experiment with spells, twisting them to do what he wanted. His specialty became glamour spells.

He could make his scales look like ripples in the water, and he could make his facial features appear friendlier. Change his size. Change his looks, until one day he found a clan, and there he wooed an Imperial named Vivi. She was charmed and agreed to nest with him, and they did this several times while he stayed in the clan. While she was falling in love, he was not. He was playing a charade, but he stayed in the clan for a long time before breaking it off with Vivi.

Several more decades passed, and he found himself in his current clan. A friendly group who were fine with his magic. In fact, many of the clanmates could do magic and helped him out. Because of Asala’s age, he was asked to become an elder in the clan, which meant he was someone that younger members could talk to in order to gain wisdom. Asala still preferred his time on his own and was not as welcoming toward new members. As a result, not many talked to him outside of the elders when they had meetings.

He was growing to resent Frillwing, Batutu, and anyone else who liked them or talked to them. Asala tried, sometimes, to be involved with the clan, but he never fit into it. He could impress hatchlings with his magic tricks, that was it, and he didn’t care for hatchlings.

The Coliseum rarely interested him since he had trained to be a physical fighter, but the Coliseum was a popular place in the clan and dragons were praised for spending their time there.

In the meantime, he added to his rippling scale glamour with a set of soul fish. White koi fish that followed him around and “swam” in his scales. They glowed against his body, and they led the way for him when he was out after dark in the Scarred Wasteland. This impressed a Snapper named Twinkle, so they mated once, and it also attracted a Ridgeback named Ebrilla that Asala mated with and realized he could manipulate her into joining him.

One day, he snapped. Dragons older than him entered the clan, and they fit in much easier, better liked, and he started to make plans. Plans to take over the clan, to cause Frillwing pain and take over the clan. He was working on a potion and a curse that would get rid of her and Batutu.

Once they are gone, he will take over.

Note to self: add in more information about Asala's motivation and who Frillwing and Batutu are, assuming the reader doesn't know.