Dormin

In the Second Age, there was a god. They were a god of many dualities: light and darkness, male and female, life and death. They were worshipped by the people of a country where the sun never sets, and spoke with two voices. They were the one known as Dormin.

In the Second Age, there was a god. They were a god of life and death, and could return fallen mortals to the living world. Their rivals, the gods of lands surrounding Theirs, grew angry with Their policy of reviving the dead in some circumstances, and the sixteen gods sent their people to sever Dormin into sixteen pieces and seal them away. Dormin's people were driven from Their land, and as time wore on They were only remembered as a demon.

In the Second Age, a young, desperate man broke Dormin's seal. It was only for a short time, for a new seal was laid upon Them, and it bound Dormin and the nameless man together. He did not age, could not die, and became Dormin's closest friend and harshest critic. He wandered the lands for centuries, doing what he could to help people accidentally touched by Dormin's power leaking through the second seal, seeking a way to free Them for good.

At the end of the Second Age, the accident that created the Arcanist broke the second seal and killed the wanderer.


It took many centuries for Dormin to revive after the end of the Second Age, the violence of the second seal's destruction disincorporating Them and the Lightweaver's awakening leaving Them less power to use. They arrived at the edge of Alma and Taishan's lands on a date unrecorded, when Alma was still a Guardian and the clan was still known as Alma's Charge.

To account for Their dual voices and colossal size even by Imperial standards, Dormin was initially thought either to suffer from a bizarre birth defect or to be an unusually articulate Emperor. Taishan was wary, and Alma as well, but they found Dormin to be apparently harmless and let Them come and go as They pleased.

Mostly, They went. After some searching, They found Their own lands: still abandoned and considered haunted by dragon and beastkin alike. Flying through those lands at the end of the world, those lands at the intersection of magic points, was bittersweet. For all that it was good to travel through Their own lands again, to be manifested in a physical body again, They found that They truly missed Their friend the wanderer. A god unworshipped has little power and grows lonely.


Gods rarely hurry, but when Dormin sensed a familiar soul return, They hastened from Their own lands to Alma's Charge.

They knew him. They knew who the wanderer was, would recognise him anywhere though his new body was far different from his old, though he remembered none of his former life. They quietly suggested his new parents to name him Kurnaz, and they accepted.

Kurnaz. The name They had always wanted to give Their friend.

Kurnaz!

He grew strong and healthy and happy, filled with joy innocent of the horrors his previous incarnation had suffered through, and Dormin was pleased. They took on a role like a mentor to the young Wildclaw, who laughed off Their claims of being a god like the rest of the clan. Dormin did not mind. Simply seeing, feeling his soul again was enough: They were old and They were patient.


They watched Kurnaz and Mono grow up together with deep worry. They heard, through the ages, the voice of a young man in love and in pain.

"She was sacrificed, for she had a cursed fate."

Through the ages, They heard, too, an old man in pain and in love.

"I should never have come. And we should never have left."

Dormin knew who Patriarch Emon was. And Dormin knew who Mono was and had become, though it had not been her fault.

They spent days laying twined around the ruins of the Second Age, contemplating mortals.


When Kurnaz came to Them distraught that Mono's clan had cleared the area the very day after he had pledged matehood to her, Dormin waited no longer, and did not allow Kurnaz to, either.

Dormin did not know if Emon knew who They were. They suspected not. But They knew he did know that Dormin looked upon him with mistrust, and They knew he did know that Kurnaz loved Mono. His clan was prepared to fight, and they had hired mercenaries to aid them: Dormin for the first time found Themself battling fang to claw, spell to spell against mortals half again as large as Them.

As for Kurnaz, he once again battled beings completely eclipsing him in size, though he did not and could not remember his past life.

It was a harsh, ugly journey. In the lands of the Plaguebringer, even Dormin was overwhelmed, torn to pieces by Emon's dragons as They gave Kurnaz an opening to run headlong for the Wyrmwound. They felt Kurnaz's rage and sorrow as he ran.


But gods do not die that easily. They had been severed before.

Dormin contemplated fate as they reawakened. Sixteen segments they had again been split into, but no mere mortal hands or claws could kill Them. Compared to the seal of the Colossi, compared to the seal of the Ancient Sword, a physical body torn apart was nothing.

They drew Their power back together and launched into the air, chasing after Kurnaz and Mono. At the Wyrmwound itself, They plucked the pair of them out of the air and flew to safety, not landing until the group reached the Tangled Wood.

The journey back was quieter, Kurnaz often riding on Their great shoulders as his injured leg healed. The pair's first daughter was born in the Wood, and Dormin knew her, too.

Yorda. Who had been the wanderer's last daughter.

But where was Ico? Would they meet, if Mono was not the Queen? Would they meet, if Dormin's power did not leak uncontrolled through a flimsy seal and cause a pair of horns to grow?


They would, and did, but that is more Ico and Yorda's story.


When the family at last reached the Lightweaver's realm again, they found that calamity had struck their old clan grounds. A great roving pack of Mirrors had raided Alma's Charge, and though many survived, many were lost, and it was now clear they could not find defensible positions in the area.

But Dormin knew of a better place for all of them. In lines in the air and on the ground, They took Alma, Taishan, and their clan home.

And so they all became the Clan at the Intersection, and once again Dormin's land had people in it.


In the Fourth Age, there is a god. They are less powerful than the Great Dragon Deities, but a god They are nonetheless.


Shadow of the Colossus fandragon, and unique among my fandragons since They're a one-to-one crossover character: Dormin is literally Dormin and not a reincarnation or Sorniethian AU.

Shadow of the Colossus crosses over well into absolutely anything.








I know that obscure reference count: 1