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DragonJade you can always stop by! i do ask people to take a break after four submissions, but it's not forever (and honestly not even a long time lol). i guess everyone thinks imps are the largest haha. i love falkor! and i'm stealing that hc about undertides that's brilliant can you imagine there's just one the size of sornieth hanging around somewhere??
what does that do to their mind too are they wise or crazy
i honestly really like writing for you every one of your characters is extremely interesting and a lot of fun!! and i LOVE characters like indira like yesss gimme crazy powerful gods omnomnom
i definitely took some liberties, and 1. left the king unnamed because in fauve's lore i didn't see a name? 2. left fauve herself unnamed because i felt like indira would more just call her like 'child' or 'girl' or something derogatory. i was going to try and write a more 1st person action-type (like, 'jasper walked forward. 'hi', he said) instead of this, but that's not what happened lmao. if i went too far feel free to call it fanfiction lol. let me know what you think, and if i can link her & the lore in the thread!! :))
(also i'm a stalker in your art thread and i remember seeing indira's art & loving it and i still do and it's an HONOR to write for this pretty girl i really really love that piece you did of her).
The sea does not care for the dragons who traverse its waters. It is apathetic to the plight of warm, living things, all-encompassing as it is and just as aged. Mother to the storms which press down from above, it coaxes forth black rain and holds little regard for the beating it might deliver to a trembling pair of delicate wings. It demands respect as well as fear, and, as all powerful things, does not hide from its own nature – for a true god does not concede nor bow before its lessers.
Once, Indira knew worship.
She was born nothing, some lowly denizen of immortality, unremarkable in size or ability. Her world was small and simple, revolving around the patch of ocean she called home; a sole, lovely reef out in the (now destroyed and forgotten) great sea, formed of color and playful winds. The lands and waters around her were, at the time, as yet unexplored by dragons. Indira knew only peace and the small creatures that darted and drifted among her coral. She had never touched luxury,
never sipped from the inner well of a being’s free will and felt their raw lifeforce chasing her eager mouth to beg
her to consume it – But when dragonkind’s eyes turned toward their horizon, primitive as they were, when the distant call of exploration coaxed them out of their crags and hovels… then,
then, Indira first tasted divinity.
And what
flavor. A baseborn animal, unrefined in mind and potential, cannot hope to experience opulence. A wolf does not have a preference for game; it understands only meat, blood, and the hot thrill of the chase. Indira had no foundation for variation from the bland repetition she’d always known. The first time Indira heard a prayer, it was as if she’d surfaced from the deep, cleared murky water from her vision, for the very first time in her immortal life.
And an immortal does not often experience firsts.
Those who sought passage over the open seas, sailors and pilgrims alike, felt rightful fear on their journeys; and so they looked to what comfort mortals own, that of their gods. Whichever nameless deity would hear them, for in the olden age the titled did not mingle with those shadowed by death.
Someone, they prayed desperately, when the storms rocked their little wooden boats. They gasped out, beseeching, around a mouthful of water when a wave almost knocked them into the depths. They begged with their eyes squeezed shut, with such
fervor, even uncertain as they were that anyone listened. And there was never a direct answer to their appeals. Any help, if it came at all, was slight; a lessening of the wind, or a shoreline for their keels to scrape against. But Indira
did help. Indira heard their prayers, tasted their zeal on her wontless tongue as if it were golden, glittering honey, and knew
ecstasy.
It was then Indira’s true power was born. Unlike some other gods, she did not rise fully-fledged, with magic and knowledge crackling along her skin. Indira’s godship was awoken, stirred to life after she was handed, readily, the faith, trust, and pleading of ordinary dragons. Mortals. Her people. These, she vowed, she would go to war for. She would exact justice, vengeance, and battle in their name. They were beneath her, yes, but they were hers all the same. Dragons had given her a crown, and all that came with it – and so Indira learned to grip it tight and refuse to let go.
Indira also learned a valuable lesson then, in that youth of hers, when her world was still blue, bright, and free. The meaning of gods and the truth of might.
It does not matter whether or not you deserve power, nor if it was bestowed as a blessing: if it is yours by right, if you have earned it through blood and madness, and, more importantly, if you want
it – you must take
it.
Shortly, as most things do, it all went afoul. Indira’s world collapsed around her, destroyed by another. She was flung – away. Separated from her people, from her kin, from her sea. For a long time, Indira slept, weak and cold to the new world around her. And when she woke… her faithful were gone. The dragons she’d once watched with amusement,
as one does struggling little bugs, dead or missing. The other gods were nowhere to be found, and in their place were the eleven. Despicable, deplorable,
irritating beings who called themselves gods and seduced masses of dragons to flock to them. And these dragons were different. (But they were the same, still. They loved and needed and hoped and
prayed, and Indira could
feel them, but she could not
touch them –). Then the Tidelord disappeared, and finally Indira could hear the call of the leylines again. Her power grew, and, well, she supposed she’d felt indulgent. Certainly that explained why she’d meddled with that mortal so.
Indira misses that little boy, she does. The one who held such pain in his heart, anger in his mouth, and chaos in his mind. Such flinty little eyes he’d had, that looked up at her and seemed to mirror something inside of her. He’d understood her truth, what Indira was trying to accomplish. Indira remembers him fondly, often as the young, starry-eyed soldier she’d once found. A magnificent commander, even as a novice. How unspoiled he’d been then! How easy to coax off his path, towards
her direction, to guide as only Indira could. His devotion, his zealotry… Indira can still feel it trickling cool over his spine, (as if he were still before her pledging his vows), as if she were the pebbled creekbed and his faith the clear, rushing water. She’d given him all of it, in return. His madness, his army – his war. Still too vulnerable to participate, she’d watched from afar as he led her infantry in her name. She’d watched as he tilled the land of the false gods’ poison. And Indira had watched as he failed.
Thousands of her people, all the old bloodlines she’d entrusted to him, to the cause: gone and lost to their
dragons.
Those little pests, apostles of the false gods – they’d tried to expunge him. They wiped his name off their histories, averted their eyes when pressed by their leaders for reports, refused to breathe a word of him around young, untouched,
innocent generations – a valiant effort, she’ll give them that. They attempted to let him sink to the seafloor and disappear into the darkness. But he was a whalefall, and his legend remains, growing glowing seeds of doubt and ruin among his white bones. His deeds are still whispered in the shadows of kin and memories, despite.
Indira has a new soldier now, a delightful little girl with the blood of Indira’s last champion running through her veins. A mongrel, really, with viscous white tusks and odd, pink eyes (that remind Indira of
home in her paler moments), but she’ll do. She’s quite young, with a mind that’s oh-so-
easy to corrupt. Indira knows one of the false gods tried to hide the little mutt from her, placing her in a sweet, loving family. But Indira only has to sink her claws in and
twitch just so – and such
anger festers within the youngling, growing and rotting even where the girl herself cannot recognize. (Indira has always had a talent for invoking anger in her devotees, it’s the sea inside of her.) Indira needs a messiah. She’ll not let her people die in the shadows, and she’ll not let her power be wrested from her –
there are some things that are a god’s by right, and to deprive them of such is a crime that must be punished. The mutt will be her champion – and this time, Indira will do it
right. She will do it alongside her soldier,
inside her, standing behind her as her looming shadow when she finally marches off to Indira’s war – and this time, the goddess of the seas, their storms, and the wicked rage of the deep will see those false gods
brought to their knees.
