A.n So I thought about removing this chapter, but I think it gives nice insight as to what all Samra has had to deal with. Plus it's a nice filler chapter before we get into the meat of the story (hopefully). I'm still working out some kinks and stuff with the plot (because this story desperately needs one) but I have a pretty good idea now so woohoo.

Enjoy Chapter 6 and don't forget to favorite and review.

Chapter 6

A Beast's Beginnings

When you used to be able to fly across leagues of land in minutes, walking seems tedious. It gives your mind too much time to wonder if what it's planning to do is right. Most of the time it spins and turns, waging a war between reality and dreams, trying to find a neutral ground in between.

Even though I had spent several centuries living in Astilias, it wasn't anywhere close to being considered my home. My home would forever be in that small little city between Rocio and Darin. I held in my head so many memories of those years, my siblings and I forever causing a ruckus, and the people of Galilray playing with us as if they were my blood as well. I remember the Lake of Lotheria, an ancient and sacred lake that the villagers would always bless themselves in. Once a month they would come to our caves and wash us with it's crystalline waters.

I remember getting to see little children grow into little men and women, and then create more little children. I remember not growing at the same pace, and roaring into the sky when a human very dear to me passed on to the Stairway. I remember the fire lanterns they would light in their honor, and I remember the grand festivals they would hold in honor of their cultures.

When I was still a little tyke, at the age of two hundred, hunters killed my mother while she went hunting for sheep. They had been from Rocio, and I remember the five scales that the villagers were able to find of hers. I remember my siblings being devastated by her loss, and I remember my father returning to us for a while only to leave again, as is usual for dragons.

Our lives after that were hard. Being the second oldest, I was responsible for finding our hunting grounds, and catching prey with my brother to share with our growing six siblings. The villagers tried to help, but we were getting bigger and our appetites did too. I could still remember the one night where my older brother and I had slept outside the cave for the first time. He had asked me about trying to lighten our load, and I had been furious. However, even though we argued, every point he made had made sense.

Two of my siblings ended up dying of poor nutrition anyways. Dragons required a lot of attention when they're young, and my brother and I were unable to provide that. The villagers spent three full days setting up a funeral pyre for them. They had only been about fifty years old.

The next couple of centuries went by and more problems rose for us, until one day I realized I was the only one left. My eldest brother and my youngest living sibling had been hunted down just like my mother. I could remember a little girl from the village crying salty tears into my scales as she explained to me what the humans outside our village were doing with the scales. Jewelry. Fucking jewelry.

My life was so worthless to these people that they would kill me for some aesthetic gain? I remember being furious, killing several Darin merchants that night for their sins against my kind. I remember hearing the news that a child of one of the merchants had died in my attack. I had vowed to never attack humans in the name of revenge again.

However, in making that decision I became a coward. I flew to a new place every day, and eventually settled in Astilias' countryside before they built the walls. However, that was when the binding spell occurred. My attack, and those from others of my kind, didn't go unnoticed. Eventually the humans decided that the dragons became too wild to keep the peace, and took matters into their own hands. We were hunted nearly to extinction; I was the last of the Emeralds. I had met an Obsidian dragon along my travels, but I wasn't sure if they were alive still. Especially if they ended up where all the rumors placed them. There were rumors of an old Amethyst living in the northern mountains, but given who else lived in that area, I refused to check it out. As for the other two kinds, I had no knowledge.

Everything around the time of the Binding was a blur. I could remember thinking I heard the voice of a child in trouble. I could remember going to investigate, but everything after that was just blocked out of my memory. The first thing I remembered after that was looking at the world around me and being terrified because everything was so large. I remembered looking at my arm, expecting the normal green scales, but instead seeing bloodied caramel skin. I could remember a woman; her skin was paler than fresh snow. Her hair matched the color, although it had a slight tint of gray. She had a dove on her shoulder and a large staff in her hands. When her eyes fixed on me, she gathered me in her arms and cried.

She spent weeks silently teaching me how to walk, how to use thumbs and care for my infected scars. I remember trying to speak and she put a hand over my mouth, silencing me. I thought at first that she didn't want me to speak because she couldn't, but later on I realized that was the one thing she couldn't teach me. She left me in a town called Wylia, a popular trading post at the time, and touched my ears to tell me I had to listen in order to learn languages.

Now, two centuries later, Wylia doesn't exist. It became Dirt People land inside Astilias. The Astilian people believed the dragons would come, and thought a giant wall would keep them out. Somewhere along the way they adopted the idea that dragons had been rulers because they were close to the heavens, eventually it turned into a religion, which led to the subjugation of an entire group based off their monetary holdings.

Once Astilias started thriving due to slave labor, other places tried it. Darin had serfs for a little while, but eventually got rid of it under the rule of Queen Carwen. After her death, the people all became slaves to their king. In Caitir slaves were highly popular. The Changelings were strong and able to preform tasks that normal humans couldn't. However, all of their slave trading was done on the black market. They had a king, but he was more of a figurehead. The gangs practically ruled everything, but didn't get the excessive amounts of wealth that the king did.

Then there was me. I was stuck in the middle of a world I had been living above, and I realized I knew nothing of the world I lived in. As I moved into Astilias, and aided with the creation of their walls, it became even more apparent. I was listening, trying to make sense of the sounds that people made. Attempting to make them when I found myself alone, and people noticed me. There used to be rumors that I was an escaped slave, or that I had escaped from an abusive husband and was permanently damaged from it. They were silly tales, but they helped me learn.

When the branding started, the segregation and the slow shift to slavery started, I was lucky. Due to my silence and good behavior, a young noblewoman took me in. She gained me the notice of other higher ups, and soon I was working for people in the Sky People section before it was called that. Again I got lucky by getting out of there are soon as possible. My life was considered to be "a series of lucky events", but I knew that would wear out.

Indalecio came, and with him the magic that bound me. I felt it every time he paraded over the bridges. That sick sharp pain in my chest would be unbearable, and I remember the day I had enough of it. There was a party and Indalecio was meeting another god-one of the twins if I recall correctly- and it was agony. I clawed the shape of scales into my chest, and when that wasn't enough I decided to get rid of it entirely. If there was no flesh, then I could heal back right.

But magic doesn't work that way, and neither do people. A man caught me and he immediately brought me back to his home to clean my wounds. Talon Socovidus, grandfather of Galron Socovidus, was my savior. After that day I vowed to aid his family in any way I could. He helped me speak, taught me how to write, and made me a person. His wife taught me to sew and speak properly without all the slang that Talon taught me. For a while I was happy.

Until I realized that I still wasn't one of them. Talon grew old, and I did not. I still aged at the same rate I did as a dragon. The eighty-five years I spent with Talon and Tarija were nothing to a dragon. When I lost them, I had to watch their children, and then theirs. It was a familiar ache in my chest that only made it easier and harder at the same time. Easier because I knew this pain from my old life, and harder because I grew to know the children even better. I had played with them, carried them when their mothers were too tired, taught them. To some I was the godparent, a term which I hated, and to other's I was an aunt or cousin.

To this day I don't think I ever told Galron how I came to be a part of his family. It simply was just known among them that I was theirs and they were mine. Now I was without even that, and things were starting to blur again.

You see that's a side effect of the Death Dust. When I am without it for too long, my thoughts turn into memories, and eventually I writhe in a nightmare of in betweens. My mind craves it, and knows that once I get to a certain point I would beg for death before begging for a cure. On the other hand, each dose slowly kills me. I was not as healthy as I used to be, the Death Dust coated my mind and made it weak. I would do anything for it. Manipulate. Suck. Kill. It was my way out of this bloody hellhole, and I wouldn't go without it. Not even if it would save someone else.

But my memories have become dull, just like the sand in this god-forsaken desert. I looked around myself to see only sand, sand and rocks. Maybe one day I will find a way to get far from this wasteland. Today is not that day.