The violet sky wept. Spatial energy ripped apart the fabric of the world. Gates opened over the heavily poputed southern park of Response City. This was the starting gun for the Fourth Great Gate Disaster in the year of 2012.
Jacoby Altiman had been enjoying his first Saturday off in two years. He held a vanil soft-serve ice cream in one hand and a tablet listing job offers in the other. He’d been working for the same firm for five years now and wasn’t advancing, feeling underappreciated and pathetic. He reckoned it was time for a change. As an unawakened his prospects were limited, but even engineers without mana could contribute significantly to the field of progress. He felt no jealousy over the awakened ones. He had seen how hard his sister’s life was. They worked her to the bone even when all she could do on first awakening was fill a water gss.
At 32 he wasn’t over the hill yet and he had kept up his skills with the advancing times, but this development had left his social life a barren wastend as a consequence. He didn’t mind the loneliness but a part of him wondered if this was the best way to live. His debts were gone now and he had saved up a sizable amount already. He wondered if looking for a more id back position somewhere, even at the cost of a high sary, would be better. Even now his body ached and cried out for rest. The park bench beneath him felt so comforting and soft that, without noticing, he nodded off to sleep. His tablet rested on his p and his ice cream fell to the ground. He briefly thought about his father and sister but, in his half daze before sleep overtook him, he reasoned he could call them ter.
Fifteen minutes passed while Jacoby slept. People began to leave the park in droves all at once, but none of the passersby bothered to wake the sleeping Jacoby. By the time the arm kxons began to bre it was already too te. Jacoby woke from his sleep startled as an expanding dimensional gate literally bifurcated him from his head to his crotch. The sudden sharp pain only sted for a moment and then darkness took him. In that brief moment he regretted not calling his family. Oddly, no physical body was left behind—just a broken tablet, a melted ice cream cone, and a pool of blood. Monsters soon poured from the gate and Awakeners, sometimes called Heroes or Hunters, came forth to face them.
-
Jacoby felt strange when she came to her senses again. Her body felt odd in ways she couldn’t expin and her surroundings were dark. She reached out her front paws, oddly unconcerned that she now had paws instead of hands, and pressed them on the edges of the known world. Bring memories burned her mind, carried on the wings of powerful inherited magic, and she screamed. The sky cracked open and the young female dragon pushed her head out into the world. Instinct and inheritance combined with the memories of her past life, creating something unique. A singurity of magic coalesced. The small white dragon howled to the sky.
A shadow passed overhead—an enormous shadow that brought shade to the entire valley. The being that cast the shadow nded in front of the baby dragon and, despite having just been born, the baby instinctively knew that she was looking upon her mother. The mother dragon’s pristine white scales and sleek angur build gave her the image of a cruel monster, but her eyes carried an unfathomable and gentle warmth like the noonday sun in mid winter.
[So one of this clutch has managed to hatch. It has been almost a thousand years since I've seen…]
The dragon spoke by vibrating magic, not air. Despite not knowing the nguage the words could be understood. The baby looked upon its mother with mixed feelings. The somber and lonely tone in the mother’s words was unmistakable.
[Your name, child, shall be Princess Scale. Devour the failed eggs in this nest and absorb their remnant power. I will act as your guardian until you are strong enough to stand on your own. That is a mother’s duty, after all.]
Having the mind of a human, the instincts of a dragon, and inheriting the genetic magics of this new world, a monstrous Holy Dragon was born. Princess Scale turned away from her mother and faced the nest of her unsuccessful siblings. She could feel it; she could feel that none of them would hatch. She didn’t hesitate. She walked to the first egg and, without any grace, smashed it with her front paws. She began to devour them, shell and all, piece by piece, and a warm current flowed through her—it was like a fsh flood in the desert after a torrential downpour. Her mind expanded as more genetic memories and magics were unlocked one by one. Her muscles wound over themselves and strengthened beyond steel, compressing harder and harder still. Her spirit soared. The air shimmered with holy magic.
She recognized herself as a former human and accepted everything. There was nothing else she could do but accept it. This was her life now. She thought that maybe one day if her magic advanced enough she’d be able to return to Earth, but it wasn’t clear to her just what that would require.
Within an hour she devoured all 19 remaining dead eggs in the nest and turned back towards her mother. Starlight shone in their eyes.
[Good child. There is much to teach you. Come.]
“What is your name, mother?” Scale asked, speaking aloud by instinctively using her magic to vibrate the air.
[Olimaw. The One Who Swallows the Moon.]
The two left together, carried by pristine white wings.
The sands of time flowed endlessly onward.
Within a year Princess Scale conquered the Western Highnds and syed one of the Demon King’s Four Heavens. She appeared like a divine goddess swooping down from the clouds over the murky battlefield. She saved the despairing soldiers of humanity, casting a mass healing spell in her wake that even revived the dead.
Her mother never stopped her from interfering in mortal affairs and, instead, seemed to encourage it. They were the st two dragons in this world and if her daughter wanted to py with the mortals for a while that could be permitted.
Within five years young Scale mastered every magic her mother knew and could erase isnds on a whim. Her physical strength long eclipsed every other living creature in the world. She earned the title ‘Divine’ and prophecies around the world spoke of her future as the Scale to Judge the World.
-
Within ten years Princess Scale had conquered the known world and saved the despairing humanity from the cwing grasp of the Demon King.
Scale made many friends among the mortal races during her growing phase. Her memories of her past life made her gentle towards them, and perhaps a bit too trusting. Her ability to shapeshift into human form wasn’t perfect, often leaving a pair of beautiful white horns on her head and tiny wings on her back. She couldn’t alter her appearance beyond the basics. She, being only ten years old, looked like a ten year old human… Where heroes, magicians, warriors, and priests failed, a child succeeded.
Despite the war ending, the prophecies continued to be passed down. Ancient texts revealed Scale to be the Scale that weighed all mortal kinds. She had the power to, if so desired, end all life in the world and it would be as simple to her as snuffing out a candle. Despite her repeated acts of kindness and good will, fears and anxieties stirred within the kingdoms of Mer and Man. After all, ‘What mortal race could accept being beholden to the whims of a child?’
In her sixteenth year Scale was invited to a banquet by the strongest of the mortal kind. The Elf Queen, the Saintess, the Hero, and the Archmage were all there. Scale attended, just happy for the company of others. She had lived a lonely first life and so she fully intended to have as many friends as possible in her second one. She trusted deeply and that was her downfall.
The Archmage, having researched magic to banish the Demon King, performed a spell the kindly Scale could not imitate. It wasn’t that she couldn’t understand the magic but that she could never perform such a cruel act. By sacrificing the lives of 100 criminals, the Archmage opened a dimensional gate and banished Scale to a far off world, unaware that her mother still walked the nd. In their act to remove an instability they had, simultaneously, sealed their own fates. The scale tipped against them. A mother dragon’s tragic cry echoed across the nd.
