GIGANTIC revamp of one of my forgettable characters. Or if you prefer, Ominous Rex-ifying
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FIREWING THE DESTRUCTOR
There was a time, long ago, when Dragons ruled the world. This was not the world of knights and castles and kings, nor even that of cavemen and spears, but a lost, primeval landscape, raised from the pre-Cambrian oceans in times long gone past. The dragons that still exist know little of this period themselves, for their race-memories of this time are foggy and vague, but what is known is that there were originally just seven dragons, the Elders, dominated by the eldest and most powerful, the Dragon Lord. Each of these seven dragons represented a key concept, Firewing, the youngest and most brash, being a personification of entropy and destruction.
Many years passed, and the broods of the Elders grew greatly. Save those of Firewing, whose offspring were always somehow stunted and malformed. This angered him greatly, and for long years he thought of ways to gain the brood he wanted. That was when the Great Old Ones arrived on Earth. The Dragon Lord did nothing, as he feared the casual obliteration of the dragons by the Great Old Ones. This too angered Firewing, but he remained calm, for the moment at least. He would gain the power to act in time. Meanwhile, the Great Old Ones fell into slumber deep within the depths of what would later be the South Pacific, leaving behind their dreams, which would create a whole world in time. Meanwhile, Firewing began to desire vengeance upon the other Dragons.
Then, one fateful night, their dreams intersected with those of Firewing, and from them he divined a plan for vengeance and a way to have what he wanted. In the darkest depths of the earth, from his own flesh and blood, he created the Seven Harbingers. Then, he split parts of his soul, parts of his very metaphysical authority, from himself, lessening him fundamentally but giving them life. He named them names that are long lost to time, and they were spirit-bound to him, to exist and be bound to their bodies so long as he lived. They formed the start of his brood, the beginning of his plan.
One black day, 65 million years ago, Firewing put his plan into action. The Elder Dragons were discussing a matter of great import, when suddenly he attacked. The ensuing battle is quite literally beyond words to describe, but it must be attempted nevertheless. The Dragons’ flame scorched the earth, as ley-currents burst under the stress they were suddenly put under as the dragons tapped them, loosing explosions of pure ley-energy. Mountains shattered, and the seas and rivers and lakes of the earth loosed their bonds, flooding vast areas. The first of the Elder Dragons to die that day was overwhelmed by sheer numbers, and the last was obliterated by Firewing himself, ceasing to exist in the radiant glare of his burning breath. But then the Dragon Lord struck. Like a meteor he fell upon the earth, sheer fury and hatred manifesting around him as white flame that burnt away the flesh of the Seven Harbingers in an instant. The two dragons tussled in the sky for many an hour, each seeming to last an eon as neither could defeat the other.
Then the Dragon Lord unleashed his full glory, and smote Firewing down like a star from heaven. Firewing crashed through earth and cavern and magma, reaching the depths of the outer core of the Earth, where heat and pressure create extremes that no other living creature would stand the slightest chance within. There he sleeps, recuperating from that fateful battle, waiting to rise once more. Stricken by disgust and horror, the Dragon Lord went into his arboreal realm and closed the gates to it, swearing an eternal, undying vengeance upon Firewing and all his brood. The brood of Firewing lasted into the Dark Ages, the last is thought to have been killed then, but some may yet survive in the modern age.
Firewing is vast. Immensity is the word you would use to describe his form, for it dwarfs mountains and cities in its titanic power. It is the relic of a long-forgotten world, an antediluvian epoch of immense grandeur and glory. For uncountable eons it has existed, it has seen gods die and entire races pass from the world and into utter oblivion, remembered by naught and all traces of them erased by the passing of deep time. Immense strength rests within, not solely of muscle and flesh but of spirit and sheer unspeakable power that will not be pushed aside or slowed or stopped, but will keep going as an inexorable juggernaut of utter destruction, a veritable force of nature like the volcano that bursts its ash into the sky or the hurricane that drowns cities or the earthquake that destroys all in its wake. That is the measure, the raw nature of Firewing.
The breath of Firewing is fire so hot as to almost be plasma, powerful enough to envelop whole cities and hot enough to melt the strongest, most heat-resistant substances humanity can devise with the most pathetic ease. And that is not the only weapon he possesses, for the fire that burns within his eyes can be projected outward as beams of superhot plasma to destroy all in their path. Firewing exudes thoughts of rage and hate and destruction outward like a blazing sun of pure negative emotion, causing men who do not have great willpower to lose their minds if they get too close.
But worse is his terrible speed, for Firewing can fly far faster than the paltry speed of sound. Indeed, he can fly so fast that the sky in his wake burns and the shock-waves he creates shatter buildings with ease. And there are worse things about Firewing, for if he so wishes he can transfigure his physical form into a living tsunami of molten lava with the vague shape of a dragon, unstoppable, terrible and nigh-godlike, a pure avatar of unstoppable destruction.
Then there are the other dragons, the first of his terrible brood to be born into the world, their spirits still bound into their now-fossilised bodies as long as Firewing himself endures, their power even further diminished, but each of these seven dragons retains power sufficient to wreck an army. The flame they breathe may be eldritch ghostfire and their wings may be skeletal and their bodies may be held together by sheer, pure willpower and spirit-strength, but they are still Firewing’s most trusted lieutenants, eagerly waiting in their deathly slumber for the glorious day of awakening and terrible devastation upon which he might return. And then, beneath all attention, there are the mad dragon-cultists, driven insane by the dreams of Firewing connecting with their own. Firewing does not hate them as he does as he does the Dragon Lord, but neither does he love them, and he would eagerly destroy them for any reason he might find. For they are utterly beneath his notice, like ants or bacteria compared to us, and he simply does not care about them, in the same way that men do not care about the ants that they step on.
To describe the utter immensity and grandeur that is the dragon Firewing in mere mortal terms is very close to a complete impossibility, but let us try anyway. Looking at the mighty Dragon-lord, dreaming somewhat peacefully beneath the crushing, burning depths of the planet’s mantle, one would first note, if all other distractions were removed, the burning fury of the eyes, each bright and terrible as a thousand raging suns. The force of the eyes would be sufficient to blind men and drive them to utter insane madness. Then one would see the vast, Void-black ebon scales, the wings capable of blocking out the sky and turning noonday to blackest midnight, and one would realise the pure immensity of what you face.
The gargantuan maw, filled with raging fire, a veritable inferno of infinite flame fuelled by undying fires deep within the terrible dragon, you would note next. Daring to go closer, one would note the old battle-scars, the talon-wounds and ancient damages. Then one would notice the talons at the ends of the terrible dragon’s four legs, harder and tougher than reinforced steel. At this point one would dare to touch the dragon, and if it desired to expose its inner world, an extra-dimensional construct closely, metaphysically linked to the dragon’s body and soul, folded inside it at the present moment, one would find oneself in a veritable Hell.
The sky would be on fire and the landscape would be a desert of burning-hot obsidian sand. One would face oceans of liquid fire, rains of molten rock, every manner of flaming death imaginable. As the dragon dreamed, the landscape would shift randomly, uncontrollably, making it impossible to find something unless, somehow, it was desired. One would find no way out, no escape unless that was as well desired or a way could be breached from outside, and if the dragon were somehow to die, so would his inner world, imploding upon itself and destroying all within.
To describe the personality of Firewing is similarly difficult, seeing as the dragon is old and powerful and filled with a thousand grievances against its arch-rival, the Lord of Dragons. Both have been weakened greatly from their prime, when their fire-breaths burned continents and their roars broke mountain-ranges. Both have sworn eternal vengeance against the other, there can be no quarter or compromise or mercy, there can only be the triumph of one over the shattered corpse of the other. But Firewing’s spite and hate and rage has grown great and terrible, and so there is no telling whether , with the last check on his power gone with the Dragon Lord’s destruction, he will not take out his eternal fury on humanity. And if he does, there is little on this earth that can stop him.