Commissioned from the talented  Zionnefitta!

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Even the wind is this dark land was silent. The buildings, temples of some sort, were intact, but there was no sign of anyone having lived here, not for many long years. No footprints lined the dust-paved pathways, no tools or weapons lay abandoned by the walls. It was as though the temples had simply sprung up from the dust, a wasteland that no one dared tread.

And yet it was here that my travels had led me. A storm had appeared in the sky. No natural storm, but a vortex of clouds and dark thunder, through the eye of which the strange creatures had flown, covering the sky. Like dragons they were, true dragons, not the upright ones like myself. But they glowed with an abnormal magical light, hard to pinpoint from their place high in the clouds, but a light that trailed everywhere they flew. The surrounding settlements had mostly been able to take shelter, but those that had not...well, that's why I was here.

The whirling storm was directly above these temples, but now that I was here, it was eerily calm. No crazed cult or wicked demon, no magical circle or portal to some dark world. I looked toward the highest tower. It had to be there. It always was. But why was I meeting no resistance, this close, among the dust?

The dust beneath my feet shifts, and I jump back, gripping my sword tight. Wind whips around me, and the dust flows like a stream through the air, spiraling up the walls of one of the temples, and coalesces into a vague draconic form. Its hollow eyes shine with that sickly blue light, and its jaw opens, letting loose a screech from the depths of the abyss. The sound rattles through my head, piercing my skull. I tremble and growl, trying to shake the noise away. The dust shifts again, and I look behind my shoulder to see a similar creature forming upon the roof of the building behind me. It opens its mouth, but I leap up at it, beating my wings and holding the sword high. My blade cleaves clean through the beast's neck. Its skull-like head falls to the ground, and its body crumbles back into dust.

Then, that horrible sound again, piercing, like a thousand locusts swarming around me, burying their way through my ears. I land heavily upon one knee and roar out, trying desperately to drown out the sound. But it won't stop. I open my eyes, and see the blue magic swirling throughout the air.

Another beast forms. Another. They are everywhere now. The sound grows louder. I can't drown it out. I can't block it. I roar and throw my sword at the nearest one. The creature bursts into empty dust, but there are two more behind.I fall to my knees and clasp my claws to my ears.

My sword is useless. My shield, useless. All my strength, the strength I have spent a lifetime earning through tireless journeys and countless battles, useless against the might of the beasts! Pathetic, weak!

Broken!

But then, the sound dims. I look to my arm. That...blue light. It moves along my arm, through my veins. It gathers in my claws. My body trembles, and I roar out again. Magic bursts from me. Magic! The power denied me at birth! My right as a dragon, a right that I could never feel! I see it, I feel it all around me. It stirs in the wind. It runs beneath the ground. It flows through my veins. It is mine. It is mine. Magic gathers in my claws, it bursts from my maw. It glows in my eyes. Pure, unrestrained power. The power long since denied me, finally in my hands!

I see everything through a faint blue haze, and yet I have never seen anything clearer. The sound has stopped. The dust beasts, vanished. I am alone again. But there, in the distance, towers. Castles of 'kings'. Homes of the wretched and the ungrateful. What are their cheers and accolades worth when I had lost what truly made me a dragon?

My wings open, but they do not beat as I slowly rise into the air, a vortex of swirling energy around me. I am finally a true dragon. I have been given my birthright at last. And with it, the world shall know what I can really do.

And they shall bow.