[BerylFlint]

***
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The door shuts to my office, the beats of my advisor's hearts falling dim with each of their fading steps, and my day is done. It is such a simple dividing act, but one encoiled into my core. For all it takes is a shutting door, and so for the first time in a long set of hours, I have the rare moment to relax, my shoulders falling, my wings hanging lower in rest. The air swirls as I stand in the midst of my office, uncertain for a spell, for potential rests in the air.

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I finally spark the rare occasion with a ‘plop’ behind my desk, coiling to rest in my office’s perch as relief flows through my muscles. My body rests, still keeping strong at my age with life burning within it. But even I find it enjoyable to simply sit sometimes. For it means If I can, If I have the time too, I have been doing my job right. When the needs of the city are low, when people rest safe and healthy in their homes, I can rest. Better now than later, it is some strange times after all. It has been a unique decade or two to live out my ‘twilight’ years, but I cannot say I am bored, that is for certain.

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I am Ksceniya C. Montelione, the head of the Montelione Noble House, the last of the original three that still serves to their functions. I am one hundred and fourteen years old. I have served my function for more than 3/4ths of my life, yet I have never gotten sick of it. I have never had thoughts of retiring, because I have yet to find a suitable replacement for myself, and I probably never will. I have watched my employees retire, and their children replace them, and even their children's children. A never ending cycle of health and blood, coiling around me. 

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Yet, I remain.

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I know this city like the back of my gloved hand. Throughout my long life I have seen its people grow and love, born or healing in my hospitals, just as well as I have seen them fear and pass away. I have given reassuring smiles to soon to be mothers, and the same smiles to their children, as their parents older and wiser stand behind them. Life continues, even as the generations pass me by, and I cannot help but watch as I always have. For no-matter what happens in Aphros, no matter the drama, the flaring emotions, the silly situations, I love my city, and I love its people. Non-magi, magi, all alike in kin and kind. There is no place like home, for I have made this one mine, the jewel on my hoard.

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For as if I may so arrogantly speak as my bloodline demands, I am the Blood Dragon of Aphros. Healer, Teacher, Maker, to seek and find wisdom, to achieve the impossible for all and myself.

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A fancy strikes me. With a stretch of my regal wings, I get back to my feet from my office cushion. I’ve always preferred cushions, my wings and tails are too large for normal chairs, no matter how hard I’ve tried to make an equivalent. My formed heels clack on the wood as I stroll to the window, pressing my hands to the panes of glass as I stare out into the silent star-filled black. Even in the night do I see the lights and movement of people. Inns and homes filled with non-magi and magi alike. I almost wish to join them, so close, all but a window blocks me. But…

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The memory, the dream, fades.

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Around my hands, the windows twist to become a solid golden curving wall. My office disappears from around me, as I float in a bubbly crimson solution, one I can only faintly see through, but I feel. I feel it sink into my form, I feel it sing in my heart. My hands rest against the side of the metal, but they are no longer the hands I know. My fingers are inhuman ivory talons, my palms a mass of white scales. My arms are strangely shaped, my body feels my own, yet… wrong all the same. My heart beats strangely, my wings scream to stretch, but I am trapped. My form presses against unseen blockers around me, for the wall stretches in all directions, curving around me.

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Panic flares in bright sparks as my shifting form threatens my prison to break. I can almost hear the metal bend, my claws scratching divots into the golden alloy. But some strange whisper within me tells me to wait. That we’re almost there, to wait just a little bit longer. A familiar primordial presence, a friend. My essence and its, we are one-but-not. It sings to me, what minds and memories remain, a draconic rumble that steadies into my heart, and stills my strange large body.

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I give into its blood calming song as I lull back into sleep, fading away as its presence coils around me.

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My office flashes back into existence around me, my hands leaning against the window, satin covered fingers-clenched. I could break it, I know I could. Tantalizing, it still cries to me in soft whispers, despite that song. I could return to them, treat them as I always had, to create wonders for all and myself. But… I know I must wait. I must, I must, wait. Patience. Something this old dragon has, or at least she thinks.

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Will they understand what I have become, and the reasons why? This old yet young greedy dragon.

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I must hope, as an Astra does.

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I sink back into my rebirthed-fragmented mind, as I dream of memories once more, putting the pieces together of a life long lived…

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***

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The cogs of a city are ever in motion. The paperwork and people that decide what and must be done to make a city run, and to keep it healthy and aligned with orders from above. Through their efforts, and those who benefit and suffer from such, does a city exist.

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For a few months, one cog, the Montelione House’s Head, has been absent from her long held position. A seemingly planned out act, for the functions of the house continue. The hospitals still run, doctors tending to those they can. The Libraries still give out and accept new books, ever looking for more information. Researchers continue their work, alchemists making potions for Aphros and the city at large.

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All as normal, All as planned. Yet there is something... missing.

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In a strange fire soaked room, a guarded large golden egg, an expensive metal sculpture for such an easy to make shape, shifts before falling still. Small micro-fractures bed on its surface, growing larger by the day with emissions of life and blood. Something new comes to the land of Amier's Blood, something that has not happened in a very, very long time…