Love Amongst the Dragons

love prevails ig

The Dragon Emperor has been cursed. And he most definitely deserved it. You could not have met someone more arrogant, more shallow power-hungry bastard. And though he was living in paradise and luxury, one can never indulge in this world when you are a jerk without retribution. Here, it comes in the form of the spirits, keepers of the world, living and dead. It comes from a shadow, dwelling in the darkness, under the realm of his lady, Tui, the spirit of the moon.

The Dragon Emperor is to be bound to mortal form until his lesson has been learnt, by the Dark Water Spirit, the Blue Shadow.

He shall be spoken of as the Blue Spirit going forth.

The Blue Spirit has had enough of the Dragon Emperor's eternal makings of sin. To send an immortal to the mortal realm, bound to a mortal body will humble him, make him worthy of his titles.

Who knows, maybe he might even find something worth regaining his power for while he's on his merry way.

He mingles among mortals, unsure how exactly to be mortal.

Though the Blue Spirit would point out that he already was mortal, he just couldn't act like one to save his life.

To tell a mortal that you were, in fact, the Dragon Emperor cursed to a wretched life of living like them was to be thrown into a mental asylum.

So, though it pained him greatly, our high and mighty emperor must tell those mortals he is nothing more than Noren, the newcomer from the North.

What was North? Noren didn't know. But that was where Noren was from and seemed to be the only correct answer as the villagers scorned any other direction.

Strange. Mortals could hate directions, simply places to come from... Perhaps it's not the places themselves that they hate, but rather what occupies them.

Noren faced many challenges, of course, he would he's an idiot who used to have a palace of servants to do everything for him. He had never known true hardship before. This curse was already well on its way to humble him.

At this point in the story, The Girl enters.

The Girl, Ursa, was a force of nature.

A master herbalist, though by coincidence her betrothed died by the very poisons she specialized in. It's such a shame she couldn't get to him in time. At least now she won't be forced into a marriage in which she has no interest.

The Blue Spirit may or may not have nudged her along her way to finding one sorry excuse for a Dragon Emperor. He seemed like he needed someone who knows their way around poison.

Noren and Ursa danced around each other, Noren so spell-bounded by her charms and Ursa no stranger to the unusual and spiritual.

So the two did their little dance together, spent some time being all cupid-struck, fell in love, blah blah blah, and Noren is feeling the Power of Love™ coursing through his veins, making him strong enough to break the curse. The Love™ he was feeling was exactly why the Blue Spirit wanted him down in the mortal realm, to learn to empathize with some waiting mortal to give him his lesson in not being a complete self-absorbed narcissist of a lost cause. If he just so happened to grow attached to them, all the better. Dragon Emperors can be oh, so lonely up in their big empty palaces.

And so this rushed, not-very-quality, the story comes mostly to a close, though the Blue Spirit would have liked to see Noren suffer more on-page. Unfortunately for him, the author does not have the patience to write out all the painfully awkward social interactions the Dragon Emperor had to have gone through to even begin a semblance of a normal mortal life.

Or the times he tried to flirt with Ursa. The amount of second-hand embarrassment from these sad attempts is enough to kill. Ursa quite agreed. She even threatened to help speed the process—no one minds a little poison in their evening tea.

The Blue Spirit is inclined to agree. Noren may be an ass, but he has good taste in women. After all, if they're threatening to murder him, they can't be all that bad, right?

But who in their right mind would threaten the Dragon Emperor? The Dragon Empress, of course.

The Blue Spirit reiterates his approval of Ursa.

So yeah. Ursa's the Dragon Empress and is super-duper powerful. Compared to her, Noren's power seems like it belongs to an itty-bitty kiddie.

(Because in this particular story, in this particular world, dragon women are, and always will be, superior, no matter what mortals think.)

The two lived happily ever after, with Ursa keeping Noren in check and Noren doting on his poison-wielding, ever so terrifying wife who will deny to her dying breath that she's grown fond of him.

(The Blue Spirit was invited to the wedding. And made many loud comments about how Ursa could do way better than some washed-out so-called Dragon Emperor.)

(They couldn't have foreseen a better ending to this tale.)