Lily of the Shadows

Introduction

The world they all lived in was known as the Valdt, and it was heavily doused in sprinkles of magic and fantastical people and beasts, like an unwatched two year old's helping of ice cream at a free for all buffet line, in fact around every corner you could find something new and interesting peeking or glaring at you depending on its mood and species. There were elves and goblins, gnomes and trolls, fairies and foxes, griffons and dragons, mice and men, all of whom were given a choice between good and evil and knew the difference once the evil Red Shadow had tainted the fountain of Callipsym.

Indeed, good and evil faced each other steel on steel, tooth and talon, wing and tail, in a never ceasing battle for dominance over one another, the Creator watching over the carnage and weeping in the pain of the fallen world, yet hopeful for the day when good would rise from the ashes of the battle and triumph once and for all.

The terrains and biomes of the Valdt were as colorful and diverse as its inhabitants, including seven unique rainforests, An arctic tundra covered in glowing purple ice with caverns below leading to the Valdt's molten core, with deserts and tropics spanning for endless miles along its equator.

In one place there was a giant crater that spanned for thousands of miles where a meteor had struck, ending the life of the last of the Cerryn, a giant creature that once devoured dragons from the sky, its feet large enough to crush mountains, mighty dragons being as gnats compared to its massive maw. And in the center of the crater were its bones, as tall as towers and surely much larger for some of them, its skeletal structure or what was left of it scattered along the crater and visible from space.

The Valdt's many environments supported many forms of  life which were as thriving and brilliant and numerous as the stars in the night sky. There were thousands of cities and civilizations where creatures large and small coexisted in peace, the most striking of all being the regal city of the Diamond Crown, where at the very center was the palace of the Dragon Empress herself, or where she would have been if she had not been flung through the portal to another world far away by her nemesis Lyrica, a dragon who not only wished to take the Empress' crown  but her life as well.

The Empress was chosen by a council of the Elders working closely with the Creator and all contacts to the Creator, and was always female and always a dragon. She would be chosen from many young dragons upon the time when the previous Empress was unfit to serve, and was chosen for the purity of her heart and the innocence of her character. She had to be strong and brave and gentle, ruling with every citizen in mind.

The first Empress had been Dreadfyre the Bold, a dragoness with scales white as the snow and eyes that were silver with flecks of gold and crimson like ashes above brimstone. When the Red Shadow had tainted the waters and burned down the first garden, Dreadfyre had sheltered all the other creatures with her wings, fanning the flames and not leaving until every last one of every last kind had made it to safety in the lands beyond the garden when the world was still young and new.

Dreadfyre had done her best to save all the other living things, yet her wings had become tattered and torn down to nothing but skeletal framework because of the heat of the Red Shadow's flames, and she feared that from that day on she would ever tasted the freedom of the sky. To thank her for her immense sacrifice, all the other creatures decided to crown her their Empress, and give her the name she bore for the rest of history to remind them all of the terrors of evil and the sacrifice of her beautiful wings.

Once they had found shelter, the first of all the creatures were unsure of what to do with the beautiful garden they had called home now lost. Each creature had fled the garden without gathering a crumb of food in terror of losing their lives, yet from trampling through the thickets and trees, seeds from many of the first plants had clung to scales and fur alike, allowing them to plant a new garden that has since blossomed over the entire Valdt.

Since Dreadfyre the Bold sheltered the first of every kind with her wings, there have since been hundreds of Empresses who have each left their mark on the history of the Valdt, the previous Empress to the current one being Naegori the swift, a rust colored dragoness who ruled with an iron claw. However the Empress of our current time who had been thrown into another world was simply known as Leif. Leif was a small dragon no larger than a horse, with icy blue eyes and pale green scales with wings reflecting the entire spectrum of light. She was young and somewhat inexperienced, the world being handed to her after the sudden murder of Naegori the Swift, and she had not ruled for more than two years before she was thrown to another world far away, her entire essence being trapped in the much smaller and weaker form of a human being.