Kingdoms Falling

Chapter 1

Art by Isronswara
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18 years later...

Meadow Grass stood alone on the shore, gazing out past star-churned waves to distant peaks, encompassed in the moon's silvery light. Water rushed over his talons, spitting and gurgling as it inched its way up the shoreline and greedily ate away at the sand.

Once, he'd imaged what lay across the ocean, just out of sight, behind billowing clouds of smoke and heat. Was there land? Perhaps another island, or a new continent. Was it habitable? Were there teams of fish swarming just below the surface? What kind of plants grew there? Were they edible, or would they give a dragon weird hallucinations? Were there other dragons out there? What were they like?

One day, he'd thought for sure. One day, he would fly there. He would see what was beyond the safety of the coral reef he called home. He would be the first dragon in centuries to travel to another island, another place, another world. And then his tribe would have to accept him. He'd finally get to be one of them, grow up alongside other hatchlings his age, learn to swim, and maybe even discover why he didn't have gills like his brothers. He just had to be patient. He knew his time would come eventually.

The only problem was, when it did come, he wasn't at all prepared.

He hadn't anticipated what it had really meant to be a Defender, or how his actions could affect the lives of so many around him. Until meeting his team, he had believed that dragons were cruel, heartless beasts who looked down scornfully on difference. He had thought something had been wrong with him, because he wasn't like the others; small and nerdy instead of big and tough.

But that hadn't been the case at all. After joining a group of misfits from other tribes, he realized that it wasn't him that needed fixing, it was the thinking of the tribe. Dragons weren't all huge and scary. Some were smaller like him. Each had fears and doubts and worries, each wanted their world to be proud of them, and many of their expectations had fallen short.

He wasn't the only odd one out, and, indeed, he had begun to wonder if he was the unusual one at all. Why make him seem like an outcast when there were other dragons just like him? Could his tribe be afraid of him? Was it his appearance? The way he seemed to read them like an open book? His extreme science talk? He didn't understand, but then again, he no longer cared to. He had found who he was, and he hadn't needed the help of any of his wicked family members to do it.

But they aren't my real family.

He knew that much now. He was adopted. His real parents were missing. They had been since before he hatched. He often dreamed of what they were like. Were they like him? Scientists? Were they kind, shy, and a bit dorky? And probably the most important question, were they even sea dragons?

He had often suspected that he was illegitimate, or even worse, a half-breed of some kind. There were many reasons for him to wonder. The first, if not greatest, was his obvious inability to breathe beneath the surface; a lack of gills. As far as he know, there had never been a sea dragon so...deformed, as his older brother had put it...that they couldn't survive beneath the water.

And that had been followed by several attempts to "see if he could breathe some other way" which was another way of saying, "drown him so we don't have to listen to his insufferable know-it-all-ness."

When Meadow was younger, he had found sanctuary from his parent's hatred in the hatchery library, amongst the isles upon isles of books, scrolls, and scraps of paper.