The Dragon and the Magician
THE DRAGON AND THE MAGICIAN
Long ago, when magic flourished throughout the lands of Albion, a magician called Darragh was befriended by a great red dragon. After a mighty battle, the dragon lay dying, and as its final act, it passed on its magic to his dearest friend.
Darragh took the name Greatdrakes to honor his dragon friend and ensure no one in his bloodline forgot where their power came from.
All magic, and especially wild dragon magic, comes with a price, and the power in the Greatdrakes bloodline was no different.
With the dragon's blessing, there came curses. The first was that at least one child in every generation of Greatdrakes tended to go mad.
The second curse was that when their dragon side decided to choose a mate, they had absolutely no say in the matter.
This is the history and legacy of the Greatdrakes.
Unfortunately, this was mostly wrong because, like many ancient family histories, it was passed down by men. The truth was far more complicated.
For a start, the great red dragon had been a female. She was one of the ancient dragon shifters who had lived in Albion before men decided to drive them into Faerie. She had died because an army of men had hunted her down, and Darragh had arrived too late to help fight them off.
Her magic had been passed down through their five children, who Darragh hid away until they were old enough to go into the world, smart enough to hide who they were, and powerful enough to smite anyone who tried to hurt their family.
The madness of the Greatdrakes was a result of their brilliance and heritage of magicians breeding magicians. Magicians are generally too clever for their own good and are as haughty and mad as cats when provoked.
The only true part of the original tale is that they did tend to have a dragon side that chose mates. The unions were always happy ones, despite any rocky beginnings, so they never really bothered to try and find a way around that.
All of this went on for generations quite easily, and every generation knew what to expect. All of that knowledge and comfort went to hell when the Fae returned and subsequently restored magic.
Now, the Greatdrakes family was facing more new and exciting problems within their lineage. For example, the patriarch of the family, Cosimo, had learned that dragons could have more than one mate if their first one died. He had been a widower for a long time, and the thought that he could have another mate out there that he didn’t know about unsettled him greatly.
Another new and dangerous possibility was that every one of them had dragons inside them, waking up and getting more and more eager to get out. No one knew if any of the other Greatdrakes in their long lineage had inherited the ability to shift into dragons because the fear of ignorant humans made them too cautious to write it down.
They were at the dawn of a new magical age, and none of the Greatdrakes knew what changes would come from their bloodline.
Luckily, they had inherited a large extended family of ancient and powerful fae through marriage, who knew how to deal with magical problems, aforementioned ignorant humans, and dragons coming into their power for the first time.