This is the tragedy archetype which - if I can pull it off in the way I want to - is only true of Dragon Stand for some people. But it’s the people I care about, so...
It’s been up on patreon since last September!
~
Consider this; there are three steps, set upon a mountain. They are not high, they are not shallow. They are half a day’s climb from the nearest settlement, and though everyone knows of them, no one knows who made them. They just are.
The steps are worn and beginning to crack with plants that creep in through the edges of what once must have been the finest join to be seen. Lichen patterns across them, almost runic in shape but unknowable in meaning.
They look old, but nothing looks as old as everyone believes they are.
No one climbs them. No one sets talon or claw, hoof or horn, foot or paw near them.
These are stairs with no purpose, because the buildings have fallen away from about them into crumbling rubble that looks like nothing more than roughened rock that has always belong there. They are paces up the mountain, and there are stories to go with them.
This is the third;
Once upon a time, there was a country. Perhaps it is still there, or perhaps it has been halted and shrivelled and cut up into the remnants of history, into small countries that can bear the strain of it better.
The country’s rulers (three generals and a scaremongering politician) decided that what would be best for them was to be on top. To rule the near countries, destroy the far and fold magic out of their reality (it was a reaction of hate and fear and zealous pride, the belief that magic was only ever an easy out, a cheat to get around honest work. They did not understand).
It took them years upon years, and an influx of refugees from the disintegrating islands before they had the resources to do anything, but when they did - they struck hard, and they struck fast.
The rest of the world rose up against them, but they rose in isolated portions, with no cohesion between countries and resistance groups and rogue crews. When someone tried to rally them, they failed. The world would burn before the might of the all-consuming empire.
Piece by piece, they all died. The pirates fled, their dragons killed. The shifters, despite their great power, were not suited to fighting and so they hid and were found and were all but wiped out.
The king and queen of the neighbouring country were killed, their child surviving only by the grace of a fallen hero, a fierce protector.
The mages promised their help and betrayed, seeking to help themselves in one last effort. It rebounded and they were shattered and lost and last - last left the hunters, with the child in their paws (their claws, their talons - these hunters were not human, not truly, but they felt and they burned and they hungered like all humans do, and they plotted revenge and a strike back, but-).
Their leader - the fallen hero, the protector, the soul of the world itself - could feel the weight and it was crushing her, and she tried but she was scared.
She hid it, forced confidence when they were watching, then ran into the mountains not to abandon them, but to -
She wasn’t sure what to do, but she knew that something had to be done.
So when Destruction comes calling and offers her a choice (a choice, he says, which doesn’t come once to most people, and now he’s offered her this gift twice), she takes it, thinking that she will have the strength to stay in control, to stay - to stay his power, to only take back what was theirs.
She was wrong. But she was scared and she didn’t think she had a choice otherwise.
The protector is broken and twisted and she is still the soul of the world, but a soul gone dark with the power of Destruction and nothing is safe.
Her soul suffers, but it is what keeps her friends safe until-
Until the worst happens and Destruction sides with those who started the war (they worship him, although they do not know it) and the protector is discarded and cast aside, broken and crazed and s h a t t e r e d into so many fragmented pieces that all they can do is to lock her into a cage and hope that she cannot escape. Cannot destroy what they have started to rebuild in their own image.
Destruction leaves her weakened and weakened himself, irrevocably attached to the beast she has become, the beast the world has made her.
God-touched, the protector of the world suffers and the world suffers with her.
This is but one step, and there are many more before the suffering will end.
