Veftlor

Veftlor has a long and engrossing history spread over many centuries. To start this story we have to go back over two millennia and to another planet…

Imagine a man, a very young yet accomplished man; he is on a boat, he is fishing. The lake he is on is huge: it spreads for miles from where his boat lies in all directions. He must be a strong rower to get his small boat all this distance. As you watch his line goes taut and he stands up to fight the fish that he has caught. He fights for some time the fish is so big. He starts to look worn out when… SNAP! his line breaks and he falls back in to the water.

As he falls in, his small boat capsizes and all his belongings fall out. He surfaces a small distance from the boat and realises what has happened. He draws breath and dives…

Now we see him as he swims down to find his things. The lake is deep but he is an experienced diver and covers the distance quickly. Soon he is at the bottom, scouring it for his things when suddenly he finds something… You cannot see what it is but he grabs it quickly and swims back for the surface. The thing is big and bulky but he swims with it easily. He rights his boat and drags the thing on board. You realise that it is an attractive woman, and as he pulls her hair back from her face he notices this too. Somehow she is still alive and smiles at him with a smile that would turn many heads.

The man begins to row for shore and soon he is dragging his boat with its unusual contents onto the beach. He takes out the young woman, and carries her too his house. Once there he lays her in his bed and warms her with towels dried over the fire. All the time she smiles at him, in a way that makes her look very attractive even though bedraggled and cold. Over time the man falls in love with the woman and one day she discovers that she is pregnant with the man’s son…

As the woman becomes heavily pregnant it becomes clear that she is not going to have the child after just nine months. As the years pass, and the child is still not born, the man becomes very old, yet the young woman does not appear to age at all…

Then, nearly one hundred years after they met, the child is soon to be due. The man, now well over 100-years-old is excited, but the woman, still looking as young as ever, seems to dread the coming birth and says to the man that he must not under any circumstances see the birth of his child…

On the day of the birth, the man is waiting for news but he is fretful. He wants to see the woman and bursts into the room…

There on the bed lies a female dragon, and she is obviously having a baby. The man realises what has happened. He has fallen in love with the Sea God, a female dragon that lives under the sea, wife of Lyada, one of the four rulers of Marzyana, this world’s equivalent to heaven, where all spirits would congregate after death. This discovery is too much for the old man and he is bedridden from the shock of it all…

The baby is born to the world and it is a dragon like its mother. It is a large and strong dragon and it is named Veftlor. This is the beginning of his life, brought into the world as an illicit child…

Then, several days after the birth, Lyada, the holder of two swords, comes down to his wife and knowing what she has done, kills her. He makes an attempt to kill Vefltor, but as luck would have it the strike was wide and merely injured the sleeping dragon. At the time Lyada did not know this and happy with his work, left that fateful place…

When his servants informed the father of these events he called his son in to speak with him and although the dragon was young, it would remember the words its father said for its entire life. The man gave the small dragon two things. The first was a small manuscript with words that would one day be useful to Veftlor, although he was not informed of when to use them. His father said that he would just know. The second was a small scripture, which bore an incantation that would carry Veftlor to another part of the universe, and again the man would say little about this and its destination. And with these words being his last the man died, looking into the eyes of his dragon son…

Now fatherless as well as motherless, Veftlor grew up in the wild. He learned the things that he knows today from all the animals in the forest and as a result became a powerful fighter, using this power to hunt and kill prey for his ever-increasing appetite. He learned how to fly from the birds, how to hunt from the cats, and how to fight from the insects and lizards that roamed the forest. He spent a lot of time watching the behavior of these animals and became a cunning, stealthy fighter, as well as a powerful and skilled hunter.

Veftlor spent nearly eight hundred years in these forests, surviving as he could and growing in size and power every day. Then, after all this time, he started to realise that something was changing in the world, something was unbalancing the natural way and he realised that Lyada had eventually found him again. It would just be a matter of time until Lyada would come and kill him. At the moment he was concentrating just on wrecking the world, trying to make Veftlor mad enough to make a fatal mistake.

Through all those years of training, Veftlor had learnt many things but most of all, attack was the best form of defense so he plotted to attack Lyada before he had time to get ready for the fight.

However, Lyada lived in Marzyana, or at least as close to Marzyana as he could. He actually lived on a million-mile high mountain, called Mount Sheguru. This mountain had four slopes, made of gold, silver, agate and crystal. And with Lyada at the top lived the other three kings of Marzyana: Nyja, Hotei and Mu. None of these three gods would look on if Lyada was challenged, so they took the side of Lyada. Thus Veftlor had pitted himself against all four kings of Marzyana.

Also, Veftlor had not reckoned on one other thing: Lyada had been planning for some time and had in this time built a new sword…

This sword was called Blue Cloud and on it was engraved two elemental runes: that of air and that of fire. When swung this sword would use these two runes to create an almost unstoppable attack. First, the Black Winds would come; these produced thousands of spears in the air that would pierce men’s bodies and turn them to dust. Then fire: the air would become thick with golden snakes that would bite men and poison them, and at the same time a smoke so thick that it was inescapable would be produced to trap all men within.

So, Veftlor’s plan was first to stop the destruction of the world, so he used his body to fill the hole that had been created in the sky and used his wings to stop the wind and used his fire to remove the floods that covered the landscape. But the most important part of his plan was to create new dragons that would guard the world should he die. From his body he took scales and, placing them on other animals in the forest, he created 5 types of lesser dragon.

1-Heavenly – These to guard the Gods.
2-Imperial – These to guard the species on the planet
3-Spiritual – These to control the wind and rain
4-Earthly – These to control flood and draught
5-Guardians – These to guard all things precious, like gold and artifacts

And so as his plan came together, Veftlor planned his attack on mount Sheguru.

The actual storming of the mount came very quickly to a conclusion. Veftlor used his massive wings to fly to the summit of the mount, and finding there a pagoda for the Gods, he breathed fire to raze this to ground.

Then landing his massive form among the surprised Gods he used the techniques he had learned to slay the Gods. First he turned to Lyada and using the skill of the mantis, managed to put his fist straight through the Gods chest, killing him instantly as he reached for his sword. Then turning to Hotei, he used the speed of the cat to dodge the blow, before using his claws to tear at the Gods chest, leaving him bleeding on the floor as he turned to face Nyja. This time he remembered the skills he learnt from the deer, and, balancing on his front feet, kicked with both legs, knocking the God over the edge of the mountain, making him fall to certain death. And in the same move he brought his tail round to cut Mu completely in half, as he had many times seen the scorpion do.

Then, standing amongst the mortal bodies of the Gods, Veftlor spoke the words of his father, so that the souls of the Gods, which still lived on, could not take mortal form again and could not damage the world in his absence. Wanting to be rid of this place, with all the memories that he hated so much, Veftlor spoke an incantation that transferred him to another place entirely, a place where his powers were weaker and he could not harm Gods as he had done before. On his old home he knew that the many dragons he had created would be ample to guard it from harm and set about creating dragons in this new place, so as it too could one day be left, to return to its natural equilibrium and to survive forever.

On this new planet Veftlor found himself in a beautiful valley and spent his first five hundred years entirely in this one place. As the world grew up around him he noticed none of it and no one noticed him. That is until mortal beings started venturing into his valley, forcing him out into a world heavily populated, where his presence was excepted as just another God to which the mortals could pray. This new planet was called Kivekia and was no danger to this massive dragon. As a result Veftlor is taking his time to choose suitable dragons to guard the world, and has been choosing for over a millennium.

Look out for him, for if you are a truly noble person, you may be the next person he picks to be a dragon and to serve under him. If he grants you this power do not abuse it; it is easily revoked and he does not take kindly to it…