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Chapter 1

A loud crack bounced around the cave walls, alerting the majestic dragon dozing nearby. Her oval eyes flitted open and her ears pricked up immediately as she steadily got to he feet, breathing a wisp of smoke in the process. She carefully padded over to the source of the cracking - her egg - and sat down to watch as a beautiful baby dragon emerged from the cracked eggshell. He was light blue in colour and was lined with sapphire spikes along his back, all the way to the triangular point at the end of his sleek tail. The mother watched proudly as her newly born son opened his jaw, exposing deadly, pearlescent teeth, simultaneously opening his blue-white wings. He was perfect in almost every way, his only flaw being the mark I his left foreleg; it was shaped like a jagged star, coloured a deep black, identical to that of the night sky. With her keen eyes,the mother immediately spotted it and screeched in shock and horror. She shouted something in the guttural native tongue of the dragons and fled the cave, leaving broken eggshell, the same colour as the baby dragons glittering scales, strewn across the cold stone floor.
"He's marked!" She cried over and over again, "He's marked!" After abandoning her child in the cave she ran as fast as she could to find a dragon elder, smoke gushing out of nostrils, repeating the same phrase at high speed, whipping her tail on the ground in distress. The elder roared for another dragon to take care of the mother and then set off towards the cave.
As he entered the cave, the elder dragon saw the marked baby sitting amongst broken pieces of shell and calmly acquainting himself with his surroundings. The elder dragon growled in greeting, knowing the young dragon was no threat without his human companion from legend and slowly approached him. Standing up and blowing his very first smoke ring, the small dragon acknowledged his elder and waited patiently as his fate was decided.
"My people will be scared," he growled, "They won't trust you. But I am not so cruel as to exile a youngling like yourself. I will instead keep a close eye on you, perhaps posting a guard outside your cave.... You are no threat without your human so we shall always keep their species away." The baby dragon blinked, utterly oblivious to his elders monologue, then sneezed endearingly. With a smile, the old dragon turned to find one of his guards standing outside the cave, accompanied by the marked dragons mother. After quickly dismissing the guard, he asked the mother to name her son, a simple task that should be met with joy, not the terror the female dragon emitted.
"I can't," she whispered ominously, "It's a monster," her ears were flat against her head like a spooked cat.
"It's your son," the elder replied gently, "You won't be harmed." The mother narrowed her glowing silver eyes and succumbed to the elders reassuring words: padding over to he child and opening her mouth to name him. She drew in a long deep breath and said simply,
"Askol." The dragon elder blanched - the name meant cursed. The mother walked out of the cave with hatred in her eyes, never to return to the dragon she would have once called 'son'.