Chapter Text
It starts simply, insignificant, as most things do. A shift in time, a shuffled line of succession. A father in one timeline, becoming the son. The big things stay the same, a boy running from home, a scarred prince, a fiery atrocity. But the timing? The timing is the important part.
It starts, and ends, the same as the story we know; with a boy, and a storm, and an oncoming war. A power hungry ruler that will give birth to a line of dragon slayers, and slay the people of the breeze.
It starts with a boy. It starts with a storm. It starts with the fire of a heart turning from loyalty to rebellion, in the desperate hope that someone can be saved from the fire-hunger of his father’s ambition. Because his father hungers to destroy, hungers to hurt, hungers for power, more than anything else.
The bandaged burn on his left eye is proof of this.
The boy was not born in a war, and neither was his father. The dragons still live in great numbers. The air nomads are still breathing.
They won’t stay that way, if his father does as he wishes. If the boy cannot get there in time.
Hence, climbing a mountain, in the midst of a storm, with one good eye, as one does, if the one is the 14 year old prince of fire, and fueled by desperation. It’s a very good fuel, desperation, right up there with adrenaline. The two go hand in hand, practically brothers, at the very least, brothers in arms. They course up the spine, leaving jitters in their wake, and the recipient of the feelings can either clutch to steadiness with determination, or wait them out, until the shivers fade.
The boy cannot afford to wait, and as such, clings grimly to the cliffside, fingers clenched on slick, rain soaked rock as the wind slices through his shirt like an angry eagle-shrike’s claws.
The rain hammers down on his head, sapping warmth from his flesh. The wind buffets and tears at him, pitching debris and rocks, hoping to pull him to instability, to drag him to his death waiting on the island far below.
The boy has a deadline, and had he been able to wait out the storm, he would have. There is an armada on the way, a comet preparing to streak across the sky, setting petrol to the flames of millions of souls, some of which come to destroy the peace of the people in the temple above.
He claws his way to the staircase of smooth hewn stone, and sighs in relief, shivering, and ascends the easier path through the elements. He approaches the main chamber of the temple, and knocks as loudly as he can, cringing at the interruption to the quiet, devoid of humanity.
He needs to warn them.