For the entirety of the first week of raising the child, Valeria was miserable. She didn’t ever recall raising one of her hatchlings, or even those of another dragons, to be such an arduous undertaking. For amongst dragons, it was a common occurrence for the whole brood to participate in the raising of the young. However, after she became matriarch she was no longer required to participate in the raising of young, and only occasionally dallied in it, choosing to mainly focus on her cultivation. She herself had spawned 3 dragons in her many years of existence, all 3 of which are still alive, and powerful members of their race. Only one of the three left to create their own colony, but still visits occasionally. She began to reminisce as she cared for Long Tian.
She had risen to the level of matriarch of the draconic brood many years ago, equivalent to 300 years for the humans. This happened after her mate, the former patriarch, had passed on for his eternal rest, an event that was caused by humans, who in their infinite arrogance and cruelty, thought themselves to be living gods. So, they chose to march upon draconic territory, leading to a massive war between the two groups.
Historically, dragons have been the guardians of whatever territory they had chosen to take up. Thus, when the strongest of the humans had invaded into their forest and began massacring the races residing within, the dragons had to step forth to put a stop to their machinations. However, Valeria was not able to fly to battle with the other dragons at the time, since she was in charge of watching over the brood of younglings at the time.
Upon entering battle, the humans took the youngest and weakest of the dragons down first, while all of their strongest fighters entangled the patriarch. Upon capturing the young, one of which included the firstborn of the patriarch and his mate, they forced the patriarch to surrender himself, on the condition that they release the other younger dragons. They desired only the older, more mature dragons, for a dragon can produce an astonishing quantity of extremely valuable material. This includes their skin, claws, fangs, scales, and even their brain. Their skin and scales can be used to make high grade defensive equipment, the fangs and claws can be used to create weapons, and the brain is supposed to serve as a means of improving their cultivation. Everything in a dragon’s body can be used for something.
The patriarch ultimately capitulated to their desires, and the humans kept their word to release their captives. However, before doing that, they made the young watch as the patriarch was dissembled from the tail to the head for parts, saving his heart and brain for last, keeping him alive for as long as possible. Only after forcing the younger dragons to watch that torture did they release them.
Their intention behind those actions was to force the older dragons out of hiding, so that they could harvest higher quality materials from the dragons. The humans received their wish of getting older and more powerful dragons to come out of hiding. Albeit, it was in a manner far from expected.
Within the draconic society, the leader is decided not by gender, nor by age, but simply, by strength. However, age does normally correlate with strength, since as a dragon got older, their strength would subsequently get higher, as well as their intelligence. And in the case of this brood of dragons, there was a little known fact. The patriarch was not the strongest dragon within their community. His mate, Valeria was. She just had no desire to lead the dragon clan at that time. All that she desired was to raise her and her mates young, and cultivate in peace. Even though in the draconic society, the number of mates that one could have was largely dictated by strength, due to having such a powerful and devoted initial mate, the patriarch had no desire to seek another mate, and thus turned all seekers away.
Upon the return of the young, and hearing what had occurred, the other dragons were furious! They wished to destroy the humans responsible for such atrocities! However, they needed to quickly find a new patriarch or matriarch to lead them in this act of vengeance! Dragons would be little more than a disorganized mob without proper leadership. Many stepped forward in an attempt to take over the position, but none could establish dominance, and so they began to fight to determine who should lead them.
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However, Valeria was in a different situation entirely. She truly cherished her mate, and her grief knew no bounds! After a while of listening to the dragons bickering in the background, she felt something inside of her snap. She roared, “SILENCE!!!!”
Upon hearing her roar, the younger dragons directly lost consciousness, and fell upon the floor. For all the dragons that managed to maintain consciousness, they found themselves prostrated upon the ground, bowing to the sheer strength that Valeria was radiating. It was of such depth that they realized that her strength had always been far beyond that her mate, and that had she so desired, she could have stepped forth to claim the matriarchal position. However, what they did not know, is that the reason behind such a large disparity of strength between two dragons of similar age was that she was born a variant dragon, the Lightning Azure Dragon, and currently the only one in existence. Lightning Azure Dragons are far faster and hit many folds harder than the normal Azure Dragon, a being already called the peak of all dragons, due to their extreme strength, speed, and tyrannical defense, the defense being their most well-known traits. But for Valeria, she had their defense and attack and speed that far exceeded them.
“I, AND I ALONE SHALL SEEK RETRIBUTION FOR MY MATE! THEIR BLOOD SHALL BE HIS FUNERAL WINE, THEIR BONES SHALL MAKE HIS COFFIN, AND THEIR TEARS SHALL SERVE AS HIS FINAL BATH!” At this point Valeria’s eyes had turned crimson red from rage, and she all but hissed these words in her dragon form.
“These humans shall learn their place! They will know TRUE fear after tonight!” And with that, Valeria flew out of the cave at her top speed, leaving naught more than a vacuum of air to fill the gap left behind by her body in her parting.
That night, 60 high-level human cultivators died, 700 cities vanished, leaving naught but ash, 5 kingdoms were wiped off the map, 3 islands sank completely beneath the ocean, never to rise again, and 2 new islands rose out of the ocean from the sheer amount of magma created.
It was later came to be titled the “Draconic Tragedy”. After the event had ended, the dragons all withdrew to their mountainous forest, and proceeded to form relations with all of the other legendary beings living there of high intelligence.
This included the Vermillion Phoenixes, Black Land Tortoises, and even their legendary rival, the White Tigers. However, the one that they ended with forming the closest relationship to was undoubtedly the 3 Footed Golden Sun Crow, simply called the Sanzuwu. This clan was closest to the Azure Dragons in strength.
As for the new Matriarch, after forming these relations, she retired back to her clan, to watch over and manage their affairs, to be sure to ever prevent another such incident. Her oldest child, the one who watched the Patriarch die, decided to strike out on his own, believing his mother had come to hate him, due to being the cause of death for her mate. Valeria at the time, was too numbed by grief to even question his actions, and so he left, leaving with 200 other Azure Dragons, some of them elders, to set up a new brood elsewhere.
The matriarch retired to her closed door training, and has never smiled again since that day.
In the human society, they began rebuilding, and the dragon’s forest became a forbidden zone, and the nesting den of nightmares come to life, where not even the brave or the foolish dare lightly infringe upon.