I suppose I’ve put this off long enough. I have no kin, of blood or heart, and find the prospect of meeting a mate to hatch a brood with quite unlikely. Yet, if there’s a chance, however slim, that I’ll not fade completely with my death, I feel I must at least try. Hopefully, someone has received this, and it isn’t just wasted effort on my part…

My apologies, I’m not usually this melancholic. I’ve had a brush with death recently that’s left me quite pensive, but I suppose we’ll get to that in time. For now, let’s begin properly, as my elders once did.

My name is Kel’iross Seabreaker. I am, to my knowledge, the most recent First, and quite certainly the weakest. As I shape this memory, it has been 2976 years since the 3rd calamity, but I’ve only seen 31 of them. This shard of my will shall bear the memories of my early years, and though I can not yet say I have learned any great secrets of the world, it shall hold the basics of magic, with a focus on lightning and frost, alongside several of the more important lessons I have learned thus far. May they be as useful to you as they have been to me. 

My birth was a fluke. In truth, I should have died along with the rest of my clutch, yet providence, for better or worse, intervened to save me. From my parents’ wills I know that we were laid late in the spring, and expected to hatch a few days past the winter solstice. We were their first clutch, and they had high hopes for us. Perhaps too high. They wanted fire dragons, you see, not Ash or Ember as they were, and it was that very dream that killed my siblings. As my parents weren’t strong enough to seize a nest in a true volcano, they instead had to stoke a great fire within a shallow laying cave on a mountain near our clan’s summerhold. My father flew out daily to bring back dry trees and my mother worked ceaselessly to stoke the flames while keeping us clear of too much Ash and Smoke. 

Their plan worked, for months on end, but it left them with little time or energy to hunt, let alone deepen the shallow cave in preparation for winter. As the seasons passed, and the clan flew off to their winterhold, they grew thinner and thinner. But, even though they could only breathe smoke, they were true dragons. Their magic sustained them, and the memories of their elders comforted them, assuring them that others in the past had survived far longer with far less. In all likelihood they would have succeeded, should have succeeded. Except… one day, about a month before our hatching, the skies grew dark and clouded. The storm had come from the southwest, a freak occurrence in the winter, not seen in a hundred years of memories, yet there none the same. It crashed into the mountain range with a vengeance, calling forth howling winds that uprooted trees and kept my parents grounded for shelter. The worst of the storm lasted for only a few days, until it exhausted itself, but the rain persisted for weeks afterward. It was a steady downpour that soaked the land thoroughly. While the cave was barely deep enough to protect us from the direct effects, wet wood burns poorly, if at all, and my father was too weak to fly far enough to find any that was still dry. The fire went out, and the clutch grew cold.

I can’t say how I survived. Not with any certainty at least. My parents’ wills scream there, with a pain I haven’t dared to push through. Maybe I never will… but nonetheless, this is my story, not theirs. I was neither the largest of eggs, nor the smallest, and I was in the outer, colder ring of the nest. Perhaps that coldness was what let me change and endure, but that’s only a supposition and a particularly weak one at that. All I know for certain is that the fire went out sometime during the second week of rain, meaning that I spent two weeks in the cold before finally… I hatched.

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I quietly broke through my egg’s shell. The sharp horn on the tip of my snout punctured the outer wall, and let me get my first taste of air. Several strong scents vied for my attention, as my lungs filled with their first breath. The elders’ memories quickly tied them to names.

Ash, the burnt dust leftover from a fire. Petrichor, the smell of wet earth after rain. Pine, a type of evergreen tree found in colder forests. A forest, a large co…

No. I quickly shook myself, dispelling the memories’ hold. I couldn’t afford to lose myself in them. Not now. I had to be the first one out! The memories were very clear about that. The first to hatch was the first to eat, and the first to eat got their choice of the meat! I found myself salivating, unbidden, as memories of delicious hearts and livers flowed up from the elders’ times as hatchlings. Once again, I pushed them off, focusing on the task at hand. Though I’d broken through the shell, I had yet to actually escape the egg itself. Moving my horn out of the way, I quickly hooked my foreclaws into the gap it had created. Using my tail and back legs as leverage, I pushed outward, breaking off pieces of shell and forcing the opening wider. Eventually, after a few repetitions, and an only slightly mortifying failed attempt to wriggle through, I’d widened the hole enough to get out.

I stood proudly on my own four legs for the first time, and stretched my wings outward as I surveyed the shattered remains of the first great obstacle I’d overcome. It was quite impressive, to be sure, until a small gust of wind sent me scuttling back into those egg remains to shiver. The world outside the egg was cold! I glared, angrily, at the mouth of the cave, whose bright light held the source of that loathsome chill. Hissing, I struck out a few times, until the wind, clearly rather intimidated, chose to stop blowing. Another triumph!

Once again quite satisfied with myself, I started to sniff around, searching for the promised carcass. Personally, I hoped it would still be warm and fresh, though some of the elders swore by colder carcasses that had had enough time to properly “ripen”. I’d have to try it someday, but in truth, it just sounded disgusting to me. 

After a few breaths detecting nothing more than the scents of the cave and forest around it, I reared up onto my hind legs and craned my neck to hopefully see the carcass somewhere. The cave was quite small, with a smoothed, stone floor. Even sitting at the bottom of a shallow depression, I could see it in its entirety and even peek out into the clearing outside, where fallen trees and flattened plants served as proof that dragons had passed through regularly. Around the edges of the cave, a few pillars had been carved out, seemingly with great care, but none of them were wide enough to hide a deer. I began to feel a sinking sensation in my stomach, as I looked and looked but found nothing.

Was I too late? I’d broken through as soon as I felt ready, but maybe the others...

No, that wasn’t it. Looking behind me, I saw all of the other eggs were intact and still. I stepped forward, hoping to get a better viewing angle from atop the firepit. Yet, as soon as I stepped off the egg shelf, my legs sank deep into ash. Cold, wet ash… No. I pushed the rising tide of thoughts away once more, and scrambled my way up onto the level floor. 

Nothing. There was nothing. Not a deer, not a sheep, not even a hare. The fires were out. The scent of dragon was old. My parents were gone. And I was alone.