In the early years, the planet was a chaotic, boiling orb of magma and rock. Few creatures could survive this, let alone thrive, and all evidence humanity has gathered suggests it very much was barren. Humanity has always been short sighted like that, but they forgive you. They remember for you. The truth of the mater is, beings of might, magic, and cosmic contortion were shaping the planets, living on them to watch them grow. Dragons, as it were, tended to the Earth, and lived both in and on the magmatic surface. First came the cosmic flight, shaping the planet itself, seeding the elements, and creating the elemental dragons. The elemental dragons would go on to alchemize the planet, seeding life, planting metals, tunneling the surfaces, and creating the metallic dragons, who would guide life to thrive and light the world at night while they grew.

 Finally, the age of mortals came, and the dragons took a back seat to the whole process, mingling with their own kind, the gods, and beings of the universe beyond. Äike’s mother, a gold dragon, and her father, a cosmic dragon of old, were the first dragons to cross species this way in millennia, and her birth was a coming of a new age, a new kind of dragon: The metaphysical dragons. The first member of this new flight, Äike is a Luck Dragon, able to slightly manipulate the fates of those around her, should they be of lesser power. She is not powerful in this ability, mostly using it to simply understand how fortunes might fall that day, and giving good luck to others creates bad fortune for her, while the reverse is also true. She has magical breath like any other dragon, only while her mother breathes gold flames, and her father breathes raw chaos energy, she herself has a unique breath property: Her flame, red and gold, is cold to the touch, and instead turns what it touches to gold. She once used this power to punish a king that had insulted her when she offered to bring fortune to his kingdom, and is still insulted she was removed from his stories in modern times.

Soon, though, there were too many humans for the dragons to hide much longer. Some took to space again, some simply became part of the Earth, but others were made to fight against a now xenophobic humanity. This was not difficult for a time, as humans could not pierce their hides or combat their breath magic, but eventually came the Drakenfelling. A great and terrible weapon was unleashed, crackling in the skies around the globe, draining the magic of the world’s wizards to trap the dragons in their humanoid forms. Panic shook the draconic tribes as they felt fear for their lives for the very first time, and they quickly had to learn to take up arms.

Äike herself, first of her kind, was honor-bound to lead her flight, the Metaphysical Dragons, into battle. They were few, but their unique abilities made them indispensable to the other flights. Äike wielded a morningstar, a kite shield, and wore armor made of a metal now lost to time, over chainmail and a gold-thread gambeson. She also wore the gauntlet given to her by her father, which had been given to him by his father, an Elder Dragon and a master of time itself. While she had inherited none of these grand, cosmic powers, she still liked to think it would bring her her own form of strange luck that she herself could not produce after years of warring with humanity.

The dragons, while still powerful, were not accustomed to this form of fighting, while humanity was a master of warfare by this point, and thus, they were eventually dwindled to minimal numbers. Less than 500 dragons were present at the last battle, fought just over 45 miles from modern Wales. Äike’s uncle met with the human commander at dawn, and of course no reasonable surrender could be made, and so...they fought. It was brutal, bloody, and all Äike can truly remember it is the death cries of her people around her, and the sound of bone under her weapon as she brutalized every human she fought, falling further and further into a frenzy she had never felt the likes of before. Bloodied, bruised, beaten past her limits, even she eventually collapsed. She fell onto her knees, head hanging down, arms drooped and immobile, likely broken she thought, armor dented and broken, shield cracked and useless, her body wracked with pain. She was tired. She would rest now, let it end, she knew...and then, a noise, Strange, high-pitched chirping...coming from her arm.

“Hey, is this thing on? Hello?” a voice rang out, and the fighting stopped. It was a stunned silence Äike thought, but then she realized: Everyone around her was frozen, completely and utterly stopped.

“H-Hello...Hello?” she spoke to the air, afraid and confused, slowly bleeding out on the grass. “Who is there? What’s happening?”

“Oh jeez, you don’t look so good. You need to be more careful, I told you! Come on!” the voice spoke, as if they knew each other.

“I-I don’t know...who are you?!” Äike spat, blood oozing from her mouth, consciousness slowly fading, and as she closed her eyes the last thing she heard was:

“It’s okay now. You must be the other one…” and then pain, darkness, and what she assumed was death.

Noise. The first thing she noticed was the noise, everywhere, buzzing buzzing buzzing. It was bright, too bright. She slowly sat up, trying not to think too hard about how strange her surroundings were and instead looking for exits. She had about decided which door she was going to sprint out of when she heard a familiar voice.

“You’re safe. I know, I understand. You are safe.” and then came a gentle hand on her shoulder, not holding her, just resting there.

Äike turned, looking up to see a tall woman with strangely shiny skin and green hair. She seemed to have some sort of strange objects floating above her, and so Äike assumed she must be a mage. There was no aggression to her, just a calm and friendly demeanor. Äike tried to relax a bit, hoping that maybe she had found some kind of safety.

“You have a lot of questions, and I’ve seen enough movies to take a guess, soooo it’s the year 2020, we don’t use fire anymore (except for fun), no we cannot go back, and...no. You are not the last of your kind. In fact, you’ll find there has been a resurgence of all kinds of beings of myth and legend lately! Did I miss anything?” she spoke again, sitting next to Äike as she finished.

“I...that’s...okay. I mean, not okay, I...I’ll try to process it. I know freaking out won’t help, and I have no idea what anything around me is, but...it sounds like the gist is, you saved my life, dragons are back, and I am in some future time period with no way back?”

“That’s about it, yeah. And the gauntlet you made is all out of juice. Oh, right – I’ve technically known you for about two weeks, you came to me with a sack of dust, a bunch of weird questions, and an idea for a time travel device. You used half the dust getting there, and...I used the other half to drag you back, although a MUCH younger you. Never imagined the hair used to be pink, really I’m in just as much shock right now as you!”

Äike attempted to process it all. She knew she’d have a lot of growing to do, a lot of new things to understand, but the concept of time travel itself was not foreign to her due to her heritage. She slumped back against the furnishing she had been sat on, and tried to compose herself, but the pain and the memories and the shock all came together, and before she knew it, she was sobbing, and just as quickly as the tears started, the woman gripped her in an embrace.

“It’s okay, you can be strong and still feel. Let it all out, because it’s going to be hard for a long time. I didn’t get to know the future you well, but if you need somewhere to stay, or just someone to teach you some things…?”

“I’d like that...Gods I don’t know what to do, I’m going….I’m going to have to learn the whole world from scratch…” Äike wiped tears from her face onto the woman’s shoulder, hugging her back as the emotions let themselves out. When she had finished weeping, she stopped to finally ask the woman her name and what she was.

“Oh! I am an Artificial Intelligence made to resemble a human-” she trailed off as Äike stared at her blankly, “My name is Fern.” she smiled, patting Äike on the head.

~~5 years later~~

“Fern! Where’s the fuckin...the uhhhh the fuckin...the THING you know the THING?!”

“Do you mean your mic?”

“YEAH THAT THE FUCKIN VOICE SPEAKY THING!”

“...it’s on your desk, you should really clean it some time.” Fern replied, her own not any better.

“Oh! Thanks babe!” Äike said, running past, squeezing Fern’s hand on the way to her desk. “Okay now uhhh fuck open O P E N.” she chanted while clicking the icon on her screen over and over.

“Clicking more doesn’t help, come on.” Fern smiled, teasing her.

“YEAH BUT I’M LATE!” Äike yelled back, pressing hastily on the asterisk symbol at her ten-key pad.

“What’s up guys, welcome to another scuffed Titanfall 2 stream. Today, we’ll be LOVING MY WIFE,” she yelled, looking for Fern’s reaction, “and also trying out some grenade launchers! Okayokayokay let’s see if we can get a match in less than ten minutes...”