#Just fancied writing some lore for Asya and her dragon side ;3

[ezra-iolite]

Pirateformers AU: Asya and Apophis

The beasts may have been slain, but the rule still remains... There will always be a dragon upon the Throne of Crimson Sands...

(TL;DR... Asya has PTSD and Disassociative Identity Disorder, both of which created her Alter, Apophis the Serpent Dragon, or Apo for short. (Pronounced Ah-po-fis, uses They/Them pronouns in contrast to Asya's She/Her ones.)

Every full moon, for a full week, or when Asya is highly stressed, Apo will take over Asya's body to prowl the ship and hunt down vermin or invading Deep Dwellers at night, in order to satisfy their yearning for human flesh, at least until Elbent helped to tame the Beast and give back Apo's sentience, through the dulling of their soul from being imprisoned in Asya's mind for so long due to her shame of the Beast. However, when it gets really bad for Asya and Apo... They must be locked up in a cell, chained and muzzled for the crew's safety. For while Apo is protective and will front when Asya is in danger and highly emotional, they are greedy, eagerly sadistic and hungry for blood and anything they can hoard.)

When Asya was born the heir of the Savannian throne, under the rule of the Dragon Lord, Jhamal Omari, something grew within her from the day Lord Omari shunned his creation, in favour of pillaging the neighboring states and domains of other lords of the sands. For whenever he was home, the Oasis Palace was never a safe place for Asya or her mother, the marriage-trapped Gasira Mutheru. The Dragon Lord took what he deemed his, and soon he ruled the entire Savannah with an iron claw, one that he made literal with the touching up of his ancestor's symbolic weapons, a status of the one who controlled the throne and the Oasis, the Dragon Scale Gauntlets.

Rarely did he take them off, including his few interactions with his heir, where he used them on her to "correct" her behavior as the future "male" heir and Dragon Lord. But little did either Dragon Kin know that deep inside the heir of the Crimson Sands, each strike of the Dragon Lord's claws upon his child developed a beast within her soul... Hungry for revenge.

The beast grew in the form of Asya's draconic urges and instincts, as her body adapted to the blend of human and dragon blood within her throughout her adolescence. By the time she turned thirteen, long after the trauma of witnessing her mother's neglectful death by a curable fever, the beast began to whisper to her, guiding her on the ways of using her blood-fire and how to defend herself against her father's cruelty and physical abuse.

But it grew hungrier with each step she took into embracing her dragon side, into accepting her father's legacy...

When she finally spoke out against her father and asked that he see her as his daughter, rather than a son or a tool for his conquest, he lashed out and fought her along the city streets of the Oasis, scarring her body and mind for the rest of her days... and awakening the wrath of the Beast within her.

Finally, the Beast awoke to protect its host. And it did so eagerly, by stealing the gauntlets of the Dragon Lord and fighting back using them against their old master, leaving behind three brutal scars across his face, not blinding him but leaving the mark of a failed parent and king for all to see. Accordingly, the Dragon Lord banished Asya and placed a bounty on her head, for her immediate death should she ever return home. Asya left happily with what little she could pack and the ship her mother left her in her will, the Alstroemeria, alongside the symbols of the Throne, her new gauntlets, and left with the intent of never coming back, leaving the kingdom to rot for all she cared, even though the guilt would eat at her for the decades to come.

For many long years, Asya sailed alone, but not entirely alone. No, never was she truly alone in her own mind since her youth, now that she had the peace and quiet to hear their voice...

To hear her Guardian Dragon speak.

But while they swore to always protect Asya and keep her alive, they were eager to hunt, greedy to hoard what little wealth Asya stole to survive on, and thirsted for mortal blood.

At first, Asya controlled her Guardian to keep them on their best behavior in public and during the peak of lunar activity, when the feral dragon became stronger and could more easily front in Asya's mind and control her body, leaving Asya to wake up the next day or even the following week caked in blood and with no memory of what had happened.

She put an end to the cycle on the day she awoke to find her former lover, a human she had been with years before her encounter with her future husbands, skinned and torn to shreds, with his heart in her belly. On that day, she created her first cell to contain both her and the beast imprisoned, a habit she continued once she was rescued and allowed to call the Immortal Sun her permanent home.

However... while others viewed her as a beast to be feared, especially after her first encounter with one of its crew, it was the captain who made the first move to understand and willingly speak to the beast as an equal, not as an animal. It took time, bribery with meat, and patience, but eventually Elbent earned the beast's trust and love through Asya's memories of her and their own evaluation on the siren's kind heart and beauty. Through their bond, the beast began to relearn how to speak, how to be more civil, and soon remembered its name and past from before becoming Asya's spiritual guardian from within her....

Their name was Apophis, a pure and genuine dragon, one of the many that ruled the Crimson Sands before they were hunted down by the hands of mortal men... Those same mortals who took the throne from Apo's kin and gave it to the hybrids of their secret union, forged by the neutral folk who saw neither side of the war as the enemy between Man and Beast, creating the half human-half beast Dragon Kin species... For even as a spirit within a neglected halfling, Apo has never feared the fate of their old throne.

For they have always known, that while their kind are now extinct, the rule of the Savannah still remains... There will always be a dragon upon the Throne of Crimson Sands.

The Serpent will make sure of it.

(Note: When the full moon week arrives, the person who is fronting in Asya's body will be more easily seen by the use of the fire that shapes her draconic horns and tail, more often a sign that the Beast is in control. However, when they switch, Apophis will have red flames and speak with growls in a deeper voice. When Asya takes back control, her horns and tail will turn orange.)