#undragoned dragons

[midoristeashop]

was feeling silly goofy so I undragoned the dragons

I’ve seen some artists draw human versions of the dragon gang so naturally I wanted to join in the fun 😌

[kamabokobun]

Un-dragons your spirits <3

[riffuxpawz]

imagine tho

[poizonedapplez]

Darkspawn 🔪🩸

[zelda-the-sacred-realm]

I heard this theory that the Spirit Dragons Dinraal, Farosh, and Neydra were once Zonai in the past. This theory is strengthened by the introduction to the forbidden art of draconification as well as the dragons sharing similar facial features to that of Rauru and Mineru (the last of the Zonai by the time of Ganondorf). I thought I'd share my take on origins of the 3 original dragons and why they became the way they are.

("The Undragoned Dragons" by kamabokobun)

Long ago, well before Rauru and Sonia, when the Zonai empire was at its peak. The Springs of Power, Wisdom, and Courage were tended to not by dragons, but by Zonai priests or shrine maidens. Each priest was trained from a young age to eventually take up the position of the new priest. This sacred duty was passed down from generation to generation until it eventually reached Neydra, Farosh, and Dinraal. I'm not sure whether it was through prophecy, observation, or even a mix of both, but the priests had come to a startling realization... The Zonai Empire was doomed.

This likely led to a secret meeting with the priests as to what was to be done as, without a future heir, the Sacred Springs would fall into ruin and fade away. Eventually, they came to the conclusion that in order guarantee the shrines' permanent protection, the priests had only one choice... draconification. Likely they knew what this act would cost them as well as it being explicitly forbidden, they decided to keep it a secret to prevent others from stopping them. When the time finally came, Dinraal, Farosh, and Neydra swallowed each of their secret stones, and with that the priests were no more, and the dragons were born.

Over the course of centuries, the Zonai empire would eventually fall into ruin, and any memory of the Spirit Dragons ever being Zonai would be lost to time. Yet still they remain, diligently guarding the Springs of Wisdom, Power, and Courage as they had always done, hidden away from all save magic or the innocent. The story of TOTK is surrounded by triumph and tragedy, community, responsibility, as well as sacrificing for one's self either for others or for your own gain. But the story of the dragons will always stand as one of the biggest tragedies of all, three people who gave everything they had so that the task they'd sworn their lives to would not be in vain. A task they still perform even after the Zonai empire has long since been buried and forgotten in the sands of time.

I like this theory and the plot for the 3 dragons. When Mineru tells Zelda about the secret stone and what happens by swallow it, I immediately thought that at that point dragons were people in the past.

What makes me think most is how the Zonai knew that by swallowing the secret stone one could live forever in a dragon form, I mean, how did they come to this conclusion? Someone had done this well before the 3 dragons came? And how did Ganondorf know if Rauru had already imprisoned him when Zelda did the deed?

In Totk there are too many uncovered points from the plot side and that's what I don't like, adding a new population without dealing with their history really leaves a lot of unknowns. I think spending some time on their story in the game would have been better.

I like this theory, I personally think that 3 zonai who spontaneously decide to transform into dragons for the greater good seems really true to me!

Thanks for sharing your story! 💖

[archivingheartbeats]

I swear, I did my very best

To be the answer to your quest,

The one who held the pearl that you had never seen.

I wanted to be your heart's kin,

To let and be let deeper in,

To meet beyond the Door out someplace wild and green.

You said you were a flying ship,

I sought to be your harbour.

When you thought you were a Badger,

I moved house to your cete.

I called myself a dragon,

Said I'd burn down a village for you,

Or be undragoned by you, as you would.

But by the end, you thought that we were never-should,

Were never-should.

[iiryebreadii]

OKAY. OKAY. finished totk. more thoughts. Everything is under a cut because 1) spoilers for the end of the game and 2) it got LONG many thoughts head full

I got all the shrines before going to fight ganondorf, and I'm sad to say they did the botw thing and made it so you can only fully upgrade either stamina OR hearts, not both. Finding the shrines was actually made much easier with the lightroots in the depths! I went around and filled out the full map underground and that let me know which shrines I had missed on the surface, and then for the sky islands I used the hero's path to see which ones I hadn't visited yet and then sifted through those until I found them all

Speaking of, THE REWARD FOR GETTING ALL THE SHRINES?? HELLO?? I can't wait to see what people say about that bit of lore cause idk WHAT is going on there. furry link real

going into the depths of the castle to find ganondorf was so nerve wracking lmao, the music did an excellent job of putting me on edge. and the little note about how the sages' powers can't reach you?? excellent, very ominous

Going back to the very beginning of the game, the corridor where you walk with zelda, but this time without her and with it covered in gloom... ough. My experience with the beginning of the game there was basically me just happy screaming about getting to walk around and talk to zelda, and that juxtaposed with the ending, where I'm getting ready to fight the demon king with ramping anxiety, OUGH very cool

my BROS came to HELP i love them. also I keep forgetting that mineru is a sage even though I use her for piggyback rides all the time

REHYDRATED GANONDORF REAL. like I know we saw him in the trailers and memories and stuff but I wasn't sure if we'd get to fight him at full strength you know? I thought they might pull a fast one on us and make the final fight against pee-paw ganon, which would have been kinda lame tbh

Ganondorf does perfect dodges too!! He gets the slow-mo!! thankfully he cannot flurry rush lol. I spent the entire first phase against him with both of use just circling each other and trading occasional blows, felt very cool

the transformation into the demon king was super cool but my favorite part might have been how the health bar just. kept going. nearly off the screen. that was equal parts awesome and hilarious

I saved a bunch of super strong weapons to fight him and what do I end up doing?? Only using the master sword. my WIFE made that sword for me I am damn well gonna use it to kill him. it just never occurred to me to try to use anything else lol. Except arrows with gibdo bones fused on, cause those things do CRAZY damage

MY MAN ATE HIS STONE. OKAY. OKAY. also I LOVE how much he looked like the calamity during his transformation, with the glow-y yellow eyes and misty body. I wonder if he has any memory of being calamity ganon? Maybe the calamity was just excess rage and malice instead of something with more intent. It was obviously intelligent, but how intelligent?

DRAGON FIGHT DRAGON FIGHT DRAGON FIGHT

MY WIFE CAME TO SAVE ME!! I LOVE HER!!! That whole part of the fight was super cinematic and fun, I got legitimately emotional when she dove in to the rescue. All that time I spent sitting on her head and flying around hyrule, who knew I was actually training for the final fight

ZELDAAAA I'm so glad I could undragon you girl I missed youuuu I missed you <3 rauru and sonia are vibing in the afterlife now, which now makes the fact that rauru passed on asap after helping link make sense, he was probably missing his wife :(

pretty wack that they gave link his normal arm back :/ I guess you could argue it got ungoopified by the shrines + the thing with Sonia and Rauru purifying dragon-zelda but it feels weird to me

I guess a counter point to that, without it we wouldn't get to parallel to the beginning with the reaching out to catch zelda. speaking of. REACHING OUT TO CATCH HER. AUGH IM NOT OK. IM NOT OK!!! literally so emotional. I thought reaching her was gonna be a cutscene but nope!! You have to dive to get to her!! makes me wonder what happens if you don't catch her.......but I would never dare experiment. that's my girl.

i am. so glad. she doesn't remember being a dragon for a billion years. hoooo that would be traumatic. I mean ya girl has trauma in spades but at least she doesn't have to deal with the memory of that part. and she was so happy that she got to see hyrule's founding!! She had her own whole adventure :) and at least a good portion of it was pleasant and filled with new friends!! good for her, good for her

post credits scene was pretty neat!! Felt nice to give mineru a little send off, not for me but for zelda. according to the stone monument things, they were pretty close and they hung out in mineru's lab a lot, so it's nice she got to have a proper goodbye to at least one of her friends from the past. And then everyone pledging to work with her to protect hyrule at the end :')

All in all I have had a STUPENDOUS time with this game, it was a fantastic sequel to a fantastic game. I'm probably gonna still play and find the rest of the sage's wills and play with the building mechanic some more, but I'll leave that for a bit later once I've had a chance to really absorb the ending!! I've got an idea for a totk PMV that I'm working on, so that might make an appearance on this blog once it's done 👀 I'm sure I'll have more thoughts later, but I think this will be my last post in this sort of style with the bullet points and such

also goodness gracious nintendo do NOT make another direct sequel these kids have gone through SO much. let zelda and link go take a nap they've earned it

[ruridragon]

very undragon ruri dragon chapter today. don’t mind those pointy things

[interminal]

lil art warmup for the day :)

[queenlucythevaliant]

In the moments after Eustace and his cousins stumbled back into Lucy’s guest room, he became uncomfortably aware that everything was different.

Eustace stared down at his arms and found none of the tan he had grown accustomed to seeing. His eyes felt strained and out of focus. It took him nearly a full minute to realize it was because his vision had returned to normal, as though he’d never tasted the waters of the Last Sea. A glance in the mirror on the back of the door revealed that his hair was neatly combed, not ruffled and wind-tossed. There wasn’t a freckle on his face.

Perhaps, Eustace should have been less startled by the physical transformation—after all, it wasn’t nearly as dramatic as his undragoning had been—but if anything, this time there was a greater awareness that came with it. Everything was different, his body seemed to sing.

If he had shaken himself from his private reverie a few moments sooner, perhaps Eustace would have seen the moment when Edmund and Lucy sank down onto the bed in one synchronous motion and wrapped their arms around each other. Lucy shook soundlessly as Edmund twined his fingers into her hair, but she was smiling too.

When Eustace went out of the guest room to shakily make some tea, he stepped over Lucy’s suitcase, which was piled high with light-weight dresses in bright, vibrant colors. He glanced into his own bedroom and saw the stack of books that Edmund had left piled on the dresser. I don’t really know my cousins at all, he thought.

Eustace couldn’t know, in that moment, that Edmund would be lending him favorite books for the rest of their all-too-brief lives. He couldn’t know that Lucy’s Narnian brightness would find its way into his stocking at Christmas this year, and the next, and the next. He couldn’t know that Peter and Professor Digory were waiting for him somewhere in a little study, that they’d give him stories about Narnia and words of Greek with equal enthusiasm in a week’s time.

When he returned to the spare bedroom with three cups of tea, Edmund and Lucy were still wrapped around each other like the cords of a rope. Silently, Eustace put their cups down on the end table and focused hard on feeling different.

.

Harold Scrubb believed in progress the way some people believe in God. As far back as Eustace could remember, his father had always taken him along whenever he had reason to visit the train station. “Engines like these will bring us into the new world, my boy,” he would say. “Man is poised to remake the world in his own image. Those of us with the right sorts of ideas had best make certain that image is one we can live with! Progress, Eustace Clarence.”

Eustace had enjoyed looking at the train engines and figuring out how they worked. He’s liked the bustle and the mechanical sounds of the platforms. In time, he’d come to believe what Harold said about progress. Mostly, though, he’d enjoyed his father’s attention, and the feeling of being grown-up and intelligent and important.

Years later, sitting beneath the picture of the Dawn Treader in Lucy’s spare bedroom, Eustace would begin to realize that his father had been wrong. People lived in the worlds they’d been born to, and then sometimes a hand reached in from Elsewhere and brought them somewhere new. People didn’t bring themselves into new worlds. They had to be thrown into them, kicking and screaming and blustering on about the British Consulate.

He remembered being young, imagining the sort of future that Harold wanted to make and thinking how much better it would be. Now he sat beneath the picture and thought, if I made the world over in my image, the people would all be dragons.

.

Edmund sent a copy of The Once and Future King to Experiment House the second week of the new term. “A place to begin, if you’d like to try our sort of books,” read the tight scrawl inside the front cover.

Eustace read it cover to cover in three nights by the light of an electric torch. When he was finished, he turned back to the front and began again. It was different from anything he could remember reading before.

It was a story about kings and knights; Eustace knew that before he cracked the spine. But it was also a story about justice, about Might and Right. When Eustace arrived at, “groping towards Right as a criterion of its own—towards justice as an abstract thing which did not lean upon power,” he underlined it three times. He could all but hear Edmund saying those words, a thoughtful smile playing around the corners of his mouth.

And there was a bright-eyed vibrancy to Guinevere that was easy to imagine in Lucy too. “An ability to be transported by the beauty of physical objects—a heart to ache or swell—a joy so joyful and a sorrow so sorrowful that oceans could lie between them”—yes, that was Lucy to a tee.

Eustace himself was a knight. He was the King’s man, standing at the ready to go where he was sent, to fight for Right. Yet when he hid the book beneath the bed, he was secretly glad not to have anyone he needed to protect just yet.

.

Jill Pole was nervous and small, the sort of creature he’d been peripherally aware of since he’d begun at Experiment House, but never spoken more than a few hundred words to outside of class. Yet when he saw her crying behind the gym, Eustace was certain that in his place, Edmund or Lucy would go and check on her.

He approached her casually, danced around her prickliness, and offered her a peppermint when he couldn’t think what to say.

“Why were you so different last term?” Pole asked.

Eustace could have answered in any number of ways. His chest was tight, the way it so often became when people noticed the difference. On an impulse, he told her about Narnia.

Weeks later, lying beside a dying fire with Puddleglum snoring like a locomotive a few meters away, Eustace whispered into the darkness where he knew Pole was lying awake, “Why did you believe me so quick about this place anyhow?”

Her voice returned out of the shadows a long moment later. “Maybe I wanted to be different too. And you were so earnest… but mostly, I think I just want to be different”

“You will be.”

“I know.”

Eustace squinted towards Pole, trying to make out her silhouette. One of the embers popped, and for a moment he thought he could see her face turned towards him. Her chin was lifted, jaw firm, and she did not look nervous or slight at all. In fact, she looked almost like the same tigress he’d caught a glimpse of before, hiding in the thick grasses and following her prey with her eyes, gathering herself to strike.  

“I think you’re already different,” Eustace whispered. He didn’t know if she heard him.

.

Eustace spent six weeks the next summer staying with the Pevensies, who welcomed both him and Jill into their little conspiracy nearly the moment they arrived. When he first stepped into the Pevensies’ London house, something in him relaxed and he thought, different.

The house was cluttered and ramshackle from the war, and the Pevensie siblings all moved through it as though in orbit around one another. Eustace noticed the way Peter’s gaze and Susan’s smile seemed to linger on Lucy whenever they were in a room together; how Susan rose early and brewed tea while Edmund went to bed last and put out all the lights. They teased one another, wry and funny but never really at anyone’s expense. Before long, they were teasing Eustace and Jill too.

Yet the day Eustace became convinced that these, at last, were his people was a hot, drizzly Tuesday when Peter found him standing out by the mailbox with a letter from Harold and Alberta clutched in his hand.

“Come inside,” Peter told him. “Have some of Su’s coffee, and then we’ll all see about helping you draft a response. No use standing out in the rain, is there?”

.

Sometimes, in the space of a breath, Eustace would be back on the Dawn Treader and Reepicheep or Caspian would be there with him. Caspian today. “I think,” the young king said seriously, “that we’ve held your upbringing against you a little. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I know what that’s like.”

Eustace gaped for a moment, then remembered himself and muttered, “Well, I don’t—that is, I didn’t really think you were a tyrant, before.”

Caspian laughed then, all dauntlessness and youth. He’d given Eustace his sword. “It always feels heavy at first,” he advised. “Mind you, it’s my second best one!”

On maps in his classrooms, Eustace sought out the Caspian Sea. He wondered about the Telmarines, and how the name Caspian had come to exist in both Narnia’s world and Earth’s. Once, Jill’s eyes followed Eustace’s and saw where he was looking. A few minutes later, he felt a hand brush his under the desk and he unfolded a creased piece of paper that simply said, “tell me about him” in Jill’s petite letters.

Caspian had been stooped with age and despair when Eustace saw him again, but he’d come out all right in the end. A little prick of Aslan’s blood, and all that weariness had simply melted away. The king had stood straight and dauntless, young like Eustace had once known him—but he was different too.

The Caspian who had advanced on Experiment House was not only young. He had somehow been all Caspians all at once, Eustace was certain. Everything that it meant to be Caspian had somehow fit into a physical form, yet none of him felt folded or shrunken down.

It made Eustace wonder about other transformations. Dragons shed their skin, he knew. What if each time a skin was shed a truer, lovelier creature was revealed? What if the transformations went on and on until at last he arrived in Aslan’s Country like Caspian, like Reep?

What if Eustace Clarence Scrubb had even more skins to shed?

.

One sweltering Sunday when he was fourteen, Eustace visited the train station with his father. They walked in a comfortable silence: the sort that they hadn’t shared since Eustace had taken up with the Pevensies four summers previous and stopped agreeing with the way his parents thought. Eustace was tall enough to look Harold clear in the eye now. They matched each other stride for long stride.

Eustace enjoyed the outing; for all that he had changed, he still enjoyed being around trains. They exchanged small talk on and off, both looking for ground to meet on. Harold bought them biscuits at one of the kiosks and Eustace said, “thank you” and smiled bright.

They brushed against their differences as they were leaving. “A new world is coming,” Harold said, nodding towards a new engine that was being advertised outside.

“Yes,” replied Eustace, “but it’s staying the same too.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know. But Harold?”

“Yes, my boy?”

“Don’t you ever think that if we rebuilt everything the way we saw fit, it might all end up ugly?”

His father bristled. “Have you really so little confidence in your own intelligence, Eustace Clarence?”

“Have you so much confidence in your own understanding of Right?” Eustace shot back. “We all crave change, I think—we know that things aren’t the way they ought to be. But I don’t think the proper place for it to begin is out there.”

“Where then?” Harold demanded.

Cautiously, Eustace took another bite of his biscuit. “Would you really like to know?”

That afternoon, Eustace sat down at the kitchen table across from both his parents with the stack of letters he’d exchanged with his cousins, Jill, Polly, and the Professor. He told them about Narnia, start to finish: about the feeling of lion-sharp claws digging deep into dragon skin, about being the King’s man, and about being different.

By the time he got through everything, Alberta was blotting her eyes with her handkerchief. Harold exhaled shakily, then nodded.

.

Eustace had long since decided that picnic lunches with Jill were worth braving the inevitable gossip in the dormitories. He’d pilfered an old whicker basket with a broken handle from Mrs. Pevensie a few years back, and he’d gotten quite accomplished at sneaking various meats, fruits, and desserts out of the dining hall beneath his coat. Jill would bring the quilt Susan had given her for her birthday the year before last, spread it out behind the gym where they’d first spoken of Narnia, and they’d sit and chat as though they were the only two people in the world.

The world was full of other people, though: vibrant Lucy and thoughtful Edmund, the Professor with his mouthfuls of Greek, and Susan with her little homemade gifts. Peter had written suggesting they all get together for dinner when the term was out. Eustace couldn’t wait.

Harold and Alberta were at home in Cambridge too, growing more and more different as time wore on. Alberta had thrown away their special underclothes last month and joined a ladies’ Bible study.

And somewhere else, another world was waiting. Not Narnia—thought it was waiting for them too—but the place with the high cliffs and the river, where Caspian had become all Caspians at once. Someday, Eustace was sure, he would get there. Someday, he would look down at his arms and be different for the very last time.  

.

The last time Eustace visited a train station, he listened to the sound of the engines and thought, “there’s a new world waiting for me.”

[anyoldfandom]

Honestly I know we’re sad here on dragonfablr about Tomix and I’m sad too but we don’t give Dove as a character enough credit for just being just delightfully hilarious in a very Dragonfable way like, both in conception and execution.

Conceptually the idea of a dragon, possibly implied to be a Great Elemental Dragon, somehow fucked up so bad that he got cursed into human form and also his attacks heal people. Someone looked at him and said actually fuck you undragons your boy.

And then in personality like. He’s just an absolute goddamn whirlwind every time you interact with him. He brushes off a Doom dragon attack in the Sandsea bc he wants to finish his dinner but then he saves you from Caitiff. He tricks you into thinking Elysia is dead and slips up and exposes himself as a dragon and also mentions he only looks at the pictures in books. Undeniably without his curse, he would be a powerful foe - even now, he’s clearly capable of defending himself and others, even if he can’t actually fight back. Yet undeniably he’s also just like. A guy. Comedy relief that clearly doesn’t like. Get how to handle people. He’s just vibing doing his own thing and also you can go to him for some funny little dragon fashion.

[midoristeashop]

undragoned dragons pt 2??1! + bonus human toof expressions

@sboochi cloudjumper for u my dear

y’all really ate up my last undragoned dragons post (tysm I love all of u) I might do more wink wink wonk

[kamabokobun]

Wish

[narniagiftexchange]

                      THE WINTER NARNIAN GIFT EXCHANGE.

              for: @jaydotwhy from @quecksilvereyes.

there is a saying, woven into Narnia’s sea, and washing into her shores. it drips from a dragon’s maw and a mermaid’s teeth; a mouse’s fur. it glints in the sinking evening sun, heavy and fat on the horizon, a glow even as it dies. from the ache of a suffocating tree, it is woven into nursery rhymes and into the wind that blows east.

I love you. let me be the thing that buries you. let me be the thing that sees your last breath suspended in starlight. let me make a grave for you so peaceful that even the soil forgets to breathe.

-

“They sound like vows”, says Eustace, with soft hands and soft teeth and a spilling, trembling voice. Underneath his hands, Reepicheep shifts. His ear flicks.

“They might have been”, he says. He doesn’t reach for Eustace’ tears. He doesn’t grip his sword. “A long time ago, perhaps they were vows. We don’t know, now. I fear we’ve quite forgotten.” Eustace’s hands are wet and sticky with the juice of a peach, his trousers and his shirt stiff and rough with salt. Reephicheep looks at him, with big, black eyes. “I thought they might know, when Narnia first called them home. But it is older than them, too.”

Behind Reepicheep, the sea is still and clear as glass, blooming in the light of the eastern sun, and if Eustace leans forward enough, he can see the bottom of it lined with pearls. Next to him, Lucy is crying. Big, fat tears that leave angry red marks on her cheeks, her freckles already fading even under this sun, she buries her face in Edmund’s tunic and Edmund-

Edmund looks like he might be sick.

With trembling hands, he holds onto Lucy. With his pale skin and his back hunched and the world on a needle’s point, he looks at Eustace.

Eustace looks at Reepicheep. Beneath their little boat, something moves. Eustace’ skin aches. It’s soft and smooth and raw and-

 -

          where is your scream, Son of Adam?           where is your voice?           don’t tell me it’s still drowned in these waters           fashioned from paint           fashioned from want

          open your mouth           is it not your mother’s voice nestled within it?           is it not your father’s chill           all the way within your hollowed bones?

     we are both      half Beast, half hope.

where is your fight, Talking Mouse? can you still feel the rope on your teeth? there is a table beneath your feet - it’s cracking, see? does not the cavity within you still taste like hemp?

open your eyes is it not a human pup, with human terror and human aches holding you so gently as though you might break?

the sun catches in his hair, see. it’s in the tears on his cheeks.

 -

my sweet. my dear thing. the sea is so quiet now. so still as though it does not fall off the edges of this world in front of your disbelieving eyes. your friend’s fur is soft against your skin. his eyes are a starless night, as is the sky stretched above you. the stars have not yet reached this corner of me, you know. they are not yet enough to fill me whole. this mouse wasn’t born Speaking. you were not born with heat in your guts and tears in your eyes. if you tilt your head, can you see yourself in his eyes? do you think he can see himself in yours?

it isn’t enough to love him. it isn’t enough to hold him. you, undragoned and afraid, must be that which buries him. with human hands that have once known divinity you must send him East. do this, not for a lion or a cousin with a dripping tunic. not for a Star so hungry for the world she took herself out of it. do this, wailing, with the earth moving beneath you, because there has never been a Talking Mouse this far East.

do this for love, child. place him in his boat, and bury him as far East as you can go. with your hands upon me, I will hold my breath and all that moves this world, for a mouse.

[rouge-raccoon]

Edgy Dragons , im honestly pretty happy with Reds coloring heh make em try to be undragon a bit some em that other dragons would shun and call them a monster or something , raisins was a lil troublesome to color in but she looks alright heh

Why yes they are mates ,,,,,because we can

Okay i think now imma take a break

[lord-of-christmas-lights]

I could post regular Narnia headcanons...

Or I could post the continuation of this post and go into depth about how Eustace and Caspian are affected by deity Narnia. Welcome back to Inhuman Narnia 101 and it turned out just as long as the first one so buckle up.

Check out this post by @dorianviolet for another awesome version of Inhuman AU Caspian

Warnings for slight body horror mentions including blood magic stuff, slight religious themes and theological discussion towards the end.

Before anything: This AU directly contradicts canon a lot. I don't care, that's why it's called an AU. Some of it is deliberate, some of it is accidental. I haven't read the books in a number of years, so this is all based on the movies and general information I've picked up from fanfic and tumblr. Discussion on this post is welcomed, criticism and arguments are not. Thank you.

First off, here is the link to an exploration of Dragoning, the Eustace-centric fic I wrote about this. I refer to it repeatedly in this post so if you want the full thing, there it is.

Second, let's get into this. So in my last post, I talked a lot about Narnia, her general existence in this AU, and her motivations as a character. She wants the people in her world to be a part of her, and no one else. Some of this is a conscious choice, and some of it isn't. Eustace's changes throughout his time in VOTDT are definitely not purposeful. It was his greed that drove him to the treasure, it was his own "curse" in becoming a dragon. That was not Narnia reaching out to him and purposefully trying to mold him to her world. As such, he takes on more of an observing role.

Eustace doesn't ever actually directly address his cousins on the subject of their inhumanity, in this fic or in any other I write. He simply sees it, notes it happening, and moves on. Even in the sections in my fics where the subject of inhumanity in general is brought up between Eustace and one of his cousins, it's always about Caspian, the greater Narnian world, or himself.

"Eustace asks why, and Lucy answers. Narnia changes people, she says. It happens to everyone, but the closer you are to her Heart, the greater it is. I don't know where Dragons are. Perhaps closer than we realized. It's exhilarating, isn't it? Aslan will return us to normal though, at the end of our journey." - AEOD

I don't know why, but I don't like the idea of Eustace trying to directly address the Pevensie brand of inhumanity. That line above takes place after his UnDragoning, after the way he sees things has changed, and I see it as him asking what exactly has changed, you know, why are Dragons different than boys?

That brings me to how Eustace himself changes. Now, if he hadn't gone and turned into a Dragon, I imagine Narnia wouldn't have taken much note of him. He's a random human, stuck-up, not at all in line for ruling her lands, and just kind of exists without much else going on. She still would have affected him a little, as she does to all humans in her world but it would have been almost entirely spiritual with no physical changes. And then we got the greatest fuck around and find out scene ever. He becomes a Dragon.

I love dragons, always have, I have a very deep spiritual connection to these creatures, and as such, I have gone all out on worldbuilding for Narnian Dragons. Again, the quote from AEOD, "...the closer you are to her Heart, the greater it is. I don't know where Dragons are. Perhaps closer than we realized." In the Inhuman AU, Dragons were the first creatures Narnia (the deity) and Aslan made when they created Narnia (the world). They just really liked the dragon shape from other worlds and thought, "Hey wouldn't it be cool if our world was populated by these big fire-breathing lizards?" Now I don't actually remember how often Dragons are mentioned and/or featured in the books so I'm going with my idea that Dragons are a somewhat rare but not extinct species. They have to be created through magical means, often through physical transformation of people or objects, though there are a few known cases of natural-born Narnian Dragons. Eustace's creation was the curse on the treasure, though I don't see his Dragoning as a curse itself. As in, the curse isn't in the being a Dragon, it's in how the Dragon was created. So, Eustace experiences this accidental change into a creature that's closer to Narnia's Heart than pretty much any other being in Narnia. They were her first creations, forged from the fire in the Stars, and they are the closest to her magic. And that gets her attention.

Now, if you went and read AEOD, you'll have noticed that one of Eustace's biggest changes (aside from the obvious physical ones) is his vision. This is just a natural thing for Dragons, they are far more in tune with magic and the earth and everything than everyone else, but Narnia's special interest in him definitely amplifies the hell out of his magic sense.

"The people here say dragons see the oddest of things, and he has to assume it's a hallucination....He refuses to give into its whims, reminds himself it's just his imagination. Until Reepicheep comments on it." - AEOD. Following this quote, Reepicheep mentions to Lucy that her inhumanity is returning faster than Edmund's and Eustace has a total panic attack at the idea that what he's seeing is real. He sees what everyone else does, Lucy's stained fingers and Edmund's ability to manipulate words, but he also notices stuff no one else does like the stars in Edmund's throat and the echoes that follow Lucy's words. This is further cemented after his UnDragoning, where the extra stuff he perceived has vanished. Now the general idea in this AU is that the closer to Narnia's Heart you are, the more you know and perceive. Everyone can see some of the more obvious inhuman aspects of the Pevensies, but there are things that only Dragons, druids, Stars, and some other magic folk really close to Narnia's Heart see. I'm not going to get into an exact chart of what certain characters can and cannot see because that can change over time and such and I'd rather leave it mostly up to personal interpretation on what other characters do and do not perceive about the Pevensies and other such inhuman characters.

(Side note—I had to pause in the writing of this post here to go to my second meeting for an autism assessment and I think if I just showed the doctor my notes app and the inhuman/dark fantasy narnia tag on my blog, I'd get the diagnosis instantly lol) So anyways, Narnia senses Eustace becoming a Dragon and is like "Ooohoo what's this?" and starts sort of digging into him in the same way she does to her Kings and Queens. This triggers his already enhanced perception of Narnia (the world) to get even stronger, and this is when he starts seeing stuff like people's souls, Caspian's second heart (more on that soon), and looking at Lucy/Edmund/Lilliandil becomes almost painful because Narnia's magic is so bright in them. Aslan then UnDragons him, which Narnia really doesn't like btw, and Eustace is back to being a fairly average human.

This is where stuff established in AEOD ends.

Now I have so many ideas and half finished fanfics written out in my notes app about Eustace, UnDragoning, and inhumanity and it would be impossible to cover them all here, so I'm just going to go with the highlights. One of my favorite ones is the idea that after Eustace's UnDragoning, he still feels very connected to being a dragon. He's had this taste of pure inhumanity, and something like that doesn't just leave a person. There's a fic I read once long before I was fully invested in this fandom about Eustace and draconity that I will never stop thinking about and was actually the reason I started considering Eustace and Narnian Dragons in this AU. One of the really important things to note is that once a Dragon is created, they can never be uncreated. They can be UnDragoned, where their physical form is returned to whatever it was before their Dragoning (a rock, a talisman, a faun, etc) but their soul has changed on a fundamental level to that of a Dragon. Now for Eustace in my Inhuman AU, this manifests spiritually as a deep longing to return to being a Dragon. Physically, he experiences fun side effects like increased heat tolerance, nails that grow faster than normal, and because Narnia likes to meddle, a single ridge of scales along his spine. In some versions of my drafts, he stays at the end of VOTDT and experiences a slow Dragoning because Narnia's influence on him is that strong, other versions he stays but never quite returns to the Dragon he was before, and in yet other versions, he returns to England and loses that connection enough that physically, he will never be a Dragon again. As I said, Narnia is fascinated by him, she's never really had a human Dragon before, but he is still just a random guy who happens to be related to the Pevensies and as such, she doesn't invest as much time or magic into his inhumanity.

So that's Eustace. This is already such a long post but I promised to talk about both him and Caspian so here we go.

Now, in my last post I talked a bit about how Narnia (the deity) affects the other humans in Narnia (the world) to an extent, but it's nowhere near the amount she does to her Kings and Queens, and also this diminishes more and more the farther you get from Narnia (the country). Telmar is fairly close to Narnia (the country) but as we see in PC, a lot of Narnia's magic and spirit has been diminished by the time Caspian is born. Up until the awakening of the land during the battle, Caspian is essentially 100% human. However, this changes very quickly.

It's hard to pinpoint the exact moment Caspian becomes a King of Narnia. Is it when he refuses to kill Miraz? Is it when Aslan tells him he's one? Is it during his actual coronation? Yes, yes, and yes. I try not to pin it down to an exact moment. By the end of PC though, he's definitely noticing some changes in himself. I have an unpublished part 2 to an exploration of Inhumanity (my only other actually posted fic on this stuff) that I swear I will clean up and get posted soon that goes into further detail on the changes he's noticing at the end of AEOI. Some of the big ones include a second golden heart, seeing some of the life magic in the world around him, and a golden glow on his palms. He also slowly develops the ability to heal, though it's not always consistent. Magic takes practice, lots and lots of practice. In pt 2, the glow on his palms has gotten so bright and also spread around his head like a halo, and Lucy shows him how to conceal it so he's not impossible to look at, but because of Magic™ there's still a dusting of golden powdery stuff across his skin. His blood turns golden because Ben Barnes + golden blood is such pretty imagery, and like the others, it gets sucked down and absorbed into Narnia's Heart when he bleeds in battle. Also when I say he's got a second heart I mean he's got a second fucking heart. Ribcage shift and all. (His appearance doesn't actually change, it's more like a pocket dimension thing going on inside him, but he sure as hell can feel it happening). Having Narnia as a patron goddess just means you have to put up with a second puberty sometimes lol.

Anyways, there's a line in AEOI that I feel explains this stuff really well. "He cannot truly protect the land without becoming a part of it himself." Narnia changes her Kings and Queens because she wants them to be a part of her. Aslan doesn't really see these changes as necessary (in canon, a world without deity Narnia, they don't happen), and if the storyline we pick is the one that's the constant cycle of humanity and inhumanity, it's sort of a push and pull between them. Aslan wants the Pevensies, and by proxy anyone else who rules Narnia or experiences these changes, to keep their humanity, to stay as they were Created by him. Narnia, however, wants them to be as much a part of her as she is of them. It's very clear in both the books and the movies that Narnia (the world) is where these characters belong. In the end, they all come home to her (yes, Susan too because fuck Mr. Clive Staples Lewis). Caspian being anything less than fully inhuman is something she cannot handle. She is constantly having to recreate the Pevensies, reestablish her hold on them, only to have them return to England and become mostly human again. Caspian cannot be taken away from her, he is in this world by birth and she is going to do everything she can to shape him into the ruler he needs to be.

Once again, I would like to state that Aslan and Narnia are not opposing sides of good and evil. Gods cannot be defined by human standards, and to think either Narnia or Aslan completely in the right or wrong in this AU would be, well, an interesting standpoint, but really not the one I'm going for here. I'm not going to say it's a misinterpretation, I am very open to hearing people's thoughts on this AU, and everyone's going to see things differently. Just, please reread what I've written about them before you start making that argument.

Anyways, that wraps this post up because I have spent the better part of the past 6 hours writing this. I spent way more time on Eustace than I intended but it's just so fascinating to think about inhumanity from his perspective considering he's the only one in canon that actually was (briefly) inhuman. Again, if you got this far, congratulations! If you use any of my ideas mentioned here, please tag me, I am so starved for inhuman Narnia content lol.