[ WP ] When everyone turns 18 , they receive a pet which is figurative of their personality . You 're the first person to receive a dragon ...

[ WP ] When everyone turns 18, they receive a pet which is figurative of their personality. You're the first person to receive a dragon... 
 
 Goals: 
 
 • Make sure the personality-mirroring part is there too, not just the dragon part 
 
 • Make it more about *after* getting the dragon, not before 
 
 • Make it a rich backstory, not just the actual dragon acquisition 
 
 • Don ’ t focus on the why or how of 18th-year pet acquisition. It happens and it ’ s widely accepted. 
 
 • Don ’ t focus on the dragon. Don ’ t even use the *word* dragon. 
 
 • ***SHOW; DON ’ T TELL. *** 
 
 ========== 
 
 `` Sandbags go there. Line the entrances, six high. When you're done, assist with the evacuation of the nethergrove. Salvage what you can along the way. When the skies fall, leave. Abandon those who refuses to come. The storm will take the stubborn.'' 
 
 A bustle of activity as the city sentinels obeyed the robed man's commands. Behind him women and children wailed. The nethergroves had been their livelihood, and their fathers, brothers, and sons had been adamant about rescuing their sweet trees. However, they had come to a compromise: their wives and children would be taken to safety. But they themselves would die. 
 
 `` Save them, sir, please!'' came the desperate sobbing of a pretty maiden, too young to realize that there was nothing more to be done. `` They said you could command torrents to halt. Have you no mercy?'' 
 
 In a way, it was true. He had done it before. However, that was when he had been standing at the top of a large hill. Fair as she was, this girl could n't get it through her head that water flows downhill. 
 
 ========== 
 
 Fourteen years before the Starfall Event, Joren had come to school quite late. By this time, his instructors did not bother to try to discipline him. Not only was he one of the more well behaved and hard working pupils in the academy, he was also the most shrewd and cunning. Time and again, he'd find a loophole or strike a deal favorable to the instructors, until they had learned that interrupting their instruction in order to be humiliated in front of the other pupils by a boy they had no problems with in the first place was not the way they preferred to spend the early hours of the day. 
 
 However, he was never later than a few rotyims at most. Which is why, when the delinquent arrived with half the day gone, covered in scratches, burns, and a face splitting grin, the academy was intrigued. After all, they had expected this. It was Joren's eighteenth gigarotyim. 
 
 ========== 
 
 `` Forward! Advance! Press the attack!'' 
 
 Anything else the regimenchief with the bloodied uniform might have said was drowned in the war cry of eight thousand angry, cornered warriors. A wise general once said that if you place an army with a natural barrier, like a river, at their backs, they will fight harder and more ferociously than one with the option of retreat. That had assumed, however, that the generals had the choice. The regimenchief was forced into his current position. At his back and to the sides were hills, and in front of them were plains from which the enemy advanced. An ambush a fortnight ago had beheaded their chain of command. Wargod Clarice and the other officers were separated from the main force along with a fifth of the the forces they were leading to secure the control towers from which they commanded the last of their sky obelisks. Amidst the magnesium pellets whizzing by their ears the regimenchief eyed the wargod fall from her strider, two meters to the soft mud, before her loyal sentinels dragged her to cover. The regimenchief, then the most experienced battlemajor they could find, was promptly promoted and put a the head of the remaining strike force. 
 
 Now, the same magspits fired their way as the eight thousand charged to certain doom. The enemy had clearly expected them to hunker down and hole up and try to defend a seige of their fortified positions. They had just begun work on erecting Samson windshields to defend against whatever potshots and artillery they predicted to come. What they had not realized was that the regimenchief's supply of pellets had run dry long before. Even basic cleaning and maintenance materials were sparse, and whatever Samson windshields they had could only be powered for brief moments, considering the amount of oil they had left. 
 
 Heatlances were not powered by oil or fed by magnesium, but energized by the heat of Sol, motion of the wind, and inertial thrust of the lanceman. They were specialized weapons, ones only the vanguard and strider riders -- officers and scouts -- trained extensively with. Yesterday they worked tirelessly to charge and overcharge the lances and teach any and everyone how to wield them. Today, they would be used by lancemen, riflemen, bandagemen, wrenchmen, and wingmen alike. Not a single one of the regimenchief's men held magnesium spitters that day, and they had caught the enemy unprepared. 
 
 Bloodlust raged among the opposing forces as they clashed. Heatlances ran through or cut down wrenchmen and the sentinels tasked with protecting them left and right, front and back. The windshields had provided somewhat of an obstacle, but there were wrenchmen in their numbers as well, and they fell in short order. 
 
 The regimenchief knew, however, that this victory would not last. They had barely gone the fifteen thousand of the enemy forces, and the least trained for open combat, at that. Neither did his men have any illusions of leaving this battlefield alive. Their mission now was not to destroy the adversary; they were simply occupying them long enough for Wargod Clarice and her two thousand to push forth and complete their mission, and take as many of the foe with them as possible. 
 
 Their advance slowed, then stopped. Gradually, they were pushed back as more and more of the foe ’ s warriors rose from their slumbers to meet them. The volume of enemy fire doubled, then tripled, and just when the regimenchief thought that every magspit in the world was present in this little valley, it doubled again. His wrenchmen had planned for this and turned the enemies ’ windshields around to serve them, but their supply of oil would not last forever. He sent out fewer and fewer sorties out to harry their flanks as the enemy wizened and repelled them more and more effectively. A collective prayer rose to the heavens. 
 
 War horns sounded from both sides of the opposing army. The sun, now low in the sky and touching the crests of the hills, was blocked out by a single file of lancemen in Wargod Clarice ’ s colors. Just behind them were riflemen with magspits at the ready. Another low rumble of the war horns and the vanguard set off at a charge, the riflemen behind them advancing slower but steadily, providing suppressive fire. 
 
 “ ’ Genchief! ‘ Genchief! It ’ s reinforcements! We ’ re sav— What the hell? ” 
 
 The two elements flanked both sides of the opposition. On the right, three…four…five…six hundred men in total? On the left…barely three hundred! Nine hundred against fifteen thousand. This would be a slaughter, unseen flank or not. He could see the officers ’ striders in the center rear of the army, portable windshields up on all sides, yelling orders down to the men. Wargod Clarice was with the smaller element, pushing well ahead of the riflemen, but behind the vanguard. 
 
 There were too little of them. They would be slaughtered, he knew it. The only reason they ’ d be doing something like this was to give the eight thousand a fighting chance to escape in the confusion. The regimenchief stood from cover of the rocks—safely behind a windshield, of course—and commanded his men to rise to the challenge, to not be outdone by their valiant comrades. The men rose, lanceman and rifleman and bandageman and wrenchman and wingman alike, and steeled their nerves, ready to die or to live as fate dictated it. 
 
 Suddenly, there was a rush of wind, and a large shadow engulfed them. No, the regimenchief thought. They weren ’ t here to save us. They were here for revenge, or as a last stand. Wargod Clarice had not been able to secure communications with the sky obelisks, and the enemy had instead made them fall from the sky once again. His last breath would be of superheated air, and his grave marked by metals and composites from the Void. He would die anonymously and so would his— 
 
 Another rush of wind and the shadow shifted and twisted and moved. A tremendous roar shook the very ground they stood on. Regimenchief Joren looked to the sky and saw that the blood-red clouds had been replaced by orange flame and leather. 
 
 They were saved. 
 
 =========== 
 
 cont.
