CASIMIRA
dragon-shifting daughter of ashhal and ryatah
When Reave had warned her of a storm coming to Tephra she hadn’t quite known what to do with the information. The flooding of the south had already left her on edge, the waters having crept too close for her liking. Another natural disaster could prove to be the tipping point for the volcanic kingdom—the one that pushed them over the edge and into oblivion. She knew how to prepare for an attack from another kingdom, but how was she supposed to ward off nature itself?
Other than sharing the information with Savior, Leliana and Isilya are the only other residents privy to what Nerine’s king had told her. Her fear was that warning everyone would incite widespread panic, and it seemed unnecessary when it was something so beyond their control. She could not change the weather, nor did she know exactly when it would hit. It would do nothing but cause everyone to live in fear of something that could be years away.
Every dark cloud on the horizon is met with suspicion, but she keeps quiet.
Every roll of thunder sets her nerves on fire, but she says nothing.
When the wind picks up so does her pulse, but she gives no indicator that something is wrong.
It’s almost a relief when it finally arrives.
The storm comes, unassuming as all the others, until lightning cracks through the sky and strikes the side of the volcano. The last time the volcano had erupted Casimira had already been dead, shattered to dust by Starsin, and so for a moment she stands, transfixed by the destruction. But more strikes follow, drawing her back to the unforgiving present, and immediately she turns to locate her children and as many Tephra residents as she can.
She does not know how she dodges the lightning strikes as they pepper the earth, and she tries to not look too closely at the rivers of magma that course by her as she runs. She focuses instead on the faces as she passes them, mentally checking them off the list when she instructs them to get as far from the volcano as they can before moving on.
Just as quickly as it had begun, the shower of lightning strikes ceases, leaving Tephra to boil in the aftermath.
Breathless, Casimira comes to a stop not far from one of the roaring currents of lava. Her ice-blue eyes are bright and shining with adrenaline and fear, her body is coated in an armor of dragon scales, and she tries to will her heartbeat to return to normal. She stands in the wake of the destruction the lightning had brought upon her kingdom, and wonders if she will have to see Tephra partially destroyed in each of her lifetimes; wonders, too, if she had failed her home yet again.
It is then that she realizes that there are two faces she has not yet seen, and she tries to swallow down the panic rising in her chest.