A dragon washed ashore, unconscious. His body lay sprawled out upon a pebbly beach of a nameless isle, half-submerged as saltwater lapped gently against his cut back and slashed wings. Their almost tender touch fell in stark contrast to the storm raging farther over the sea.


    A stray wave lashed at him, submerging him whole—as though the briny depths were trying to reclaim their little plaything—but it came back with no catch, receding alone into the watery unrest. The dragon’s head shot up then, roused by the assault, and his body spasmed, and he retched what had to be a bucketful of seawater. He tried to stand, failed, and as his shaky paws gave way beneath him, he coughed up more brine and groggily blinked open salt-crusted eyes.


    All that greeted him was darkness. His mind reached for… something—something that wasn’t there. He frowned, confused. What was he…?


    In the black of night he could see little, but as far behind lightning struck, for a heartbeat the image in front of him resolved itself into a beach of small flat-round stones, and a forest farther up. As his consciousness slowly slid back into place, with it came a stinging pain, and there was no part of him spared—paws and back and wings and belly, the whole of him felt like one giant wound, made worse by the briny water drenching him from head to claw. He looked himself over, and in the scant momentary light he was a bulky patterned form—exact colours difficult to tell, smeared as they were with blood. His whole body was littered with cuts both big and small. The largest ones ran the length of his sides, four on each, evenly spaced. There were other wounds as well—small ovals of scabs and missing scales. He counted eight of those, too.


    With some difficulty he lifted his head and looked back. A storm rumbled over the sea and obscured the horizon, great enough he could scarcely imagine himself flying through it, even in a better condition. Was that where he’d come from? His throat felt parched, as though he had not drunk in days. He swallowed thickly, and it hurt.


    He forced his shaky paws to move, hefted his battered bulk onto all fours, swaying slightly. The wind tugged hard at his wings and he had to force them tight against his body, and hissed as wound touched wound.


    His eyes were getting used to the oppressive darkness. He tried to wipe at them with his paw and he nearly lost his balance, only barely managing to stay upright. It did little to improve his vision, so he tried to trudge to the forest to wait out the storm. His tail dragged limply across the beach.


    He wondered if he was supposed to be here.


    He did not know. In fact, he knew naught.


    Questions swam in his mind as he groped blindly for any sliver of memory, any remnant of his past. Where was he, who was he, how did he get here, what was this place?


    It would come back, he told himself. He was in shock. (How did he know?) The storm on the sea would pass, and the haze in his mind would too, he only had to wait it out.


    He did not trust himself to rest. Having crawled back into consciousness, he found it a fleeting thing. Every step was wobbly, every thought was groggy. He feared that, should he allow himself to sleep through the storm, he might not wake again.


    He went inland.


    The forest was a tricky thing—here and again his paw would snag on a creeping vine or a twisted root, there and now he would hear a hiss or chirp or growl, and he would wonder whether it were the land’s inhabitants, or his tired mind playing tricks upon him. He saw no one else—animal or dragon—but the woods were dense and the sky was dark, and his sight allowed him little more than the extent of his outstretched paws.


    He made his way slowly, carefully, through the undergrowth, and after what had to be an hour (or a half? or a quarter? he could not tell) the darkness was broken by a shard of light a bit to the left. He gasped, awakening fresh pain in his parched throat, and veered in that direction. In a few moments he found himself at the edge of a clearing so luminous he had to squint against the light, and even then it stung his eyes. When his vision readjusted he looked up and stared.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    Before him was a squat building of stone so white it seemed to give off its own glow. The source of light wasn’t the thing itself—the stones were set aglow by something deeper in. A wide staircase led to a low-set platform and two rows of columns supported a triangular roof. The base of the platform was adorned in elaborate carvings he could not quite discern from this distance, and the roof appeared to mirror them exactly.


    He hesitated at the edge of the clearing. He knew nothing of this building, but on some deeper level, with a sense he could not quite place, he felt something inside—the source of light, perhaps—pulsing and radiating with power.


    He took a step back into the forest and it felt wrong.


    The thing inside was calling him. He was struck with sudden fear, but found himself, despite his mind’s incessant roars of protest, walking back to the clearing’s edge and then onward still.


    He stopped at the base of the stairs, looking up. It was hardly a big climb, but tired and beaten and cut as he was, he wondered if he could make it. The beckoning he felt from the thing inside gave him little choice, as he found himself lifting a paw and setting it down on the bottommost step. All at once the eight different wounds—and one other, somewhere else he could not see—screamed with a new, longing pain. His paw buckled, but he steeled himself and pushed on.


    The way up was slow and torturous, unspeakably so for such a short climb. Each step brought a new wave of melancholy, but he pushed on, and eventually his paws found the top of the stairway and the blinding white flatness of the structure. It hurt to look. He blinked, again and again, and then some more.


    It took his eyes a good while to get their bearings, and when they did he cast a look around the structure. To the sides the rows of columns were simple things, with minimal carvings at the base and top—vines and trees and small wingless dragons in various poses, long, jagged crests running along their backs and tails. He frowned. He remembered little, but he knew he had wings himself—cut and torn and hurting as they were—and he knew that having them felt right.


    He stepped farther in. The pads of his paws squelched against the stone, glaringly loud in the tranquil temple. He grimaced at the sound and turned back to see a trail of watery pawprints in his wake.


    He hoped whoever saw after this place would not mind. If anyone did at all.


    Step after torturous step he approached the radiant thing. Set upon a pedestal of, if possible, even whiter stone, was brilliance hewn into a solid form—a gem, colourless and neatly cut, about as large as his own head, pulsing with some alien strength. His heart beat faster as he stared at it, unable to move.


    A voice called from behind.


    He whipped around, panicked, and where before there was nothing but his briny trail, now stood a dragon—brown and big and bulky. He could not discern their scent nor voice—could barely make out the nondescript brown of their scales and a flattened white crest. No, not a crest—what he’d taken for one on the carvings was fur. It ran from the top of their head, along their neck, back and tail, culminating at the tuft at the tip. The stranger wore scant adornments, most notable of which was a metal band set against his brow, studded with three white gems.


    And, like the dragons on the carvings, the stranger had no wings.


    The two dragons regarded each other in silence, the storm now but a quiet thrum in the distance. The newcomer lifted their gaze at him, and around the black pupil, their irises were white. They spoke once more, but the confusion of sounds meant nothing.


    They stepped forward then, a frown on their snout, and, grabbing him by the shoulder (pain seared across it; he tried to break the hold, but it only hurt more), their eyes flashed with a whitish glow, and they said, ‘Who are you?’


    He blinked, too stunned to speak. Then he opened his maw, tried to speak, but words kept eluding him, lost somewhere between his tired mind and parched tongue. Finally, under the wingless dragon’s relentless, shining gaze, he managed, ‘I don’t know.’ And then, ‘I don’t remember.’


    They frowned, clicked their foreclaws against the stone, then said, ‘Come,’ and released their grip. He barely caught the dimming of the glow in the stranger’s eyes as they made their way to the gem, and he followed.


    They looked at him pointedly, seemingly unsure, then pointed to the gem, laying their paw against it. There came an audible whoosh and he took a step back, but after a few more frantic heartbeats nothing more seemed to be happening. Gingerly he padded back to the shining gem, all too aware of its hidden strength. (How?) But if the stranger could touch it, why could not he? As though for emphasis, they sent him an impatient look.


    He huffed and let his paw rest against the gem, and a roar loud enough to set the distant storm atremble ripped from his throat as the world exploded into shining whiteness.


    Remade.