Aotrom · The full story

The funny one who keeps turning out to be brave.

Canon's yardstick for an average dragon — roughly half Tairn's size — bonded to the squad's loudest mouth.

The prank war

Two comedians, one bond.

Ridoc and Aotrom share exactly one sense of humour, and they aim it at each other. Ridoc once worked itching powder down between his scales; Aotrom had to go sit in the river about it. This is a war-dragon and his rider, and they are having a genuinely marvellous time out here.

What he powers

The joker holds the line.

When Baide's dragonfire fills the wardstone chamber, Ridoc channels Aotrom's power into a wall of ice that simply refuses to melt until the flames give out. It costs Ridoc his hands, badly burned. The comic-relief pair, quietly saving the entire room.

The yardstick

Ordinary, they said.

He's the dragon canon measures the others against — half Tairn's bulk, a perfectly standard adult. There's nothing standard about flying into Basgiath, taking a wound, and carrying his rider back out of it anyway.

The bond

The funny one who keeps turning out to be brave.

Aotrom's arc rides shotgun with Ridoc's — jokes the whole way, right up until the moment they aren't. From a Threshing bond to the ice wall that saved a room, he's the loyalty underneath the mischief, and the proof that 'average dragon' was never the same thing as expendable.

01
The Threshing
In 633 AU a brown swordtail picks Ridoc Gamlyn — the squad's sharpest tongue — and the two of them are instantly, incorrigibly a matched set.
02
Resson
He carries Ridoc beyond the wards to Resson, into the squad's first real fight — venin, wyvern, and the end of every comfortable lie they were told about this war.
03
The wall at Basgiath
In the wardstone chamber Ridoc pours Aotrom's power into ice and holds back a dragon's fire until it dies out. Then the two of them fly into the battle proper, and Aotrom takes a wound but survives.
04
Draithus
By Onyx Storm they're shielding civilians through the Medaro Pass — the prank-war dragon grown into a protector of people who'll never once learn his name.

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