The Dragon Brother

He sighs a long sigh. "Well, looks like I have to actually temporarily change you back into a human until I can gather the ingredients. Wish I was buying time but even the Polyjuice Potion is insane to make...

A guise? Maybe longer." *He looked at the dragon's eyes.* "If you want complicated, take the potion mentioned. I'd need fluxweed... picked during a full moon, would have to stir it for eighty minutes.. then leave it to brew for 24 hours. Starting to see the complication in your demands?"

A low boiling twist of hot smoke filtered up into the air. "Fine~," Tom stated with more annoyance to his tone than anything. "Of course I do have a place to 'hide," he almost smirked in his Dragon-like way. "I'm not a child at this game.~" But that said, it did not change the fact that he wanted his guise now rather than later. He was limited while in this form unless he did want to unleash devastation upon this human infested city... and while that sounded reallly really nice right then, especially after having been trapped from this true self for over two years .. that would be a major hitch to his plan.

At the comment on changing him back to a human form Tom did start to laugh. "You are such a fool, Aurelius. You do not in fact, have that kind of power. That I do know as fact. Even Pan could not do that without help of something else not human. Please... I am not here for a laugh. I need my fucking guise ASAP."

He had thought of compulsion, but whatever... if that's the way the boy wanted to play.

"Fine. I'll do a favor but we're not waiting 'til morning. I'm bringing you to my Order. They'll have everything you need."

With a billow of smoke steaming from Tom's nose and teeth, he so smoothly for such a large creature circled the boy entirely within his front claw. "I wouldn't fight me, you don't want to fall now do you?"

He looked at the size. It was large, terrifyingly so. He'd seen dragons while with Newt but somehow Tom was larger than even them. Still to prideful though for his tastes.

"It is easier said than done, Tom. While I said it was easier, it still will be tough. Not impossible but just will take a while. The idea is finding someone similar to your guise, copy them and make it come as an illusion that can come and go without error or you leaving giant footprints behind you with each step. An illusion is simple, a guise is complex."

He also had a bargaining chip in hand. "In return, I would like a favor, a favor I can call on at any time. And yes, I know that it's madness to bargain but.. well, we both know I am at death's door, I probably smell often more like poison than a person. I help you and you help me and it will either benefit you as well or just be another day for you."

"Indeed~," Tom's voice reverberated from somewhere deep within his core. "What do you know? Death has never been the end. It is transformation and that is exactly where I'm standing now."

Hot smoke steamed from his nose as his impenetrable large black scaled body nearly blended within the shadows. He would need a guise before daylight. "I have until dawn," he rolled in statement. "That is if you want this city standing and not a place of history beneath my fire's ashes. You know I will be seen in my natural body. I'm bigger than three of these buildings all together and you know I will not go down easy. If need be I will burn everything. I'm sure you don't want that to all these innocent people."

Of course he had a favor in mind. Selfish humans who only cared about control. Tom was not one for open-ended favors and the thought of someone being able to control him on a word. That could become a very deadly game on both behalfs.

A small too welcoming smile curved along the young dragon's lips, watching calmly as his ancient father in what would be a guise of his true form walked in. It had been about two years since his father had vanished into his little fit from what Pan and the other Faerie did.

It had been nearly two years in which Devrim had fully taken over their home and Clan. Two years, even for a Dragon since he was young had done a lot of things and Devrim still held tightly to many truths that he kept well hidden.

He gazed at his father with that toying bit of smile, his predator gaze icy and locked in an inhumanly unmoving way. It was as if he could still taste the flesh of his father's even though, his species had changed.

Dev leaned forward in his chair, the tips of the long blond bangs of his own guise dangling.

"You've made it back," his voice sort of toyed as if for his father only his true inner self was showing. At that moment a small three year old looking child with black littered scales, wings, and the buds of two little horns, crawled out from behind Devrim, climbed up in his lap, and buried his head in his arms. "You won't touch me.. this is why."

Tom's candor simply mirrored Devrim's back, knowing too well this game that his son was trying to play. Tom knew better. Sure, he could still feel that acidic crunching of his bones from when Devrim tore him apart in that human form, but Dragon's knew scent and he would not allow Devrim to catch even a minor glimpse of nervousness from him.

He was Asher. Devrim was a kid.

Tom's gaze did find and follow the mutated mixture of a human and a dragon hatchling move out from the shadow to curl up in his 'mother's' lap. Part of him pinched at the overwhelming miracle of life mixed into the child before him -- a naturally conceived and hatched Dragonling. There hadn't been one since before the eradication of their species, but part of him was torn by the rude mixed bred abhorrent cross of nature that tarnished this child's breed... and there lineage.

Then, again, he had been the one to create Dragon Hybrids a decade back~. Survival of the species. They would just need to make sure this child has a real Dragon mate to weed out the human eventually down the line, again.

"A new guise? Hmmm I guess your guise became permanent while in human form. Fascinating." He rolls his eyes. He knew how to make one's self appear as another for an hour or so, but that was human not a dragon to a human. "I mean, I suppose I can learn. I know how but that is human to human, not a whole different species change." He pondered, slowly remembering the different spells he can use to help the dragon.

"I think .. you forget who I am," Tom's voice rolled in it's inhuman Dragon tone. "Did you really think death could stop me?" he asked, letting the tip of his talon tap against the delicate stone area of which they were standing. The talon alone would be longer than the human's entire body, razor sharp, just as the long exposed teeth.

Tom's horns, black as his scaled body almost glistened against the dim lighting, the only bit of camouflage to hide the enormous ancient creature from the world around it. Perhaps they would think he were part of the building.

His size would be deceiving, given it's almost awe inspiring limberness to crawl along that surface, shadowing what little light there was over Aurelius. Tom's core burned and rumbled deep, a sound as if the Earth was waking up and Aurelius might feel the ground beneath him begin to shake.

To Tom, this form felt fantastic; a freedom of who he really was .. after nearly two years. His wings itched to expand, take its needed flight and to light up the evening sky with a shower of flame.. but this was not the time nor the place. Tom had a million years on his age, he knew well how to wait and plan his future stake.

Maybe if this was Tom as a human still, he'd have just walked off and ignored the 'former' dragon for his own sanity. He didn't move nor turn his head, he could see the snout out of the corner of his eye alone to know this was the dragon and sure as hell wasn't Devrim who was smaller snout wise at least. He felt the heat, that alone was a reminder who this was and he tried not to grimace at the breath. "So, looks like you finally became a dragon again."

Dev smiled just a bit, the predator in him ripening at the way his father carefully stepped back from him, along with the nervous energy that was lifting from him in the air.

Dev licked his teeth; razor sharp beneath the guise. "I don't need my fire back. You see, ... there's nothing wrong with me. No one ruined me. That's where Max differs from everyone out there. He loves me just the way I am. He always has."

"I make my own fire, Tommy-boy~," he stated in a very mimicked Harry Hook tone. The smile widened just a hint on Devrim, before he let a trickle of his acidic green fire flicker from the corner of his mouth to show his father.

"Don't worry, I won't kill you ... this time. But you killed a child of mine that night at the club with Max when you thought you were so tough making a show of me in front of dad and Max. I was pregnant with eggs that night you slammed me to the floor. I don't forget that. Prove yourself to me."

"Zu'u los jud do Dovah."

Tom played this carefully..., but inside was screaming, 'who the hell did this punkass think he is?' Sure, Dev was the Queen, and normally he was all for Dragon Power and chaos, but Devrim was dangerous --- not only to the weaker species, but to his own kind - dragons. That green fire proved it, because he knew that was from acid.

Memories of what he did to Cal would have sparked a smoldering of smoke within Tom, if he had some.

But there was little for him to do but play the game and be smart while in this form.. and he had bigger fish to fry than his son.

So, he kept his head downcast in a state of submission, but if Devrim thought he was the only one who could lie, he was rudely mistaken.

Oh, hell no. Tom was still KING.

But he didn't survive this long for millennia without 'fitting in'.