KHEZEF

• Species: Dragon with a little bit of sheep DNA
• Sex: Male
• Age: A few hundred years
• Birthday: around March 24th
• Height + Weight: 13' at the withers
• Siblings: 6 (4 deceased). Of those surviving, all were born within a few minutes of one another: Khezef (youngest), Czabock (middle) and Kevalth (oldest)
• Misc: Dragons have magical powers and have are sometimes voted to positions of leadership due to their power
• Worldbuilding: Humans are either extinct, or rare, in this world

Note: In this universe dragons age differently to humans. I have given the years below to show the time scales involved, but we can assume that Khezef grew up much faster than a human would, in the same time scale.

Trust & Confidence (age: newborn to a few days)

Khezef's parentage is unusual, so before we look at Khezef's birth, let's look at that. For a start, he has only one parent.

His father's name was Za'afiel, and he was the dragon king. He was also cruel, greedy for power, and was usually trying to expand his empire. He was known to destroy entire cities. One day he got into a fight with a foe who was able to fight back, and they did so by turning him into a female sheep. Za'afiel began to turn himself back into a dragon but his foe put a stop to this with another spell that made Za'afiel pregnant ・ and prevented him from being able to terminate the pregnancy. Understandably, he was furious about this humiliation, and his powerlessness to change it.

Za'afiel's high stress level throughout the pregnancy was felt by the growing embryos, so when Khezef, Czabock and Kevalth and their four, unnamed brothers, were born they already had a keen danger-sense. If they did try to bond with their parent, it was a faltering attempt, and as soon as Za'afiel was no longer pregnant, he was able to change back into a dragon, which would have been terrifying for his newborn sons.

At birth, Za'afiel's sons looked like lambs. Za'afiel was displeased with his sons, and ignored them completely. One died while Za'afiel was in labour, As is the way with sheep, the sons were able to walk from birth so Khezef, Czabock and Kevalth kept their distance, and he was impressed enough with their wit and self-preservation skills that he let them live. All of the lambs reverted to looking like dragons within one day of being born. Kevalth ran away within a few hours of birth and wasn't heard of again for a very long time, but Khezef and Czabock stayed, eager for some kind of parenting from Za'afiel and unsure where else to go.

Their father was neglectful and didn't teach them how to hunt, so they learned to hunt together. They both became independent-spirited.

The combination of sheep and dragon DNA caused the sons to mature faster than a normal dragon, so they reached puberty at 1.5 years old and were fully-fledged adults by the time they reached age 4. From the start, Khezef was uncertain about his lifespan. Dragons could potentially live for thousands of years but usually they died sooner, as a result of fights or sickness. It was also possible that his sheep DNA would shorten his lifespan. He tried not to think about his mortality.

Freedom & Self-Determination (age: a few weeks)

In addition to hunting, Khezef learned to read and became a keen reader. By doing this, he truly established himself as a self-reliant individual.

He and Czabock continued to spend a lot of time together. However, due to their angry and destructive father, they didn't learn how to show emotional warmth and were not affectionate to one another. In particular the two bickered frequently about their age. Czabock maintained that he was older and while that was technically true, it was only by a few minutes, which irritated Khezef.

Khezef wasn't good at making friends. Although he had had a taste of cooperation while learning how to hunt with Czabock, ultimately they had learned to hunt as sole predators ・ without needing to resort to teaming up. The dragon family lived close to a community of mixed species, including reptiles of various sizes including a dinosaur, plus gryphons, dogs, cats, tigers, and wolves, but Khezef didn't take part in the community much. He liked the look of the community and the sense of inclusion and warmth it promised, but the bleakness of his father overshadowed this. In fact, his father made a point of saying that this community wasn't worth his consideration.

That discouraged Khezef from trying to be a part of the community. After his father's dismissive attitude and his brother's insistence on learning to hunt without him, he deeply doubted that others would like him or appreciate his thoughts and ideas. This doubt was an extra negativity he didn't need, so much like his father, he convinced himself that he didn't care what the animals of the community thought.

Khezef developed a hatred of his father from an early age, as he despised his father's abusive and neglectful attitude towards him, as well as his arrogance and cruelty towards others. He tried to punish his father, but lacked the power or the experience to do so effectively.

Ambition (age: several months old)

As Khezef grew, he started to think about what to do with his life.

Despite Za'afiel's dismissal of the community, he had been developing a relationship with a female Gryfon named Shinko. Shinko had a kindness and a warmth that Khezef hadn't experienced anywhere else, and he was fascinated by it. Shinko in turn took him under her wing and introduced him to the community. In this way he began to take a small part in it.

For Shinko, this closeness and care helped her through a difficult time in her life. She had been training under a master who had been killed during a raid of a nearby city. She coped with her grief by become closer to Khezef, who she came to care for deeply. She saw that he was not very well connected to the community so did her best to encourage him to connect to the community more. (Note: Czabock's master, named Rama, was Shinko's father, Za'afiel had killed Shinko's mother when Shinko was still a little girl, around 100 years previous to this story.)

During his time with other animals of the community Khezef discovered that his father's tyrannical behaviour had been happening since before he was born, and was even more serious than he had realised. He learned about the cities his father had destroyed, the whole families he had murdered, and even heard about a species called 'humans', who the community believed may have been wiped out by Za'afiel.

With Khezef already angry at his father, he decided that Za'afiel could not be allowed to continue. Khezef tried again to punish his father, hoping that he would be more effective now that he was bigger, stronger and older. He wouldn't let his father continue to terrorise the world. Instead, he would take the crown and become a far better ruler than his father had been. He still wasn't particularly effective, and his father successfully subdued him, much to Khezef's fury.

This anger, plus his involvement in the community, meant that Khezef's passion for reading disappeared. Curiously, his brother Czabock took it up instead. Khezef scoffed at him over this, as he no longer believed reading had any value and that Czabock was wasting his time.

Czabock himself began to experience changes of his own. Although he was not aware of it yet, he was turning from a dark dragon to a fire dragon, which meant a shift in his nature from having an affinity to dark magic to being more about regeneration and rebirth. As he became more comfortable with reading, he developed an interest in becoming a healer. In contrast to Khezef, it seemed that he preferred to care almost excessively for others.

Khezef had the beginnings of a tolerable life, but then it all came tumbling down. The young dragon found some magical stones and experimented with them. He wanted to fight Czabock's master and Shinko痴 father, Rama. Khezef had wanted to do this to prove his father wrong, that he was not weak. As Khezef understood it, Rama was weak enough for him to beat. But he didn't realise their power and accidentally destroyed Shinko's and Czabock's resident city.

Czabock was out of the city at the time with his best friend, Sahariel, so had no idea that Khezef was responsible for this. Khezef didn't tell him for fear of retribution. However, Khezef found bearing this secret difficult, and soon learned to bury his guilt deep enough that even he barely knew it was there. He isolated himself from the community and his family once more.

Furthermore, he decided that having power over others wasn't such a good idea after all. This contributed to his decision to isolate himself, as he simply didn't know how to be a part of a community. As the son of a king, he was obsessively aware of power dynamics, and being part of a wider community didn't make sense to him. He became secretive, and took to declaring that he didn't care about other people.

Note: Shinko's father was Khezef's brother's master.

Productivity (age: 18 months)

Shinko supported Khezef as best she could through all that had happened, but despite her best efforts the young dragon withdrew into himself. When he began to withdraw from her too, she offered him one, last gift: she led him on a flight.

Her gift was a discussion that would teach Khezef the value of healthy withdrawal from society. She told him that sometimes, an animal needed to be alone so that his head could clear, and so that he could breathe deeply, and think, and plan what he wanted to do next. She explained that as flying animals, they had an advantage in being able to withdraw from other people. As she explained this, she led them to a mountainside where there were many isolated rocks on which a dragon or Gryfon could rest and gather his thoughts.

The lesson took, and from that day on Khezef always enjoyed the peace of finding a deserted, high up place to relax.

Meanwhile, Czabock continued his studies to become a healer. He and Khezef had never been close, but until now they had simply stayed physically close and bickered a lot. Now, Czabock distanced himself from Khezef by ceasing to take part in the frequent bickering. Czabock had much about himself that he wanted to heal, however this was going to be more difficult if he remained around Khezef, so he removed himself from Khezef's presence.

This suited Khezef just fine, as his guilt about his murder of Czabock's master, no matter how accidental, had continued to nag at him. With Czabock talking to him less, he could forget about it more easily.

These were not the only changes that came upon the family. Za'afiel, who's cruelty had caused so much suffering to so many people, was finally deposed and was no longer king.

For a while, Khezef was unsure how he felt about this. On the one hand, the opportunity of besting his father was gone. On the other, they were no longer the royal family. Now - sheep DNA notwithstanding - Khezef was no longer a prince. This meant that he was far closer to being a commoner, but he didn't know how to be one of the many. He had never flaunted being a prince, but he had become used to the status of being 'one up' over others. Without it, he could no separate himself from others by status any more. As the years went on, he forgot about his regal birth.

He escaped this confusion by finding ways to be active, and this (ironically) pushed him closer to the community. There were many tasks to be done ・ homes to help build, messages to deliver, public spaces to develop, farmers to help ・ and he helped with all of these, but he couldn't quite bear to learn to cooperate. He took to shunning teamwork and competed any tasks he could alone. When the stress of trying to cooperate, or of taking on a task himself that really needed a team, became too much, he would fly away and find a deserted spot in the mountains to sit on, to clear his head.

Meanwhile, Za'afiel had been seeking other ways to fill his time now that he was no longer king. He had had dealings with an underworld god, who had overpowered Za'afiel and forced the dragon into becoming his servant. Za'afiel had failed the god.

With Khezef participating in the community once again, Shinko stepped back into his life and tried to help him develop relationships with the community. This failed spectacularly when an argument between Khezef and a mage escalated.

When Za'afiel had failed to serve the underworld god, Khezef had stepped in. He had seen his father's failure and desperately wanted to be the competent one, to succeed where his father had failed and prove himself. But it was not to be: Khezef too was unable to appease the underground god, and the mage saw Khezef's stepping in like this as arrogance. The mage decided to bring Khezef down to size ・ quite literally ・ by turning him into a dog. The underworld god approved of this.

This came as a shock to Khezef, and he struggled to adjust. The mage had intended for Khezef to learn humility by spending time as a dog, but the lesson didn't take as much as the mage might have wished.

Despite this transformation and Khezef's failure, the underworld god kept him as his servant. Perhaps the god was keen to watch Khezef's humiliation. What he did not bargain for was Khezef's ingenuity: he took revenge on the underworld god, and killed him. His defeat of the god allowed Khezef to take over the role of 'god of the underground'. He finally had the satisfaction of being more competent and powerful than his father!

Soon after this, the relationship between Za'afiel and Shinko broke down, to the point that Za'afiel threatened Shinko. She fled the community for her own safety. She had to leave so quickly that she had no time to say her goodbyes to Khezef.

As much as Khezef had learned to pretend he didn't care, this was an event he hadn't expected, and it left him grieving for another connection as warm and loving as Shinko's had been.

As such, Khezef was still a novice in the maintenance of the underworld. The status he held there allowed him to alter the timeline. He saw an opportunity to save hundreds of lives from the community plus Czabock, so, believing this to be a good thing, he did. He learned the hard way that tampering with the timeline had severely negative consequences. However, whatever the consequences were, Khezef had saved his brother.

At this time, Khezef got into his first relationship, with a male dog named Indigo, who had a supernatural background of his own.

Adult Selfhood (age: from 2 years old)

One day, when Khezef was 4 years old (and while Indigo was still around), Kevalth returned.

The family reunion was an awkward, even frosty one: Khezef and Czabock had thought him dead. Kevalth had managed to find loving enough company as a lamb that he had grown up to be somewhat more relaxed than Khezef and Czabock, and the three found it hard to reconnect. After a year of trying to establish a relationship, Kevalth left again.

In the way Khezef so often did, he maintained that Kevalth's decision to leave made no difference to him, that he simply didn't care. However, it left him feeling uneasy, and in particular it drew his awareness to other disappearances in his life. The community he and Indigo were a part of was not the same now as it had been when he was first born. The actual community was still existed (although it had moved location three times: once temporarily to a mountain plateau, once to Sahariel's castle, and once more very recently to this event), but the people who made it up had come and gone, and now, all of the people in this community were different. It was another goodbye, and one Khezef hadn't realised he had to make until it was already too late.

Khezef and Indigo fell deeply in love. It seems that both desired a secure family so much that they decided to cement their relationship by having a child together. Using magic, they had a son, named Pynch.

Pynch was made in the underworld and lived there permanently.

Khezef and Indigo remained close for around 2 years and during that time, Khezef's terrible loneliness healed a little. However, 2 years into their relationship, when he was 4 years old, he began to feel a need to be by himself, and the two took a break. Indigo relocated far enough away that Khezef didn't see him for around 2 years.

Khezef did not learn much from his status as a dog. He continued to be emotionally distant and to keep to himself.

Khezef remained a dog until he was 7, when he finally discovered a way to turn himself back into a dragon. Two weeks later, he received news that Indigo had died of heart disease.

Closeness in Relationships (age: older than 7 years)

As an adult, Khezef had little idea how to connect with others. He had learned over time how to passively allow others to connect with him ・ Shinko, various members of the community, Kevalth, Indigo ・ but he hadn't learned how to initiate. Instead, he had learned how to avoid initiating by saying he didn't care about other people.

Khezef's lack of professional direction took its toll on him too. He left the underworld in Pynch's care, as his stunt with the time line had effectively marked the end of his career as god of the underworld.

He continued to help out with the community, mostly on his own, but nothing really 'took'. His memory of killing so many people with those magical stones had stayed with him, and he remained terrified (although he would never admit such a thing) of power and responsibility. As such, small jobs around the community worked just fine for him.

Pynch continued to quietly care for himself in the underworld. The magic used in his birth had granted him the ability to look after himself. It also gave him an innate understanding of how to steward the underworld, so when he took over from Khezef, he did so seamlessly.

Passing on Responsibilities (age: 100 years)

Khezef never paid much attention to Pynch, as he simply didn't know how to demonstrate care for his son.

Pynch, as stated before, was able to accommodate this, and simply waited for Khezef to no longer want the role. They did not interact very much, and this was mostly at Khezef's preference for solitude.

End of Life (age: 500 years)

Despite his unhappiness, Khezef is afraid of death. However, he has an 'open-ended' feeling about his life and doesn't have a plan as to how he would like the rest of his life to go.