ORIGIN

The cold here was still biting, and in preparation he gathered his magic again. Again the heat bloomed in his belly and again, the temperature warmed up by degrees.

This was... reassuring. Comforting. And it freed him to focus on the task at hand.

He basked in it for a moment, revelling in the sense of heat--and was his magicka growing stronger..? It somehow felt that way; or maybe it was mere practice. Dread, however, did not think of it as magic. He thought of it as his fire.

The black owl-thing had harmed his fire, but slowly Dread was stoking it: feeding it, growing it, strengthening it. And when he was done, he would burn anything that stood in his way.

Dread wing-walked the edge of the cold, ember eyes picking out the flakes that flicked toward him and away. He narrowed his eyes against the blasts of icy wind, fins flattening against his neck.

Time to get back to work, then.

Head held low against the onslaught of false winter, the dragon inhaled, then spat out another glob of pyro-goop. Half blinded by the snow, he struggled to see where it had landed. But no; he lost sight of it almost at once, and in irritation, the dragon reared back his head.

"TOO COOOLD!" he roared, a screeching bellow lost to the muffling snowstorm.

Black scales glinted in the orb-light, their sheen slicked with snow and half-obscured by the swirling flakes. The dragon grumbled as he made his way along, spines again flat to his neck, the cold... unpleasant.

He paused along the outer edges, again preparing to spit the goop. But first he had to warm himself up again, because caves, it was freezing. He paused, resting, focusing-... and nothing happened. A quiet cry of annoyance left him, and Dread turned to glare at the snow, as if it was somehow this storm's fault.

He was tempted to yell 'stop that' at it, but... he didn't, because yelling at snow would be weird. Never mind that he'd been doing that already.

He wing-walked onward, a surprisingly swift motion, and as he did so he tried again. This time he felt warmth blossom up--not heat, not quite enough but it was there; it was something.

The snow beneath him, as he came to a stop--a thin, powdery layer underfoot--melted just a little; and the dragon's hum of satisfaction was a low bass thrum that vibrated along the rock beneath. His tail switched to and fro, catlike, as he turned to face the storm again.

Calculating, he pressed in as far as he dared go, fins flattened back against the wind.

"I am going to burn you," he growled, and inhaled in preparation.

The black dragon lashed his tail, eyeing the snow with a critical gaze. A coughing chunk of bile hacked up along his throat, the force of his lungs and magic behind it; the goop sprayed out and into the snow, a satisfying splattering sound following the ungraceful hacking cough.

Good-! That one had been Lots of Goo, and Dread looked on in approval, briefly smacking his 'lips.'

He was growing weary, now. Perhaps it would be best to rest, maybe train elsewhere, and then return-?

The dragon rumbled to himself in thought and then took wing, bass wingbeats providing a backdrop thump against the roil of wind and snow.