Drovan Velkaris “Greyscale”

Drovan was already old when people learned to light a fire.

He knows, because he was the one who taught them. Without meaning to. One winter, more than a thousand years ago, a whole village survived by warming itself on the embers he left behind as he passed.

He is a dragon of the ancient blood. Bigger than a house when he sits down, and almost as quiet. In the Silent Order, nobody remembers hearing him say more than three words in a row.

He has no need to. When Drovan opens his mouth, what comes out is not words.

For centuries he flew alone. He burned what he pleased, slept wherever he felt like and bowed his neck to no one.

Until he met Vaelund.

Nobody knows what they said to each other that night. Only that, at dawn, Drovan stopped flying alone. Since then he follows Vaelund and Nyzarion wherever they go, one step behind and half a sky above.

He does not fight with his claws. He fights with a maul he tore out of a mountain and forged with his own breath. He says claws are for young dragons, who still have something to prove.

He has nothing left to prove.

When the fight turns ugly, Drovan takes a deep breath.

And the whole battlefield falls silent.

Right before it burns.