Eternal rage

I'm so proud of this! This is my entry for the contest, and it took me the best part of two days to finish, three if you count the time it took to write the backstory and character bio. I was looking at the other entries before I started and I was convinced I hadn't a hope in hell of placing in this contest, but now I think I just might have a faint hope.
Either way I'm keeping this character, I love her to pieces already!
She's a biocras dragon, a species that belongs to *ipodsmakemyheadhurt and *DragonsFlameMagic. There's more info here: [link]
After I read the description I was going to make her a mad dragon who'd lost her charge, but I saw somebody else had already done that better than I could, so I thought up a different story, one that I'm rather proud of. Just so you know she's meant to be black, her stripes are just glowing rather brightly in this image.
On a completely unrelated note, this drawing taught me that I love nebulae. They're so cool!


*** Character bio***
Name: Dracorica Soleara (DRA-COR-IC-A SOL-AIR-A). Her first name comes from the words Draco (meaning dragon) and orica (meaning black or dark). Her second name comes from a corruption of the word sol (meaning sun or star) and the suffix ra (meaning of or from). Her full name means “Black dragon of the stars”. Her first name is not the one she is known by; in fact it is the word the race that named her use to refer to all Biocras dragons. Her second name is her working name, the one she thinks of herself with and the one she would like others to call her, if she ever encountered anyone who’d talk to her.

Age: One of the oldest Biocras dragons still free, this ancient doe is thousands of light years from her birthplace, a planet that has long since faded in her memory. She knows of no other who has searched so long, or travelled so far. As far as she knows she could be the only one left, for she has not seen another dragon in over a thousand years. She does not know how old she is, time is irrelevant in the life of such an old and bitter beast.

Personality: Soleara’s main personality trait is loneliness, as she has been without any contact for almost as long as she can remember. She has been alone so long she has half forgotten how to communicate, but she talks to herself daily to keep herself going, for after all this time she is starting to lose hope. Like all Biocras dragons she is drawn to negative emotions, entranced by the shadowy depths of the dark hearted’s souls. But she herself is not a kind dragon, her long search has embittered her, she has no wish to associate with others of her kind, and she holds the other sentient species of the galaxy in contempt, looking down on their short, insignificant lives as devoid of purpose, meaningless. To her, they don’t matter. She is above caring about such things. She does, however, hate space vessels with a vengeance, and any unfortunate enough to plot a course too close to her end up being torn to shreds as she vents her frustration. She’s very stubborn, once she starts something she has to finish it, and she pursues her goals with a single minded determination that can be quite impressive to witness.

Physical appearance: A massive specimen, Soleara is about the same size as a medium sized colony ship, measuring approximately 2000 metres nose to tail. Despite looking like a wyrm at first glance, she is in fact a true dragon, with four legs and two wings. However has spent so long in the vacuum of space that her legs are no longer strong enough to enable her to walk, her muscles have atrophied to the point where in standard gravity they would be unable to support her own weight. Her wings, however, are immensely powerful; one blow from them could dent even the toughest of ship’s hulls. Thousands of years of uninterrupted flight had left her with tireless wings and incredibly strong force of will. Her weak forearms she keeps folded against her chest except when she’s picking up or holding something, as they are too delicate to use for locomotion. This is the natural rest position for them; they lock into place while she’s not using them. Her wings have two fingers without any webbing; she uses these instead of her forelegs while on the ground, walking somewhat like a bat would, but as she’s so well adapted for flight she’s clumsy and uncomfortable on the ground.

Abilities: Beside the standard quota of abilities common to all Biocras dragons, Soleara has the power to adapt her body to the conditions around her; this is a variation on the ability all Biocras have to shapeshift when told to by their charge, but as she is still free she doesn’t have conscious control over the process. Her poison is secreted by a number of glands under her skin, with more being located near the tips of her spines and inside her mouth. This is all fairly standard, except for the fact that she has a muscle wrapped around the poison sacs that she can contract to force the poison out, this is purely a reflex action that happens when she feels threatened. This releases a cloud of toxin that infects all it comes into contact with. The poison is a neurotoxin that targets the rear section of the frontal lobe, interfering with the signals between the neurons in the primary motor area order to block signals from reaching the rest of the body. This causes a loss of motor control and spasms culminating in total paralysis. Once it reaches this stage it then blocks the non-conscious signals to the heart and lungs, causing them to cease functioning. This normally takes around two hours, depending on the size of the person and volume of poison absorbed. She might have extra abilities that would be unlocked when she connects, but as she’s still free she has no idea what these could be.


*** Story ***
Time immemorial. It had been more than a thousand of the small being’s lifespans since she’d last felt the black thrill of her charge’s emotions, since she’d known what she was doing. That last flash of hatred, defiance, the vow for revenge, which was all that was driving her forwards. She was so close, she could almost feel him, almost touch him, she was so close to seeing her charge it was driving her mad. It had been this way for so long, and she’d tried everything.
Soleara could remember the early days, when being Free hadn’t been so painful, when she was full of optimism and hope as well as desperation. The need had been as strong then as it was now, but somehow it seemed more painful these days. She’d flown thousands of light years in mere days, slipping into the ‘star stream’ (the dimensionally warped wake left by ships travelling through hyperspace) in order to travel faster than physically possible. But she’d been too late; she had entered the orbit of the right planet only to find her beloved charge had just been imprisoned for his crimes. She had no idea what he’d done, or even what species he was, but when the prison ship left she knew he was on it. It was as she pursued the ship out of the atmosphere she’d felt his last emotions, his last thoughts before his mind had fallen silent.
But she could still feel his life pulsing before her, and in that moment of grief and confusion she’d hesitated, allowing the ship to leave the atmosphere and set off into space. It was her biggest regret; if she’d have acted then she’d be connected by now. She’d chased after it the moment she’d got her wits together of course, but in the vacuum of space there was no way she could open the ship without killing her charge.
So now here she was, following this oval metal thing on its seemingly endless journey, protecting the thing she hated most in the galaxy like it was her own pod, slowing her pace to match its infuriating sublight crawl. She understood now that her charge had been cryogenically frozen, but there was still nothing she could do about it. It was beyond infuriating, knowing that all that separated her from her charge was a metal skin a similar thickness to her wing membrane, that and the laws of physics. The last thing she wanted was for her charge to die from explosive decompression the moment she laid eyes on him. If he was male that is, over the years she’d got so used to referring to her charge as male she seriously hoped that was the case.
She could smell a solar system approaching, the few wafts of stray atmosphere telling her exactly what gasses made up the planets orbiting that star. She breathed deep, the holes in her neck opening wide to get the best possible scent. She stopped suddenly, unsure if she was dreaming. She sniffed again, this time it was unmistakable. Oxygen, the gaseous type. An awful lot of nitrogen as well, but there’d been some nitrogen in the world he’d come from too, so it couldn’t be poisonous to him.
Hope swelled in her breast in the first time since her charge was so cruelly snatched from her. There was an asteroid belt between her and her goal, as well as four gas giants, but Soleara didn’t care. For the first time in thousands of years, she knew what she had to do. She dug her hind claws into the ship and grabbed it tight, then set of for the living world that shone out as the hope in her life.
Don’t worry little one She thought. Not long now.