Carnelian

This is NightStrike's own headcanoned version of Carnelian (feel free to add things, but just don't change the overarching theme of her character). This is an AU where she secretly survived the cactus bomb and went into hiding out of shame. She has been camping out in a place deep in the mountains by the edge of the rainforest, near AviWing territory for about 4 (human) years. She calls her camp Exile.
Carnelian 	Carnelian
 	
Background 	Background
Creator 	Tui (headcanons are NightStrike's)
Infobox 	base by IceWingDragoness
Attribute 	raw emotion
Element 	magma
Theme 	bloodied gold, black-and-white ashes
Song 	
Character 	Character
Age 	20 (human)
Gender 	female
Orientation	asexual
Occupation 	SkyWing soldier
Tribe 	SkyWings
Goal 	to serve Queen Ruby
Residence 	Jade Mountain (formerly), Exile (current)
Allies 	Queen Ruby, select others
Enemies 	everyone else
Powers 	average SkyWing powers, trained in combat
Weapons 	spear, bow
Appearance
"Leave me alone, SandWing scum! I only trust my fellow SkyWings, who might fight for something meaningful once in awhile."
You might mistake Carnelian for any other SkyWing, with her striking scarlet scales, citrine eyes and powerful wings, but once you see the burn scars over scars which twine around her chest and neck, you may realize that she is the one everyone thought dead 4 years ago at Jade Mountain. However, only if you're observant. Smoky colors fill her neck, wings, and torso, which seem to fade into her normal colored scales. Her talons and horns are a smooth ebony color, darkened and smoked with age.
Personality
"Why do you care?! I don't ask about you, do I? Just go away and do things that are actually meaningful, please!"
Carnelian sees herself as the same dragon she was when she "died". She's still somewhat snappy, impulsive, and snarky, but she has grown as a dragon since that time. However, her near-death and four years of solitude have given her a lot of time and initiative to think about things.
She is normally pretty quiet when she's alone, and likes her peace. She keeps herself alive with efficiency, and manages her small camp well. She still has the mind of a soldier, wary of her surroundings and quick on her feet. She doesn't want to be found due to her failure, and she must stay as vigilant as she was in the war to keep others from discovering her.
Carnelian feels a constant, burning shame whenever she's reminded of her tribe or the war in any way. She feels like she's failed Queen Ruby by letting herself be taken advantage of by a weapon of war, even though wartime was over. She sees her past self as blinded, and regrets that day immensely, to the point of causing obession and trauma. She is enraged that the stupid NightWing was right, and that even in death, she was made a fool of by her own self. She hates it.
She obsesses over the small details of the past, writing journals of how she could have avoided the explosion and what she should have done differently. Her mind won't let her live it down, and she has nightmares of that day along with all of her bloody battles and war experiences.
She is a rattled dragoness, and she knows she will never get over the past, so she's given up trying. She doesn't know how to cope with the failure of her loss of honor and status as a SkyWing soldier, but she knows she can't go back; it's already too late for her to be redeemed. She is defensive of this and will not let anyone know how much it eats at her.
History
"Don't act like you know me and my struggles just because you heard about my 'death' over the wind. Go and try to lick the moons, it would do me a great favor."
Carnelian doesn't remember much of her childhood besides the war. In fact, her whole childhood practically was the war. She enlisted in the army young, though, she can't remember why exactly.
She does know that somewhere along the line, she wanted to become a General of the SkyWing army. Those were her glory days, the kill-or-be-killed time. She took the lives of many, and they took the lives of her comrades. The cycle enranged her, drove her on to begin it anew. She was a child soldier, of course she didn't know much else, driven by emotion and instinct to be a savage killer.
She won battles and she lost battles, but at least she kept her life, honor, and most of her squadmates. She didn't really care about anyone besides herself in the heat of battle, but later she soon came to regret that. Especially when her whole squad was slaughtered in a defensive battle against the IceWings. She only survived because she was on messenger duty that day.
She still has nightmares on going back to base only to see the frozen bodies of her entire legion, and most importantly, her squad. She cried, but quickly fled, fearing another attack. She also wished to hide her feelings. In Queen Scarlet's army, soldiers didn't cry.
She was devoted to her tribe and Queen Ruby fully when the war ended, and she was upset that all her tribe had fought and died for was in vain. Burn was not Queen. That wretched Thorn was. SkyWings had died for nothing, hell, they weren't even beaten honorably! It felt like a huge joke to her.
This joke compounded when she was sent to Jade Mountain Academy.
She apparently had to go to school before she could become a general. Queen Ruby had disregarded her skill off, in her mind, and she was not happy about having to spend a year (at the least) in a school founded and run by the idiots who had made her tribe's loss a big damn joke. Her withdrawal from the wartime adrenaline also didn't help her mood.
However, she was going to suffer through this school to achieve her dream of being a General, even if it killed her. And it very well tried.
On her second or third day, she can't remember exactly. She was blown up by a cactus bomb set by another student. The last thing she remembered was a smoke-filled room, yelling, and screaming. She awoke on a mountiantop, wreathed in silver silk, like the moons had come down and wrapped her in a pelt of stars.
The pain in her chest was intense, that was the only thing telling her that she was still among the living. She fled the scene in shame, remembering how she'd been told not to go in the cave. She made a fool of herself. Her resolve broke that night. She didn't want to suffer in that school more than she already had.
It was a broken system that had no hope of succeeding. The students felt like nameless nobodies overshadowed by the Dragonets of Destiny trying to up their popularity once more. She was sick of the jokes.
So she went into exile.
Category:SkyWings
Category:Females
Category:Characters
Category:LGBT+
Category:Public