He was a great golden dragon, his hard skin made of the soft metal itself. The wings upon his back were translucently gold and made of glass. Already, some of his quill feathers had been shattered. He kept the small pieces of precious hope, for that is what his wings represented, in a tarnished bronze box. 

This was a creature of pure anger and violence and hatred. A creature who could not love, only care and only get hurt from it. A creature who lost the will to love after his wings had been shattered. 

In every way, he was a perfect dragon, but for his wings. 

~*~

Looking out from his high-rise apartment, away from others, the dragon contemplated itself in the reflection of the window. He had grown large indeed, and had the size to command respect from other dragons. His long body and triangular-pointed tail used to be of a beautiful shine of gold. Now, he had let them go uncleaned and his scales had degraded into a worn down state, dark green, almost black as black as the mane in his ignorance of them. 

He placed a talon to the glass wing he had moved over his shoulder. Running the long foretoes down each individual quill of the rare feathered wing, he gazed at himself through the lights of the streets below. 

This was an often done practice for him now. But something was missing on the form that looked back at him. Something was needed. And it was going to hurt. 

He rose from the chair and moved to the kitchen, pulling a thick blade out of the drawer. Turning on the propane stove beside the counter, he placed it in the flames. After all, gold may be a soft metal, but heat was so much easier in manipulating it. The flame turned deep red and he pulled the knife from the gas, not wanting it to be hot enough to seal the scar afterwards. Just enough to help bend the scales.

The blade hovered not a centimeter from his forehead as he waited to feel the perfect temperature settle into it. 

There! Quickly, and with a fluidity of movement only a dragon could handle, he cut open his scales in a process of carefully planned movements. First, the pentagram formed and next the reversed cross in the space between the bottom elements. Being a dragon of his massive size, the cross alone was a full seven inches long and the pentagram around twenty-two inches across.

The blood ran down his face and over his cheek scales, dripping off the protruding tips. The blue-black ichor pooled on his kitchen counter. 

Walking calmly into the bathroom, leaving a spotted trail behind him, the dragon wiped off his face with a towel and threw it into the laundry basket for the maid to take care of. He turned back to the mirror and looked at his handiwork. The intertwined symbols were perfectly done. He smiled slighly to himself then went to bed ignoring the dark mess in the kitchen.