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Fact of the matter is, Ao Run has learned to be pragmatic.
There was a certain grief to his hatching, he has always known. Dragon eggs wait long in the oviduct, then incubated longer. As the egg had waited and waited the Dragon King had lost his wife, his heir, his young son. After that, the promise of the Spirit Pearl was all that remained to him.
Out of that Spirit Pearl, stolen by the wretched monsters of the land, they hatched a Prince. This Prince was their very last hope.
For (though the Prince know this not) the wretched dragons had been cast down out of their seaborne city into the lava below, and he who had been their brother now was their jailer. This was an agreement the heavens made with the King, that in exchange for his life- for the life of the egg- for power, peace, tithes and titles- the most powerful Dragon General and his Easternsea clan would halt their rebellion, and instead turn upon their kin.
The King hated to do it. But it was what must be done (for the sake of my own, he thought. At that point, his own siblings, and their continued rebellion, all they did was pose the guillotine above his neck. He would do anything to shake it off. He would do anything.)
And so. That is why three-quaters of the dragons live beneath the fire amongst monsters of the sea, and the remaining quarter live day-and-night to keep them there. 'Twas the order of Heaven. What can you do?
Well, actually, the King of the Western Seas had veranated her older brother once. To follow in his millenia-old design was just in her nature.
After that, after everything he had done, the King realized that the eye of heaven still regarded him as a dragon.
The King decided he would work ceaselessly, chaining back the sea-monster, hindering their rise. Then the heavens would look upon him with favor, and free him from the life so close to the fire.
(For three-quarters of the Dragons ought to be imprisoned for their great act of evil. Accomplishing this was only possible with the use of the lava that ran underneath the sea floor, as dragons are beasts of water. But where did that leave the Easternsea Clan? A life so near the fire was just about better then a life spent boiling within it- but only just. The constant desperate writhing of the prisoners sapped their strength. The heat of the lava singed their scales, blistered their claws. The only ones who where permitted to leave were the leopard and the Prince.)
And so he toiled, and he toiled, he worked and worked. But all his efforts, all his work, amounted to nothing. There-quarters of the Dragons lay imprisoned, and it seemed that those evil dragons were the ones who set the image for the lot of them.
The King could not help but think back to when his siblings had nearly dragged him down into the abyssal hell that awaited them. He could still feel their chains, tugging at him, dragging at him, weighing him down.
That was when the King decided he wanted a son who was a God.
What was I to do? Ao Guang had asked, when the heavens sent down their chains. What would you have me do? I have only my title left, it is all that I am.
The King stole a righteous fate from the third son of the Commander. He did this so that his Prince was born pure and untainted.
Little did he know, by this cruel act of theft, implanting the holy Pearl into the child of a wicked monster, had overridden its nature. The Prince was born rotten, as every dragon was.
Though, the Prince knew this not.
Every day, the Prince went out. He cultivated. He observed the human realm. He defeated wicked demons who had escaped the jail of fire.
When the Prince was grown, he thought, he permanently shift into his natural appearance, as did everyone else in his clan. He would coil along a grand pillar, and take up a chain. He would suppress the evil that lurked beneath of the Dragon Palace. But the Prince did not know the treachery that his wicked master and monsterous King-Father had planned for him.
Hell is a monotonous place. Three of the Sea Kings burn under their older brother's eye.
The truth was, the Prince was very lonely. He had but one friend, and that one friend was doomed as all demons were doomed under the eye of heaven. But the Prince, as he now knew, was born to fulfill a purpose, to save the Easternsea Clan, to pull his people out of the fire, out of their jail. And so, it did not matter if the Prince was lonely.
Once Ao Ran was granted a little bit of reprive by her sweet softscale nephew, almost newly hatched by the look of him. He had the face of an older cousin, though they'd never meet (as his father stood by and watched as the Heavens slaughtered them all, and so. And so.)
But who cared for that?
It was a long, long time ago, and Ao Ran was of a different character then. She had entertained ideas of true freedom from fate, she had rallied her troops and her children, she had held grand conferences with her brothers of the North, South and East. All of them streamed from the city of the dragons, all of them focused their huge might on the white-jaded heavens, all of them warred, bit, fought down to the last. The city of the dragons stood empty now. Everyone imprisoned here. Though one was here of his own design.
Her nephew poured water over her scales and iced her claws with a thin layer of frost. He said it was because it would be shameful for a Dragon King to die in such an ugly way. Da-ge still had his pride. What of hers?