Once upon a time there was a king. The king was vain and proud of himself and his lineage, just as every other king. He thought he was fine and grand and deserving of all glory and praise. Just as every other king. He talked with grand contempt in his voice and with his nose in the air, just as every other king. And he longed for a fine, strong heir to pass down his lineage to, just as every other king. 

But this king had a dark secret. He found the young wife of the stable hand, who herself was a servant in the palace, very beautiful. She was a beautiful and dark-skinned girl named Kiyoni. As her king and her employer he held the power over her and he told her to come into his bed. With her the king had a son. An illegitimate son born to a servant woman. And the king was very ashamed of the son indeed, and never recognized him as his own. 

And so the boy, who was named Arbor, grew up as a servant in the palace. He was raised by Kiyoni, his mother, and Kameki, her husband, who took him in as his own. He grew up as a very sweet and humble boy who became, later, a very sweet and humble man. He was friendly and helpful and secretive and thoughtful. But he always held within him a rage that smouldered like embers and could corrode the finest metal of the finest crown. But he did his work diligently, and he never let anyone know what he longed for deep in his heart. 

In front of the royals he always wore a mask of meekness and submission. And they never suspected that there was more behind diligent little Arbor. More than they would ever understand. 

Arbor grew up with the knowledge that he was considered inferior ingrained into his very spirit like a darkened brand. He grew up with toil and fear and submission and powerlessness and pain. 

But he was loved by his mother and adopted father. And they protected him from the harshness and cruelty of the world as much as they could. And so did all the other servants around them. 

There was another child who also grew up in the palace. Another son of the king. He was the crown prince and he was a careless, thoughtless type of boy. He grew up spoiled by the king and always regarded as the shining star of his world. The prince always got everything he wanted. He always had his needs put first by everyone in the kingdom. He grew up as vain and proud as the king was. 

The prince never thought about what he did. But only did what was put in front of him. He only ever did what his parents expected him to do. And he only ever thought that he was the most precious young man to ever live. 

Arbor knew the prince very well. Too well for comfort. The prince enjoyed holding his power over Arbor. Enjoyed playing with him like a cat playing with the mice. And Arbor had to learn how to live with that too. 

Both sons of the king grew up into young men and the prince became the king of the kingdom. 

It was at this time that forces beyond their imagining spun themselves into being in the shadows. 

Four beautiful women. Only, they were not women. They were spirits, or something else. They sat in the grounds beyond the physical plane of existence. And they sat together, in a circle, each facing the others. 

They spun their magic and they passed their magic around in the circle to each other. Each woman took the magic and infused it with their own magic and their own power before passing it over to the other woman beside them in the circle. 

They were creating dragon eggs. Four of them. And the dragons would be very powerful beasts indeed. With chaos and ice and fire in their souls and fierce hatred in their eyes for any who stood against their fierce intentions. 

Great powers were being brought into the waking world from the world within the dreams of the people. Powers that would alter the course of history itself and bring a new dawn. The women spun. The women smiled smiles sharp as knives. And the women waited. 

The palace was large and spacious and grand and beautiful. The king was content and sated on his golden carved throne. 

In the meantime the peasants were in their fields, with nothing but their hunger and the biting wind and their toil and the glaring sun. The shepherds were with their flocks, and they could barely scrape together a living for their families. The tradesmen were in their shops and their lot was not much better. 

Meanwhile the nobles had their grand, find houses and their many many clothes and their books and their bards and their parties. Their lot, as always, was much better. 

And thus the kingdom screeched onwards and the people lived their lives and the king thought all was well. All was well. All was well. No-one complained. Except in private. Except in secret. 

And so the time came when the women came to the kingdom. All four of them together, covering their hair with simple scarves. Four rocks were clutched in their hands. Rocks that were not rocks. Rocks that held life. Rocks that held the reckoning. 

They made their way around the kingdom. Meeting peasants and shepherds and butchers and bakers and all sorts of commoners. They conversed. They shared secrets. And the women could feel the revolutionary tension boiling under the surface. They could feel the way it was about to boil over, sooner rather than later. 

And they relished in it. 

The people looked at the four women, sat with the four women, talked with the four women and shared stories. And they felt a lightness in them the sort that they had never felt before. They felt a sense of joy. A sense of hope. They felt that these times were finally coming to an end. Hope was boiling over and turning into something else. 

The women finally made their way to the castle, and they asked for an audience with the king. 

Arbor met them at the gate, and the young man showed them to the king's throne room. The women saw Arbor. And in him they saw the hope of the nation. A tiny drop of pure revolutionary hidden in the stronghold of the status quo. 

The king met them and was beyond impressed with their beauty. He felt a great greed in his heart. He wanted them for himself. He asked them where they had come from and they replied that they came from around the way. They made it seem as if they were from his kingdom. And in a sense they were. 

Hearing this the king felt a great gladness in his heart. For he knew that the women were from his domain. Were under his control. And he relished control. 

The women then asked him something that he would never give them. Not willingly. They asked him to set his kingdom free. 

The king was confounded by this. He said that his kingdom was already free. That the people loved his rule. And all was content and all was as it should be. 

He then asked the women to be servants in his palace. They agreed. And he thought it was because they had to. In a way they did. 

And so they fetched and carried and cleaned and cooked and did their work. But secretly, when the work was done and the royals were not looking, they talked with Arbor and all the other servants. They talked of longing. Of yearning. Of love. Of hate. Of hope, they took the embers and sparks that were already there and blew on them, kindled them, until slowly but surely they became a small fire. 

They kept the dragon eggs with them at all times, secreted in the spaces within their clothing. The eggs were basking in the power all around them. The power of the commoners the whole kingdom over. The eggs were lying in wait. The eggs were preparing to hatch. 

The whole kingdom was lying in wait. All it's people were lying in wait. But they didn't know it yet. 

The king was very keen on getting with the women. One day he called the youngest of them up to his chambers and made his proposition. The woman looked at him with wide eyes as if she were scared. The king asked again, more forcefully. But the woman looked at him. And she refused. 

A few days later the king asked the second youngest one. And then the third youngest one. And then the oldest one. One by one they all refused him and they didn't give in to his demands. 

The king was furious. How could there ever be commoners so audacious and disobedient? How could there ever be servants so bold? He decided to show the women once for all the power he held over them, not knowing the power that they had over him. 

He threw them in prison. In the deep dungeons in the depths of the palace. They went with their heads held high and a steady fire flaming in their eyes. They brought with them the dragon eggs. 

They were all thrown in one small prison cell, with dark black metal bars and cold bare stone walls and floors and only one small sliver of a window that did not let in the sun. The window was not in the cell but rather in the stone hallway beside the cell. The air there was damp and foul. And the atmosphere heavy and bitter. 

Arbor saw what happened to the women and his heart grew weighted and heavy in distress. He knew what had happened to his own mother and did not wish for that to happen to anyone else. He was awed by the bravery of the women but disturbed at the punishment they received. Though he knew they would receive nothing less. 

He resolved to sneak food to the women. Giving them food was illegal. But he did not care. He had to make sure they didn't waste away in their cells. 

He asked the kitchen staff to help him and they did. For all of the commoners' hearts went out to the four women. They had given all the commoners a sense of freedom and hope and rage that the people had never felt before. 

And so the kitchen staff snuck bits of food away from the meals of the royals. The royals ate so much that they barely noticed it. And they made five meals each day. Four meals made of nutritious and filling food for the women and one meal made of sweet and savoury fatty things for the guard. 

Arbor was the one who risked going into the prison. He took four bundles of food in his bag and one tray of food that he carried. This he offered to the guard as a bribe. And the guard was fat and greedy. He did not think anything was wrong with simply letting a servant talk to the prisoners in exchange for such good food. And then Ardor snuck the contents of his bag to the four women, who ate their meals when the guard wasn't looking. 

Arbor and the women also talked, when the guard was not within earshot. The women told Arbor that the kingdom needed change. The people needed to make change. The people needed to rise and they needed to do it soon. 

Arbor agreed. 

One day the king said he would go on a tour of the whole kingdom, going to all the towns and villages and taking in the praise and offerings of the people. He decided to take Arbor along as a servant. 

Arbor told the women that he wouldn't be able to bring them food for the next few months, that hopefully another brave soul would do it instead. The women told him it was okay. But that they had a very important mission for him to undertake. 

They showed him the dragon eggs. And Arbor held them and felt the life growing inside of them and the rage and the fury and the destructive, groundbreaking power that they held. 

Arbor was amazed. They looked like simple rocks, the size of his palm. But they were almost overwhelming to hold and feel as they pulsed through him. 

So Arbor secreted the dragon eggs inside his own clothing and went out into the kingdom with his master, the king. The people of the green fields and small towns all bowed to the king and so did Arbor. The people all prepared elaborate feasts for the king to eat and gave him gifts that were much too expensive for commoners to afford. Arbor attended to the king as he revelled in his feasts and made grand speeches. 

But in the night Arbor went to the people. And he told them about the dragon eggs. And about all that he had seen and heard. The people either remembered the women or had heard stories of them. They all held the dragon eggs in their hands. And they felt the power and life growing within them.

They incubated them with their hope and their rebellion and their power. They infused their own power into the dragon eggs. And they incubated themselves with hope and rebellion and power as well. They thought that finally, the yearnings that they never thought were possible were coming to fruition. 

The kingdom was standing on a precipice. It was time for it to shake the dust off its wings and take to the sky. 

Finally the king had made his way all around the kingdom and secretly, oh so secretly, so had the dragon eggs. Finally they were ready to hatch. They only needed a final spark of rebellion to set them off. 

When Arbor returned to the women, they thanked him dearly for going on his quest. And they talked and schemed more. 

Until one day they decided that it was time for the women to escape. 

It was a risky plan. An incredibly risky one. But they were brave now. Or maybe more importantly, they had so much hope that they could see the end of any fear. They could see the end of their journey. Just over the edge of the horizon. 

And Arbor asked the people who worked in the kitchen to poison the food for the guard. With a herb that would make the guard pass out upon eating it. They got the herb from the the people who supplied the palace with ingredients. And those people in turn got it from a witch in their village. 

And so the plan was set into motion. The guard was given food as he always was. And he expected nothing of it, taking it as he always did. After all, he thought, how harmful could a simple servant be? Arbor and the women waited with bated breath until he was found to be passed out in his chair. 

Then carefully, ever so carefully, the keys were lifted from his pocket. And silently, Arbor opened the door and let the women out into the hallway. He then lifted them up on his shoulders so they could squeeze themselves through the window. And they pushed themselves into the sunlight and greenery of the outside world. 

The women took their dragon eggs and snuck past the guards guarding the palace. Arbor suspected that they used some kind of magic. But however they did it, they got out.