Dragonborn

Fang awakened with a start, gasping in air. It was sooty air. Grainy, flaked with ash and chunks of the leftovers the blaze. It cloyed on his tongue, and when he licked his lips, he found his tongue dry and--

With a start, he realized his tongue had changed. It ended in a pointed taper, and the muscles that made it up were stronger, denser, almost making his tongue like a little knife. And when he felt the little patches of floating ash settle on his tongue, he couldn't just feel them, he could SENSE them, their every little detail.

So powerful was this sense that he could even tell what the ash had once been – musty cedar wood molded down with damp and age. It reminded him of a class he had taken, some introductory biology, where he learned that reptiles such as snakes could "smell" through their tongues.

It felt so strange, so utterly alien to experience such a sensation, and he immediately darted up. He stood in the middle of the burnt-out wreckage of the office building, the epicenter of a sea of grimy black. His clothes had burnt away, but sloppy, rain-infused ash and half-burnt mass clung to him, weighing him down, and it was then, feeling the physical manifestation of his failures sticking to him, that he fully realized the weight of what had happened.

He had literally come back from the dead. It wasn't a small-scale kind of death either, like a heart-attack victim passing away intact. He had burned away completely, leaving not even an entire skeleton, but here he was.

"And here you are, against all odds. For a greater purpose."

A chilling voice cut through the night. It was at once beautiful and terrible, heavenly and hellish. A womanly voice, for sure, but somewhat inhuman, intoning the wrong words.

Fang gazed at the woman that had called him back to life. He remembered her, wrapped in white robes that shone like snow under sun. Even now, those robes fluttered about her, and he noticed they did not so much as float on the wind as they did of their seeming own volition, like they were live serpents that slithered about her.

"You can read my mind?" asked Fang.

"I can sense it," said the woman. She drew closer, but Fang couldn't make out very many details about her. Her robes covered her in an almost distorting aura, keeping her body hidden, but her face struck him still. It was beautiful to a haunting extent, as if some higher force had personally carved a doll meant to be as pretty as possible, as out of reach from humankind as possible, unnatural and yet lovely to the highest extent.

"An Alter?" questioned Fang. He stepped back, overpowered by her inhuman presence. Perhaps she had the superpower to read minds.

"No, something more," she said. "And you too are something more. We are something more."

Fang blinked in confusion, and the woman sensed it. She waved her hand, and the filth that covered Fang disappeared, dissolving into nothingness. He realized then that it wasn't just his tongue that had changed – his whole body had altered.

He was still human, that was for sure, but his skin had lost its soft, human elasticity. It had hardened over with brilliant golden scales that grew particularly thick around his vitals – his armpit, his neck, and, thankfully, protected his decency.

"You possess a gene lost to time." She closed her hand into a fist, and winds started circulating around it, gathering the soot and ash into a complex pattern of revolving hexagrams. "Not the Alter Gene, something far more ancient. Far greater. The Gene of the Gods, when Magic still remained in this world and when wonderful beasts and creatures of all kinds roamed the earth. In your case, you hold the Gene of the Dragon, the finest and strongest of mythical wonders."

"The dragon," whispered Fang. "And you? You said you were the same as me. What are you?"

"A god. Perhaps the only left in this world."

Fang blinked. "A god…like in the stories? Movies? Like Thor, Odin, all that? That kind of god? Or god as in, all powerful, almighty?"

"There is no almighty god," she said. "Or else there would be more of us left. But yes, if it helps you understand, my nature is similar to that of these primeval gods you know, though I doubt you truly grasp our nature."

"Then what is your nature. Don't keep talking to me in circles. What do you want from me? Why did you revive me?"

"You are a rare shard of my era. It would be a great loss to this world to let you pass." A pause. "And I knew by searching your mind that you were hunting those with the Alter gene. I too wish for that gene to be purged, for its heretical existence to be wiped away. It did not come from this world, and yet it has wiped away the existence of the ancient, the mystical, the godly that created and nurtured his world from the start. I wish to return the favor and wipe away the filth that is the Alter gene."

Fang raised a wary, clawed hand. "Slow down. I hunt criminals, not every single Alter on this planet. I'm thankful that you saved me, but I'm still going to do what I promised myself I would do."

The woman gave a curt nod. "And I understand that, mortal. I will not force you into my service, but you will come to find that our paths merge rather well. Even now, you have an Alter to hunt, no?"

Scarskin.

Fang clenched his fists. He would give Scarskin one hell of a surprise.

"Guess I can give you one favor," he said. "But where will you go from here? You just show up, a god in the flesh, maybe the last of your kind. You can understand why I'd be confused as to what you're going to do from now."

"Following you," she said. Or rather, she more or less declared it.

"Excuse me?"

"I do not have anywhere to go. I will join you. This is the least service you can do for me, no?"

Fang raised a questioning finger and wanted to voice a complaint, but he decided against it. Despite how hard he could get, especially with criminals, he was soft to those in need, and this woman – this goddess – needed it.

"Alright," Fang surrendered, raising his hands in the air. "But just know my shitty flat up in Chinatown doesn't exactly have the most space."