Rise of the Dragonwolf

There are defining moments in my life. Moments that strike deep and leave echoes in my mind. Those thoughts turn into understanding, and understanding sharpens into experience. Those experiences lay the foundation of who I am. One part of me was shaped in very specific moments, carved out of time itself. That is the Dragonwolf of the Shadow Pride. His roots stretch far back in my life, but his true inception was marked by several distinct moments, each a spark to his flame. Every spark lit a different part of me, wolf, dragon, shadow, and lion. Together they shaped me. To tell that story, I must tell theirs, beginning with the wolf.

The wolf sparks began to swirl on a day like any other. I sat at my keyboard, fingers flying, the sharp click of cherry blue switches filling the air as lines of code spilled out. I was wrestling with a problem, how to fit complex geometric shapes into a mapping system built on square coordinates for a graphics library. I paused, pressing my fists under my chin as I muttered through half-formed solutions. Then I realized how oppressively quiet it was.
"Can’t think like this," I grumbled.
Music! That would fix it. A few days earlier, my friend DeAnn had introduced me to an artist who wove Celtic and fantastical themes into song. I fumbled across my desk, found the Apple TV remote, and held down the Siri button.
"Shuffle songs by Karliene," I said.
Music poured through my headphones, drums bumping, a hurdy-gurdy whining, rhythms with that Irish fire that keeps the blood moving. My focus snapped back, and I coded with renewed clarity.
Time slipped by, thirty, maybe forty minutes, before something shifted. The song ended. A new one began. No drums. No hurdy-gurdy. Just the soft strum of a guitar and Karliene’s haunting voice. The contrast caught me off guard, and I paused for a moment. But that moment unraveled into the length of the song, and I found myself utterly captured.
The song told of a wounded wolf, broken and bleeding in the winter snow. A battle with a bear had left him torn and near death. He lay exposed, frost biting at his fur, breath shallow, life ebbing. Above him, the moon watched. And as he gazed up, she smiled upon him. The wolf lifted his head, singing songs of passion and love to the moon, pouring out his soul. By dawn, his wounds were gone, presumably healed by her light. He looked to the sky and knew who had saved him. The story filled my mind with visions sharper than anything music had ever conjured for me before. I could see the snow, trampled and blood-stained, the wolf’s matted fur glistening under the cold light of the full moon. I could feel that light, hear the raw ache in his howl as he lifted his head to sing. I wasn’t just seeing it, I was inside it. I was the wolf, broken, bleeding, yet still raising my voice in love and desperate hope. I was the moon, radiant with joy at the song of my wolf. I wasn’t simply listening, but living it.
When the song ended, I was broken, for lack of a better word. There would be no more coding that day, not after the hammerblow my mind had just taken. And yet, the universe wasn’t finished with me. That night, when I stepped outside, I saw it: a full moon. What little control I still clung to shattered like glass. I froze, staring upward, caught in her light as if turned to stone.
It was then that realization struck. The connection I felt with wolves in stories and in music was not because I thought they were cool, or merely interesting. It was because they were already within me. On that night, the wolf in me was born, fully, fiercely, and completely.

The wolf inside me is the one who guides. I follow him because he has never steered me wrong. He is the one that rises in the purest moments. He decides who is family, who is pack, and who is a threat that must be stopped before they can hurt us. That deep connection lets me trust myself in ways I never could before. When meeting new people, or working out issues between friends, the wolf’s instincts guide me. They tell me, this one belongs in your pack, or, the real reason these two are fighting goes deeper than this petty argument. Thanks to him, I have kept my pack together through challenges that might have split us apart.
So when friends call it cheesy, or joke about it, I only smile. For I know they see it too, that instinct, that loyalty. And when they lean into it, when they call me their leader, their wolf, their alpha, I rejoice. To be known in that way, even in jest, is to be seen for who I truly am. And for me, being seen is everything.
But instinct and love were not the only forces stirring in me. There was another, a fire waiting to burn, and it would awaken with the dragon.

The dragon sparks came at night, somewhere between 2200 and 0000 hours. My friends Bran, Andrew, and I were hanging out on Andrew’s TeamTalk server, roleplaying in the fantasy world we had built together. That night’s story centered on a mad doctor and his twisted experiments with demons and dimensional gateways. His machine consumed souls to power his work, fueling science with dark magic in ways too horrific to ignore. Naturally, the Pegasus Alliance, our band of heroes, could not let this continue once the truth came to light.
A few of us set out to put an end to his cruelty. One of those few was Shellguen, a dragon, raised by a demon slayer and trained in the Slayer Dragon Sect of the Academy of Ages.
This was my first time stepping fully into Shellguen, and I wanted him to feel real, alive, and authentic. For weeks I had been experimenting with voice acting techniques, training myself, learning what I could. Now it was time to risk everything and put that practice on display. I asked myself, How do I sound like a dragon, let alone one with Shellguen’s prowess? " My friends' voices broke into my scrambling thoughts: "Ethan? Hello? You there?"
I searched my memory, pulling on every dragon voice I had ever heard in narration or performance. One voice rose above all others, Gerard Doyle’s portrayal of Glaedr from the Inheritance Cycle. It was one of my favorite performances of all time. Shellguen was younger than Glaedr was at the time, so I shaped my voice into something like a younger echo of that power. It wasn’t perfect. In fact, it was rougher than I had intended. But somehow, that made him feel more real to me, less imitation, more creation.
Later in the story, Shellguen crashed through the doctor’s lab, roaring: "Stop your destruction! You shall reap the benefits of lives no longer!"
In that moment, I realized I was standing in the middle of my room, arms outstretched like wings, feet stomping the floor like a beast landing from flight. I wasn’t just speaking lines. I wasn’t just acting. I was Shellguen. I was the voice, and the act. I was a dragon!
I had never felt such immersion, such complete transformation. And in that fire-lit instant, I understood why Shellguen had awakened this in me. He was not something I had simply invented. He was a reflection of something already within me. On that night, the dragon inside me raised his head for the first time, and breathed his flames of life into me.

It is this fire that drives me forward every day. It is what earned me the moniker “stubborn as a dragon.” Yes, I’ve been called that, and yes, the day I was given that name, one of the biggest smiles I’ve ever worn split my face. I am, in truth, just as stubborn as a dragon. Without that drive, without that fire, I would not be where I am today.
The dragon taught me a valuable lesson: to fight for what I believe in, even as Shelguen fought for his belief that the doctor had to be stopped. When someone challenges me, it is the dragon who answers. When they tell me I am not good enough, he roars back, not in denial, but in defiance, they are right, I am not good enough. I am far more than enough.
I know now, no matter what comes, the dragon within me will not let me fall. He will always spread his wings and rise again. His birth lit within me a fire to fight for my beliefs, a fire that still burns strong. But fire alone cannot carry us. Even the brightest flames cast shadows, and in that darkness, I found a different kind of truth.

That truth would be found within the shadow sparks, which rose within me once again at night. But this night, I was alone. It was around 0200, and I was deep into a book, or more accurately, so obsessed with the series that I was already nearing the final volume. The book was The Fallen Blade by Kelly McCullough. It tells the story of Aral Kingslayer and his living shadow familiar, Triss. Once, they had fought for justice under the goddess Namara, but when Namara was destroyed, they were left with no one to serve, no guiding light. Across the series they face countless trials, but one thing struck me more than all the rest: Triss himself.
Triss is forged of living shadow, born from the essence of the Everdark, yet he is one of the most pure and good beings I have ever found in a story. That night, as I listened, I realized I wasn’t there for the plot, nor even for Aral, but for Triss and the intricate wonder of who he was. At first it was simply fascination, he was different, unique, and that caught my attention. But fascination deepened into something else when the thought rooted itself in my mind: can darkness be good?
My answer came fast and fierce. Yes. It most certainly can. I didn’t notice the hours slip away, didn’t notice when I paused the book and simply sat, caught in the feeling Triss had sparked within me. Not until the first rays of dawn pierced my window did I realize how long I had been sitting there, absorbed in the thought of good darkness.
And then the realization struck. I wasn’t merely drawn to Triss, nor to his shadowed purity. For that time, I was living it. It was already inside me. I was the Shadow, the darkness, a living shade of good, and on that night, the shade within me stretched out his soul, and awoke for the first time.

It is this thought, the thought of good darkness, that keeps me from faltering. When I reach the lowest points in my life, I return to that night, the night I first realized that even darkness can be good. I hold to it now as a reminder: darkness is not only meant to harm or destroy, but to shape the person we are. It is through trial that we uncover the deepest parts of ourselves. So, even as Triss remained hopeful, so shall I.
In the moments where I feel I have lost, I remember that in truth I have won, because I have discovered something new about myself. I have walked through the trial, and now I can learn from it and grow. I strive to follow Triss’s example, never losing hope, always becoming the best form of darkness I can. I remember that trial shapes us, and no shadow can crush me, for I am the living embodiment of that darkness.
But even darkness needs balance. A force of loyalty and protection to hold it steady. That balance came with the lion.

The lion sparks came to me last, though not all at once. They arrived over several days. School was out, and I was restless, searching through my collection for something new to read. That’s when I stumbled across Kate Daniels by Ilona Andrews, and from the first pages I felt the pull. The series follows Kate Daniels, a mercenary armed with a sword, a sharp tongue, and secrets hidden deep in her blood. She takes the jobs no one else dares, cleaning up magical wreckage, creatures twisted by broken spells, curses left to rot, beings that hunger for life itself. Yet Kate is more than a mercenary. She is heir to a power older and darker than most can even imagine, a lineage she must conceal if she wants to survive. And then there was Curran Lennart, the Beast Lord of Atlanta, the strongest lion shifter alive. At first, he was simply another force in Kate’s world, though one that mattered a great deal. As the story unfolded, as Kate and Curran grew closer, his presence became undeniable. When Kate and Curran fell in love, it wasn’t just a romance, it was the unveiling of Curran’s true strength.
My own name, Ethan, means steadfast, and that is what I saw in Curran. He never wavered. He never gave up, because surrender would mean the destruction of those he swore to protect. He was, in essence, a guardian lion. Before long, I realized something strange: I wasn’t listening for Kate anymore, I was listening for Curran. His spirit called to me, because in many ways, we are the same. He would give everything for those he loved, no matter the cost. And so would I. I may not fight flesh-eating monsters or sorcerers hungry to bend the world to their will, but I will fight any battle that threatens the people I call family. Even if it breaks me, I will stand, because that is what it means to guard.
That was the moment the truth struck me. What bound me to Curran wasn’t just admiration, it was recognition. Something older, something primal, stirred within me. The lion. The guardian spirit that lives in both of us. So when Curran roared into battle, I roared with him. And in that sound, wild and unyielding, I set my own lion free.

The lion within me is the keeper of my loyalty. He makes sure that no matter what happens, I fight for those I love. He protects and defends. His loyalty is why, once you make friends with me, you'll be hard-pressed to get rid of me. I’ve been told that before, and yes, a broad smile split my face when I heard it.
I will never yield when someone I consider a friend is harmed. I have fought battles, both mental and physical, for my people, what the lion calls my pride. I’ve stayed up long nights making sure friends feel steadier after a rough day. I’ve stood guard online, driving off disgusting predators and making sure they carry a fear of trying that again. I fight, again and again, just like Curran, because protecting the ones I love is worth the pain it brings.
I’ve even been compared directly to Curran, and when that happens, I take it as the highest compliment. It means the lion inside me still stands strong, unyielding against any who would harm those I care for.

All of these sparks are the echoes of defining moments, each one carving something essential into me. The wolf sharpens my instincts and binds me in love. The dragon fuels me with fire and will not let me fall. The shadow teaches me that even darkness can be good, shaping me through trial. The lion roots me in loyalty, unyielding in the defense of my pride. They are not separate pieces, but facets of one whole. Together they forged me into something beautiful, pure, and true. They made me into the Dragonwolf of the Shadow Pride. I am him, and he is me. This is no mask, no passing phase, but the core of my being. I am not flawless; I will falter. Yet no matter how many times I stumble, these sparks remind me who I am and who I fight for. And so, I will always rise as the Dragonwolf of the Shadow Pride.