deface | fuckin dragons man

A dragon and her somewhat incompetent rider that she doesn't like much. They trade jobs that no one wants to do and cheat each other out of stuff constantly, and when a new threat appears they always have to book it— even if it does inspire a little tiny bit of working together in the process. They run into a white dragon who, despite being smaller and less powerful, is simply not taking any of their bullshit because they're so unimpressive together. Whitey fetches her tribe of minotaurs, and they drive off black and rider.

She's with him just because she's not sure where else to go, but she plans on ditching all this for the first big, strong, dreamy human warrior with an army she can fight at the head of. He insists he was the general of an army, it's just back this way, but she believes that if he's not outright lying, it's just a band of like 20 mercenaries.

She's also very young, maybe hatched in his company and grew to nearly fullsize in a few short weeks (ala Temeraire, learning is done in the shell), so she sticks with him because she has a lot to learn about the world, and it's better to have someone not actively trying to kill you teaching you about it. Still needs to learn shapechanging, will immediately begin to rub that in his face when she does. Calls her "Dagger", which she isn't fond of.

V is quiet, insightful, bookish, but cunning. He's secluded himself in the mountains, where K basically just falls into his lap shortly after hatching. He feeds her and she scampers off (hurt or some shit), but keeps coming back for food. "nowhere else to go?" and "no parents?" yields no results.

He eventually helps her learn to hunt, then learn to fly, and much later learn to harness her natural ability to shapechange, but he can't help her learn about other dragons or see the world (though he has a thousand stories to tell about it). She knows she's supposed to be great, and after hearing about big famous battles/armies from him, dreams of being at the head of one. He can see she has an ambitious and cruel nature, but slowly comes to think he can change that/it would be worth it to.

It comes out that he's secluded himself in the mountains to weaken and die (incurable sickness), but she's not down with that. She's just selfish enough not to leave the choice of how he dies in his hands, and so leaves and drags him along with to find a cure. This is actually a plan of his, as he claims he's heard of the cure, but knows there isn't any. It's meant to teach her his final life lessons and get her out to see the world. (End result option 1: They get to the end of the fake-quest and oh look no cure, he dies. Option 2: They unexpectedly do find a cure, and his machinations fall apart and she realizes it was all a fake/she was led on. For her to be pissy about it she would have had to just sacrificed something big for this quest...)

Come to a small village, delayed for something? (Pharmacist making necessary drugs or something.) While there she learns about acting human and meets D, a good guy (knight?) passing through who is terribly opposed to her dickhole ways. They meet on a good note, but their relationship begins to quickly sour (starting when he rejects her advances), becomes a multiple-encounter grudge over their travels. He rises through the ranks of knights into leadership position, as she grows bigger still/learns more spells/etc.

Things to work out:
• Why is he there? What's the illness, what happened to family/village? Is it genetic? A curse?
• Side quests! People/things claim they know the cure and will help if helped in turn, but turn out to be marginally useful/not useful at all.