Story Overview:
Way of the Dragon follows the story of Anri, a young girl seeking the path of an elemental warrior. It is rare for a female to pursue the Way; a set of rules and guidelines for knights and mercenaries seeking to live their lives by their swords. However, Anri is not just any girl. Though her history is marred by scars that she cannot remember, she has desired nothing more than to overcome the restraints and limits placed on her as a woman and as a person. Her anger is her strength, but nine times out of ten, it also proves to be her undoing. Will the young Dragon regain her lost memories and succeed in becoming more than just the wife of a lesser knight? Or will her anger burn her out once and for all?
Rating:
This story is rated yellow, for infrequent coarse language, moderate violence and/or death of humans or animals, and sexual references. It was intended to be a green story, but the complex romantic relationship in play, and the ultimate direction that the Way and all of the battle training is heading, prompted me to kick it up a notch.
Spoiler-Free Author’s Notes:
This is an oldie, pulled up from the darkest recesses of my backlog of things I’d love to work more on. I have always liked the concepts I came up with here, but I always ended up trying to put my focus somewhere else over the years, and never got around to it.
I think of this story as a cross between Disney’s Mulan and the anime series Naruto. Anri is very much a Mulan archetype, willing to fly in the face of tradition and expectation for the sake of the greater good. However, the story is also about the growing relationships between Anri, her would-be boyfriend Raimen, and the mysterious girl Nana. The world they live in is not a kind one, and they will have only each other to rely on as the coming storm approaches. Whether they grow together or apart is anyone’s guess for the moment!
This story, more than any of the others on this site, is evolving in organic fashion. I have a very loose idea of what will happen next. At the time I wrote the first chapter, I was far too young in my career to consider an ending. Most of what you have seen has been what I have come up with on the fly, close to ten years later. It could go anywhere.
Team Way of the Dragon, as created by LooseLeaf! Characters are, in order, from left to right: Anri, Raimen, Nana, Mikhail and Grimm.