Dragonchild of Darkness

[Questwolf]

Awareness crept up upon her, as with imperceptible slowness the nothingness of nonexistence gave way to an indescribable somethingness. By degrees she became aware of herself, of the curled up bundle that was her body and the soft rhythm beating within it. Eventually, with great caution she extended questing limbs outward, into the unknown and in so doing she found the wall. The wall was solid, so hard and firm that it did not yield to her touch. Through careful exploration she came to understand that the wall surrounded her on all sides, holding her in place within its embrace. Languidly the thought came to her that the wall felt rather nice. For a while she ruminated on that, but then the thought fled her as awareness faded and she slipped back into the void of unconsciousness. Yet when she woke she remembered. She remembered the soft heartbeat within her, the body that was her, and the wall that surrounded her. Sure enough all those things still existed despite her stint of unawareness.

For a time it was just her, the rhythm of heartbeats, and the wall that surrounded her. Unawareness came and went and she came to understand the cycle of sleep and wakefulness. She suspected that the heartbeat continued even as she slept though she could not say for sure. She was certain the wall remained present even as she slumbered for it was not a transient presence as wakefulness was but a solid thing she could touch and feel. She was contemplating how lovely and comforting the wall around her felt, when with startling abruptness a new thought appeared within her mind. I serve the Void Gods. The thought came out of nothing and nowhere, wet and dripping with impossible knowledge. She immediately identified the strange thought as not her own for it was clearly not about her, the heartbeat or the wall. What were gods? Carefully she turned the alien thought over in her mind, feeling out the shape of it. She got the impression of incomprehensible things, that loomed impossibly large. To act as they demanded was only natural, claimed the thought that was not hers.

After a moment of consideration she came to a stunning revelation. These gods must exist somewhere beyond the wall! It seemed an impossible conclusion for the wall was all encompassing, surrounding her on all sides and reassuringly solid. Yet the thought had to have come from somewhere, and she would have surely felt something as large and strange as these gods apparently were if they existed within the wall as she did. Thinking of where these gods were in the great unknown that apparently existed outside the comforting embrace of the wall made her feel terribly small. It was like the time before she discovered the wall when she had extended herself into the unknown, not knowing what she would find.

Even as she considered the great unknown beyond the wall, new thoughts came to her. They came to her as she was awake and thinking and they came while she was asleep and unaware, filling her mind with half remembered things that fled her when she woke. After many cycles of sleep and wakefulness she came to think of these alien thoughts as whispers, but that did not help her understand them. She tried to make sense of them by reviewing those she had thought while awake. The Void Gods will guide me to Power inestimable. What was power? Destiny in Darkness. She knew neither darkness nor destiny. All will fall before me. What? How? Why? I embrace the void. The only embrace she knew was that of the wall. The only void was that of sleep. They are inevitable. Who were they? The void gods from the first whisper perhaps, but what did it mean to be inevitable?

The whispers all made perfect sense when she first thought them but considering them after that, the whispers practically bubbled with unknowns and uncertainties. With things she did not know how she knew. It was frustrating. She much preferred to think of the wall. As time had passed it had grown closer, coming to embrace her more tightly. She gently ran her limbs across the smooth, gently curving shape of the wall drawing comfort from the sensation. The wall could be touched and felt unlike the mysterious gods that she theorized existed somewhere in the great unknown beyond the wall. That made the wall far more real and understandable to her than the strange and alien gods the whispers told her of. She wiggled her body against the reassuring solidness of the wall for a little longer before sleep claimed her and she sunk into the void of unconsciousness once more.

She awoke to sound. Not the everpresent soft, steady thumping of her heartbeat (though that was there) but a new, far louder, totally different sound wholly unlike it. Shaking off the hazy memories of the whispers that had come to her as she slept she focused her attention on the new noise. It was harsh, hissing, and warbling in vivid contrast to her heartbeat but more excitingly the noise seemed to emanate from some point far beyond the wall! Perhaps this was the heartbeat of a god? She listened intently as the sound rose and fell, its intensity varying seemingly at random. She tried to divine some new information about the great unknown beyond the wall from this sound but after only a short while the noise ceased, leaving her with only the steady thumping of her heart, a noise that suddenly seemed incredibly soft and quiet.

As the sleep cycles past the unknown warbling sound returned with increasingly frequency if frustratingly inconsistency. At least by listening carefully she was able to detect other softer sounds that sometimes came before or after the warbling. Between sounds from the great unknown and the whispers she had much more to think on than she had in the past. Using what little she understood from the sounds and the whispers she tried to imagine the shape of the great unknown beyond the wall exploring it with her mind as her body had explored the wall with touch. She attempted to arrange where void, gods, darkness, destiny, and the other things the whispers spoke lay in relation to each other and the wall she lay curled up within. Then she tried to guess which of them made the warbling noise.

Her big breakthrough in this grand endeavor came when the whispers for the first time ever repeated themselves. She thought for the second time of Destiny in darkness. What that meant or why the whisper had come again she could not say but it gave her the idea to compare the warbling sounds to each other more closely to see if they ever repeated. At first look they did not - every warbling varied in length and volume seemingly without reason. But as she carefully remembered each sound she realized that bits and pieces did sound alike! What she had taken for a single sound was in fact many different sounds all coming one after the other. Some of those smaller sounds were repeated in almost every warbling! What the significance of this was she did not know but it was a great discovery nonetheless.

Of course even as she turned her contemplations outward to the great unknown she did not neglect her oldest companion, the wall. It had grown increasingly close of late to the point she did not have to extend any part of herself outwards in order to feel the wall all around her. While this felt very cozy she did wonder what was causing this increased closeness. In her earliest memories she'd had to extend her forelimb out quite far to reach the wall, yet now it was only a twitch or idle wiggle away, even curled as tightly around herself as she was. Yet perhaps this was simply the way of things. For as long as she could remember the wall had slowly grown closer. It was probably just the way the wall was. Idly she wondered what would happen when there was nothing at all separating her body from the wall.

 

[Questwolf]

As time passed, she found her attention drawn more and more toward the wall. It closed in around her, holding her tighter and tighter. It felt nice, the tightness of the walls smooth embrace making her feel warm and relaxed. For a while she simply drifted, ignoring the whispers from within her mind and the warbles from the great unknown in favor of the comforting embrace of the wall. Yet her contentment did not last forever. The wall continued to tighten its grip upon her body, and for the first time ever the touch of the wall began to feel uncomfortable and constricting. She had thought that once the wall reached her, it would end its ceaseless advance, having shrunk as far as it could. Yet it seemed to want to continue shrinking right through her! That could not happen, but she did not know what to do in order to stop it. Her body began to grow restless as she tried to think of how to loosen the painfully tight embrace of the wall.

Yet even as her focus turned to the wall, she heard something in the great unknown. It began with a quiet cracking sound and then the warbling started up again, though it sounded slightly different. Shortly after that came a barrage of new sounds. A cacophony of hissing, snapping, and yelping that she did not understand. The whispers did though. They spoke to her incessantly of fighting and Killing and proving strength through bloodshed.

With an effort she swallowed down the alien concepts that bubbled up within her and tried to focus on the wall. It was more important than whatever was happening in the great unknown. The wall's comforting solidity had been a constant companion for almost as long as she could remember, yet now it seemed to threaten her very being! Eventually she came to the conclusion she would have to push the wall back into its proper place. That would surely set things right. She wiggled her body back and forth trying to uncurl herself, yet the wall did not relent. She tried to push on the wall with her forelimbs, yet all she managed to do was shift herself slightly back and down. In desperation she stretched out her entire frame, pushing outward on the wall with head, tail, forelimbs, hindlimbs and wings all at once. It felt like the whole of her being strained against the implacable solidness of the wall. Once, twice, thrice the wall rebuffed her efforts but then

-crack-

The wall seemed to yield just the slightest amount with a familiar cracking sound. Emboldened she pushed outwards once more and suddenly the wall gave way as she sprawled out farther than she ever had. Inside her chest her lungs contorted and she gasped as she breathed in for the first time ever. Immediately she was bombarded by new senses, by sight and taste and smell. For a while she just lay there and breathed, so exhausted by her labors that she just let the startling new sensations wash over her.

Then she blinked, marveling at the wonder of sight. She saw shapes and colors all around her, figures moving as they hissed and cawed at one another. the darkness she had known all her life had been peeled away to reveal light. Hesitantly she darted her tongue out to taste the air and found it full of scents. Each clashing figure seemed to have their own and they mixed together with each other and a vast multitude of as yet indecipherable smells.

The sudden ability to see and smell was so distracting it took her a moment to realize what had just happened. She had broken through the wall and into the great unknown! Immediately several conflicting emotions surged through her. Horror at inadvertently destroying such an integral part of her life as the wall. Excitement to explore the great unknown around her. Curiosity about her new senses. Fear and wonder at the great expanse she felt around herself.
Even as her feelings roiled, She examined her new surroundings mapping the unknown with her eyes. She and the broken remnants of the wall still wrapped around her were in a cavernous open space enclosed by irregular gray walls. On one side of the space an opening let in light while the other lay cloaked in shadow. Scattered around her lay shattered empty walls that smelled much like the one she emerged from, and biting clawing figures that smelled much like her.

One of those figures ambled over to her and raised its claws to her head. The figure proceeded to claw her face. Another new sensation washed over her - pain. It came from her snout, a sharp feeling so hurtful she let out a yelp of surprise. The creature before her snarled in response. It was of like size to herself, mantled in black scales and with blood dripping from its foreclaws. Enemy. Fight it. Hurt it. Make it bleed. Claw it's eyes out.

Her claws twitched as a vast multitude of very violent solutions were whispered into her mind. The villainous creature reached out to claw her again and this time she clawed back tearing her foreclaws through scales and into the vulnerable flesh beneath, even as her lower wing cried out in pain from her attacker's own strike. She snarled and growled as she emerged from the wall tearing into her attacker with tooth and claw, every blossoming of pain just pushing her onwards. Then the world spun as her attacker tackled her to the ground and leaped atop her to claw at her throat. In a sudden panic she raised her hind claws up and raked them along the creature's belly. It howled in surprised agony and writhed in pain. Then it leapt off her, leaving her battered body in a heap as it made its escape.

She watched as her one time attacker limped away mewling in pain, the warm glow of victory in her chest. Until with shocking suddenness, massive jaws closed around the creature. One moment it was limping from her, the next its body was twitching in a devouring maw of some giant creature. With languid slowness the devourer retreated back into the shadow and swallowed down its prey. It was alike in shape to the creature she had fought yet colossal in scale. As the devourer's crimson eyes looked down to regard her she froze in terror holding herself completely still. Those burning eyes seemed to pierce straight through her and they made her feel so very, very small. Slowly a toothy grin parted to reveal a great jaw (large enough to swallow her whole!) and a familiar warbling sound came out. She did not know exactly what the Devourer attempted to convey to her but she felt in her bones that it was cruel and derisive.

When she did not respond the devourer seemed to lose interest, looking back to those figures still fighting. A moment later it vanished, it's great bulk fading from sight as if it had never been there, but she could still smell it. The terrible creature's scent permeated this place, filling the very air she breathed. The smell was upon closer inspection an inalienable part of the scent of each of the combatants. It was a part of her own scent. What that meant she did not know. In that moment she did not want to know. She simply stayed very quiet and very still as she observed the fighting. Twice more she witnessed those defeated consumed by the devourer.

At last the struggle finally came to an end, the various participants apparently too exhausted and wounded to continue. Still growling and snapping at each other they turned to consuming the shattered walls that littered the ground. There were far more walls than creatures yet they still argued over who got to eat which wall.

No one ate her wall of course. She growled and snapped at any who approached it and all comers turned away without a fight, looking for an easier meal. Yet as her own tummy began to growl she found her attention drawn inextricably to where her wall lay in pieces. It was the first thing she had ever found and now it lay upon the ground, shattered and broken by her emergence. In the light the pieces were a deep black color almost like the scales of the creatures she had seen. She rubbed her snout against the largest fragment and breathed in, capturing the wall's scent. She was hungry and hurt and the wall was already broken anyways and so she could not stop herself from devouring it. After that she lapped up the clear, thicker than blood fluid that had leaked from the wall. Then she licked her wounds for a time running her tongue along those lacerations she could reach. After she was done the injuries hurt just slightly less.

Then she was tired. More tired than she could ever recall being before. She curled up around herself but sleep did not claim her. It felt wrong not having the comforting embrace of the wall around her. With a great effort she uncurled herself and dragged her aching body to the edge of the cavernous space. There she found a corner that she pressed her body into. That felt slightly better. Like half a wall. Slowly the light faded and the cavernous space grew quiet as sleep claimed the others. She did not know where the devourer was or if it slept. As sleep slowly overcame her she reflected on that. The great unknown it turned out was a scary place to be.

 

[Questwolf]

She woke to the sounds of fighting. Instantly her head darted up, as she shifted from her cozy curl to see what was happening. The survivors of the earlier fight were arrayed before the Devourer who lay curled up contentedly in the center of the room, a large creature spasming in its foreclaws. While she watched, the unknown creature bellowed in agony as the Devourer brought its great maw down and tore a bloody chunk out of the unknown creature's hindquarters. After a moment the Devourer spat out the morsel among the others who hissed and clawed at each other as they fought over the scrap of flesh.

Seeing that she was not the center of attention she took a groggy moment to examine her state. She was tired. Just woken up and already tired - it seemed most unfair. Her various injuries had gone from sharp stinging pains to unpleasant aches at least. She felt very cold which was an unpleasant and novel sensation. And she was scared. She was scared of the others but most of all she was scared of the Devourer. Her stomach informed her that she was also extremely hungry. The tantalizing scent of flesh wared with her fear and in a moment of indecision she decided to look herself over. She had not gotten the chance to properly see what her body looked like since she left the embrace of the wall after all. She started with the most familiar looking down at her forelimbs. They seemed near identical to those of the others, clad in black scales and with wicked curved claws coming from her five-toed paws. Turning her head she looked back to examine her flank.

A pair of great black wings emerged from her shoulders, as thick and scaled as her forelimbs yet with a large delicate looking membrane extending from the limb to the top of her body. Experimentally she stretched them out marveling at how far out from her body her wings extended. She had to be almost twice as long wingtip to wingtip than she was nose to tail! Curiously she saw she had a single sickle shaped talon about halfway down each wing. She vaguely remembered bartering her one time attacker with her wings in the fury of combat but she hadn't thought to try clawing at them with her wings. Not that she had been doing much thinking at the time.

Shaking away memories of the fight she continued her examination. She had a long thick tail that ended in a solid bony club. She thought that it was probably good at hitting things. Sticking her head under her belly allowed her to examine her hindlimbs but they were much like her forelimbs just with dewclaws instead of opposable thumbs. She wished she had some way of seeing if her eyes were the same blood red color as the others but with that impossible she moved on to scent. Tasting the air it was easy to identify her own scent. It was uniquely hers yet undeniably related to the others and the Devourer.

Yet that was not the only scent she tasted in the air and her growling stomach made the tang of flesh harder to deny. She arrived late and wound up with little in the way of food. Most of her prizes were claimed shortly after the prey creature died and the Devourer, apparently tired of the game, began to eat the carcass. It was a messy process and most of the others were too busy securing their own scraps to bother her. After the Devourer finished eating it turned to her and the others and began warbling at them. Whatever it was trying to say it was quickly annoyed at their incomprehension for without warning it abruptly backhanded the closest other, sending it flying into a wall. For a moment she thought the unfortunate dead but it sprung to its feet apparently none the worse for wear. With a huff the Devourer turned and leaped into the opening of the cavernous space unfurling its titanic wings before flying off into the light.

She was astonished by the sight! Could she fly like that? Where did the Devourer go? Something told her it did not simply disappear into the light never to return. Her brief experience outside the wall told her she was not that lucky. Still perhaps the Devourer had gone after another prey creature? That would not be so bad, she was still rather hungry after all. Curious now, she approached the opening herself, her claws and talons clinking off the ground as her cautious steps took her closer to the light. Then in no time at all she was there and after only a moment's hesitation she thrust her head out into the harsh glare of the light.

For a moment the brightness blinded her, but then her eyes adjusted and the world opened up before her. The sky stretched out above her, the soft blue haze sprawling endlessly from horizon to horizon. All around her the towering gray peaks of vast mountains scraped against the sky. Far below her she saw fluffy white clouds soar over the green-forested hills that stretched as far as the eye could see.

The sight of it stole her breath away and for a time she simply marveled at the vastness of the world. She felt the cold wind blow against her scales and its touch seemed almost playful, like it was inviting her out to soar through the vast sky above and explore the land below. For a moment she considered it stretching out her wings and trying to remember what the Devourer had done to lift itself into the air so gracefully. But then she looked down at the shear drop below her and fidgeted uneasily. The moment stretched and she lost her nerve. All around her the wind seemed to howl with laughter at her cowardice yet she did not mind. Someday she would jump into the sky and sail through the wind. She was sure of it. For now she watched the clouds far below.

After a time the Devourer did return, but it did not bring more meat. Instead It warbled at them all. When they did noy satisfy it, it slapped them with its forepaws. The blows were lightning fast with no warning to even tense oneself. One moment the Devourer would be sitting before them the next she would find her limp body flying through the air. Eventually she learned that before it hit her the Devourer spoke a specific sound. In fact it seemed to have sounds for each one of them. Hers was Shadrak'lanarithia. The others had their own complex sounds of similar length all starting with Shadrak. Slowly she matched the easier to remember bits of sounds with the scents she knew the others by. Zavia was the slightly larger one. Nixia was the one who liked to jump around. Saffia was the stubborn one. Terria was the quiet one. And Valexia was the growly one.

When she next heard her sound she hesitantly stepped forward and the Devourer turned its molten gaze upon her. Unsure and terrified she did the only thing she could think of. She spoke up trying to replicate the noise with her own faltering voice. "Sh - Shad-rack-lanar-ethyah" The complex warbling sound was difficult to say, leaving her tongue feeling twisted from the effort required to force the sound out. For a silent heartbeat her small trembling voice seemed to echo through the cavernous space, but then the Devourer leaded down over her.

"Shadrak'lanarithia" spoke the terrifying creature the sound louder than before. With a swallow to try and clear her suddenly dry throat, she repeated the sound as best she could once again, trying desperately to get it right. The Devourer regarded her with an unblinking eye for a moment and then began to warble at her. She did not understand. She sat silent upon the ground waiting for a blow but the Devourer merely snarled and turned away from her. It turned to the others beginning to call out their sounds and she let out a sigh of relief.

Eventually the others learned to speak their sounds and then they all learned to come when the Devourer called them. Next they learned to fight on command. Two sounds would be spoken and the selected would fight each other until two new sounds were called. Recalcitrance was punished with vicious blows from the Devourer. By the time the light began to fade her body hurt even more than it had before she went to sleep and the others looked even worse. She was watching Nixia and Valexia claw at each other weakly when the Devourer disappeared, vanishing from one moment to the next.

The devour flew in shortly after and this time it had a prey creature in its claws. It was surely the nicest thing she had never smelled. She did well in the ensuing brawling, being slightly less battered than the others and taking full advantage of that in the hissing, clawing skirmishes that broke out as the Devourer rained scraps upon them. So at least she went to sleep with a full belly.

 

[Questwolf]

Life outside the wall quickly fell into a familiar pattern. It primarily consisted of fighting the others for food, enduring the attention of the Devourer as it tried to impart "proper behavior", trying to find the right things to do to avoid the Devourers' notice, and sleeping so she had the strength to do it all again the next day. She grew used to constantly being slightly hurt, hungry and cold all the time though the exact balance changed from day to day. At irregular intervals the Devourer would disappear, leaving them to their own devices, though there was no way to be certain when it remained with them watching invisibly and when it left the cavernous space to fetch prey or do other things.

Either way when she could not see the Devourer she would sit before the opening to the outside and think. It was her favorite spot in the whole of the cavernous space, a place where she could imagine it was just herself and the howling wind. There, with the world unfolded below her, she puzzled out the meaning of words and practiced speaking them by talking to the wind. Everyone had learned at least a rudimentary grasp of speech in order to follow the instructions of the Devourer, but she knew her understanding of language as a whole was tenuous at best. It did not help that most of what the Devourer said was curses and insults directed at their weakness, stupidity and myriad other failings. So she came here and worked on her words. It served the dual purpose of helping her understand the Devourer's instructions and giving her context for the alien knowledge whispered into her mind. Plus she enjoyed figuring out new words!

Sometimes though her mind wandered. On occasion she daydreamed of flight. Today as the warm morning light shone down on her, she thought of the first words she had learned. The sounds given to each of them by the Devourer had meaning. They were names. Hers was Shadrak'lanarithia and she did not know what it meant. Was she Shadrak'lanarithia? Or was that just what the Devourer called her. Already she thought of the others by their Devourer given names, but she did not know how they thought of her, or even if it mattered. "What do you think Wind? Do you think of me as Lanarithia?" The wind swallowed up her words but it did not answer. At least it didn't hiss at her like the others did when she tried to ask them.

With no answers from anyone else she turned inward. She tried to consider how she would feel, being Lanarithia, testing the word as she rolled it through her mind like a whisper she could not yet fully contextualize. Then something slammed into her back and she was abruptly pushed out into the sky. For a moment she panicked feeling the wind rushing past her scales as the world tumbled end over end around her. Then she remembered her daydreams of flight and unfurled her wings desperately trying to catch the wind. In the end it was the wind that caught her, grasping her wings in a vice-grip and pulling on them so hard it jarred her wing bones and strained her flight muscles. For an instant she thought the wind would shear her wings from her body but instead she felt it lift her up, pulling her away from the sheer cliff face of the mountain. As she flew, her heart hammering in her chest, she thanked the wind with all her being for saving her life. A laugh bubbled out her throat and she felt a strange elation, a joy at flying, a joy at still being alive to fly.

Quickly she was absorbed with learning the intricacies of flying, like how to turn without losing momentum and dashing oneself on the rocks below and how to actually gain altitude. Many times she fumbled and stalled out, beginning to tumble once more, yet each time she managed to catch the wind on her wings and it pulled back into the sky. Even through her private struggles she did not fail to notice the appearance of the others in the air. One after the other they were thrown out of cavernous space, made to fly into the sky or die on the ground below. Nixia had no problems, bounding into the sky like she was hatched to fly. Zavia managed to catch the wind after a moment of flailing. Both Saffia and Valexia struggled at first, yet desperate effort saw them claw their way into the sky. Terria though… Her broken body lay at the bottom of a narrow mountain valley. The sight of the desperately flailing creature hitting the ground had put a chill in her spine and a lump in her throat. That could have easily been her if the wind had not caught her and lifted her away from the mountain.

An ear splitting roar pulled everyone's attention up to the cavernous space where the Devourer stood perched. It began to shout their names and its favorite curses, a sure sign that they had to reach the Devourers' side imminently or suffer a terrible beating. As she flapped her battered wings straining to pull herself upwards she began grappling with a new challenge - landing. She almost made it inside the cavernous space without crashing but her wingtip clipped the edge of the opening and she began to tumble. With no time to adjust, she hit first the floor and after bouncing off that several times, the wall. Between the forced take off and the unhappy landing her body felt like it had gone several rounds with the others but the important thing is that she had gotten there in time, as she was not the last to arrive.

After the Devourer had cracked several of Valexia's ribs for being the last to arrive it began to address them. After only a perfunctory cursing of their slowness and other more general failings it got to the meat of its announcement. "Now you idiots can finally fly, you can hunt your own food. I'm sure you've seen the prey I've hauled up here. Well it's all from the forest down there. I'm sure even dragons as pitiful as you can manage to catch beasts. Just be back here before nightfall or I'll kill you." Then without ceremony it disappeared

She was astonished. That was the longest the Devourer had ever spoken to them without cursing! It was almost as insane as the news itself. The freedom to fly around all day. The sudden need to acquire their own food. The ominous death threat for if they failed to return. While she pondered all this Nixia immediately leaped out the opening and into the air. The others followed shortly after but she stayed a moment in the apparently deserted cave sitting in her spot overlooking the world. It had lost some of its calming effect as she kept expecting to be suddenly shoved off by someone she couldn't see.

So with a sigh she took flight herself, yet instead of racing down towards the forest far below she flew upwards. As she rose higher the air grew cooler and the bare stone of the mountain came to be covered in ice. Yet she persisted and eventually she made it to the mountain peak. Perched there, at the very top of the tallest mountain in sight, all the world seemed below her and all the heavens above. She spread her wings and roared in triumph and delight as the chill wind enveloped her body. The view was amazing! What better place than this to talk with the wind.

Yet despite her exhilaration the sharp fangs of hunger eventually pried her from her perch. So after only a short time discussing the latest developments with the wind she flew down the mountain looking for something to eat. It turned out she didn't even have to reach the forest. In the mountainous foothills she found a herd of goats. Feeling incredibly lucky she picked a goat out of the herd and dived down toward it. Yet just before she could impact the goat and claw it to death the thing suddenly moved leaving her to slam into the ground and then roll down the hill. It hadn't even been looking in her direction! At least hills were softer than mountains.

Spitting dirt out of her mouth she rolled on to her paws and leaped back into the air. She found the herd of goats was now moving at speed across steep slopes of the foothills and so she flew after them. The rapid movement made it even more difficult to hit the damn animals though greater cation prevented another embarrassing crash. Eventually she was able to swoop low enough to rake her hind claws along the flank of one goat. After that it was a fairly simple matter to hound the wounded animal until it finally fell and she could claw its throat out. Compared to the other's scales, the goat's hide barely resisted her claws at all.

Tearing into the meat of her prey she found it tough and gamey but it was all hers! She glutted herself so much she struggled with the flight back up the mountain and regretted it not one bit. It just felt so amazing to actually be full for once. As she curled up in her corner of the cavern she felt pleasantly warm and lazy. Even though there was still some light left in the day she felt sleep creeping up on her. Despite starting with her being thrown off a mountain, today had on reflection not been that bad.

 

[Questwolf]

When she woke the next morning, shaking of the whispers of sleep, she felt refreshed and energized. She uncoiled herself and let out a yawn as she stretched outward working the kinks out of her serpentine body. Her flight muscles still ached from yesterday, yet she found herself eager to get back into the air. As she walked towards the cave opening she saw the others still curled up in their own sleeping spots. For a moment she looked for where Terria was before she remembered that she was dead, her broken body laying in a valley far below them. Terria's presence had been a constant in her life since her hatching, it seemed so strange that she was just… gone. When did she start to think of the others as 'shes' instead of 'it's'?

Shaking of the feeling of unease she made her way to the opening pausing only briefly before leaping into flight. The wind greeted her exuberantly, billowing around her as she flew up to the peak. She spent some time up there relaxing in the early morning light with the wind. The whispers were particularly lively this morning, whispering to her a twisting lesson on the nature of entropy that she half listened too as she looked down on the world below and chatted with the wind. Eventually the others woke up and she watched as her remaining siblings flew out of the cave below one by one. She herself leaped into the air, eager to explore the world below.

She found many interesting things. The first great discovery was a startlingly blue lake tucked away in a mountain valley. The water within tasted amazingly clear in sharp contrast to the slightly bitter flavor from the puddles that lay within the dark damp recesses of the cave. After drinking her fill she played in the lake for a time, splashing through the shallows like she had not a care in the world. Eventually though both her hunger for exploration and her rather more literal hunger for food pushed her into the sky once more. In the foothills she managed to catch another goat. Utilizing the lessons learned from her first hunt it was only slightly fiddly and she didn't even crash once! After eating her fill she buried the rest of the carcass before flying down into the forest below.

The forest was a wonder! It absolutely teamed with scents and sounds she had never smelled or seen before. Bird song and rabbit scent filled the air alongside a thousand other new things. The whole place teamed with life, from the towering trees with their great green canopies to the vast multitude of beasts that traveled below them. She chased rabbits and birds through the forest and though she never caught them she learned to dig up warrens and raid bird nests. Looking at the small speckled eggs of the feathered beasts, it seemed strange to think that she had hatched from something not so different from that, though larger and black and located in a cave instead of any kind of nest of course. Even after so little time since her hatching, being unable to move about, to see or smell anything seemed an impossible burden. Sometimes though she still missed the warm embrace of the wall. Things were simpler back then. The bird eggs tasted great at least so she supposed that was one point in favor of life in the great unknown.

As the day went on she chased down and ate many new and interesting things. From a multitude of small fluffy animals to a great variety of tasty bugs. She did not limit her explorations to animals and she also tried a profusion of mushrooms, moss, berries, shrubs, foliage, bark and other miscellaneous plant life that could be found in the forest. By the end of the day her stomach felt somewhat uneasy and her mouth and tongue stung from all the thorny and prickly things she had eaten but she had learned a lot!

That night after the five of them had returned the Devourer suddenly appeared and called them to it once again. There were butterflies in her stomach as she sprinted over to her position before it. Her siblings were right behind her with Nixia bounding to her side just a moment before Zavia, Saffia, and Valexia arrived. She expected the Devourer to lash out at Saffia, the last of them to arrive yet it did not. It did nothing and she grew even more restless as the Devourer simply sat before them eyeing them with its piercing gaze before flicking its tongue out to taste the air. She could smell the fear-scent emanating from herself and her siblings as a considering growl emanated from the Devourer. "I think" it spoke in a low purring tone. "That it is time to tell you whelps of our peoples glorious history. Perhaps such knowledge will encourage proper draconic behavior among you." With that comment it turned to glare down at Lanarithia and she felt her heart skip a beat. What had she done wrong? The Devourer continued without pause.

"The story of how dragons came to rule this world begins with Drak'athenia the Dragonmother, who came from beyond the heavens on wings of fire to claim this world. It was she who first slayed the lower lifeforms of this place and devoured their flesh and it was she who laid the first clutch. As the seasons past Drak'athenia laid many clutches and in time all dragons hatched from her eggs came to be known as the first brood. These dragons' own hatchlings were the second brood and their hatchlings the third brood and so on." She fixed them with a level stare. "You all are of the thirty seventh brood. If any of you live long enough to have hatchlings of your own they will be of the thirty eighth brood. All dragons are descents of the Drak'athenia the Dragonmother and it is our duty and our destiny to rule over this world and all upon it. However Drak'athenia failed to fulfill this destiny. Even as she grew into the length of a greatwyrm the Dragonmother grew weak.

The early struggles to survive the world were now long past and with age Drak'athenia became indolent and permissive. She let the lower lifeforms of this world rise high above their natural position as servants of dragonkind and let her children establish their own petty queendoms independent of all authority. So it was up to the strongest of the first brood to bring about the destiny of dragonkind on this world. The greatest dragon to ever live Drak'penumbria. It was she who first found the Void Gods and she who first answered their call. They remade her, giving her scales of midnight black and power over shadow. She became the first Shadrak, Shadrak'penumbria.

Using her powers she slew her mother Drak'athenia and declared herself Shadrak'penumbria the World-conqueror. Convinced by her power and the weight of her destiny many dragons submitted, swearing fealty to her and the Void Gods and in so doing they became Shadrak themselves. Together with her new subjects the World-conqueror set out to fulfill her destiny and her armies grew as more and more of the world fell under her banner. Yet just when it seemed that our destiny was at hand and an eternity of triumph lay within our claws a cabal of traitors and blasphemers gathered to deny us. Too weak willed and petulant to submit to the World-conqueror as Shadrak, these unshadowed dragons instead allied with the lower lifeforms native to this world in order to deny her.

A thousand times the World-conqueror and her armies defeated this coalition of the low and craven and yet they were so skilled at running away that they would always retreat to their holes and lick their wounds. Until at the battle of Lunahest coalition forces used trickery to achieve a single victory and in so doing drive the World-conqueror from the field. The unshadowed and their worldborn allies believe that this single defeat is enough to deny dragonkind's destiny forevermore but they are wrong. Someday the World-conqueror will once again gather all void dragons to her banner and fulfill her destiny by conquering this world.

In the meantime know that you are all direct descendants of Shadrak'penumbria the World-conqueror, the greatest dragon to ever live. Make sure to impress this fact upon all void dragons of lesser parentage for even the eldest of them is far beneath you. Force the unshadowed to submit before you and the Void Gods making of them void dragons as the World-conqueror did. Slay the worldborn and devour their flesh. Most of all, never dishonor your great ancestor with weakness. I will kill you myself before I allow that. Am I understood!" The Devourer snapped at them. All quickly fell over themselves to give acquiescence. "Remember it well" spoke the Devourer before it vanished.

Numbly Lanarithia ambled back towards her sleeping corner. The Devourer had dropped a lot of shocking revelations on her, the most terrifying of which being that it seemed to be angry with her! Frantically she racked her memories to try and find what she could have done to merit that glare. Had she shown weakness somehow? Was being weak why the Devourer ate her siblings that lost their fights the day she was hatched? Was she going to be eaten? Surely not, she thought. If the Devourer wanted to eat me it would just do it. No need for ominous glares. Somehow that thought did not reassure her. There had to have been something she had done to earn the Devourers ire and there had to be something she could do to lose it. Her mind turned over the problem as she lay curled up in her corner.

 

[Questwolf]

The light had long since faded when she had an idea. The Devourers story had been full of incredible revelations but the one that really stuck out to her was its mention of the "Void Gods" who had empowered her ancestor. These must be the same Void Gods that the whispers spoke off. It was even consistent with the whisper's promise of power for following the Void Gods. Though she could not say for sure, she now suspected that the Devourer's ability to turn totally invisible at will was a Void God granted power. If she could achieve the same feat surely that would sooth the Devourer's ire and if not she could at least hide from it if it came to eat her.

Her course decided, she took a deep breath and centered herself. Okay Void Gods I am ready for your guidance. I will serve you in exchange for power over shadow. Yet despite her pledge no whisper came to her mind and no mysterious power blossomed within her. She snarled in frustration. It was always this way with the whispers. Dropping a jumble of impossible knowledge into her consciousness before disappearing. Making demands for how she should think or behave with no explanations as to why. The whispers drove her crazy sometimes, as she turned a fragment of alien thought over in her mind again and again until it hurt to think about and got no closer to understanding the why of it.

The silence between whispers, the times like right now were the worst. When a whisper first bubbled up within her it made perfect sense. For a moment it was just obvious how to behave, how to act, how to think, how to understand the world. Then the moment passed and she was left with the knowledge but never the understanding. Whispers came and went but they never responded to her own thoughts, to her own desires. To questions of why and how. Normally that was alright. Normally she could scrape out what knowledge she could put into context, form theories and ideas for what she couldn't and then think about something else for a bit until the next whisper. She had gotten good at thinking about other things.

Tonight though it was harder because she wanted something specific and the more she went over whisper-sent memories digging through them for the secrets of invisibility the more she was convinced it was possible. Or at least that the whispers believed it could be done and she knew it was possible because she had seen the Devourer do it multiple times. Yet it was clear she was missing something, some piece of knowledge without which it was all impossible and she couldn't ask the whispers! She paused her racing thoughts slowing for a moment. She knew the whispers didn't come from herself and they had to come from somewhere. Perhaps she could ask the whisperer?

She thought back to the first whisper she'd ever had back when she was still in her egg. At the time it had felt like the thought had appeared whole formed from nothing and nowhere. She focused, letting her annoyance drain away as she shut her eyes and peered inward. For an indeterminate amount of time she simply searched looking for that nothingness within her. The surrounding world fell away until it was like her body was the only thing in existence. Her thoughts faded as she concentrated on that feeling of oblivion. Then she felt it.

She was amazed she had ever missed it. The feeling was in her chest, a hollow aching feeling at the center of her being so constant and normal it was overlooked. It was in her head, in the spaces between thoughts. It was in the blackness of her scales and the empty spaces inside her bones. The void permeated her entire being in a way that made looking into it slightly unsettling. Like she had turned her eyeball all the way round to look inside her skull. Still she was excited! In addition to being a fascinating discovery about the nature of herself she was certain this was progress on where the whispers came from. If she could ask them her own questions she could answer so many mysteries.

So even as she grew tired and focus began to drift she pulled her focus back to her internal void time and time again. Waiting. Sometime deep into the night her patience was rewarded. She felt the void within her begin to roil and bubble growing deeper as it resonated with some distant presence. The whisper came to her, flowing into her mind from the void within. Our destiny draws near. The thought was full of dark anticipation, cloaked as it was in the promise of terrible vengeance for all who had wronged them. For a moment she was lost in the whisper eager to finally have her enemies under her talons. Yet the warm feeling of boundless hatred eventually passed, giving way to excitement. She had witnessed the arrival of a whisper! Now if she could just do that in reverse she was sure she could get the answers she desired.

It turned out to be a rather difficult process. First light came and went as she tried to twist her void upon itself so that she could whisper to the whisperer. Yet despite the fact she had not slept she felt animated by a feverish energy. She was close. So close she could taste it. Once more she centered herself and pushed her void inward and outward in a way that should have been contradictory but instead made perfect sense. What she was looking for after all was both deep within her and incredibly distant. She understood that now. So much more made sense now she was awakened to the void within herself. Then suddenly the world around her was gone. The familiar scent of the cave vanished as if it had never been. She stood in a place that had no light upon an inky black ocean that had no bottom. She had a brief moment to wonder how she would ask her many questions before the ocean rose to swallow her.

The liquid darkness that surrounded her felt so very cold. She kicked and squirmed and flapped desperately with her wings struggling against the infinite ocean surrounding her to reach the surface but she had no way to know up from down in this place. No way to know what brought her toward the surface and what took her deeper into the bottomless black. She felt the dark edges of the ocean around her begin to nibble away at her and she felt parts of herself vanish into that dark, hungry ocean. She could not remember what was taken, what she lost to the inky darkness only that parts of herself were gone. She screamed but there was no sound, only the feeling of the darkness rushing in, filling the holes it had torn in her identity even as it took more and more ever hungry ever grasping. This is inevitable. Spoke the ocean inside of her. Everything you are. Everything you could be. It all belongs to me.

In that moment, as her sense of self began to dissolve she knew it to be true. She was made from this void and one day she would return to it. Strangely, that fact did not stop her struggle. Desperately she tried to hold herself together. To hold her own void separate from the infinite void all around her. She made the blackness within her a part of her own void and let go of all she had lost. For an eternity she fought against the annihilation of all that she was until as suddenly as it had swallowed her the inky ocean spat her back out. The sudden reappearance of the familiar cave was a shock. Her body convulsed as she vomited onto the ground below, spewing her guts out until her stomach lay empty and then coughing until she'd hacked up all the liquid in her lungs. Looking at the puddle of sick before her was a shock and a horror as chunks of half digested food lay within an eldritch blackness darker than the darkest night. On shaking limbs she fled the sight, running for the light. When she leapt through the cave opening it took her a moment to remember how to fly.

After a short and terrifying plummet she unfurled her wings and the wind caught her in its reassuring grasp. She flew up to the mountain peak and just panted as she looked down on the world below. The view seemed new and unfamiliar. Yesterday's memory of the sight seemed a vague and fuzzy thing, almost like it was something that had happened to someone else. She was panting heavily and her heart raced inside her chest but that was the least of her worries. There was a clawing emptiness inside her that was more than hunger. A haziness to her thoughts that was more than tiredness. She was less herself than she had been yesterday. The void within her had grown deeper, the whispers sharper.

The wind swirled around her protectively as she panicked. Then to her great surprise she felt the wind surrounding her speak. "It will be alright little one. Just focus on our voice." The voice of the wind was soft and airy, almost indistinguishable from the sound of the whirling breeze around her and yet the words were easy to separate out because she did not hear them as she heard other sounds. The wind's words seemed to simply appear in her mind almost like a whisper and yet they felt so completely different, clearly foreign and external and coming from the swirling air around her while the whispers always seemed to bubble up inside her, difficult to distinguish from her own thoughts except by their alien nature. The wind's voice was like nothing she had ever heard.

Incredulously she peered at the swirling air all around her "You can talk!?" her surprised exclamation seemed very loud coming after the not-sound of the soft voice. "You gave us a voice to speak, but we were always there for those able to listen." The wind sounded almost amused at her questioning. "That is unimportant at this moment. You must focus upon yourself. Slow your breathing. In. and out. In. and out. It took her a long moment but eventually she was able to follow the wind's advice, breathing in the crisp mountain air at a slower and slower pace. The beaming sunlight and the calm voice of the wind helped ground her in the here and now, away from the terrible darkness of the infinite void.

As the tension slowly flowed out of her she was left with the empty aching hollow feeling of loss. Meekly she spoke to the wind of what she had done and the parts of herself so lost she could not even remember what they were. She spoke of her fear that the her of yesterday would not even recognize the her she was now. The wind spoke back to her reassuringly, telling her that they still recognized her as the young flier who so profusely thanked the wind for catching her. It seemed to her an obvious lie but she clung to it desperately nonetheless. She tried to bury her own thoughts by asking about the wind. They were apparently a spirit. One of a vast multitude of wind spirits that supposably traveled across the whole of the world. She tried to extract tales of the places the spirit had traveled but apparently wind spirits do not perceive things such as scent or light instead feeling everything the wind touches. It made for quite alien descriptions but that was okay because the challenge of comprehending them was great at distracting her from the gnawing hollow feeling.

 

[Questwolf]

Eventually as the day stretched into the evening she started to feel just a shade better. The hollow feeling seemed to lessen or perhaps she just grew more hungry and tired as time passed while she was curled up at her perch on the top of the world. Eventually hunger overpowered exhaustion and she worked up the strength to leave the mountain peak. The wind spirit traveled with her flitting around her wings as she flew down into the foothills far below. She dug up yesterday's goat and ate it. A day buried underground had not done wonders for its taste but she was too hungry and tired to care. After filling her stomach she flew up to the alpine lake and drank from its lovely clear water. As she looked out over the water she realized that the lake was very pretty and she was so very tired. Now her hunger was stated and her thirst quenched her fatigue pushed down on her like a physical weight. Beyond the lack of sleep her experience in the infinite void left her feeling tired in ways beyond the merely physical. The hollowness had not left her. How wonderful it would be to just curl up here and sleep.

Yet if she stayed up past sunset the devour would come and eat her. It seemed such a strangely distant threat like the Lanarithia of tonight lay a great distance away from the Lanarithia of right now. Except that made no sense. With a groan she leaped into the air and flapped her wings. Of course she didn't leap high enough and slammed her wings into the ground. It hurt and was embarrassing and most importantly stopped her from taking flight. For a while she lay upon the rocks feeling like the most miserable creature to ever exist. Then the wind gently blew past her and mumbled wordless encouragement into her mind. After a moment she picked herself up and rallied for a second attempt. This time she asked for help, wordlessly calling out to the wind around her. When she jumped the wind blew with her and when she unfurled her wings the wind caught them. It reminded her of the first time the wind had caught her and for a while exhaustion was washed away by the pure wonder of flight and the strength of her gratitude.

Eventually she made it up to the cave. She crashed and cared not one bit, she simply wanted to sleep. At first she moved towards her spot in the corner but then she smelled the twined scents of vomit and void. She was searching for a new spot to sleep when the Devourer demanded their attendance. She was the last to arrive by a large margin. A great force slammed into her head and for a while everything spun strangely. As she pulled herself back to her feat she concluded that the Devourer had clubbed her over the head with its tail.

As she sat there in front of the Devourer she was strangely too tired to be afraid. All her focus was on holding herself in a sitting position instead of curled up on the ground. Vaguely she was aware of the Devourer speaking of names and lineage. She caught bits and pieces but most of it passed right through her without the slightest comprehension. Time seemed to pass at a crawl as the Devourer talked and she held herself up even as she daydreamed of sleep. Finally her siblings wandered off. I took her a moment to realize that the Devourer had disappeared. Relieved she wandered over to the cave opening and curled up to sleep there.

There was no peace in unconsciousness. Nightmares plagued her sleep as claw sharp whispers spoke of the inevitably of the void. She dreamed that she was back in the infinite void, all that she was dissolving into a bottomless ocean. She woke with her heart hammering in her chest. She gasped as she breathed in the clear mountain air around her. She smelled the familiar scents of her siblings and even the Devourer and was reassured. Slowly she calmed for despite the darkness all around her this was not the total oblivion of the void. There was scent and even light here. She looked up at the sky and the sight took her breath away. The heavens above were adorned with glittering constellations of radiant lights.

She felt the wind blow past her snout. As she turned her attention to the cool night air all around her she thought she could almost feel some kind of diffuse presence fluttering about in front of her. "Wind spirit? Is that you" She spoke quietly, directing her voice out into the night. "I am here." responded the wind spirit in their soft voice. "Do you have a name?" she asked, suddenly curious. The Devourer had exposited at length on names and heritage and its importance but she had no idea if the wind spirit even had a name as dragons did. "For spirits it is not the same as for mortals. We are defined by the acceptance of a mantle imagined by mortalkind. They see the raging storm and the billowing gale and they name it wind. In so doing they give of themselves to create the mantle. By accepting that mantle, that name spirits gain agency, gain motive and power and the ability to act. In exchange we are bound to be as wind for that is our name and nature both. By speaking to me you crafted me a voice to speak. Through your belief and gratitude I am empowered and bound both. If I accepted a name from you it would be a new mantle that would bind us together for as long as I accept it."

Such power names had! No wonder the Devourer had talked about them for so long. She wished she could recall more of what the Devourer had actually said. She dug through hazy memories trying to reconstruct the lesson. Before she could get far the wind spoke again. "I believe I would be willing to accept a name from you, if that is what you desire" The wind spirit sounded hesitant yet determined. She was astounded. The wind spirit was willing to bind themselves to her? Apparently detecting her surprise the wind spirit explained. "I am a minor spirit, one among a vast multitude of wind spirits who travel throughout the atmosphere. To accept a new mantle is to become greater if only by a minor degree. Besides, I am interested in you. Why do you think I stayed around this mountain instead of moving on? I could fly away any time I desire. If I am to stay with you anyway, why not take a name from you?

The wind spirit sounded almost like they were trying to convince themselves instead of her. Still she considered their words for a time. The idea that the spirit could just leave was one that had not occurred to her. It felt oddly distressing. So she tried to find a good name for a wind spirit. The silence seemed awkward as she lay there curled up on the edge of the cave. Finally she had an idea. "If you wanted, you could be Zephyr." she said hesitantly. For a very long moment there was silence and then the wind spoke. "I think that I would like that." It felt strange having someone who wanted to be around her. She suddenly realized she should probably tell Zephyr her own name. It took her a moment to remember the long full name the Devourer had taught them but she got it eventually.

She puffed herself up and repeated the entire thing to Zephyr. Her proper full name contained all her ancestors so naturally it started with Drak'Athenia then went Gein Shadrak'Penumbria (Gein just meant first clutch) then came the names of thirty four dragons that she struggled to remember and finally it ended with Eln Shadrak'Ovlithunia Hir Shadrak'Lanarithia. This told her the Devourer's name was Ovlithunia and that she was in the Devourer's fourth clutch. She was rather impressed with herself for being able to recite the entire thing despite being half asleep when she first heard it. Zephyr however seemed amused. "That is a very big name for a little dragon." They said. "It is!" she responded. "And I remembered the entire thing! I just think of myself as Lanarithia though because that is the me part of the name." Zephyr paused to consider this for a moment before asking. "Not Shadrak'Lanarithia?" She paused for a moment considering why she didn't think of herself that way. "Shadrak is what I am," she said at last. "Lanarithia is who I am." Zephyr made a noise of agreement and the two of them settled into a comfortable silence.

She returned to stargazing, looking up and observing the heavens above in all their wonder. She had never seen the night sky, never imagined it could look anything like this. After a time Zephyr asked her what she saw and she told them of the stars. The wind spirit was fascinated for they could not see light and apparently the atmosphere stopped long before it reached the stars and so they knew nothing of them. So she described the constellations until she grew tired again and drifted off to sleep. The nightmares of the infinite void came again that night but every time she was jolted awake heart racing in her chest she breathed in the cool mountain air and looked up at the celestial lights above until she calmed enough to slip back into sleep once more.

 

[Questwolf]

Her old sense of self did not return with the dawning of the next day. As she took flight and flew, her new awareness of the void within herself surged to the forefront of her mind as it twisted and contorted, flowing through her body in strange patterns she could not understand. Seeing the void was uncomfortable but she found herself too fascinated to look away from it even as the sensation distracted her from flying. Eventually though she made it to the mountain peak and the void settled down after she landed and the pull of the world reasserted itself. As she curled up upon the soft snow she heard Zephyr whistle a friendly greeting to her.

Atop her mountaintop perch, she reflected that no matter how much time passed she would probably never feel the same. Yet she felt better than she had yesterday, more settled in a hard to describe way. Everything that had happened before the incident remained indistinct, feeling more like something someone had told her had happened than something that she actually experienced. Yet her new memories helped ground her. Made her feel merely changed from her contact with the infinite void instead of unrecognizably different. Zephyr helped too, having someone to talk to felt great! She had her siblings of course but they mostly communicated in snarls, growls, insults, curses, and taunts. No one would dare talk back to the Devourer. You said what it wanted when it wanted and otherwise tried to stay beneath its attention. She got to speak to the wind and the wind spoke back! Well Zephyr did anyway, as they had explained to her they were not all of the wind. Still she found Zephyr's soft voice and gentle breeze a comfort.

She was still missing some piece of herself. She did not know what it was or how important it was but she knew it was gone. Accepting that felt like a betrayal. She wanted to continue rooting around in her mind, searching though hazy memories until she found the missing piece but she had already done that and she was tired. She let out a great yawn and rested her head upon her coils. Before she knew it she was asleep. For a time she drifted enjoying the lazy warmth of dreamless sleep until claw sharp hunger pulled her from her nap.

For a long while she glided over the foothills searching for goats. Just when she was about to give up and go look for food in the forest below she spotted a group of them. As her stomach rumbled she picked out a goat and dove for it. The churning void within her slowed slightly as she plummeted toward the ground. Time seemed to slow as the goat she had chosen grew larger and larger. At the last moment it moved, dodging out of the way of her claws. Yet she had grown wise to the wiles of goats, who cruelly sought to deprive her of their extremely edible flesh. So when the goat moved she adjusted, flaring her wings to change her path through the air so she could intercept. It did not go exactly as planned. Instead of flying over the goat and raking it with her claws as she had intended she instead collided head first with the creature.

Her skull ached and she almost flew into a hill but when she banked back around she saw the goat laying stunned in the grass as its compatriots fled. Before it could recover she pounced tearing into it with foreclaws and talons. As the goat ceased twitching and finally admitted to being dead she felt a flush of pride only slightly diminished by Zephyrs howling laughter. She had caught a goat with a single strike! Well sort of anyway. The important thing was that she was surely getting better at this kind of thing. She was surprised however when she managed to devour the entire goat without feeling bloated afterward. As she cracked open the bones to lick up the marrow within them she pondered this. Was this goat smaller than the others? She reviewed her memories of picking it out of the herd. It was among the largest of the goats. Perhaps this herd was simply smaller than the others? Or perhaps… she wondered in a flash of insight if she was getting bigger.

"Zephyr am I larger than I was when you met me?" she asked the wind spirit. Zephyr did not answer her but she felt a swift wind twirl around her. The wind ghosted across her scales circumnavigating her body before Zephyr's soft voice spoke into her mind. "Yes, you are indeed greater in scope than you once were. This is most interesting. I have never stayed around a creature long enough to witness their growth." It was a strange revelation. She wondered if she would ever grow as large as the Devourer. It seemed impossible but the Devourer had claimed that if she survived long enough she would have her own clutches of eggs so maybe it really would happen one day. The idea of herself being as large as the Devourer seemed very bizarre, like a fundamental reversal of reality.

She shook off her thoughts as she finished licking the marrow from the bones of her kill. With a leap she launched herself into the air and she unfurled her wings. The wind filled them as Zephyr helped push her into the sky. She thanked Zephyr and then all the other spirits of the wind she traveled through. After that she simply enjoyed the feeling of flight for a time, her belly pleasantly full, her mind well rested and her eyes drinking in the majestic sight of the sky above and the beauty of the land below. Then the thought came to her that I will cloak the land in eternal shadow. she could feel the void within her resonating with the infinite void and she felt the sudden urge to unleash her emptiness upon the world. The desire blossomed within her to spread it far beyond the confines of her meager body. Then the moment passed and she was left drained by the experience. Like all the whispers since her contact with the infinite void it was sharper, more vivid and harder to ignore. The whisper-thoughts were now louder than her own internal monologue, blotting out her own thoughts in a deeply intrusive manner.

She was still somewhat unnerved when she made it up to the alpine lake. She eagerly thrust her muzzle into the cool waters, lapping up the clear water eagerly in order to quench her thirst and distract her from the most recent whisper. When she was finished and the ripples ceased she caught a glimpse of herself on the surface of the water. She tilted her head and the reflection copied her, tilting its head to peer back at her with a single red eye. The blood red orb was split down the middle with a dark pupil and it seemed to scrutinize her with its gaze. As she examined her appearance she realized she looked basically identical to her sisters and indeed to a smaller version of the Devourer. Without scent it would likely be difficult to tell them apart. She didn't know how to feel about this fact. Despite everything she had thought she would appear different somehow. Different coloured eyes perhaps or maybe something as minor as a different curve to her horns. Shaking off her odd sense of disappointment she turned to playing in the lake. She discovered she could hold her breath underwater but actually getting to the bottom of the lake was confounded by her inability to sink.

When it grew late she flew up to the cave above to find the Devourer waiting for her. Fortunately she was not the last to arrive. She still got clobbered by a wing but it was a relatively light remonstration by Devourer standards as she was hit with a wing-knuckle instead of the talon below it. She expected more storytelling but instead the Devourer demanded they fight one another once again. Sometimes she fought one of her sisters and sometimes she fought two but never did she rest. As they clawed and bit at each other she asked them if she seemed different to them. Zavia just charged her, attacking with foreclaw, talon and tooth. When Zavia won that exchange she bragged and boosted and insulted as if Lanarithia had not asked a question at all. Soon the fighting started up once more. She held her own and yet it was undeniable that Zavia was the superior fighter. When she asked Saffia her sister responded with a taunt that she seemed even weaker and feebler now than the last time they fought. It was a strange comment for Saffia had never been more than her equal when it came to fighting and both of them were bigger and more experienced than they had been.

Valexia simply growled at her when she asked them. She was erratic, staying on the defensive before lashing out at seemingly random, attacking relentlessly with no regard for her own injuries. So she stayed weary and kept her distance. After getting clawed in the neck and back as well as having her wings raked with talons by her bounciest sister she shook them off her and asked them. Nixia tilted her head as if to examine her from another angle but she did not answer. As they moved in for another clash she reflected that Nixia would probably be better at fighting on the wing. There was a grace to her movements that was particularly evident in flight. As it was though, she was able to wrestle Nixia to the ground and inflict grievous injuries before her sister was able to wiggle out of her claws.

After the fighting was done (it seemed to take much longer than it did before) everyone retreated to their sleeping spots to lick their wounds. She was exhausted and so the instant she had finished tending to her injuries and mostly stopped bleeding she fell asleep. After waking panicked from her first nightmare of the night she came to the decision that sleep was not so great after all and abandoned the endeavor to stargaze and chat with Zephyr. That was much more relaxing although it left her rather tired come morning. So when the sun rose she flew up to her perch atop the mountain peak and napped there. She found the snow to be very comfy on her tender scars.

 

[Questwolf]

Slowly things fell into a new routine. She would wake up on her mountain peak perch in the middle of the day. She usually spent a few moments looking down at the world below before flying down to the alpine lake to drink. Then it was hunting time. She would spend the afternoon searching for prey among the foothills and the forest. She ate birds, rabbits, the large insects found under rotting logs and all manner of forest critters but the best eating was goats and deer. On those days her appetite outpaced her luck with hunting, she would dig up one of her stashes of meat or eat some of the less prickly, less poisonous plants in the forest. As sundown crept closer she flew back to the lake and after drinking her fill she would play around for a bit. She had taken to exploring the lake by grabbing a heavy rock in her forepaws and then walking into the water on wing-knuckles and hindlegs.

Using this technique she was able to walk along the bottom of the lake, exploring the great underwater expanse below the water's surface. It was like a whole other world down there. She had seen so many interesting rooks! Once she even discovered the waterlogged remnants of a tree trunk which was particularly interesting as the forest lay far below. Had the Devourer dropped a tree in the lake? Why would it do such a thing? After a time her lungs would begin to burn and so she would release her weight-rock and float back to the surface. After swimming to shore she walked over to a large stretch of mostly flat rock she had found. There she would stretch herself out as far as she could, and measure the length of her body from tail-club to muzzle-tip. In this manner could track her growth by scratching marks into the stone. Depending on how much time was left until sunset she might splash around the shallows of the lake for a bit but she always made time to go over everything the Devourer and whispers told her, collating it and trying to draw conclusions about the world around her.

Then came the worst part of every day. The time she spent with the Devourer. At first the Devourer had alternated between story night and fight night but as time went on it increasingly demanded both at once. While she grappled with her sisters the Devourer told some story or lesson. At random intervals it would break off and ask a question of one of them. Sometimes the question was about what it was talking about. Sometimes it was about something it had told them days ago. Sometimes it was about something none of them had ever heard before. Either way failure to answer punctually and correctly was punished by a blow from on high usually followed by the sister she was fighting taking advantage of the distraction to maul her. It was difficult and exhausting and painful because she had to focus on fighting her sisters and listening to the Devourer at the same time. The lessons seemed to go on longer every night.

Then long after night had fallen when the Devourer finally disappeared, came her favorite part of the day. She walked to the cave opening and curled up there to stargaze and talk to Zephyr and just ponder herself and the world until the orange light of dawn came. It was her time to just relax and ignore her aching body. As she looked up at the night sky she witnessed wonders from the common excitement of spotting a shooting star to the breathtaking aurora that illuminated the night with unearthly light. With the rising of the sun she flew up to her perch atop the mountain to watch the sunrise. Then she curled up to nap the morning away. Throughout day and night the whispers came. She mostly tried to ignore them except in the evenings when she spent a small amount of time carefully reviewing them for useful knowledge or interesting information. Sometimes she was able to answer the Devourer wilder questions with things she had learned or inferred from whisper knowledge but it always left her feeling uneasy.

It was the ninety-eighth day after her hatching when she flew up to the cave prepared to once more endure the Devourers attention. All her sisters were already there except for Valexia. At first her absence was unremarkable but as time passed the Devourer began to grow visibly agitated. Being this late would surely get her a vicious beating, yet still Velexia did not show up. The longer this went on the stranger the situation grew. Then when the sun kissed the horizon the Devourer leapt into the air with a snarl abandoning the cave to her and her sisters. She could feel a sense of apprehension settle upon them as the Devourer remained away. Everyone was unsure what to do and the faint smell of fear was threaded through everyone's scent. Just as the sun's light was fading the Devourer abruptly reappeared behind them. Nixia lept so high into the air that she almost hit the ceiling and in truth Lanarithia was only slightly less startled herself. The Devourer did not react to their startlement, only launching into the night's lesson with barking commands. There was only one clue as to the fate of her sister and that was the blood on the Devourers caws that smelled of Valexia.

The Devourers' attention was long and brutal that night with even the slightest delay in following its instructions punished with vicious blows. She witnessed the Devourer shatter bones and rend flesh to the bone and felt the cold chill of fear. Then the Devourer paused in its lesson on draconic dominance to barked out "Shadrak'lanarithia, Shadrak'atrazavia" and her heart sank as she realized she would have to fight her most vicious sister once again. Zavia charged right at her, uncaring of the fact that her left wing dangled limply by her side, broken in many places by the Devourers' attention. She moved to meet her sister and the two of them collided in a clawing, biting struggle. Just as she gained the upper hand the Devourer called out. "Shadrak'lanarithia who was the nighty-seventh unshadowed to kneel before Shadrak'penumbria and become a Void Dragon?"

As she struggled with Zavia her mind raced searching for the answer. "It was shadrak -" her pause was perhaps a heartbeat long. Too long. In an instant the Devourer's tail-club fell upon her and a crack resounded through the cavern as her right forelimb broke. For a moment she was stunned and then the pain hit her. She let out an involuntary yelp as the most pain she had ever experienced emanated from her leg. Of course that was the moment that Zavia jumped her. She found that her right forelimb was worthless for walking or fighting and trying to use that way only brought white hot spike of agony.

In that moment despite roiling in a sea of hurt her mind felt strangely clear. So she waited as Zavia tore into her with tooth and claw until inevitably her sister overextended and she was able to hook a talon into her broken wing and twist. As Zavia tried to free herself she used her other talon to rake vulnerable areas like the eyes and throat. For a time there was only hurt and hurting but then Zavia pulled away snarling at her. Zavia attacked her again and again but she used her talons to fend her off to an extent until finally she was told to fight Saffia instead. The pain of her broken forelimb did not dissipate as the night dragged on. Instead that hurt was joined by others as she acquired more and more injuries fighting her sisters as she answered the Devourers demands with desperate haste.

The only thing that saved her was the fact that her sisters were just as injured and tired as she was. Finally sometime late into the night the Devourer vanished. Nixia ceased trying to raise her talon to fight and just crumpled in on herself until she lay bleeding and exhausted upon the floor. In that moment she was tempted beyond measure to join her sister upon the cool stone but instead she stubbornly dragged her protesting body to the cave opening. Only after she had collapsed did she allow herself to whine in pain. Making the quiet hurt noise helped a little in a strange way. It let out some of the hurt into the night air soothing her just the slightest bit. Zephyr did not understand her distress. Wind spirits apparently did not know pain as dragons did. It was a difficult sensation to describe in her current state and so she just continued trying to force her pain out with her quiet whines and whimpers.

She did not know if Zephyr understood her but either way they stayed with her telling her stories of the land and sky as the wind spirits knew them. Zephyr's soft voice was calming in its own way and after a time she gathered enough strength to rise and lick her many wounds. Yet as pain slowly faded fear rose up to replace it. As of tonight she had three siblings. Not so many days ago she'd had five. When she had hatched there had been eight. How many eggs had been in her clutch? She found she did not know. Would she survive to see her two hundredth day? Or even her hundredth? Once a hundred days would have seemed an eternity but now it felt a very fleeting length of time. She did not want to die and yet she knew the Devourers tail-club could have shattered her body as surely as the ground had broken her sister Terria.

Almost involuntarily her mind turned to the whispers of the infinite void and the empty acing nothingness within herself. If she could turn invisible as the Devourer did… She let out a sigh. She would never try to contact the whisperer again but maybe she could figure it out herself. The Devourer clearly had so surely it was not impossible. Hesitantly she spoke to Zephyr of her thoughts trying to explain how she thought the ability to manipulate her void would help her survive while also describing how the whole idea unsettled her after her contact with the infinite void. She felt the gentle gust of the wind and a moment passed before Zephyr responded to her. "I believe it would be wise to understand the power within yourself. Void is your nature as much as mine is wind and true comprehension of your own nature can only empower you." Zephyr paused for an instant before continuing. "In addition, if you wish I might be able to teach you something of shamanism"

At her questioning look Zephyr elaborated. "You are not the first mortal to call out to the spirits and I am not the first spirit to answer. Mortals can learn to listen to the spirits around them and request their aid. Those who are persuasive enough to convince spirits on a semi-regular basis are known among mortalkind as shamans. I am a young spirit and have not given aid to a shaman before but I know the stories. Though you would be the first void dragon shaman I have heard of." Being a shaman sounded great! Reluctantly she also admitted that learning more about the void within her would also be good. For the moment though… "Zephyr, could you tell me a story about a shaman?" The wind spirit hummed in affirmation. "I will start with the story of the windspeaker as she is known among wind spirits as the greatest shaman to ever live. Her story begins many many cycles ago in a place where the west wind meets the shore…" The story was enthralling and very different from any she had heard before. Most notably it was centered around a worldborn instead of a dragon! In all the Devourers' stories the worldborn were feeble beasts barely different from animals but Zephyr spoke of the windspeaker as cunning and wise. In her adventures she befriended many wind spirits and once she even drove off an unshadowed dragon by throwing bolts of wind-gifted lightning at it! She listened intently to Zephyr's story until the sun rose and the stars faded. She found she was too tired and hurt to fly up to the peak but as she curled up and drifted off to sleep she found herself content.

 

[Questwolf]

As the days past Zephyr taught her shamanism under the twinkling starlight. Mostly the wind spirits lessons consisted of stories of mortal entries for aid, those that failed and those that succeeded. They also told tales of famous shamans and their feats. She was engrossed by the tale of the dragon of seven winds, an unshadowed dragon shaman that long ago flew around the entire world with the help of seven bound wind spirits. She was fascinated to learn the names of the five great shamans who cast down the tyrant-mage and all their works, freeing countless imprisoned spirits at the cost of their lives. Yet the lessons she found most valuable were the ones on etiquette. Through stories and fables Zephyr taught her the most foundational of wind spirit norms. She learned to never try and force a wind spirit to do anything. To respond to jests and pranks with good humor and cunning grace. To never ask a wind spirit for something more than once. To never request something that required stillness and to show appreciation through movement. It was in the afternoons as she hunted on the wing that she practiced what Zephyr taught, calling on the wind to lift her up as she flew. Just as often as the wind spirits helped her fly they buffeted her with sudden crosswinds and relentless headwinds yet as the days past, she found that for good or ill the winds answered her calls more frequently and she learned to twirl in appreciation of their efforts, pirouetting across the sky to thank the wind spirits for their playful attentions.

Sometimes she spent more time playing with the wind and engaging in aerial acrobatics than actually hunting but she didn't mind even if treebark now made up a larger share of diet than was perhaps strictly optimal. It was fun spending time enjoying the simple pleasure of flight and sharing that joy with the wind. She found herself wanting to be a shaman even if the wind spirits rarely followed her pleas. After hunting she would walk the bottom of the lake with the aid of a weight-rock and attempted to talk to the water spirits that probably existed there. Zephyr said that in addition to wind spirits there existed spirits of water and earth and perhaps even more esoteric things. Unfortunately Zephyr knew little of such spirits besides their existence. The different natures of the other spirits apparently precluded communication between them except through a shaman skilled and persuasive enough to translate. She felt that if she was to be a proper shaman she should be able to talk with all different kinds of spirits. She had yet to make contact with a water spirit but she did not allow that to dissuade her. Plus exploring the bottom of the alpine lake was so interesting! Just moving around underwater felt so different from flying through the air.

It was in the brief time between lake diving and sunset that she worked to dispel her apprehension and study the churning void within. As she picked apart the whisper-thoughts she tried to push and pull at her void. It seemed almost eager to obey her but was nearly impossible to control swirling around within her in a manner that defied her understanding of movement. When agitated the void could fold in on itself in a way that made it somehow larger until it pushed at the boundaries of herself in a churning maelstrom of paradoxical movement. Looking at that for too long made her feel ill and uneasy. Sometimes she managed to give herself strange headaches just before the Devourers lessons and once she had seen the void move in ways so mind bending thinking of them made her bleed out of her eyes, nose and ears.

She found she made more progress and less headaches trying to still the void. It took concentration and great calmness but she eventually found she could stop the ever flowing void within her, freezing it in place so she could examine its strange twisting geometries. One evening when she was particularly attuned to the shape of the void within she was shocked when she felt the presence of something else brush up against her void. Turning her senses outward she felt a vague swirling mass of constantly moving amorphous energy was flitting around her body constantly. The presence felt other, indescribably different than her own void and on instinct she tried to pull it within herself. Her body quivered with the urge to take its essence within her and complete herself but the presence jerked away from her.

"Please do not consume me, Lanarithia." an urgent tone was threaded through Zephyr's soft voice. A wave of panicked remorse spread through her as she realized what she had just tried to do. "I'm sorry I didn't mean to! It was just - you were just - I didn't recognize you!" She felt the soft caress of the wind as she sputtered in apology. "It is alright, I do not blame you. You are of void and so it is in your nature to consume. Just try not to consume me. I do not think I could teach you shamanism if I was a part of your void." Zephyr voice gained a light mirth, apparently all too willing to forgive her transgression, but she found it harder to forgive herself. In that moment she had wanted to consume the wind spirit like she had wanted nothing else in her life. It scared her. She felt as if the empty aching feeling within her took on an ominous quality.

"Zephyr?" she asked hesitantly. "Is the reason there are no void dragon shamans because my people generally eat spirits instead of entreating them?" There was an awkward pause and she looked down at her paws in shame. "Just because I have never heard a tale of a void dragon shaman does not mean there has never been one and in order to consume a spirit one first has to catch them. Mortals have always had difficulties catching the wind." Spoke Zephyr. "That is not a no." she pointed out. Zephyr made a great sighing noise. "Well that's because you're basically right. Void is considered incompatible with… well basically everything, but that's why you're so fascinating! You act with gratitude and grace so like a shaman while having a fundamental nature that is antithetical to all existence. It is a paradox I really wish to understand." Lanarithia was unsure how to feel about apparently being antithetical to all existence. She quite liked a lot of things that existed including Zephyr, who she had just unthinkingly tried to devour.

She tried to imagine her nights without Zephyr's soft voice to fill them and felt a pang of sadness at the thought. Imagining it being her fault Zephyr was gone made her feel even worse. She clenched her claws on the hard stone beneath her paws and raised her muzzle to look up at the sky above. "Zephyr, are you certain I cannot catch you?" She felt a sudden gust of wind flow along her flank before shooting up into the air. "Do not be foolish. You cannot fly faster than the wind. I am perfectly safe around you." Despite the harshness of their words Zephyr's voice was calm and gentle. Reassuring in the determined certainty held within it. "Now are you going to try that void thing again? I felt you doing something before you tried to consume me." she shuffled awkwardly on her paws and wing-knuckles, wincing slightly as she accidentally put too much weight on her still healing right forelimb. "Maybe tomorrow. Soon it will be sunset and I think I just need a moment." She felt the wind spirit twirl around her as they hummed affirmation into her mind.

She spent some time sitting at the shore of the alpine lake just thinking about herself, Zephyr and everything. "Thank you, Zephyr." She felt more than heard the wind spirits questioning curiosity as it ghosted across her mind. "For staying with me." she explained. "Well you are my shaman. I would be a poor wind-spirit if I abandoned you" spoke Zephyr. It was the first time they had described her as their shaman and she felt all warm and gooey for a moment. For a time she just luxuriated in the warm feeling, enjoying Zephyr's silent company. Eventually though she started to feel restless and she decided to fly up to the cave early tonight. With a thought Zephyr was there helping pull herself up into the sky above.

When she landed in the cave she found herself alone except for Zavia. This was not unusual as Zavia liked to arrive early and it was impossible to predict when the Devourer would show up. Sometimes it was waiting for them, laying upon its coils in the back of the cave. Other times it flew in at great speed leaving them scrambling to escape its path. Most often though it just appeared suddenly materializing out of thin air to loom over them. As she waited for everyone to show up she was reminded why she rarely arrived early. The constant tension wore at her as she expected the Devourer to pop up any moment. She peered at Zavia but found herself unkeen to try talking with her. Their brief conversations rarely went anywhere. Still she suddenly found herself curious. She peered around the cavern of her birth searching for a wind-spirit that she could not see. It was foolish as Zephyr rarely came into the cavern especially when there were other dragons in it. Besides they could easily escape her even if she had another slip, which she wouldn't! It just… felt slightly safer doing this here.

With a deep inhalation she centered herself focusing once more on the void within. It took her longer to get into the right mindset here in the cave but eventually she managed it. Slowly, taking care to maintain her connection with the frozen void she pushed her senses outward to where she knew her sister stood. Just as she suspected she could feel the void within Zavia. At first it was a hazy blurry thing until without warning it suddenly snapped into focus. It was strange seeing a void that was not hers. Her sister's void seemed to bubble and churn in a way similar yet somehow totally distinct from her own. She had worried that she might feel the urge to devour her sister's void but while the empty aching hunger was definitely there the other void did not excite it as Zephyr had.

Just as she was settling in to examine the differences and consider why she didn't want to eat her sister she felt something move in the cave. On instinct she turned her sense to look. She saw nothing. Heard nothing. Smelt nothing. But she felt a great roiling mass of void within the cave. Her heart skipped a beat as the vast nexus of wriggling power stopped in its movements and turned to regard her. She wanted to bolt out of the cave and flee into the sunset but the memory of the Devourer eating her siblings held her in place. With an effort of will she forced herself to stare back at the glaring void that could only be the Devourer. After what felt like an eternity the great mass of void turned away and she sighed as the tension flowed out of her body. She released her grasp on the void within and her void-sense faded as she tried to think of other things. Yet when everyone arrived and the Devourer appeared it had a new lesson to teach them all. A lesson on the magic of the Void Dragons.