Starting Date and Time: 21st day of Vermillio, 300 DM
Starting Location: Ruins to the south of Pyresia.
CS URLs: Genrit’khaath and
DrachiathoryxThe thermals of hot air were a welcome blessing after an entire pre-dawn morning of flapping hard over the miles of wild forest south of Pyresia. But now that she had finally reached the rocky uplands where the late summer sun baked on the exposed granite there was warm air billowing under Drache's wings, keeping her aloft with hardly any effort on her part. Her wing muscles would ache terribly, but not until tomorrow. And by then hopefully she would be on her way back to the volcanic city with shinies in her purse, not minding the walk with triumph lightening her heart.
Enjoying the pleasant weather, the red-scaled dragoness practiced a few rolls, tucking her wings so that she spiraled lazily through the air. The airborne acrobatics weren't at all necessary, but Drache didn't like the way that some half-dragons let their wings dwindle away to scrawny decorations with disuse. Not there were a
lot of halfies around, mind.
Spotting a deep groove across the sun-warmed stone, Drache let air spill out of her wings and swooped down for a closer look.
"Wagon tracks, excellent," she said to no one, her teeth bared to reveal twin rows of pearly fangs as a few hasty flaps took her up again. Not many people would get excited about a few wing-lengths of wagon ruts that had been nearly worn away by the rain of decades.
Following the curve of the land, ember-coloured eyes tracing the ground below in an attempt to guess where a civilization of long-dead humans would have laid their road, it was only an hour later that she came across the ruins. Had Drache been a traveler on foot in these lands she might have missed them completely, but from the sky there was no mistaking the unnatural straight lines that bespoke of the architecture that had once looked out over the expansive forest.
Not many people knew what kind of nifty loot might be found under those decaying remains. The half-dragon's bare black talons scraped on the ground when she landed with a slight hop, her red and gold wings folding neatly along her spine, long tail giving a swish as she put a saucy hand on her hip, glancing around.
"Ah. Today is going to be fun!"--
The sun was beginning to dip close to the horizon, red-gold light playing across the tomb raider's red-gold skin where she was perched high up on a crooked plinth of carved stone, ankles crossed and tail dangling over the edge towards the ground far below. Scattered around her were her prizes of the day: An ancient set of bronze pauldrons with an intricate feather pattern stamped into the metal, a small pile of dented coins (several of them gold but most silver and bronze), and a hammered gold circlet set with an emerald. The later piece was resting in her black hair, though since it didn't quite fit around her horns she had it set at a jaunty angle across her brow.
But in addition to the obvious trinkets, she had found a small stack of books buried deep in the remains of a wooden chest. They were in sad condition, so delicate and decrepit that she had wrapped them already in a piece of thick leather, afraid to peek at their contents until back in the safety of the balcony apartment she shared with Mojavico. If she couldn't transcribe them into fresh tomes herself, she supposed the rest of her treasures would earn enough to hire a scribe. The unfortunate consequence of what Mojave liked to call her "dead tree collection". She secretly hoped that the books would hold some knowledge of the arcane, but usually they turned out to be histories or ledgers and shipping manifests.
Her own book, a large journal bound in suede and fitted with ornate gold and ruby fittings, lay open in her lap. Rubbings of the coins and various engraved stone she had come across over the course of the day were folded and tucked between the pages. She always liked to write about her finds while it was fresh on her mind. Her script was thin and slanting, the flourishes sharp and fierce. She switched between Common and Draconic, depending on the subject. For this wasn't only a record of her digs, but also a personal diary.
As the sun dipped lower, Drache glanced up frequently, though whether it was for inspiration or to check her surroundings for danger was impossible to tell from without. It was during one of these fleeting breaks that she noticed a deep shadow under an overhang of rock that she had not previously seen.
"Hmm! Looks like I missed a spot."There was no hesitation as the dragoness began to gather her things, tucking her treasures into her backpack and then packing her hand-shovel and pry-bar in on top. Truly, she could have just waited until morning to investigate, but what was the sense in spending a sleepless night wondering when she could simply find out for herself?!
After a final swig of wine, still chewing on some beef jerky, Drache launched herself from the tilting obelisk and glided down towards the shadowy smudge, her tail trailing after her like a kite. As soon as she landed she knew that the space beyond the opening was large, the echoes of her flapping wings fading slowly down into the deep. Eyes glittering like coals, the darkness held no fear for Drache as she stalked forwards, snout lifting slightly to sniff through flaring reptilian nostrils.
Water dripped and the temperature dropped as Drache moved between stalagmites. It wasn't a particularly impressive cave, lacking the colourful seams of gems that permeated through the volcanic Pyresia, but the half-dragon continued on. There was little to suggest she might find treasure here, seeing no signs of civilized habitation. But it was interesting all the same, especially when she came across a damp chamber full of gleaming blue bioluminescent plants.
When the floor became uneven, Drache half-jumped, half-climbed from ledge to ledge, until one of them broke out from underneath her. She was suddenly careening down a sloping tunnel, the sides smooth where water had once flowed. She gripped the slab fiercely with clawed fingers, shrieking an inhuman shriek, half-thrilled and half-terrified by the wild ride.
"Yee-aaaahhhhh!" Sparks flew every time the stone collided with the walls, and when the ride was finally over, she tumbled across the ground and landed on her tail with a loud painful
"Oof!"Panting for a moment, brief puffs of smoke wafting from her nostrils due to the excitement, Drache finally realized that she was cold. Not just cold,
freezing! Her tail was touching something icy and the rough stone underneath her was slimy and chill. Shivering instinctively, hating the cold, the slightly mussed half-dragon stood up and straightened the vest that barely kept her generous bust under control. After a brief check of her backpack, she looked around. This chamber was very large, the ceiling obscured by shadows that even her eyes couldn't penetrate. Poised like a raptor on high alert, she listened for the subtle sounds of Underdark denizens. It wouldn't be the first time she'd run afoul of shadowcats or moody drow.
And she noticed something else. Deep gouges in the floor that could have only come from the claws of a dragon. Her ear-frills flattened against her head as she looked up, and found herself face-to-face with a solid wall of ice.
"What are you doing here?" she wondered. The eerily regular sound of water dripping was much more pronounced in here, and her nostrils verily steamed against the wet surface.
With no small sense of foreboding, Drache swung her backpack down to her hip and rummaged around until she found her glow crystal. With the light shining from between her scaled fingers, she lifted it high, peering into the warped depths of the ice, eyes wide. It took a moment to realize what she was looking at, but when she did she jumped back with start, pupils narrowing and wings lifting in alarm. The pale light bounced dizzyingly around the room as the glow crystal clattered noisily to the floor.
"Well that's not something you see every day!" Approaching the ice again, lifting her hands to press against the hard surface (with just her claws, avoiding letting it touch her skin, of course) she let her gaze follow the curve of a dragon's face.
"How did you get in there, I wonder?" Her voice echoed strangely.
She had to step back, retrieving and lifting the glow stone again to see where her darkvision couldn't, the light refracting prettily through the ice. Was it the frozen water that made his scales glitter so nicely or was the pristine whiteness a result of his rimey prison? She assumed he was male. His horns were quite more proud than most she had seen. He even had a Wild look about him.
"If you've been there a while I suppose that's to be expected.""Hmm. What to do! I suppose this is your cave, Sir White." Wandering away from the ice, Drache poked around, eventually coming across a deep trench that, while it appeared to have stripped completely bare, still emanated a faint tang of metal. Hopping down into the bottom, it was only the light of the glow crystal glittering on something caught under a chunk of rock that showed her the treasure. Grunting, tail waving high in the air with the effort, Drache managed to shove the piece aside and revealed a small crack filled with gold coins so old that their designs were effectively inscrutable.
"A-ha! Well I suppose you wont be needing these, will you!" She hummed a tavern wench's song under her breath, happily plonking each coin into a leather sack, the resulting load very nearly more than she could carry.
"Oh my poor little wings are going to fall off by the time I get this lot home!" Returning to the flat spot near the frozen dragon's face, she sat down with the bag of gold as a seat, and brought out her journal once more.
"Now don't you move!" She instructed the hapless ice-bound beast sweetly, chuckling as she began to sketch on a blank page.
It was about the time that she was filling in the details of the dead dragon's proud face that Drache truly began to wonder about him.
"What were you like? How long have you been in there? What was the world like in your day?" A stream of muttered questions joined the reverberating
plip-plop! of dripping water. Questions she would likely never know the answers to. A pity. When the sketch seemed finished, Drache closed her journal and got up, stretching in readiness to leave this place.
But she couldn't. Her tail undulated behind her legs as she looked up at the ice, her horned head tilted thoughtfully.
"I suppose you really are dead. But if you aren't, it would be a shame to leave you in there. But how to get you out?" She would die of starvation before her flame-breath would even make a dent in the ice, and it would take a troop of dwarves days to get here, let alone the time it took them to chop him out.
"And they'd want to be paid, the scoundrels."Drache paced back and forth in front of the ice, trying to see how high the block went. She finally spread her wings and jumped, wincing at the cold as she landed, slipping slightly on the uneven ice. With her glow crystal still resting on the floor below, she could see the shadowy shape of the white dragon's body locked in the ice underneath her. But after a brief glance at him, she looked up.
"Perfect."The stalagtites hanging above were enormous. Nervous about causing a cave-in, Drache moved her stuff back near the tunnel that had spilled her out into this frosty tomb and flew up to the ceiling, hovering (with considerable effort) as she swallowed and opened her jaws, her belly clenching as she brought up a tongue of flame into her cupped palms. Breathing the fire was easy, but clutching it in her claws was something else entirely. The first time it had happened was a complete accident earlier this year, but she'd been practicing and discovered that she could do all sorts of neat things with the heat she had been born with.
The fire almost guttered out while she tried to shape it with her mind, but with a fluttering
whoof! it became a ball, growing larger and whiter, more intense. Her eyes sparkled gleefully as she felt its strength. Heaving her arm back, the half-dragon threw the fireball at the base of the largest stalagmite, and then giggled madly as she retreated to the relative safety of the tunnel like a little boy fleeing from lit firecrackers.
The fireball hissed menacingly through the air, striking the stone roof with a concussive
BOOM!, the bright flare of sparks and flame fizzling out against the unburnable stone. Fragments of rock and dust rained down on the ice and the cavern floor, but nothing else happened. Drache uncoiled from where she had crouched in wait.
"Aw, rats and rust!" And then there was a thunderous squeal, the kind that can only be made when stone rips apart like paper. The hanging spear of rock jolted suddenly, tearing from the ceiling and falling with an almost peaceful slowness down to the ice below. The silence during the fall was a start contrast to what happened next. The pointy spike pierced a good ten feet into the ice, a huge crack zipping through the solid block as fast as lightning. But when the rest of the untold tons of falling stone shattered against the top of the white dragon's prison, the entire mass blew apart under the strain, rock and ice cascading across the chamber in a cacophonous tsunami.
Watching with her mouth open at the results of her handiwork, the shapely dragoness only managed to avoid being crushed under the avalanche by turning to flee up the tunnel. The silence that followed was almost oppressive in its intensity, but at least she knew that the rest of the world wasn't going to come crashing in.
"Well! That was fun!" 
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