Quests & Challenges

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Black Orpington

Meat

Males of this species of poultry crow loudly when the sun sets.

50

5

More food = More Coliseum! The RNG decided that today's round count would be 46, and so it was. All three of my main battlers are now level seven.

Notable Drops:

Leafy Pack

Chests

Assembled from woven vines and tough broad leaves. There's something inside.

0

[center][b]Day Seven[/b][/center] [b]------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/b] [Item = Dodo] Wow, Pinkerton seems dead-set on getting me new dragons, huh? This is what I got: [img]http://flightrising.com/rendern/350/414150/41414930_350.png[/img] Beautiful, right? Her name is Syllere and she will show up with Nyriss in my next lore post!

[center][b]Day Eight[/b][/center] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Item = Venomblade Hilt] [center]Welp, I procrastinated on my writing and made this little doodle of Azorillith:[/center] [center][img]https://i.pinimg.com/564x/1b/d5/33/1bd533bda12f31910fe18c6d413abf88.jpg[/img][/center]

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Bergon

Stupid, he was just so stupid! Bergon couldn’t believe how idiotic he was, forgetting to put out the fire before he fell asleep. Now his legs burned as he forced them to run and jump through the thorny undergrowth of the Tangled Wood, former clanmates who had seen the smoke hot on his heels. Why were they here? Why did they care about him at all? He had always been the clan’s outcast to everyone but Niall. He had a feeling this was Anthius’ doing; the leader was just so all-knowing, and he had probably put two and two together about why Bergon had fled so suddenly.

He dodged swiftly around a tree that was blocking his path and felt Lataiss’ claws dig deeper into his shoulder scales as she struggled to hold on. Despite the pain, Bergon was glad he had thought to put her back there in his hurry to leave; she never would have been able to keep up with him otherwise.

“Azorillith! That’s it; the smell! His passenger suddenly yelled as he jolted over a log.

“Who??”


Azorillith

Azorillith wasn’t quite sure what pulled her awake for the second time since her crash-landing in the Tangled Wood. Maybe it was her cramped wing, which had folded into a strange and painful position as she shifted in her sleep; or maybe it was the moonlight, which had become so bright that it was even making its way in through the branches of her shelter. Whatever the case, she was awake and not likely to go back to sleep again that night. With a sigh, she squeezed out of her hideout’s entrance hole crawled into the moonlit clearing.

‘Might as well hunt while I’m up…my best chance at food would probably be the Driftwood Drag, but I don’t know how far that is from where I am. Therefore, I should just poke around here for some bugs or something of a similar nutritional value.’ Azorillith pondered her situation for a moment longer before ambling off into the forest.

She listened as she walked, noting each faint rustle and chirp mentally before pursuing their sources. The mushroom-and-moon-lit forest was a true treasure trove of nocturnal insects, and she was pleased with how easily she could fill her stomach. Given a few weeks to improve her lair, this place could easily become home for her. That thought, as pleasant as it was, brought bad memories bubbling to the surface of her brain again, and she quickly moved to suppress them before they destroyed her composure. ‘Ignorance is bliss…I can’t afford to grieve until I can make a safer lair off the ground.’ Azorillith thought bitterly before perking her ears back up to listen for the next insect. Having surplus food would be useful, she figured.

The forest was had gone suspiciously silent all around her; not a single cricket daring to make itself known. Azorillith froze in her tracks, worried for her safety. Silence in a forest was a dangerous thing to a lone nocturne such as herself. Wait, was that a shout? Indeed, it had been; and more swiftly followed behind the first, growing louder by the second. Calmly, but swiftly all the same, Azorillith climbed the nearest tree and waited. If her calculations were correct, the owners of the shouts were headed in her direction.


Bergon

Lataiss’ sudden revelation was almost lost on Bergon as he pelted through the darkened trees. Azorillith? Obviously, he had never met them before, and he likely wouldn’t now that they were primed to leave the Tangled Wood behind. His passenger chimed in with another yell: “She’s close! Azorillith!!! Where are you?!”

“What are you doing Lataiss?!” Bergon yelled back to her, “There’s literally no way for us to get to them now! I can’t go scoop up someone else with a bunch of dragons on our tail!”

“She’s fast; I’m trying to get her to come to us!”

Unfortunately for Bergon, Azorillith wasn’t the only fast dragon in the woods that night. Niall, hearing the outcry of Lataiss, put on a burst of speed. The gap between the two closed faster than Bergon thought possible, and his friend was closer each time he glanced over his shoulder. “Bergon!!” he heard her shout, “Stop at once!” Bergon winced; the more proper her words, the more angry she was.

Sharp lines of pain ripped suddenly down his side, and he glanced over to see a fierce looking Niall running right next to him, claws bloody where they had scratched him. “H-how?!” His mouth moved unbidden as he poured on the speed, but there wasn’t much left in him. She easily caught up again, and then ran even farther ahead, whirling onto his path in one smooth move that effectively cut him off. He screeched to a halt, feeling Lataiss’ grip on his back loosen as he did so.

Niall waited only a split second before she began yelling at him, “What in Sornieth were you thinking, Bergon? Why is there a dragon on your back? WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME WITHOUT EVEN A HINT ABOUT YOUR PLANS??! You made it seem like everything was normal and then BOOM, you’re gone! Wh-“

Bergon interrupted before she could continue, noting the approaching sounds of other once-clanmates, “I found my Charge when I was down cleaning out bodies… that’s who I’m carrying on my back. I knew Anthius would kill her the moment he saw her, the moment he knew there was still at least one dragon from her clan left alive. I had to leave and, Niall, please believe me when I say that I felt awful about leaving you without an explanation. But I can’t go back now, and there’s no changing my stance on that. You know how the boss feels about deserters.”

Niall was silent for a whole awful moment before she spoke again, in a somewhat frantic tone, “Fine, I understand. But I can’t just leave without you, you know. Boss hates failures just as much as he hates traitors. So, I need you to scratch me or something. Do something to me that will let him know I tried.” She looked up at him with desperate, blue eyes before presenting her flank to him.

“I’m sorry, Niall. I really am.” Bergon’s voice wavered as he lifted a paw, bringing it down hard on her side. She gave an over-exaggerated screech and staggered as Bergon sprinted once more into the undergrowth.


Azorillith

At the sound of a familiar voice, Azorillith was in the air and winging toward the source. Unless she was mistaken, Lataiss was here in the Tangled Wood and had recognized Azorillith’s scent. ‘Does this mean the clan is okay? Did they send Lataiss and some others here to fetch me?’ Azorillith was giddy with excitement, and kept her eyes glued to the ground below her to find the pale tundra. When she did, however, she was not expecting to find Lataiss on the back of a shadowy guardian who was running pell-mell through the rapidly thinning brush.

“Lataiss!” she called as she swooped down to the side of her friend, settling easily beside her. The guardian didn’t even react to the new addition, charging forward without the faintest hint of a reaction. Lataiss, however, reacted by throwing her wings around Azorillith and squealing excitedly about how thankful she was that someone else had survived the massacre that had befallen the clan. Azorillith felt her stomach sink when she heard that the clan was completely dead aside from herself and Lataiss, but that feeling couldn’t squash the happiness Lataiss was transferring into her with every passing second. She estimated that her sadness would resurface when she had time to grieve. For now, though, she couldn’t let her feelings incapacitate her when she could be keeping lookout for whatever the guardian who was at present serving as transport was running from. She was just about to ask Lataiss about it when she was jolted into the air as the guardian collapsed into an impossibly dark river that nobody had noticed. Azorillith and Lataiss were in the water with him mere seconds later, bobbing further inland with the current.



Today's Drop:

Lizardscale Cloth

Dragonmade

Hundreds of tiny scales were stitched into this textile.

81

Whoops, I gave myself feels over a secondary character. I swear, I'm going to buy a mirror and name her Niall when I get my next familiar from Pinkerton

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Marbled Stingray

Seafood

These lively fish are a joy to watch and to eat.

25

3

Finally! As much as I love writing and drawing, nothing beats the exhilaration of fighting in the coli! The RNG told me to do 36 rounds today, and with two of my new dragons having reached adulthood today, I had to use the RNG to generate who would be fighting. Both new adults ended up fighting with Lataiss to coach them, but everyone is still alive (if I had been in the Scorched Forest, there would have been a different story).

Notable Drops:

Sakura Owl

Familiar

The sakura owl blooms only once a year. Many forest denizens will journey long distances to witness the event. Not all of the visitors return...

1675

Leafy Pack

Chests

Assembled from woven vines and tough broad leaves. There's something inside.

0

x3

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Azorillith

Azorillith’s wings and legs churned the water, trying to keep balanced in the rapidly moving currents. The river bank had grown steeper as they moved along, and the current had picked up from the its prior snail-like pace. It was nigh impossible to leave the river now; none of them were even trying to fight their way out at this point. All three were exhausted beyond belief from the day’s turmoil and were as close to content with their condition as dragons floating in a river could be.

With her limbs moving on autopilot, Azorillith changed her focus to the guardian who had transported them through the Tangled Wood. Following his initial yell of surprise at tripping, the dragon had gone very silent. Azorillith estimated that whatever was chasing him before their unfortunate dump into the river demanded a lot of his though power, thus rendering him silent. Or, he was just a quiet dragon; Azorillith was nowhere near qualified to judge the guardian’s qualities.

As for her tundra friend, Lataiss was also quite silent. She bobbed along near the guardian, shooting Azorillith occasional glances that displayed a jumble of emotions; the nocturne on the receiving end of them could not decipher what they were supposed to mean. Azorillith supposed that there really wasn’t much to be said when one was drifting on the currents of a river, and there wasn’t much to be done other than to watch out for a low bank that could be used to escape the stream’s magnetic grasp.

That low bank was not to be, but a river escape was due to them surprisingly soon. Azorillith listened as a distant mutter became a nearby roar, signaling the presence of a waterfall. The others noticed it as well and were priming themselves to launch into the air at the first opportunity. Unfortunately for them, it was no easy task to transmit directly from a waterfall into the sky, and only Azorillith managed to do it. The others tumbled down with the rest of the inky water, and the guardian’s tail whipped up to catch one of Azorillith’s wings, dragging her down with them.


Lataiss

Lataiss felt her shoulder hit hard ground but felt her tail splash into water. She yelled with the onslaught of bruising, near bone-breaking force on her shoulder, and heard her companions make similar noises following coordinating thumps. Shifting her forelegs under her chest, Lataiss pushed herself out of the pool she was half-laying in to stand shakily on her feet.

The area around her was a patchy, cracked portion of an ancient-looking auditorium. In the center was a crescent shaped pool filled with inky water similar to that of the river they had been traveling in mere moments before, though the water itself was mostly obstructed by piles of shadowy trinkets and shimmering heaps of treasure. Lataiss gaped, trying desperately to remember where she’d heard of someplace like this.

“The Forum of the Obscured Crescent…wow, just wow…” Azorillith had sidled up next to Lataiss and saved her the trouble of remembering the name of the place. It was a fittingly imposing name for such an imposing and ancient area, and Lataiss made what moves she could to dedicate it to memory.

“Is that an egg?” Bergon’s voice interrupted Latiass’ scrunch-faced memory committing attempt, bringing the moon-colored tundra’s red eyes to face what was most certainly an egg on a pillar. Azorillith, curious as always, was in the air immediately to check.

“It is!” The bat-like nocturne circled the dark shape on the pillar a few more times before returning to the group.

“The blue one is quite right, that is an egg up there.”

The three dragons whirled to face the creaky voice that had addressed them from behind, eyes wide. They found a chuckling purple tundra sitting so perfectly on a rock ledge it was if she had been waiting for them. In one lithe move, the tundra leapt down and stalked toward them like a cat. Her age didn’t appear to show in her movements at all; in fact, only her voice betrayed how old she surely was.

“Are we trespassing, ma’am? Do you want us to leave? I mean, we didn’t mean to come here; we just kinda fell into a river and then- “ Bergon’s nervous flurry of questions was halted by the tundra, who responded:

“You are not trespassing, guardian. In fact, fate has deemed many years in advance that you should join me in this Forum tonight.”

“You’re a prophet, then?” Azorillith jumped into the conversation here, approaching the amethyst-colored tundra and eyeing her critically.

“Indeed, I am. You may know me as Hope, prophet to the Shadowbinder herself.”

Lataiss had never heard of a divine prophet like Hope, but this answer seemed to please Azorillith, who backed away respectfully. Once she had, she posed another question: “Does this mean that we’re part of a prophecy?” Beside Lataiss, Bergon gasped.

Another chuckle from Hope. “For the third time tonight, my answer is yes.”

Azorillith opened her mouth to say something else, perhaps to ask the prophet another question, but she was shushed as Hope continued:

“I need not delay the truth any further, so I will tell you of the prophecy now, or at least its origins. I was not the one to speak it; no, that was my ancestor Cassandra’s job. It has simply been passed from prophet to prophet since, so that it would be remembered when the time came for it to be fulfilled. Much of your task is derived from this prophecy, after all, so forgetting it would be less than ideal.

“The prophecy itself is many hundreds of words long, too many for me to recite to you now, lest the blue moon disappear before I can finish. So, I will detail the task you must complete, and will answer your questions afterwards if you have them.


Hope finished her recitation with a grand wing-sweep in the direction of the egg-pillar, staring at her audience with expectant eyes. Lataiss felt nervous under that purple gaze but couldn’t find the will to speak even a single word. The prophecy, what bits hadn’t been forgotten already, tumbled around in her brain trying to fit together and drag Lataiss into the picture. They had to find treasures? Ten of them? And they had to take that egg?

Lataiss was saved from responding by the ever-analytical Azorillith, who was already seeing problems. “What if we forget what we’re going after? I mean, I’d like to think I have a mind like a steel trap, but no dragon is free from memory decay after a while. What if we get to the last one and then can’t remember what we’re looking for?”

“Well, I’m glad that you’re willing, at least, to take on this journey. You need not worry for your memory; the solution to that will make itself known to you soon enough.” Hope responded simply to Azorillith before turning her gaze back to the two who had remained silent.

Bergon went next, “Not to say that I don’t want to do this whole prophecy thing, but what would happen if we didn’t follow along and just did our own thing? Would you force us to do it?”

“No, I wouldn’t force you; I would kill you. Simple as that. Now, do any of you have more questions?”

“Hold up, hold up! You’d kill us? Aren’t we kinda necessary to this whole ordeal?” Bergon interjected, a nervous waver tainting his deep voice.

“Frankly, this prophecy has attempted to fulfill itself many times over the centuries. Blue moons and confused Plague dragons aren’t as uncommon as they might seem, and I am always willing to wait another few hundred years for the prophecy to work its way out again if you aren’t willing to assist. The Mother of Shadows does not appreciate using game pieces that don’t wish to be used.”

Lataiss deflated a little at that. While she might be scared by the enormity of the task awaiting them, and the fact that they would be killed if they didn’t comply, she had been somewhat excited to hear that she was part of something special. That she was special. That there was a reason for her to still be alive when her family and all but one of her friends were dead. Hearing that she wasn’t all that, necessarily, was a little disheartening to her.

As if through some sixth sense (or maybe it was Hope’s sixth sense, Lataiss couldn’t tell), Hope turned to Lataiss to address her, “Just because I CAN kill you doesn’t mean I absolutely need to. It seems at least one of you is up to the task, and perhaps you are too, little tundra?”

“I think I’m up to the task… Bergon, are you?” Lataiss stared at Bergon with pleading eyes.

“It’s my JOB to guard you for the rest of my life; I have absolutely no choice, do I? But yeah, I want to come too. It’s not every day that you become part of a prophecy, is it?”

“Wonderful! I am thrilled to have willing volunteers after all this time. Then, we should carry on with the next part, shouldn’t we? That means- “

“Wait a minute! I have one more question for you. Why should we do this? What do we gain from this? And more importantly, what do YOU gain? What will these treasures do once we collect them all?” Azorillith stepped in front of Hope, accusation dripping from each word she spoke.

“Well, you’re certainly a smart dragon, I’ll give you that, blue one. Think of these treasures as game pieces. The Shadowbinder needs these pieces to complete her strategy to win the game of Dominance. They will help bring an age of prosperity to my people. You will be rewarded for your efforts, of course, and you will forever have a place here in the Forum where you can live in richness and comfort for the rest of your days.”

“Whoa, we could live here? In this place?” Bergon had perked up substantially over the course of the tundra’s latest response and was practically wagging his tail at her mention of a lair near where they were standing at that very moment.

“Of course! Now that we’ve got that cleared up, we can move on to the hatching of your guide.”

Hope strolled over to the pillar, stopping a few feet away. Then, in one fluid movement, she spread her teal wings and leapt into the air, spiraling upwards on an unseen draft. Once she was high enough, she left the updraft to glide over the top of the pedestal. She snatched the egg and clutched it to her chest as she soared back down to the group.

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Today's Drop:

Crackled Scales

Organics

Most scales from this kill were damaged, but this handful was salvageable.

55

woooooooo

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White Lace Honeybee

Insect

The White Lace Honeybee rarely stings. Some say it's too ladylike for that.

15

2

Yass, more coli! I rolled 26 rounds today, and they went smoothly. My team was the same as last time (thanks, RNG), and now Lataiss is level 9 and my the other two are both level 5.

Notable Drops:

Bamboo Phytocat

Familiar

Little is known about how the Bamboo Phytocat's physiology evolved, but one thing is for certain: watch the reeds as you walk... (KS-sponsored by kiohl.)

1650

Leafy Pack

Chests

Assembled from woven vines and tough broad leaves. There's something inside.

0

x2

I've equipped the Phytocat to Lataiss, seeing as she was the one to deal the finishing blow on it. His name is to be Reed, and I'll put him in the story once I can get it to progress past where it is right now.

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Old World Rabbit

Meat

This species has managed to thrive even in the aftermath of two apocalypses. All divergent species of rabbit claim Old World rabbits as their living ancestors.

50

5

Oh yeah! RNG told me to do 43 rounds today, and generated my team as Bergon, Syllere (she just grew up today), and Umbreus (who will be formally introduced by tomorrow, when I go back and edit day 11's post with new lore).

Notable Drops:

Grouse Basilisk

Familiar

Breaking the gaze of a grouse basilisk is not too difficult if attacked in pairs; they startle easily!

1650

Basilisk

Familiar

A basilisk's gaze can petrify even the hardiest Earth dragons into stone. Staring contests with this familiar are not recommended.

1800

Leafy Pack

Chests

Assembled from woven vines and tough broad leaves. There's something inside.

0

The grouse basilisk is Bergon's new familiar, named Wilson, but the normal Basilisk was slain by Syllere, who already had a familiar, so it isn't going to come into the story.

Bergon is level 8, Umbreus is level 6, and Syllere is level 5.

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Ringmaster's Bellwhip

Trinkets

Its chiming peals maintain the attention of a crowd.

39

Another trinket, huh. Well, I have anther doodle I could post, but I think I'll save that for later and reserve this spot for lore. I'm wrapping up the essential prophecy lore this weekend, so I can start posting daily short story elements soon!