Markoh's Clan

The Frostbone clan has gone silent. All that remains is a veritable labyrinth of tunnels into the Cloudscrape Crags, a complex death trap dark and dangerously cold. All is silent and untouched. Interlopers may go in, even those accustomed to the lethal cold of the locale, but none ever seem to reemerge...

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Satine had spent the better part of the day pacing, restless with the expansion of other clans near their territory, the shrinking of their hunting grounds, and the general unrest of her own nightmares. More than once have they been forced into a skirmish over unannounced run-ins with other dragons looking for food, and there was only so much their small clan could do against movement on all fronts.

"Your lack of sleep is getting worse."

She stopped pacing long enough to turn a droll stare to Inuart, her mate being ever so keen to add to her list of worries. "Thank you for the reminder," she said with just enough bitterness to rival the sweetness in her tone.

The Red Grim approached and gently ran the edge of his skull helmet across hers, just enough to relax the tension in her wings. He knew if the others saw him doing this, they would never let him live it down. He craned his neck around hers in a quiet hug and waited for her to relax. "...We will fight to the last, if we must."

Satine frowned beneath her helmet. "That is what I fear..." She sat and leaned against his shoulder, feeling like she'd been standing for years. "If we continue to fight, we will run out of food. Our lair is isolated enough that we have to travel to hunt, and surrounded enough that anyone can see us leave... We'll starve here, one way or another."

"If we stay."

"...You suggest we leave?" Her eyes were almost alarmed as she looked up to him. "This place is our home. We fought to carve our lair here, raised our child here, made the ice and stone our own."

"It also haunts you," Inuart added with a scowl equal to her own. "I've watched this specter whittle away at you for years now. It plagues your sleep, robs your thoughts, seeps the time right out of your spirit..."

"The Geist isn't real-"

"It's real enough to have a name," he interrupted. "Real enough to be drawing the life out of you... I don't care what the Seer implies. I know what I see happening to you."

Satine sighed, both out of defeat in the argument and relief that he believed her. She drew up to all fours and peered out the lair door, down through the shadows. "Where would we even go...? Our clan may be small, but we are still numerous enough that starting over someplace new would leave us completely exposed. But if we stay, we compete with surrounding clans and find war at our doorstep..." She sat down with a sigh, her four eyes staring thousands of miles away into the dark. "Either way, I fear these halls will be empty and abandoned soon with nothing but the Geist to roam the tunnels..."

Inuart smirked, but it was sympathy. He had never seen his mate like this. Just as he was about to open his mouth to say something, he heard the slightest stir of cloth behind him.

"If I may...?"

Both mirrors spun to the entrance of their den to see a pale wildclaw, one relatively new to the clan going by the name Slip. The two alphas wondered in the brief beat of silence how the cloaked one got here without being seen, but the silence was filled by Slip's words instead of questions.

"By continuing to fight every contact with the edge of our territory, we aren't just being pushed back. We're being tracked directly to our lair." Slip stood patiently, holding their own hand as though they were a soldier at rest. "If tensions raise any higher with the larger clans, we'll be wiped off the face of the mountain like dirt on a trophy. This spot is tactically ideal for multiple reasons. Our rivals will move in, see how perfect the layout is, and call it their own... But I say we let them."

"What...?" Inuart took that as a threat.

"No," Satine stopped him, gently brushing her wing across his shoulder in silent reassurance before approaching Slip. "I never hear you speak, and here you are in our lair with this... Explain yourself."

Slip smiled from under their own mask, their crimson eyes curved from the expression. "The enemy wants the mountain for its strategic position. And I don't care how big a clan gets around here, there's an abundance of food if you know where to look. My suggestion is to let the enemy believe we truly are gone. Abandon the halls, some possessions, let the tunnels speak for themselves."

"Speak... For themselves...?"

Their smile widened, evident from the squint of their eyes, and they indicated to the dark tunnel with a sweeping gesture of their claws. "Alpha... You have an army and you don't even know it."

Satine turned to look in the direction of their offer, waiting to see what was meant by the strange wording. They had dug so many tunnels into the mountain, prepared for expansion and more numbers, but all that came of it was a labyrinth of empty darkness... And the whispers. The longer she stared into the darkness, the more she could hear them. Hundreds of them. An army of hushed voices, whispering an undercurrent to the mind-bending shriek of the Geist only Satine was believed to be able to hear...

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I love RP, and I absolutely adore hearing from the ones I sell off! If you've happened upon one of my hatchlings or I've ended up with one of yours, shoot me a message and I will respond back in kind!

I am also on the lair map, so feel free to find me there.


THINGS TO DO:

Update ALL the permanent bios.
Acquire a bonefiend and a skycat... Somehow.
A grape-grape-bubblegum of any dragon species, ideally with primal arcane eye morph.