Eulogy » Lair » Starling

Starling

(#14527488)

.....You said this lair was empty, it is anything but....

Familiar

Wind Sprite

Energy: 0/50

Personal Style

Apparel

Skin

Scene

Physical Attributes

Battle Stats

Measurements

Length

17.15 m

Wingspan

16.68 m

Weight

11753.05 kg

Genetics

Violet
Crystal

Violet
Facet

Midnight
Basic

Hatchday

Jun 29, 2015
(8 years)

Breed

Adult
Guardian

Eye Type

Arcane
Common

Level 25 Guardian

Max Level

STR

129

AGI

DEF

QCK

INT

VIT

MND

Lineage

Parents

Nevel
Galaxy

Offspring

Biography

Starling
".....You said this lair was empty, it is anything but...."

“They’ve gone dark on us, Starling. No messages received from them for the past few weeks. Nothing but silence. Just silence...”
The silence is what you notice when you first enter the lair. It’s breathless, all the life sucked out of it. As you behold the bodies slumped across the floor, you realize how true that is.
It isn’t just sound that’s missing. It’s blood and wounds, it’s weapons and broken bones and damage. An answer to the question “How did you all die?”
“Tell me what happened,” you want to say, as you examine each inert, unmarked corpse. But there are no explanations forthcoming. The silence is your only reply.
This close to so much death, you feel your years creep upon you, long days spent fighting creatures and beasts. You step over fallen guards, young and old alike, and reflect that you could have easily become like them, years and years ago.
“There is no shame in running, or hiding if you must. Build up your breath, then...eliminate,” you hear bygone teachers say...
You swear you hear them say.
You look back. The shadows shiver weakly, cast into blurry motion by the guttering lanterns. A sympathetic shiver passes over your own flanks.
And yet the silence remains. Surrounded as you are now, by so many of the dead, you cannot be certain whether you are grateful for that or not.
You have seen death come in many forms. You feel like a detective, considering suspects to a crime, examining the likely culprits of poison, disease, or sorcery. And the deeper into the lair you go, the heavier the silence, as though you’re being crushed beneath the lightless, endless sea....
You need to speak, or else you’ll suffocate. You examine a nearby Wildclaw. He’s slumped over in his seat, a tankard by one paw. His eyes are open and as white and blank as clouds.
“No external injuries, just like all the others...”
You swear he winks at you, just before you turn away. How strange that it’s so difficult—and yet so easy—to fight the urge to look again.
You catch yourself using the bodies as landmarks. You’ve been there before, inside the Dead Guardian and Ridgeback’s Armory. Across from it is the Fallen Pink Nocturne’s Storeroom, and perhaps you should stay away from the Deceased Imperial Trio’s Smithy—
You’re ready to laugh at the absurdity of it all. But something else does. A soft titter, or maybe a rustle, from the passageway behind you.
You turn to look—and in spite of yourself, you do a double-take. There, in front of the storeroom—you could have sworn that that dragon was a Nocturne earlier, not a Bogsneak. The armory Ridgeback’s face was turned away from you, not towards you. And beside him...
This time, you’re positive you hear it: a whisper from the dark.
And you ask yourself, “How far away from the entrance am I?”
“It would be so easy,” you tell yourself, “to falsify the results of this investigation.” To just write down what you think happened here, the rest of the investigation be damned.
(You aren’t sure now, that you aren’t...)
Anything would be easier than staying here, surrounded by dead bodies and darkness. You hurry back to the entrance, but it doesn’t get any easier to breathe—
“There is no shame in running, or hiding if you must.”
A lantern winks out, then another. A rustle to your left. As you dart through a doorway, you see movement. Eyes bore into your back.
“They’ve gone dark on us, Starling. Nothing but silence.
They’ve...gone dark...”
Closer to the entrance, still closer. Heads turn as you rush past.
You reach the lair lobby, and above the doors, you see a hand-painted sign. Thank you for visiting! it tells you, as the corpses start to rise.
Clicking claws, grinning teeth. One eye opening, then the other, winking, opening wide.
Each heartbeat drawn out, impossibly long, time slowing to a crawl. Perhaps you scream. Perhaps the dead scream back. But the only voice that matters is the fighter deep inside. The fighter who now tells you—
“Build up your breath, then...eliminate.”

~ written by Disillusionist (254672)
all edits by other users

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Exalting Starling to the service of the Flamecaller will remove them from your lair forever. They will leave behind a small sum of riches that they have accumulated. This action is irreversible.

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