Morrigan

Clan Role: Alchemist, Potionmaker Mate: Phoenix (formerly: Uther) Adopted Children: Belladonna Friends: Enchantment

Lore Morrigan enjoys studying and experimenting with the more Shadow-y aspects of Arcane magic. Her favorite disciplines are alchemy and potion-making. Her Storm Seeker does her gathering for her, and brings her shiny objects and potion ingredients. Together, Morrigan, Phoenix, and Enchantment make up the clan's corps of alchemy students. They all wear matching sets of jewelry emblazoned with alchemical symbols to signify their friendship and their shared devotion to the profession. For the longest time, Morrigan and Phoenix could often be seen whispering together or slinking off to one or the other's cavern to collaborate on something. Eventually, they came out as a couple. Uther became rather depressed when he learned of this, but gradually became used to the single life again. He finally came around to the arrangement when Morrigan and Phoenix proved to be good mothers to the clan's first Bogsneak, Belladonna, whose egg they had bartered for.

Short Story


Even though the Second Battle of the Bay was over, there were still would-be warriors traveling through the Starfall Isles - those who had come here intending to join the fray, but had arrived too late. Some stopped at Clan Adeptica's caves to rest for a night, and some decided to stay for the long term after talking to and getting to know the dragons who lived there (especially Snowblossom and Diamondshine). Two of those who joined the clan in this way were Morrigan and her mate, Uther, a purple Spiral and Pearlcatcher, respectively, from the Tangled Wood. She was an alchemist by vocation, and formed an immediate bond with her fellow Spiral, Enchantment, who had taken an interest in the art herself. The two of them spent much of their time brewing reagents and Soylents to trade with other dragons, and were frequent visitors to Baldwin's stall at the Trading Post. One day, the two Spirals and their elder clanmate Cerulia all decided to head there together, so that Cerulia could sell some of the trinkets and trophies she had won from her coliseum fighting.

It was a beautiful day with a warm, autumnal breeze, the kind that one couldn't help playing in and with. Morrigan and Enchantment leapt into a joyous display of aerial acrobatics as soon as they left the entrance to the clan lair. Cerulia soared and swooped through the warm air, not caring about taking the most direct or efficient route to where they were going - and then, suddenly, she found herself somewhere else.

Where the open ocean had been spread out below her not a moment before, there was now a sea of rustling treetops - and they were closer to her than the ocean had been. Cerulia focused on the feel of the air against her wings, knowing that if she panicked, she might fall. She had to find a safe place to land. There - a gap between two groups of trees that looked large enough for her to land safely.

Only after she had done so did she allow herself to try to assess the situation. Where was she? What the Shade had just happened? How had she suddenly ended up here, wherever 'here' was? Had someone put a curse on her?

Her senses went on high alert, as if she were hunting or fighting, but she detected no sign of any hostile entities nearby. Good. If there was no immediate danger, then the next question was what had happened? She looked up at the sky, back the way she had come, and - were those swirls of pink and purple she saw against the blue?

"Enchantment!" she called out. "Morrigan! I'm down here!" She unfurled her wings again, trying to make herself as visible from the air as she could - which wasn't very, since her wings were dark purple.

The pink and purple swirls must have noticed, because they began to descend toward her. "Is that you, Cerulia?" Enchantment called out when they had gotten close enough for her to hear their little, chirpy voices.

"It is!" Cerulia answered. "So it happened to you, too!"

"Whatever 'it' is!" said Enchantment.

The two Spirals hovered before Cerulia and they all tried to make sense of their experience. The two Spirals reported an experience similar to Cerulia's - suddenly flying over a completely different point on the ground, with no apparent cause for the sudden transition.

"This must be the Starwood Strand," said Morrigan, indicating the trees around them, whose leaves grew in shades of periwindle and lavender.

"It must be," said Cerulia. "That still doesn't explain how we got here."

"Pretty sure it was some kind of magic," said Enchantment. "We just need to figure out what kind. Maybe if we retrace our flight path and look very, very carefully, we might find some clues."

They did just that, the two Spirals keeping their large, night-hunting-adapted eyes open for anything unusual or unfamiliar. "There!" Morrigan exclaimed, pointing with one claw and her tail. "See? The air over there is sort of… shimmering."

The three dragons approached the area of shimmery air with great caution. It appeared to be a perfect circle, suspended vertically in the air, about twice as wide as Cerulia's wingspan was. The two Spirals could easily hover in any spot in airspace they chose, so they came right up to the shimmery surface, without going through it. Cerulia was built for soaring and gliding, and was unable to hover the way they did; instead, she had to fly in wide, slow circles, making sure those circles did not intersect with the plane of the shimmery surface.

Morrigan stuck a forelimb tentatively into the shimmery surface, and it disappeared. Enchantment peered around the edge of it. "I can't see anything," she reported. "Does it feel like anything?"

"No," said Morrigan. "It feels the same on both sides."

"I think I'll try going through it from this side. I want to see if it takes you back to where we came from."

"I'll stay here and watch for you to come back out," said Morrigan.

Enchantment took a deep breath and flew directly into the shimmery surface. She disappeared as she made contact with it. A few long moments passed, and then she emerged from it again.

"I was right!" Enchantment exclaimed. "It does go back to where we just came from! You can see the entrance to our lair from where it comes out!"

"Let me try!" said Morrigan. This time, she went through the shimmery surface while Morrigan watched, and then came back out again. "It works!" Morrigan said. "I guess it's some sort of… portal?"

"Seems like it!" said Cerulia. "Never seen anything like it, though!"

"We'll have to ask around about it when we get to Baldwin's," Enchantment said. "Maybe someone there will know what it is."

"Speaking of which," said Cerulia, "I guess that was a shortcut. We're already on the mainland. Shall we keep going toward the Trading Post?"

"Yes, let's," said Enchantment. She closed her eyes and spoke a few magical words. A pink, glowing arrow appeared before her, spun in a circle, and then stopped, pointing in a certain direction. She and her companions flew in that direction, knowing that if they traveled that way for long enough, they would reach their destination.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Enchantment's guess had been correct. While she and Morrigan were waiting for their brews to finish at Baldwin's, they talked to the other dragons who were at the stall that day, particularly their neighbors from the Starfall Isles. They learned that what they had encountered was a known phenomenon, called a spatial warp. It was the result of unrestrained arcane energies lingering in the Isles' airspace, twisting it into unnatural shapes, and sometimes, folding it like a sheet of parchment, so that some points that weren't otherwise anywhere near each other could touch each other. They weren't known to be harmful, and were often used as shortcuts between one place and another by those who knew where to find them.

The three clanmates decided that that was how they would use the one they had found - as a shortcut to get from their home to the Trading Post and the Coliseum more quickly. They used it that day to get back home, using Enchantment's compass spell again to find the place where their spatial warp opened onto the Starwood Strand. This would make their occasional ventures away from their island much more convenient and efficient.

(Banner Text: Previous Chapter)

.........

(Banner Text: Next Chapter)

Art




Created by Ozeatetsor!


OOC

Past Trick-or-Treat thread posts: 2015, 2016, 2018, 2020
(I never bothered to post in the 2017 or 2019 threads)

Trick-or-Treaters received in 2018:
Techmox, UserOfShadows, Sylphiette, Megan65, SilverDeath, mithrel, nevvermore

Trick-or-Treaters received in 2020:
Sinobutt, PrinceyBoy, EternallySacred, CupcakeCass, Seonais, Seaglauss, SilverDeath, viola0riri, SayuriHawthorn, TsarinaTorment, BlazingSkyDragon, Aprycus, hetalia1, JoweeTheRaposa, Zemo, dragonpals, Artichoke, SeaDuchess, Starwindrider, chamilet, yellowstarfish, Sorrowspark, mayogirl2, WaverVelvet

Trick-or-Treaters received in 2021:
NightmareJudge, Jaypaw, hotpants, CupcakeCass