Abzu

| The Lost One | The Lonely One |

Forgive me, stranger, but you'd be better off finding a place for the night than going back out now. There's a storm coming.

Ah, I see the confusion in your eyes. You must have traveled far, indeed, to not know what it means when you hear the dragon on the highest mountain roar. It's a lone dragon, that one, but far more bark than bite--as much as any drake can be, that is. No, no, that one is nothing to worry about. It's the ones that live beyond him that you'd best be wary of--the ones the loner is calling. You see, in the quiet after the storm passes, they'll come out. They always do.

There are stories of a power that settled in this land, long, long before this village was built. What that power was, what it called itself, has been lost to the ages... as perhaps this story itself might be in some far-off future. Some even claim it was here before the First Four, and will remain somewhere in this world even after the last of the Eight is gone.

What matters was that it was here. When it arrived it was tired, so tired that it's wing clipped one of the smaller peaks and knocked it down. The power crashed into a different mountain with such force that it created a great cave, and in the place where the other mountain was knocked down was left the pass that you travelers take through the range. The power looked around at what it had done, sighed, and slept.

How long it rested there in that cave depends on who you ask. My grandmother told me it slept for a hundred years, yet I've heard others claim it was a thousand, while some even say it lingered for only for a night and a day. Maybe we're all right. More likely, none of us are. Yet we can all agree that when the power departed, it left something of itself behind.

Here, take a look at this. It's a piece of the wall of the cave the power made... you can find them sometimes, near the foot of the mountain. They were pulled free and scattered by the power as it left the cave. Ever seen symbols like these? It's alright--no-one has, outside of this land. Some say that the powers' dreams carved themselves into the cave. Others say it's a record of the future, from the moment the power left to the end of time itself. Regardless, the symbols always take on a strange glow just after a storm, which is why the dragons always search for them right after a blizzard.

At first, of course, it wasn't the whole mess of dragons that're up there right now waiting for the storm. No, at first it was just one lost little hatchling. A scruffy little thing--it's parents didn't look any different from the rest of the ones around here. Tundra dragons, you know. Most of the ones in this land answer to the Icewarden, but we're far enough off from his territory that you've probably seen a decent clutch of other lines. The hatchling in the story was one of the Lightweaver's get. Her flock probably wandered across the sea to get a look at some ruin or one of our icebergs, you know how Light Flight gets.

A hatchling gets distracted so very easily, though, and with the right coat colors, could easily fall behind playing in the snow without being noticed--just as this one did. By the time she realized the others were in the sky, they were winging their way towards the horizon and try as she might, she could never catch up. She finally fell from the sky from exhaustion trying to navigate the strange winds around the peaks--just barely managing to turn her tumble into something closer than a glide, steering herself towards a mountain cave she caught in the corner of her eye.

Of course, you put a Light dragon in the middle of a cave full of language they could never hope to decipher if they studied it for a million years, and what do they decide to do? Decipher it, of course! Her flock did try and track her down, of course, but it took years and when they finally did find the cave, there was no getting the rest of them to budge. She's their leader now. They're still up there, working with the one they had lost to try and understand what the power left behind. They'll leave to hunt for food and shards, but you rarely see the flock out and about otherwise.

...well, with one exception.

The lone dragon you heard earlier--he was a member of that flock as well. Supposedly the mate of the lost one, at one point. But, oh, it was about ten years ago, now, something happened and he split from the rest. These days he just howls at them from his own mountain, like a lost soul trying to find its way home. Or maybe it's the rest of them that are lost, like that hatchling was so many years ago, and he's trying to help them find themselves.

Sounds like the storm's started up. You'd best find a place to wait it out, traveler. Remember--watch out for those dragons. They don't take too kindly to strangers, not after a storm at least.