By StayingBehind!


Rhiannon and Cloudweaver, bonded pair from Catkinstarchild :)

Apparel to re equip: Ash lace rose set

Rhiannon { ree - AN - en } Nicknames: Ria, Queenie Mage, Diplomat, Scholar, & Courtier ♥ clan gift from Luminaries Snowfall Robe Apparel An enchanted robe that keeps one chilled even in warm climates. (Crystalline Gala Holiday Item 2017.) 0 Gossamer Silk Veil Apparel A fine piece of silver silk, elegantly draped to echo the movements of the dragon wearing it. 1600 Dew Laden White Rose Apparel A newly-bloomed, perfumed white rose. Flowers such as this represent purity and innocence. 1150 Light Tome Apparel A durable leather tome filled with ancient knowledge of the Light Flight. 1000 ╭━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╮ = Bio = (written for CatkinStarchild by Disillusionist) ♫ (artist) - (name) ♫ ╰━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╯ Her mother Kelsus always said you don’t realise who you’re going to be until you become it. But Rhiannon was meant for so much more than this, such greatness as Yul had never seen- but she lost it all, became an exile, rejected and disowned for her mistakes. Her advice: "If you’re too proud to listen to your elders, you’ll learn what happens when you fly too close to the sun."

As a child running free in the city of Yul, Rhiannon the heiress was rambunctious and caused trouble wherever she went. Her parents, both her mothers- Yul's leaders- and surrogate father, frequently upbraided her for her behavior. As Rhiannon grew, she began to hear whispers: “It must be the Guardian blood in her veins.” They whispered it as if it were something shameful, to blame for her being born so headstrong. But Rhiannon didn’t mind. Guardians were big and strong; she was proud to have one as an ancestress!

With her dark colors and markings, she looked like a smoky little devil with a bright white smile. Other younglings were charmed by her boldness. Rhiannon led them on madcap chases, and they were eager to get into the most “forbidden” place in Yul: the Library. Its imposing façade housed numerous tomes, some of which were said to contain dreadful secrets. The rumors that made adults shiver were irresistible to the bored, curious hatchlings.

Rhiannon and her friends got into the Library one night. They scuttled past the shelves, converging on the books with the most spine-tingling titles. They entertained themselves by whispering the words off the pages and gasping at the illustrations.

Inevitably, they got into trouble. They found a book they should not have touched, and something burst from it. Something dark...malignant...beyond their control. The hatchlings fled the Library and swore not to tell anyone else what had happened that night. Rhiannon ran into her older brother, Naja, on the way back, and she swore him to secrecy, too.

Thereafter, Rhiannon was very well-behaved. The adults approved, saying it was about time she grew up. Her parents of course suspected something was up, but Rhiannon wouldn’t say a word. Even when the terrors came to her as she slept and she found herself bolting awake from nightmares...even when it seemed her smoky markings were beginning to shift, moving subtly across her skin....The nightmares got worse as she grew to adulthood, until a pattern emerged: Rhiannon seemed to inhabit the mind of some other entity, looking through its eyes as it flitted through Sornieth. It seemed to always be searching....It ate what it caught, its dark talons stripping the life from small animals.

But as Rhiannon grew, so did the shadow whose mind she glimpsed. It started looking for larger prey—until it was raiding nests, breaking into the eggs. Rhiannon always woke up from these dreams with a heavy heart. “They can’t be true,” she told herself. Was she becoming a seer, a soothsayer, with true dreams? She discreetly consulted oneiromancers, but they all dismissed her inquiries. “You do not have the talent. We are sorry....It cannot be taught.”

They were apologizing because they thought Rhiannon wanted to be a seer. They were mistaken. She was actually thinking, “If I don’t have the talent, then what am I seeing?”

The nightmares got worse. They only occurred a few times each month, but they always involved tracking something down, usually another dragon, and then killing and devouring it. Rhiannon grew anxious as reports came in from outside the city, about dragons being slain by a mysterious shadow. “The Shade,” the citizens of Yul whispered fearfully. “Someone has brought the Shade upon us.”

“You know something, don’t you?” Naja asked Rhiannon. He reminded her about the secret she had entrusted to him long ago, and he threatened to tell their parents. “It has to stop,” he declared. “If you won’t do something, I will!”

Rhiannon shushed him. Instead of going straight to their parents, couldn’t they take care of this menace themselves? They were both strong fighters; surely they could handle some shadowy scrap from a book!

Naja agreed. He and Rhiannon slipped out of the city at dusk and headed west towards the deeper shadows, from where the most recent reports had come....

---

Part II: Memories of Yul

---

Rhiannon opened her eyes. She lay in her bed for a long moment, trying to empty her mind. Of her thoughts, her memories...the dream. The dream again. She had been haunted by strange, dark dreams since childhood...or perhaps they had been visions all along. Glimpses of reality.

“Ria—run!”

She remembered her brother’s voice....

The dead of night, outside the city of Yul. Far away from the city walls, from where the torches burned. Out of range of hearing. Out of range of the light. It had come for them. Shade fragment? Demon? Something else entirely? She didn’t know—

It had taken her brother.

The two of them had fought valiantly. Wielding swords of light, cutting through the darkness. They’d been young and so naive; they were royal children of Yul! Heroes! Of course they would prevail! But the darkness had not been the least bit troubled by their blades. It had chittered as if laughing, and then, it had grown tired of the game. Taken their swords, smashed them in suddenly-solid claws. Bereft of weapons, the siblings had fled. And it had pursued them.

They’d been so young, so foolish. Too late they realized they were leading it back to the city. They turned and tried to drive it back, even though they understood it was useless.

That was when Naja stepped forward. “I’ll hold it off!” He’d declared. Magic erupted between his paws, a brilliant orb of light. He still had that weapon, at least. “Ria, run! Get the guards...!”

And so Rhiannon had fled. The moment she turned away from him, she knew she had seen her brother for the last time.

The Oakheart Dragons knew Rhiannon had secrets. They respected that—many of them carried heavy secrets, too. But Rhiannon’s chief secret was not that she had released something demonic, possibly a Shade fragment. It was not even the fact that her brother had fallen in battle against it. Those were not secrets—all Yul knew them. Her brother...

They had never found his body.

They had searched and searched; it was only proper he be given a burial. But they had found no sign of him. No sign—except the ones that came to her in sleep, even now.

She knew the fragment was still out there. Stalking through the night, waylaying hapless travelers. Slaughtering them. Consuming them. Its hateful chitter played over their screams like some twisted soundtrack, barely covering their anguish.

But at times the dreams were different. The Shade struggled through the darkness and encountered no prey. And when the first rays of dawn striped the sky, it pulled back, looking for a hiding place. The chittering stopped. And Rhiannon would hear another, perhaps even more terrible noise. It sounded as if...it were trying not to weep.

Did it weep because it feared the sun? Because it had nothing to shelter it from the burning rays of light, and it would have to hide until the sun waned once again? Did it weep because of hunger, with no flesh nor spirit to feed it?

Or did it weep because it dreamed of a lost sibling, a home, just as she did?

It was this connection, this- empathy, where it tugged at the depths of her heart- that was her darkest secret. That she felt sorry for the shade fragment, regardless of its crimes. That she might even- be unable to kill it. If the time came, and she had to decide, to take that final plunge of a knife or quick sharp bite with needle-like fangs- she would not be able to. Regardless of the consequences. She was as powerless now, as she had been then- but now, it was for far more shameful a reason. She cared for it.

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



That was some years ago, in the Sunbeam Ruins. Since then, Rhiannon had made her way to the Viridian Labyrinth, where she had the privilege of meeting Angelus, Oakheart Clan’s champion. “Teach me what you know about combat,” she said to him. The old warrior frowned, but he thought she showed promise, and he saw no ill intentions in her. He accepted her as a pupil.

Rhiannon trained with Angelus and Oakheart’s other fighters. She grew to love her new clan, and there were many times when she felt like telling them her secrets....

Her brother had not returned to Yul. They had encountered that shadow, that Shade fragment, and Naja had been killed in the ensuing battle. Rhiannon had fled back to Yul for reinforcements, but it was too late: Naja was dead, and the Shade scrap had fled back into the night.

The ruling family of Yul was disgraced. Their eldest daughter had foolishly endangered the rest of dragonkind....It could not be borne! And so Rhiannon was banished, sent out into the wilds....

She retained the marks of her home for a reason. One of her mothers, Kelsus, had said to her, “Guardian blood runs within you. It’s a part of your heritage, and you must prove yourself worthy of it. You’re no Guardian, but let this be your charge: Go out into the world and find this Shade fragment. Dispatch it and bring back proof of your victory, and you may return to Yul, if you wish.”

Rhiannon shivered. She knew the fragment was still out there: the dreams came to her from time to time. Her markings continued moving across her hide, writhing into shapes, symbols. Had the thing marked her long ago, when it’d burst from the book in her hands?

She had shamed her family and her city. Her foolishness had doomed many innocent drakes, including her own brother. She would be strong and take the lessons Oakheart had to teach her....Whether she shared her own secrets with them or not remained unsure, however. Were they strong enough to bear it? Or rather, was she strong enough to confess?

She remembered the last time she had vowed to keep a secret, and she wondered....



[img][/img]