Roshan

Perhaps at first it takes you don't understand what it is about the moment that unsettles you so. Even the second, third, fourth time; your instincts know there is something unshakably wrong here, but eyes and mind may fail to put it together. There is something thinking and malicious about it, testing its power, reaching into your world and seeing what it can pull.

It is not a creature of shadows, and in fact shuns the Shadowbinder's home and children, but perhaps the shadows are the first time you understand what is wrong. This is for the best, if so; the shadows are the weakest manifestations of its power. The shadows match the objects perfectly, and might escape notice entirely, except that there are too many. The setting sun casts one, long and soft, and your lamp casts another, shorter and flickering slightly, but what casts the third shadow? The third shadow, short and crisp and leaning away from you as if cast in some brilliant, steady lantern held over one of your shoulders. You understand how shadow and light works, be it through science or art or common sense, and now that you recognise its wrongness the shadow repulses you. How can any shadow be cast so dark and crisp when the light around it is so warm and ordinary?

If you understand now, perhaps there is time to leave without confronting it.

Your next chance to see might be a cave. A familiar cave or a strange cave; it doesn't matter, it will happily occupy either. There are proper behaviours for light in a cave, and a cave that does not darken as the entrance becomes further away is a cave to be avoided at all costs. If you are strong and the cave has no tools for it to use then you may escape unhurt; now would be a good time to get a long way away as soon as possible.

Surely no one would miss the next sign of its gathering strength. The small lights that skip alongside you as you return from your hunt are impossible to ignore, and come with an intense sense of foreboding which might surprise given the bright light and cheerful movement that seems to be all that they are. Hopefully its host is a member of another hunting party you crossed paths with; otherwise it is with your party, and you have a problem in your claws.

As it becomes stronger you may feel its intrusions in your mind. But perhaps not; there are many things that could shield you from it, and if you are strong or lucky you will instead see those which have fallen to its power. If you are wise these will be enough to drive you away. The corpses are the least dangerous, and may even be a sign that it has left the area already. Any corpse would be worrying in any case; these will be riddled with bloodless wounds and surrounded by perplexing circumstances. The bodies seem in many ways several days dead, and yet in others fairly fresh. Certainly they appear to have been moving and creating tracks more recently than they were alive. Some of the wounds, even those which individually should not be survivable, show signs of having healed for hours or days before death, and yet what could have remained moving, living, healing for so long with such injuries?

The answer, if you see it, is more frightening that what most imaginations have any need to conjure. It appears to be near death but perhaps that means nothing given the ambiguous state of the corpses. Its joints are painfully twisted and its movements staggering but surprisingly fast. Half of the dragon is almost obscured by a blinding sheet of impossible light that imprecisely bisects the body; a crisp blade of brightness that cuts through torso, head and neck. Limbs move in and out of the sheet, sliding between the darker and lighter sides as the thing lurches towards you. As if this wasn't enough, spears of light impale the dragon at all angles, and these appear to leave actual wounds, which seep a glowing, oozing substance. If you are very observant or medically minded, you might notice that every singe one of these wounds is an exit wound.

Of all the distorted features of those who have fallen under its powers, the face is the worst; inevitably split between the eyes by the light sheet, one side the light is much brighter, the expression of the eye is crazed, wild, undraconic and alien, the face contorted and monstrous. On the other however, inexplicably in the shadow of the bisecting light, the pure terror of the host dragon can be clearly seen; in that way at least it is alive. If you can fight well and run fast you may survive this encounter, but you cannot kill this monster. At best you may offer the host some release by damaging the body enough that the draconic mind is released, but the terrible parasite will keep its hold on the shell, and wield it as a puppet against you until you leave the area in which is has sufficient power to maintain that grip.

Your final warning, if you are brave or unwise enough to remain as long as that, is its touch on your mind. At this stage a warning is too late; either you defeat it now or you succumb and become one of the tormented horrors under its power. There is no turning back. To those not psychically gifted it will manifest only as an excruciating pain in the head and a deep feeling of abhorrent wrongness. Those with psychic gifts will likely have a more complex manifestation in line with the patterns and metaphors used as a mental control panel for their own own abilities. While few are strong enough to defeat it at this stage, there are a great deal of things that may be turned against it by a sufficiently determined, skilled or prepared dragon; body, mind and allies may all help.