Drusilla

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Original lore by ixris:

Drusilla was born in a small clan in the Wandering Contagion. There, life was difficult, as the clan firmly believed that only the strong should survive. Any who fell ill, any who got injured, any who were attacked by another clan member were expected to grow stronger on their own merits. Medical attention was highly frowned upon, and so Drusilla was the only surviving hatchling that her parents had.

As she grew older, Drusilla was taught to fight, though she did not enjoy it. Such base physicality, while lauded in her clan, was not what she wished to fill her life. Instead, she impressed one of the clan's defensive mages and began to learn sigils and warding runes. These would keep the clan safe from marauding beastclans and the near-dead that sometimes went mad with disease before dropping dead.

Drusilla took to the wards like a fish to water. Her teacher taught her all the runes she knew, but Drusilla quickly outpaced her. Soon, Drusilla was working on creating sigils of her own, concocting inks out of different herbal mixes and experimenting to see if there was any improvement between what she knew and what she was creating. She was creating new runes, new wards, new sigils to protect her family from such demeaning threats as creatures who weren't even dragons and those who were already as good as dead.

Word of her skills spread, and she was soon contracted out by other clans. When she became an adult, she was able to go without escort to nearby clans. Her ability to strengthen wards that were already in place allowed the clans to flourish. She earned the respect of her clanmates, and she soon had several suitors vying for her attention.

It was after one such routine trip that Drusilla's life fell apart.

When she came home, there were no hatchlings playing among the noxious pools of water. There were no elders sunning themselves on the rocks. There was no noise coming from her clan - not anywhere.

She approached with caution, but all she found was slaughter. Her clan was dead. Most had been murdered in their sleep, and those who fought back looked like they hadn't achieved much at all. Here and there, a dead stranger lay among her family and friends. Drusilla had to assume they were attacked.

Her grief was strong. She mourned for days as she did her best to single-handedly consign the bodies of her family to a peaceful rest. She performed what rites she could, and she sealed the rest with runes.

She tried to take shelter with one of the nearby clans, but her grief had made her distant. Others found her standoffish, distant, and unavailable. And after months of feeling like she didn't fit, Drusilla left.

She wandered.

She didn't care where she wandered, and at night she thought of her parents, the sight of them dead among the carnage. She thought of her suitors - all torn to pieces. She thought of the hatchlings, but she knew many of those were doomed from the start.

Eventually, the humid and moist air gave way to a dryness that Drusilla had never experienced. The cracked earth beneath her feet roasted in the day time and froze at night. A suitable punishment, she figured, for being unlucky enough to live.

She wandered further, knowing she must find water, for that was where the fish would be. In the distance, she saw mountains, and she headed there. It was a long journey, and she was exhausted by the end, but she was rewarded by finding a small stream practically teaming with minnows. Drusilla ate her fill, glad for the challenge of survival all over again.

She rested for a few days, taking small trips to understand the lay of the land. And that was when she saw the tombs. She had heard rumors of Cairnstone from traveling traders. She knew the stories that sometimes the dead walked and the spirits were restless. She narrowed her eyes, remembering how she felt so sure that necromancy was cheating the natural cycles of life and death.

Drusilla began a cautious investigation. She kept to the shadows, traveling carefully and lightly as she had done for years to avoid the beastclans in the Wandering Contagion. And while the tomb seemed fine - what was she supposed to know about tombs, anyway? - she eventually heard what sounded like someone humming to themself.

She crept nearer the sound, seeing little more than a dusty, cobweb-laden coatl working by a little summoned illumination. He seemed intent on his study of some hieroglyphs that Drusilla thought looked like crude claw slashes. She watched him for a little, then cleared her throat.
She had never seen another dragon jump quite so high and still land on his feet, facing her and ready to fight. And that was how Drusilla met Sterling.