Maro

10/26/16 "Look, I know you are trying to take advantage of my parents," Maro stated to the twisting black and white Spiral.

"Take advantage?" Kratos returned. "Ah, a Skydancer. I suppose there isn't anything to hide with you. To be fair, I didn't think there would be anything with a grain of insight here. No matter, 'take advantage'?" He repeated with a grin, "We are born to take advantage of our parents, and then we move on to take advantage of strangers. Do you not think your simple clan is taking advantage of me and my skill? Why deal with anything if not advantageous? Do you go into a disadvantageous battle? Do you eat or sleep at a disadvantageous time?" The older Spiral paused a moment, watching as Maro took in his words. "If you thought I was a malice to your clan you would have already ousted me."

"Correct... I just get the sense that you aren't loyal to us yet."

"Is that a problem?" Kratos watched Maro's gaze churn. "I am here to learn, to come unto my own. I can't claim to know if I will find my calling here, but I mean no harm. At ease, Skydancer."

"Alright," Maro allowed slowly, "Forgive my skepticism, but I haven't met many others who thought so deeply here in the Wasteland."

"And I haven't met many Skydancers here. They go insane. If you are meaning to stay by your Plague parents, and I hope that you do, they need someone with half a brain, I would pick up alchemy. Transform yourself into a Bogsneak or something. The voices will go away."

"You've heard it to?"

"No, but I've heard stories. They say us Spirals' minds travel too fast for such mundane mumbling. There's a thought-- become a Spiral." Kratos babbled on, but Maro's attention had long but wandered. It was at least refreshing to know that others thought of more than just Mother and simple survival. There was a nuance to life that existed. There was.

11/07/16 It was with Kratos and a young Snapper dragon that a Survey Team was conceptualized for The Cell. Eager to learn more about the world beyond his home territory, Maro thought it the perfect undertaking to gather not just exploration in support of his home, but perhaps further answers on the strange ambient sound that had admittedly begun to interrupt him from sleep as of late. With every month older the dragon grew, the intangible echoes clung to the air longer and longer, unbroken in their interminable syllables that came to sound as the din of heavy rain.

11/15/16 The survey team had taken a dozen or so trips across the Wasteland. They met clans that were approachable, and clans that were savage, but had thus far escaped any major quarrels save a few spats with serpents and other members of the territorial Beastclans. The Plague flight dragons they had met were at times prickly, but no matter which corner of the Wasteland they wandered, Maro heard a unanimous murmuring among them all, and upon locking eyes with the trio, unfamiliar dragons would begrudgingly allow the survey team to go about their probing. Maro wondered if his mind too held such fervid whispers, for despite his eyes being a betraying shade of green, the Plague dragons responded to him as leniently as any other among their flight.

Upon one such expedition, however, the team met an anomaly. They had wandered a bit farther South than they had intended, but figured that they could at the very least chart up a map to make something productive of their blunder. Abruptly, while they fiddled with their parchment and pens, a sizable band of Mirrors bolted up to them from behind the tendrils, skidding to a halt barely feet from where they stood. We must have crossed a territory line, Maro thought. It was none the matter, for this happened fairly frequently during their travels. The formidable dragons, however, refused to lock eyes with them and instead held their gazes just beyond theirs, fixated at the horizon. Maro tried to catch a glimpse, but it was impossible.

"This territory is taken. Kindly move on," one dragon uttered. Despite not making eye contact, Maro gathered that the Mirrors were tracking the team's every fidget with their heat pits.

To Maro's side, Kratos offered kind words and apologies, words both he and Beefaroni had heard about a hundred times before. Halfway ignoring his captain, Maro glanced from face to face of the Mirror clan. They moved seamlessly in unison and were all sizable in stature. Maro figured they must have heralded from a prosperous clan likely much larger than The Cell. Interestingly, just beyond this cluster of dragons, was another Mirror who noiselessly observed, beige and blood with jewels adorning his claws and dangling from his wings. This one was accompanied by three tiny pups who looked alike in color and mannerism. He appeared to be directing them to watch the interactions transpiring before them. These dragons did not avert their eyes to Maro's glance, so he turned to them, hoping to get a feel for the inhabitants of the Southern Wasteland, yet an odd sensation overtook him as one of the hatchlings entrapped his gaze. He heard the rushing of sound again and, further, he could make out a cadence that he hadn't before, where once the air hissed, pronouncements were formed. It was rhythmic and loud. It was just one young creature before him yet the noise was as an ocean.

Intruders?
No, not.
Kill the intruders?
No, not.

Maro snapped out of it, Were the voices referring to them? He wasn't sure how long he had been gawping for, but to his shock the beige Mirror had halved the distance betwixt them.

"Why are you staring at my son?" The regal creature's voice dripped as slick oil, fluid and deep.

"Excuse me? I apologize. I get distracted easily," he offered. "I hadn't noticed that I…" He eyed the hatchling in question who remained motionless, eyes squinted as if in concentration. He never finished his sentence aloud.

"That is Ichorclaw, or rather, he will be called Ichorclaw upon completing his trials at Wyrmwound."

"Trials?"

"We are Necromancers. It is," he hesitated, "Well, if you don't recognize us, your clan must be new or unworldly."

"I'm afraid we may be guilty of both, though I can appreciate that your home clan is quite impressive."

"Thank you," Kobari allowed. He lingered a moment, his jaw subtly oscillating as he turned over his words. "Now, where are you from? Did you really only bring a Spiral and a Snapper with you so far from home? No Mirror dragons?"

"Not in our survey team. As you gathered, our clan is new. Our aim is to learn more about the surrounding areas and benefit from what we can. We are northwest from here, located between tendrils bordering Starfall and the Boneyard. So far it is only the three of us championing the survey effort, but our alpha is a Mirror and we have many Mirror hunters."

"Is that so?"

"Yes. We are not a stranger to Mirrors or any other species, really. It is mainly the lands and clans around us that we are ignorant of. Actually," Maro affirmed, "Would your clan object if I sent our alpha here to meet with your leader? I can't shake this feeling that it would mean a great much to him. Our clan is called The Cell. We may be still amateurs, but I'd like to think we are very enterprising."

"I would venture to believe that, germ. Our clan is called Outfit Vector, and my name is Kobari. It is not typically my call on who Khatun Shiv meets with or not," his claws tapped the earth. Perhaps a habit of thought, "However, she tends to welcome all Mirrors who faithfully serve the Plaguebringer. I'll tell you what, go speak with the border patrol and ask for a bone chit. You can tell them I sent you. That chit has the emblem of our clan on it, and your alpha will be granted passage through our lands."

With that Maro bowed his head and rejoined his allies who had all been beckoning for his return for quite some time. He spoke with the large Mirrors and received a thin bone fragment notched with a mosquito. Without trading a word, the hoard returned to the tendrils. It was both eerie and inspiring how hurriedly they operated. Maro felt lightheaded, but satisfied that he had secured a meeting with the enigmatic and disciplined dragons of the Southern Wasteland.

It was not long after their encounter with Outfit Vector, that the Survey Team promptly added a Mirror dragon to their ranks.

12/03/16 Maro had watched the clan grow from a handful of dragons to a mighty lair of the Wasteland. The dragons that had come to occupy The Cell consisted primarily of Plague Mirrors, though a good amount of peculiarities had invaded their home as well. At the end of the day, all dragons no matter their ilk required food, land, and resources.

Maro thought, amid all this growth, that now would be a good time if any to present to the lair his newest endeavors. He brought before his father a globular red product, claiming it were food made from trinkets and materials that The Cell would have tossed away. Bonejack was mildly tolerant of the taste if not confused by his son's alien efforts. When Maro, however, made 200,000 treasure in less than a half day's time and single-handedly funded their next lair expansion, Bonejack was sold on his son's eccentricities, from that point on, allowing him to take whatever object he so desired from the hoard.




03/21/18 Maro had lived amid the plagues of the Scarred Wasteland since he was but a few days old, celebrated even for his impermeability. Blessed by Mother, they had said, but it was only after the clan's Necromancer's "Grand Rite of Rot" that Maro first glimpsed the chirality of Her blessings.

"This marks the second instance that you have received Her favor," Ichorclaw surmised, “However, Her first gift to you was one of immunity, a gentle tap of Her right hand.” The beige pup that he had first set eyes upon so long ago was now the clan’s decorated priest, having passed his trials at the Wyrmwound. He reached up towards Maro’s face with a gilded claw and Maro bowed to receive his touch. “Allow me to show you Her truest blessing, the hand sinister,” he uttered. Maro had lived among disease his entire life, came to grasp at the idiosyncrasies of his adopted Plague family, but that night he was brought to his knees with pestilence. When he awoke, his head ached and his breath rasped. His ears rang.

They rang for hours afterwards. He sat outside his den staring at the sky awaiting some noise to return to him. He locked eyes with the two Shadow Mirrors as they strode home in the darkness, their eyes a reflective indigo. Also hailing from a foreign flight, they too had been required to experience the deathly embrace of the Plaguebringer this evening. He noticed a yawning red sore on the side of one of the dragons, but she didn't appear to be limping. He stared at the wound as they passed, it looked like the Wyrmwound crater, and just as the thought crossed his mind, the ringing in his ears left, replaced by the cacophony of whispers. He must have visibly startled, for the Shadow dragons halted and craned their heads to him. He locked eyes with them again.

Need to get back to the Shadowbringer...
Shadowb--inder...Shadowbinder...bringer...
the Tangled Wasteland--Tangled Wuh--wuh...woods

Maro broke eye contact with them and cowered, gripping his head between his claws in an attempt to drown out the crashing waves of conversation that cascaded through his mind.

“Who is doing this?” He inquired angrily into night.


03/22/18 The following morning Maro bid his clan a farewell. It appeared as if the feathers had been ripped from his skull.

"No different than Hassil," he had reasoned with his parents. "Recall that he visited the Arcane lands not too long ago? I only, like he, want to understand my background."

"Hey, maybe I'll even come back with new wind magic," he offered the survey team.

"Yes, I'll bring home souvenirs and food," he griped to his siblings.

And then he took off in flight. It was a meandering trajectory.

03/31/18 It was nearing the end of the Mistral Jamboree. Maro had spent a week now away from Plague, gallivanting with possibly some of the best gallivant-ers in Sornieth. He flew kites and learned to dance, spread his wings and took to the breeze, and despite these little niceties that so many from the Windswept Plateau pitied him for missing, there were, too, many things that he felt they had neglected. Like the fanciful way in which a colorful fungus could erupt from the back of an ant like wings from a butterfly, for example. He found it also a bit unnerving to exist in a world with zero expectations. He could get on as he pleased, he could do as he pleased, there was nothing in theory taxing about such freedom, but Maro found the lack of structure and purpose daunting. Life had so much specific meaning at The Cell. It wasn’t easy, but it was enterprising. He noticed too how the sick were regarded quite differently, oftentimes quarantined even with the faintest of colds. He supposed that such a reaction would have been warranted. If it weren't for his blessing from the Plaguebringer he too would have wasted away as an infected log. He had met with one such pariah during his journey. She was afflicted with some form of disfiguring disease. Her skin was marbled with pocks and protrusions and, unsure of how contagious her condition was, she was kept at a distance from her clan in the Zephyr Steppes. She had contracted the ailment not long after her birth and had grown accustomed to the tepid reception by other dragons. It was thus quite the treat to chat with one so unconcerned with disease as Maro. "You should come back with me to Plague. No one would fear you. Quite the opposite-- you'd be..." Maro trailed off. "Wait, I don't know if I should really recommend that. In all honesty, I actually fled here from Plague." He thought briefly of his clan and felt the pains of homesickness and nostalgia wash over him, though those warm feelings were almost immediately twisted by the visceral memory of talking white noise. "You know how as Skydancers we can sense the intentions of others? Well for some reason in the Wasteland those predispositions are maltreated. I can't explain it, but..." He halted his speech again, the words of his Spiral friend reverberating in his mind I haven't met many

Skydancers here. They go insane. He let out a heavy sigh. The more distance he had put between himself and the Boneyard, the clearer his thoughts became, no longer muddled by the hurricane of sound that had perplexed and bombarded his senses.

Perhaps if he could just learn more about what was going on, his understanding would beget peace.

04/03/18: As the festivities had come to a close and Maro slunk back to the den he had fashioned from ripe bamboo, he was surprised to find familiar kin waiting to meet with him.

"Apparently 'that one really skittish Skydancer' is a universal pseudonym for you," the white Spiral stated with a wry grin.

It was Kratos and HearseSong, and they claimed that the clan's Necromancer was thinking on a cure for his 'mind Rot.' Naturally, it was Kratos who did the majority of speaking, gesturing, and emoting. Maro's sister seemed to be along more for the adventure and novel foods than to glimpse her brother, but he was glad to see the both of them nonetheless. The three of them stayed among the bamboo and reeds for the evening, and explored for half the next day, enjoying the sunshine and breeze.

By evening of the next day, Maro was reluctantly goaded by his two cohorts into returning to their home in the Boneyard, though admittedly, it was perhaps not as reluctantly as his better judgement would have forbade.

04/04/18: Upon his return to The Cell, he was taken back by the usually proud priest's gesture of respect even if it was however cursory. The Mirror shuttered his heat pits for a fleeting moment, and nodded his head ever so slightly.

"Maro, what you're hearing is what I like to call, 'the weather.' All in Plague are attuned to it, but only few creatures can glean it verbatim. Of course, Necromancers being one of them. My point is, that ambiance is Our collective will, the hive, and state of things,” he paused as if awaiting response, but Maro remained silent, his body stiffening. He wasn’t entirely sure what Ichroclaw was getting at nor what he was capable of. The harrowing bite of infection was still fresh in his mind. The priest continued, “Now, I am no expert on this, as I came from a clan of Mirrors, but from what I gather, foreign Skydancers suffer from a feedback loop. They sense individual intentions and yet ‘the weather’ blares something loftier, something far more assimilated and almighty.”

“It is maddening, believe me.”

“But you can hear the words. That is different than merely a maze of intent. I have a theory, however, but I’m going to have to rip Mother’s protective blessing out from your flesh.”

“You know, I’ve only been absent from Plague for a week, but... already that sounds really rough to me.”

“You needn’t trust me—”

“Good, I don’t think...” Though as Maro uttered the words, Ichorclaw locked his gaze and whispers again flooded his senses.

“You needn’t trust me,” he heard him repeat again, yet his jaw was still and his voice faded into a litany of breathy tongues.

Blessed one.
Blessed one.
Glory.
Mother.

“Are they talking to me or you or...?” Maro mustered through the noise.

“Either. Don’t think of it as strict conversation but as the tenor of the Plaguelands. Perhaps it was something similarly in resonance that I gathered as you looked on me when I was a hatchling. Do you believe in synchronicity?” The Mirror crept forward, his armored scales clattering as he moved.

“I, uh, I think so, but it’s hard to say.” He eyed the Necromancer’s clawed hand as it suddenly stretched for his temple.

“Right. There.” He tapped the side of Maro’s head. It looked too much as if he were taking a precise aim. "This is where Her long finger came in contact with you when you were a child and encased you from us," he paused for a moment, studying Maro's profile closer than he would have preferred, before suddenly, “Close your eyes?”

“What? No, why?” Yet as Maro sputtered, he reflexively followed the request. He thus couldn’t glimpse it, but Ichorclaw had extended back his arm, splaying his claws and struck the Skydancer clean about the head. The blackness of unconsciousness overtook him. When Maro awoke, there was light glinting in through a structure of bones which framed the entrance of the lair in which he had been sleeping. How long had he been here? He shuffled to his feet and was instantly made aware of key differences in his anatomy. His front legs were nothing but exposed bone wrapped loosely in gauze. Further, there was a pool of black fluid where he had been laying. The source was a craterous wound in his abdomen that leaked the strange inkiness, yet he felt no pain. The air was still and quiet. Nevertheless, he could feel the ardor of the world like static, coursing through his veins and through the Plaguelands. He was as a spore carried upon Her wind.