Vergil
(#28507329)
Level 1 Imperial
Click or tap to view this dragon in Predict Morphology.
Energy: 0/50
This dragon’s natural inborn element is Lightning.
Male Imperial
This dragon is currently listed in a Crossroads Trade.
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Personal Style
Apparel
Skin
Scene
Measurements
Length
28.18 m
Wingspan
20.07 m
Weight
7413.42 kg
Genetics
Orca
Giraffe
Giraffe
Orca
Saturn
Saturn
Ice
Gembond
Gembond
Hatchday
Breed
Eye Type
Level 1 Imperial
EXP: 0 / 245
STR
6
AGI
6
DEF
6
QCK
5
INT
8
VIT
8
MND
6
Lineage
Parents
Offspring
Biography
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"When gods are contrary They stand by no one." - Vergil ╰━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╯ There are some things even the gods can’t explain. Would you like to hear about one of them? Let me narrate the tale of Vergil....I see you know his name. He would be pleased by that, for even as a young drake, he already sought fame and fortune. He was a well-educated dragon, which was rare in those long-ago days. Dragonkind was more focused on survival then—especially in the Southern Icefield, where Vergil made his home. Among the Ice drakes, he was soon renowned for his wordsmithing. He could spin stories and epic poems; he could set them to music. The unlettered drakes who gathered to listen cheered and wept in turn. Reception was always positive, though Vergil was a bit irritated—these dragons professed that his inspiration was a gift, that he owed his success to an industrious guardian spirit. A muse. Vergil scoffed—what muse? All intelligent dragons knew that his success was due to his education. No, better to focus on his most recent opus: an epic about a dispossessed prince leading his people in search of a new home. He called it the Aeneid after its hero, and he was determined to make it his masterpiece. Vergil spared not a thought to where the ideas had come from. They were there and would make him further renowned, and that was all that mattered. He went to sleep that night with the ideas bouncing around in his head.... And when he woke up the next morning, they were all gone. No matter how hard Vergil tried to write, the ideas just wouldn’t arise. What had happened? Perhaps jealous drakes had ensorcelled his ideas away with foul magic. He consulted magicians and soothsayers, and eventually the wisest of them made her diagnosis: Vergil’s muse, annoyed at his neglect of her, had deserted him. Vergil protested at first. But as weeks passed and he found himself unable to write stories or compose poems and songs, he grew frantic. A deep grayness had settled onto his mind, and he was at a loss on how to fix it. The augur was not surprised to see him return. With a gap-toothed smile, she pointed the way to the Cloudscape Crags. “Up there,” she croaked, “where the peaks go right up to the heavens...That’s where she wants to be. Wants to rejoin the gods, the way people go home to their parents when they’re in trouble.” The Cloudscape Crags were said to teem with demons....But Vergil was a skilled warrior and could defend himself if need be. He would not take a companion. Those ideas were his alone. He couldn’t let his masterpiece fall into another’s hands. The augur gave Vergil further instructions, and he flew towards the Cloudscape Crags the next day. A harsh land...Mountains burst from the ground like frozen waves, ranges of them stretching to the horizon. It was hard to tell where their peaks ended; so pale were they, like the sky. In the valleys between each range was a darkness so deep, one could look up from it and see stars even at high noon. Were there demons here? It didn’t matter; the weather was a demon in itself. Storms buffeted Vergil, threatening to hurl him from the sky. At night, he put up barriers of ice for shelter, but the wind beat upon them, and in the morning there would be great gashes on the ice from where it had tried to burst through. But he went on—even as blizzards enshrouded him like a cloak. Even when he finally lost his way, his compass torn from his claws by a gale. Clouds covered the heavens. Day...or night? The sky was always white; he was a ghost gliding through a phantom land. The witch’s voice grated in his mind: “Keep going, keep going...and listen, Vergil. Listen as others once listened to the sound of your voice....” The sound of his own words. One day, he heard them...but that voice...! Soft, lilting, a chime on the chilly air. It wasn’t long before he saw her, the only spot of motion in the frozen whiteness. He recognized her right away—she had modeled herself on the heroine of his story, how dared she! As he glided nearer, he heard her reciting the words of his epic poem. It was like the gates of his mind opening, and his brain was flooded with ideas again. The fires of Creation flared. The muse turned as he approached. She smiled when she saw him—but there was only frigidity in her eyes. She had named herself Aeneid after the saga she’d stolen, and she wouldn’t come back with him. After all, he’d never appreciated her. Vergil stormed and pleaded. His words, among the most eloquent in the land, failed to move her. Mockingly, Aeneid began reciting the first words of his epic. Vergil’s eyes flashed, and before she could finish, he bellowed the next set of lines at her. Aeneid decided she'd heard enough. With a disdainful sniff, she glided away. Vergil surged after her. Thus it was for the following weeks: Aeneid always gliding ahead, Vergil following behind, the two of them trading insults and bellows of angry poetry. Vergil found that when he lost sight of his muse, he forgot his ideas again. Aeneid was similarly chagrined to realize that as soon as the words sprang to Vergil’s mind, he could spin them into further verses of the story, some of which were so eloquent that they made her heart ache. There are many things the gods can’t explain, and one is the power of words, how such ephemeral things move mountains and shatter hearts. Over time, Vergil’s rancor cooled, for here was a kindred spirit, one who truly understood his stories and didn’t think of them as mere entertainment. The way she spoke his carefully-crafted verses put his voice to shame, yet hearing her speak them, he now felt a surge of pride. Aeneid, for her part, felt her cold heart begin to thaw. The ideas she had stolen from Vergil were also emotions, and they all roiled together in her fragile heart. This was wrong. Muses were supposed to inspire, not be inspired. But then, no muse had ever handled ideas so carefully before. The most powerful thing is an idea. Two beings who had grown so dependent on ideas could never hope to conquer them. The ideas of sorrow, hope, and love...They took root in Vergil and Aeneid—and, inevitably, flowered into something more than just ideas. Slowly, they became real and felt. Beset by her newfound feelings, Aeneid flitted away. Vergil lost sight of her for some hours, and during that time, the mountains seemed quieter than ever. Lonelier. He found her beside a grave. Before the dragons had learned to fear the mountains, they had gone up here, searching for glory. Many had found only fear and death. One of these unfortunates had been buried in a ravine, and Aeneid bent over their grave, tracing the eroded headstone. Vergil did not speak to her immediately. He waited instead. Finally, Aeneid said, “Her story did not have to end so soon.” Vergil sighed. “That is not for us to say. We’re just characters in tales spun by the gods, after all. It’s they who weigh our fate.” “We’re all just faces in the background, then?” “Sometimes that is best,” Vergil admitted quietly. “Heroism does not guarantee a ‘happily ever after.’” Aeneid reached out, tentatively put a paw on his forearm. He did not pull away. She seemed to reach a decision then: “I will return with you.” Vergil was not really surprised. He and Aeneid had grown familiar with each other and knew each other’s minds very well by now. He did owe the muse a lot. He would take good care of her when they returned, maybe build her a home.... Aeneid’s thoughts ran along different lines. For the past weeks, she had been unable to shake her new emotions loose. Her theft of Vergil’s ideas had backfired, for she had lost the uncaring heart and the ethereality of all muses. Now she had emotions and, as she’d discovered when she’d touched Vergil, she was acquiring substance. She was becoming mortal. Before Aeneid could return with Vergil, she needed to give his ideas back. She didn’t know how to undo the magic she’d wrought, and had gone into these mountains to find the Icewarden and receive his aid. Vergil nodded somberly. If this was what she wanted, he would not hold her back. He felt he owed her this much, at least. He pledged his sword to her, and they continued their journey towards the deepest whiteness of the highest peaks. They spoke more often now. Vergil had many stories to share. Aeneid didn’t, but as a muse, she helped him refine his sentences, choose the right words. She wondered at the emotions they inspired in her, and Vergil marveled at how easily the ideas came to him whenever she was near. When they were apart, his mind was dull; no new stories appeared. And Aeneid was almost lifeless, with nothing to stir her into motion. The land around them was desolate, but fire burned in their hearts. Something sensed it, crept towards them, and considered how it might ensnare them. It surged out of a blizzard one day, its footsteps shaking the ground. Impassive, frigid...the very likeness of the Icewarden. Its head was lost in the snow whirling above. “Come,” it said to them, its voice rumbling with the force of a gale. “Follow me, and I will hear your supplications.” Aeneid followed eagerly, Vergil less so. Was this being truly the great Icewarden, condescending to hear their plea? Vergil and Aeneid followed the great drake out of the blizzard and into the depths of a glacier tunnel. They soon left the light behind, and that was when Vergil’s worst fears were realized, for the great wyrm turned towards them with eyes deeper than the blackness of the night. A demon of the snowy mountains. A Shade fragment. “Get back!” Vergil cried to Aeneid, and he bared his claws. The impostor Icewarden hissed like a knife being drawn across stone, a sound more chilling than the blizzard. Then it attacked. It was a difficult battle. Vergil was hard-pressed to defend both himself and Aeneid from the beast. As for Aeneid herself, she was a muse and could only inspire. And inspire she did! With Aeneid at his side, Vergil’s vision was clearer, his thoughts faster. Energy surged through his veins, and he pressed the attack home. As the Shade fragment dodged and wove, it smashed into the walls of the glacier. Cracks began appearing deep within the ice. It was Aeneid who opened the way to victory. The ideas rose in Vergil’s mind, and she plucked them away—she, with her new-wrought body and the magic all dragons were gifted with. Her magic bloomed, and at last her eyes shone—no longer frigid and colorless, but as brilliant as the stars. She spoke the words that blasted through the ice, opening the tunnel and letting in the light. The blizzard had passed, and the sun blazed down in its glory. The Shade fragment screamed as it was crushed beneath the rockfall. The sun would soon bake it to death; Vergil and Aeneid escaped into the wilderness once more. They had survived—for now. For Vergil had been wounded by the Shade, and as all dragons know, Shade-inflicted wounds do not heal. He was far from home, but even if he weren’t, who would dare tend to him, a Shade-touched dragon? “Tell me a story.” This was their routine now: slogging wearily home, and when Vergil’s mind began to darken, Aeneid would urge him on. It helped if he spun stories; they could lose themselves in those imaginary worlds as they trudged on, through the cold and the dark. She inspired him, and he did travel farther than he would have if he’d been alone—but it wasn’t enough. At last they found a crevice in a mountainside, and they curled up. And waited. Vergil talked freely now, telling Aeneid about his memories, his home. The muse knew all of this already—after all, she had tended his mind before—but still she listened. As Vergil slipped away from life, closer to death’s door, she felt herself being pulled along with him. When a muse’s protege dies, the muse is released to find a new dragon to guide. But Aeneid was no longer a full muse. She was not quite solid, not quite ethereal, and while she was still tied to Vergil, she knew that once he was gone, she would not dissolve. She would go into that great beyond to which all of us must go, in time. Strangely, she didn’t mind that. What was death, after all, but another world? And with her stalwart companion at her side, there would be nothing to fear. There was still one thing troubling her, however: “The Aeneid,” the Coatl whispered. “How does it end?” Vergil’s eyes were already closed, but a faint smile lit his face. “They succeed in their journey,” he murmured to the muse. “They find a home. They live...happily...” And with those final words, the Imperial’s life finally left him. Aeneid did not weep. She waited—for she’d felt Vergil’s life leave his body, but not this world. It still...lingered... And in a rush of snow and ice, he materialized before her: not quite a dragon, but not quite a spirit, either—just as she was. For a moment, they stared at each other in disbelieving wonder. There are many things the gods can’t explain—and this, as I’ve promised, was one of them. How did Vergil’s transformation come to pass? Perhaps it was his will that tied his soul to the world. Perhaps it was a talent that hadn’t manifested until then. Or perhaps it was because he had shared a part of himself with his muse, and with her still existing, he couldn’t quit this plane so easily. She had stolen his passion for literature, his heart and soul....She hadn’t been able to give them back as she’d promised. But instead, she’d given him something else. And it seemed a fair trade. Aeneid broke the silence: “And they all lived happily ever after?” “Apparently,” Vergil admitted. And for the first time, they embraced, there at the edge of the world. A poet and his muse, frozen between life and death. For many beings, this is a curse, but for them it was just another chapter in their journey. There would be other chapters, other stories. For as the world continued to turn, so, too, would the pages of their stories continue turning. They were happy together. It was time to discover what “ever after” held in store for them now. ~written by Disillusionist (254672) all edits by other users
Layout by Kintsy
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