Pride

Pride has been with the Reach since the very beginning.

It surprises many newcomers--the socially awkward, anxious ridgeback is a rank-and-file sentry, laconic, a bit of a loner. It's just...not a logical thing, to conclude that she might be one of the original members of the Reach--daughter-in-law to the Founders, part of the clan since it was nothing but a half-feral band of rock lizards acting as guards to a longneck clan, since before even Turania.

At first her story seemed simple. She was a Mirror, a child of the Icefield who ran into a handsome young hunter in the field. Lorrin was kindhearted and brave, Pride was wary but clever, and they seemed a good match.

Everything changed with the birth of their eldest son.

Jesrith was born with a degenerative blood disease--devastating, painful, a slow killer, and incurable. It was a travelling nomad who offered an option other than a slow and agonizing suffocation for her eldest. The visitor, a Plague ridgeback named Bok, said that if this was a wasting disease there was one place in the world that might offer the little one a reprieve. The place where disease flourished but the Plaguebringer’s strength ran strongest, where adaptation was rapid--where even death could be fought.

Racing against time, hating every moment of it, she took her son in her jaws and struck out for the Wyrmwound.

The loss devastated the Reach, but it affected Jesrith's family harder than anyone. His father, who hated the Wasteland and the Plaguebringer but could not argue with the decision either, stood loyally by his mate and child throughout the journey and, when it was over, quietly left them to wander Sornieth, hoping to find peace in the hunt--a choice Pride, who had lived the life of a solitary huntress herself, understood. She took brief comfort in the nomad who had saved her son's life at such high cost; but it was never more than comfort, and both inevitably moved on. She never forgot the feeling of safety and support he had offered, however--and found healing herself, eventually, when a priestess was able to grant her a Ridgeback's form so that she could offer the same stalwart defense to others.

Of her first clutch, only the youngest--our deep scout Astikan--survives; both mother and son have lived lives marked by devastating loss. They have both, in their own ways, struggled and stumbled back into hope and life over time; but they have never forgotten the son, or the brother, they lost. They still believe Pride made the right decision. In offering him to the Plaguebringer, a true exaltation, she was giving him a chance of living a full life. Placing his survival over her own selfish need--an end to his suffering, at the price of never seeing him again.

Or so they thought.