mirrormaker » Lair » Gazna

Gazna

(#29648216)

Level 1 Spiral

Noodle

Swallowtail Buttersnake

Energy: 0/50

Personal Style

Apparel

Skin

Scene

Physical Attributes

Battle Stats

Measurements

Length

3.39 m

Wingspan

3.25 m

Weight

91.14 kg

Genetics

Carrot
Iridescent

Cantaloupe
Shimmer

Banana
Runes

Hatchday

Dec 28, 2016
(7 years)

Breed

Adult
Spiral

Eye Type

Earth
Common

Level 1 Spiral

EXP: 0 / 245

STR

AGI

DEF

QCK

INT

VIT

MND

Lineage

Parents

Offspring

Biography

aaaaaa

Gazna

Insect Keeper at the Bountiful Garden

aaaaaa

You and Eladine sit side by side in silence. She is scribbling something down on her scrolls, the movements of her arm as fluid as the running water in the creek before you. You figure it’s not the best time to bugger her with questions, despite having so many you feel like your head might burst. Instead, you choose to lean back and enjoy the sunlight, so warm and pleasant it could as well have been real.

All is calm and silent, save for the chirping of crickets and the joyful trills of birds. When your eyes are closed, you find it easy to forget where you are, and to transport yourself back home. Suddenly, you hear rustling in the bushes on the opposite side of the creek. Out of the brambles slithers a sleek orange Spiral, dressed in impeccable celadon silks, with a hustle about him and the way he scuttles about. A bag is hanging over his long, thin body; even from the distance, you can see that it’s chock full, with scrolls and a bug net sticking from under the strained flap. The Spiral freezes in place, then makes several circles around the spot, peering down, into the grass through a magnifying glass. With his other hand, he reaches, blindly, into his stuffed bag, and as he pulls out a glass jar from within, several others fall out with a soft thump against the thick grass. Patiently, he plucks something from the ground with tiny pincers; you notice his hands tremble and twitch ever so slightly. Slowly, he carries the pincers over to the jar and drops his catch inside.

From the distance, you yell out a friendly greeting.

Caught by surprise, the Spiral jumps several feet into the air with a shriek. His grasp is lost; the glass vessel drops down and the lid pops open. As he is clutching at his chest, breathing heavily, his eyes go round; panicked, he drops down to the floor and starts digging around among the blades of grass. Stuff is raining from his bag onto the floor. You see more jars, some of them filled with an unspecified substance; scrolls, both blank and written all over; more small bags and pouches. You watch him for several minutes, wondering if you should say anything at all.

Desperation is written across the Spiral’s face. He’s twitching visibly. You finally have the nerve to tell him the insides of his bag had been emptied onto the floor. Taken aback by your addressing him, he pauses for a moment, then turns his long neck around full circle, glaring.

“N-nobody asked you,” he snarls, sounding as if he’s about to cry. However, he does turn his attention to his bag. Now looking utterly dejected, he sinks down and begins frantically gathering up his scattered paraphernalia. Unable to face the miserable sight much longer, and feeling your own responsibility for adding to his plight, you waddle across the shallow stream to help the Spiral pack up again. At first, he tries to slap you on the paws as you reach down to pick up a jar or a scroll, yelping out “No- d-don’t-”. Soon, however, his protests grow meek, and finally, he quiets down. You can only hear him grunting.

At last, all his possessions are in place. He goes through his notes frantically; you ask him for his name.

“What is it t-to you?” he stutters, but the malice in his trembling voice is forced. He stares at you for a moment. “G-gazna.” he says, finally. You introduce yourself, as well.

You throw a glance at Eladine over the stream. You could have sworn you had just felt her eyes on the back of your head. She’s still writing, though, snout buried deep in the parchment. You decide to chat with Gazna a little more.

“I’m an entomologist,” he says, after you two have exchanged some more pleasantries. Gazna isn’t one to hold a grudge. His stutter seems to have gone, though there is still that quiver in his voice, giving him an air of being permanently unsure about something. “I’m relatively new here - though, what is new in an eternity? I don’t know how old I am.”

You explain why you’re here. He nods energetically in understanding. “Aaah, yes, the R-rotund. A marvellous structure. Without it, we wouldn’t have this Garden. And without the Garden, I wouldn’t have my insects.”

As he goes on and on, you realize that once the topic had switched to insects, there is no way back. In a matter of minutes, Gazna had already shown you at least five species of bugs hiding within the grass and among the foliage, asked you on your opinion of his breeding charts, and waxed poetic about the coloration of a certain butterfly. Your head is buzzing, as if it is, too, filled with bugs. Gazna’s bugs, to be exact.

“Gazna!” you hear an unfamiliar voice call, and almost breathe out in relief. Its owner is a pretty brown female Spiral, walking towards you with Eladine by her side. The entomologist’s ears perk up, and his head jerks immediately in her direction. A warm smile spreads across his face. He rushes up to the female.

“Earthworm,” he says quietly. “I’ve missed you.”

Eladine is covering her face, trying to conceal the giggling. Earthworm shakes her head, but doesn’t hide her affection.

“It’s been only an hour, you nerd.”

The two share a passionate kiss, coiled around each other in a tight embrace.

"All the best things have at least eight legs."

Gazna was so immersed in his chase, he forgot about the weight of the backpack, jangling with glass jars, on his back. Net firmly in his claws, he half-ran, half-flew after the little grey moth that was fluttering away carelessly. The entomologist’s eyes were dry, as he consciously forced himself not to blink. Even for a fraction of a moment, he could not afford to let the elusive critter out of his sight. Had he allowed that, it could be gone, gone forever - perhaps the last of its species to ever be seen with a dragon’s two eyes. Gazna’s hope of finding two specimen, of opposite sexes, for breeding had evaporated after about three and a half days in this lonely, deteriorated part of the Shifting Expanse. If he could not save the species, the Spiral figured, he could at least chloroform and preserve it. Of course, it would be quite the bittersweet outcome for his expedition - but it would be better than returning to Dragonhome not only battered and worn, but with empty hands. Gazna strained his wings to their fullest potential, lifting off the ground as much as his clanking baggage would allow him, and launched forward.

Despite his best efforts at concentration, his journey had worn him out enough to make his eyesight blurry and his back achy and tired. The pale moth was right in front of him, and yet it felt kilometers away as his vision tunneled and warped. In a last ditch attempt, Gazna threw out his net, and drew it carefully to his eyes to see if there was any success.

There was.

There was no strength left in the entomologist to even breathe out a sigh of relief. Pressing a paw against his chest, he coughed out mucus, throwing a victorious glance at the tiny vicious creature beating against the mesh. Procuring an empty glass jar from his backpack, he carefully transferred his catch inside and sealed the lid tightly. Gazna cackled in delight. Now, he could finally take a closer look.

If he hadn’t spent years hunching over books, drilling his taxonomy, and venturing on many a lengthy field trip for the sake of his research, what he was seeing in front of him right now would have struck him as incredibly disappointing. There was absolutely nothing special about this moth to the untrained eye, with its puny size and drab, grey wings. Yet Gazna, currently head over heels with excitement, knew by the angles of its legs, by the length of its thin antennae, by the number of facets in its eyes that he had found exactly what he was looking for. A species exclusive to this specific area. A species thought to be long gone, extinct. A species rumored to be endowed with vitality that superseded that of many mammals by a margin of decades - vitality that kept it alive in a land that few living things could bear to call home. Gazna was holding it in his very paws, his trophy separated from him but by a wall of fragile glass. The Spiral caressed it gently. He noticed his arms were shaking, as was the rest of him; to prevent an unfortunate accident, he put the jar into a separate pocket in his backpack.

Now, he could finally return to Dragonhome, prize in hand, to recognition and celebration from his peers. He would revolutionize his branch, maybe he would even be able to apply for funding to launch a larger expedition. Maybe, this species could be saved from extinction yet. Maybe… if not for one rather unfortunate problem that arose as he lifted his head to look around. He didn’t have the slightest idea where he was. All around him were stony cavernous hills and cracked arid earth; no living creature in sight other than him and his insect captives.

Quickly, not giving panic any time to set in, Gazna pulled out his compass. With a sinking feeling, he realized that it wasn’t working; the arrow was moving every which way, pointing east one second and south the other. Could it be the electricity in the air messing with the magnet?... thought the entomologist as he shook the device, first gently, and then with force. It still refused to work. No need to freak out, Gazna, the Spiral mumbled under his breath, even though he was already trembling like a leaf. You- you must have come from this direction… so that’s where you should go to get back, right? Forcing a bitter gulp down his throat, he made an uncertain step, then another.

Soon, he found himself completely, utterly lost.

As far as he knew (and getting more and more certain of it as he went along), this part of the Shifting Expanse housed no living creatures. No sounds except his own footsteps and the rumbling of storms in the distance; soon, the two began to meld together in his mind, his brain playing tricks on him due to lack of any other input. He could, theoretically, have flown up and assessed the landscape from a higher perspective; however, that would mean leaving his possessions, including his prized moth, on the ground, and he simply couldn’t allow for that. All he could do was walk. And he walked, and he walked, and he walked, until the sun set. Then it rose again, and set once more. On the dawn of his sixth day in this uninhabited region, Gazna was out of provisions for himself. The insects got their needed rations, but after a while, they began to look quite tasty themselves.

At first, the thought was appalling to him. He, a scientist, simply consume the subjects of his research, like they were mere dinner? And yet, he reasoned with himself as hunger nudged him somewhere underneath his ribs, extreme situations call for extreme measures…

The sound of the first lid popping open filled Gazna with both anticipation and disgust at his own behaviour, and his body responded by producing a good measure of saliva. The crickets he had been taking care of since his stay at the Sunbeam Ruins quickly met their untimely demise at their captor’s teeth. Relieved of hunger for a little while, but feeling a piercing guilt filling up the rest of the void in his stomach, the Spiral went on. Another day passed, and throughout, he found himself nibbling from another one of his jars, his empathy receding and his nagging conscience growing more silent with every next one. What mattered most was survival.

On the evening of the eighth day since he entered the region, there was only but one jar left. Clutching it in his claws, he left the rest of the backpack behind, since it was now empty and pretty much useless. He tried to fly, but to no use; now worn out and deteriorated by hunger, his wings refused to comply. The entomologist glared at the last insect he had in its glass jar. All the fabled longevity the species was said to possess could end this instant, at it meant nothing before the Spiral’s famished state. However, Gazna hesitated as he put his paw on the lid to open it. Something inside him, the final shreds of his academic pride, could not, would not let him eat the moth. He sighed dejectedly. There was a dead end, a range of hills before him, conquering which would mean exhausting the last drops of his energy and sanity. In his frustration, he felt like crushing the jar between his paws, killing the creature that brought him here inside.

But he couldn’t do it.

Gazna heard a rumbling close nearby. A storm… So far, he had been lucky enough to avoid being caught up in one close by, and here it was now, his fear, his fate, perhaps his saviour. The Spiral laid down. He simply didn’t have it in himself to go on anymore. Holding the glass jar firmly, he let his eyelids fall shut, hoping that a bolt of lightning will strike him in his sleep and end his misery. And the moth, the moth would die with him, such was their destiny - to be put to rest together.

The last thing he saw - or, maybe, hallucinated? - before he passed out was a tower of copper, glistening as lightning reflected on its walls, looming high above the hills and going beyond the steel-cast clouds.

GALLERY

Art by radishcake

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Exalting Gazna to the service of the Stormcatcher will remove them from your lair forever. They will leave behind a small sum of riches that they have accumulated. This action is irreversible.

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