Athexreh » Lair » Desolan

Desolan

(#35341608)

Level 25 Mirror

Familiar

Rosa Cerdae

Energy: 48/50

Personal Style

Apparel

Skin

Scene

Physical Attributes

Battle Stats

Measurements

Length

5.42 m

Wingspan

3.78 m

Weight

554.11 kg

Genetics

Oilslick
Python

Eldritch
Constellation

Fog
Sparkle

Hatchday

Aug 21, 2017
(6 years)

Breed

Adult
Mirror

Eye Type

Ice
Rare

Level 25 Mirror

Max Level

STR

129

AGI

DEF

QCK

INT

VIT

MND

Lineage

Parents

none

Offspring

none

Biography

Desolan The Eclipse Born

ANGUISH

Aspect: Anguish

— severe mental or
physical pain and suffering

Ability: Bide

— Endures damage
before returning
the attack twofold.

...................

DOES NOT TRUST

...................

For a single, breathless moment, everything was still. A hundred eyes fixed upward, whether in supplication or reverence it was impossible to tell.

Something was happening. Something big. Far bigger than any one of them could explain. Or comprehend. Despite the brightness of the day- despite the warm caress of sunlight on scale and fur- darkness stretched across the land. Across the sky. Across the upturned faces of every awe-filled creature.

Inky fingers lazed forward, cold and silent and demanding.

And every creature heard the call. It whispered dark praise and coy promises. It spoke of forbidden, unknown- unknowable- things that left those who heard with an empty yearning. For what they couldn’t- or wouldn’t- say.

For a single, breathless moment, everything was still. United. A singularity in light and dark and everything and nothing. Of time and space. Of things that should not have touched. A celestial alignment of sun and moon and molten rock. A moment of divinity.

And in that moment, something shifted. A new awareness spread. Blinked into the twilight. Stretched into the corners of creation. Yawned under the shadow of the moon. Basked in the slivers of the sun. Shouldered the mantle of the eclipse. Tethered itself upon the moment. Upon the delicate equilibrium that never should have been.

The moment passed.

The moon pulled away.

The darkness passed.

The singularity fractured.

“If you’re not happy with something, change it.”

That’s what they said. But how was Desolan supposed to change himself? Was that something he could do? He’d do it. No questions. If that would just erase the sense of wrongness in his limbs. In his mind. In the far too restricting coils of his limbs. If it would silence the voices. Why was he so small?

It had been a while since he’d ~~woken up~~ been born that day- dazed and confused and so very alone- under the heavy shadow of the Eclipse. And he’d grown. The hollowness in his chest had only grown. Even when he settled into the routine of clan life, the pervading sense of loss and emptiness clung to him like a second skin.

It ached.

He… ached…

The clan elders scoffed. Said he was young and filled with wanderlust. Said he’d grow out of it.

And he’d tried. He’d tried settling down. Tried starting a family- what a joke that had been- only to find out he made for a terrible parent.

He’d tried to change himself. To become something he wasn’t. Something that made him… not quite happy. But close. And for a while it worked.

There was still something missing.

Change quickly become his addiction. Apparel. Masks. A face to meet the faces he met. He’d tried them all; changing personas like coats. It wasn’t enough. He carved it into his scales, dabbed ink and paint and bright color into the mercilessly deep gouges. Into the very marrow of his bones. Maybe then it would stay. Maybe then it would become a part of him.

He shed. Snakelike. Slithered out of the changes he’d made. The altercations. Old scales and older memories sloshing away. A smooth, new canvas ready to receive. Ready to create. Ready to forget again.

He changed what he could. To keep the emptiness- the soul stuttering emptiness- at bay.

To keep... himself... at bay.

He couldn't stand to look at his reflection anymore.

Desolan remembered.

Not everything. But enough.

He remembered the sun. Bright and burning. Bleeding molten drops of fury into the sky. Swollen and young and searing in a way that had long since faded away. He remembered the chimes of shadows playing in his blood, taunting the light, growing stronger as it reached out for eternity.

He remembered feeling alive.

And he remembered dying.

Then waking up again. That had changed everything, honestly. He had been a part of something… big. A lumbering, gargantuan amalgamation of wriggling, putrid piles of scale and fur and raging flesh and overwhelming fear and something that still tasted like imperial but more ~~emperor~~. The earth shuddered underfoot- whose foot — did it matter when all were one?— he couldn’t say. He could feel the ground crumbling, pulverized into a coarse powder. He could feel the moon overhead shying away from his visage. Could feel the pulse of the cosmos thrumming against his- their- collective awareness.

He wanted to sink his teeth into it. To rend. To feel the oozing slime of star and space and time dripping down his maw. To taste the lifeblood of creation. Bitter against his tongue.

There was a rumbled purr of thought in the back of ~~his~~ their mind. A myriad of voices whispering. A myriad of thoughts building on each other. Crashing. Building. Fracturing. Waves of emotion tumbling and churning and swelling like the ocean only to be swept away into oblivion before roaring back into existence.

A face- a dozen faces- peering into the sky— the earth— snapping at each other. A family of twisted, writing, familiarity. The Emperor's teeth clinked together. Tongues writhed. Chuckling, voices echoed. And he- they- stood, tasting eternity. Sampling the delicacies of the gods. Fear was an addictive drink; a bitter elixir. They refused to fade back into oblivion. Refused to die.

He wanted the world to bend to his whim. Wanted to take and destroy. To rip and tear and rend asunder the world that had wrong him. That had taken him. Taken him apart and stitched him back together all wrong. He wanted the world to hurt the same way he hurt.

The others- there were others he was sure- weren’t as resolute. They whispered calming words. Soothing murmurs that stroked the fire in his soul. That eased the burning of muscles that twisted the wrong way. That pulled along bone and sinew and warped scale. They wanted to fade. One by one their voices pulled away, their limbs dragging. Their heaving, rotting form sinking back into themselves. Collapsing under the onslaught.

They thought they had changed him. They thought he was better. Was content.

He was just b̡̳͓i̠d̺͍i͓̬̞͔n͇̲̭̜̺̙g͚̺̫ ̗̲̰͓̯͍͓ his time.

“Is this what we’ve become?”

Desolan bristled, eyes narrowed. He glared up at the towering figure of the imperial, duly noting every twitch- every minuscule spasm- in the gargantuan, twisted form. It was something straight out of his nightmares- shifting impossibly even as it stood stone still. It was a familiar shape. As if looking through a warped mirror. An imperfect image. A mirage of a memory.

With a low growl, the mirror flared his wings, a subconscious effort to appear larger. It was a pointless gesture.

The imp laughed. A deep running sound that shook the earth around them. A pale tongue ran over jagged teeth as his chuckles faded into a hissed breath. “What a question…” he started, eyes bright as the rippling neck snaked down to inspect the mirror more closely. An eye, nearly the size of Desolan’s head, blinked at him. Its shadowy color seemed to be filled with starlight. Mimicking the night sky.

It almost made him dizzy, the sudden sense of vertigo.

And suddenly the imp reared back, steam spilling from his open maw. He settled into an easy recline, his serpentine body lazily wrapping around the smaller dragon’s perch.

Desolan watched the coils of scaly flesh with narrowed eyes. The tangled streaks of fur along its spine were coated with a viscous slime that glistened in the faint light. With the dragon’s proximity, Desolan could make out a cloyingly thick stench. It was almost a faint rot: heavy and unmistakable.

“You’ve been waiting, haven’t you?” the dragon rumbled, head tilted to glare down at the smaller creature. “What have you been… anticipating, hmm?”

Desolan hissed, backing up a few paces. There was a fizzle against his scales. Something dark and foreboding and impossibly tantalizing. Something that was unmistakably magic. Unmistakably his.

The imp chuckled, wings spreading to blot out the sky. Undiluted chaos rippled along the edges of the appendages, writhing, screaming, bubbling magic that was as incomprehensible as it was... crippling. Silent screams were captured in that magic- screams that he could hear in his mind. Could feel bubbling in his blood. He knew those faces. Somehow. Impossibly.

Desolan found himself clawing at his face, belly scraping along the nearly-searing stone floor. A small, choked whimper escaped him, the sound lost under the shrieking, screeching noise echoing around him.

And the imp drew closer, darkness swathing his twisted limbs. Blocked out his steely gaze behind an impenetrable shroud. “I know you’ve been waiting. I’ve been waiting, too. And soon we won’t have to wait anymore. Won’t that be grand? Isn’t it everything you’ve ever wanted?”

And, as the imp laughed, Desolan wasn’t so sure anymore.

Desolan glared at the fae perched on his back. She was pointedly ignoring him, her head held aloof and her tail flicking in irritation. Occasionally she would glance in his direction, her expression souring, before she returned her attention to the evening sky. Her clawed hands kneaded into the heavy fur pelt he’d draped across his frame and scraped uncomfortably at his scales.

Actually, he mused, the entire situation was pretty uncomfortable. He wasn’t sure what had possessed him to agree to dress up and parade across who knew where with the irritable fae, but there he was. Doing exactly that.

“You were supposed to be a cat,” she hissed at long last, still pointedly looking in any direction but at him, “You know? Like a witch and her cat? We talked about this. Is any of it ringing a bell?”

The mirror shrugged, the motion nearly dislodging the smaller fae from her perch. The indignant squeak that burst from her small frame was well worth the thwack he received.

“What even are you?” she continued, eyes practically blazing in the fading light, “Did you put any thought into it? Looks like you just crawled into something.” She finally turned to face him, scorn dripping from her maw. Her nose wrinkled, “And knowing you, it was something dead. Smells like it, too.”

With a small chuckle, Desolan stopped listening. Sure Revelous was a friend- his best friend, he’d go as far as saying- but she could get… carried away sometimes. Most of the time. Still, it was nice to have something to fill the silence of their travels. Something that wasn’t the destructive spiral of his thoughts, at any rate.

So he said nothing.

Eventually she lapsed into silence, disinterested with his lack of response and, had it not been for the flittering pulses of magic that buzzed around them on gossamer wings, he would have sworn she’d fallen asleep.

He’d asked her, once, about them- about the magic that buzzed almost of its own will; he’d been enthralled by the ethereal beings and their star like shimmer. He’d snapped at them, the fizz of magic against his tongue a burst of citrus and bitterness and sunlight that made him recoil.

And, with the heavy taste of oranges in his mouth that he wouldn’t be rid of for weeks, he’d turned and asked.

It was the first time she had said nothing.

He didn’t ask again.

Still, their faint light was as entrancing as it had been the first time he’d see them. Flittering around like lost souls. Like the forgotten memories of a thousand years. Like a half-forgotten promise. Or threat. They lit the path underfoot even through the last lingering rays of sunlight. Drifting close only to flitter away again.

“We’re here,” the fae whispered, shifting into a crouch. Her claws tapped a pattern on his forehead and he paused, blinking away the stars that erupted across his vision. “Look alive.”

Grumbling, he took in their surroundings, dimly noting the budding decorations. There were atmospheric lights strung up between trees like glowing intestines winding around them.

Pulsing.

Undulating.

It made him think of something waiting. Something hungry. Something he wasn’t too inclined to meet. A dozen eyes seemed to be glaring at him, a myriad of voices hissing from the darkness. Impossibly familiar voices that he thought he'd finally been rid of. He took a step back, shaking his head.

“Hey,” Revelous yelped, patting the side of his face, “You with me?”

“...sorry,” he murmured, voice barely audible.

She hummed, “Yeah well keep it together. We have a lot of places to go today, mkay? Getting to go around and get free stuff? Yes please. And you’re not going to mess this up, ok?”

As he padded forward, she trilled, quickly running her hands over her outfit to ensure it was still in place. “Good,” she chirruped upon finding everything in order.

Excitement buzzed in her small frame and she was finding it harder to sit still. Brightly light pumpkins marked out half-hidden paths. Cobwebs waved in faint breezes. The scent of pumpkin-spice and cinnamon hung thick in the air. It reminded her of home. Of long forgotten days of hatchlinghood.

Sure she was supposed to be hunting. But she'd found one of the accursed eclipse-born demons and... well she wasn't too inclined to meet the others. It wasn't what she had thought it would be. A lot less glamorous, in fact. And, if Des had been any other dragon, she probably would have given up on her adventure long ago.

But he was adamant to help. He insisted on tracking down the others of his kind. More than adamant. Almost... zealous... obsessed.

She shivered, quickly shaking off the thought.

If the other demons were even a quarter as... unhinged as Des was... well. She would agree with Des' assessment. There was something very wrong with them.

Quote:

Two adventurers knock upon the door
Destined by one who came before
Bound by the great eclipse
With words whispered by no lips
One holds darkness in his soul
Darker than the most sinister ghoul
The other is a beacon of light
Shining through an endless night
And together they cling to the skin of the earth
As it spins around its great rebirth.

-Petall

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Click or tap a food type to individually feed this dragon only. The other dragons in your lair will not have their energy replenished.

Exalting Desolan to the service of the Icewarden 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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