Unnamed
(#36586376)
Level 1 Nocturne
Familiar
Ridged Crocoturtle
Click or tap to view this dragon in Predict Morphology.
Energy: 0
out of
50
This dragon’s natural inborn element is Earth.
Female Nocturne
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Personal Style
Apparel
Skin
Scene
Measurements
Length
6.03 m
Wingspan
6.3 m
Weight
529.65 kg
Genetics
Antique
Basic
Basic
Stone
Basic
Basic
Iris
Basic
Basic
Hatchday
Breed
Eye Type
Level 1 Nocturne
EXP: 0 / 245
STR
7
AGI
6
DEF
7
QCK
6
INT
6
VIT
6
MND
7
Lineage
Parents
- none
Offspring
- none
Biography
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——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— Mimesis / Blasphemy (it/its) Digger | Gargouille | Thief Industrious · Covetous · Mischevious <New cobalt vein, mark it. Send diggers out tomorrow.> |
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It is not known what caused the statue to animate,
whether it was Amphithere's passion for stonework, the eyes deposited at the lair, or some other ancient magic. The gargouille has able to move freely since Amphithere attempted to destroy it, and it uses its position as a centerpiece and inexhaustible nature to great advantage in its service as a greeter, guide, and secretary, directing and recording visitors that come to the Legacy seeking the services or companionship of its denizens.
It has since become become a central aspect of the
clan as well as a very accomplished digger, extracting the most valuable rocks from the land it came from. It now seems to exist in a liminal space between dragon and construct, being as weighty and land-bound as stone but as lithe and mobile as any flesh-and-blood nocturne. The gargouille still retains a mischievous streak and still goes out of its way to prank some clanmates, Nox especially, though it has become more conscientous, and always offers a piece of its extensive mineral hoard to the affronted party in apology.
Though it has always been completely mute, the
gargouille has few issues communicating with the dragons of the clan; through a combination of signing, gesturing, and scrawling messages every now and then, it manages to convey most of its intentions. Oddly enough, it sometimes expresses a snippet of absolute gibberish, tapping its claws in frustration when it is met with confusion, and signs "you no longer have a word for it." It will respond like this when asked its name, expressing that the word or phrase is so long forgotten that dragonkind doesn't even have an analog to it anymore. These occurences have led a few scholarly clanmates to speculate upon whether this gargouille might hail from a forgotten era of draconic history.
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"Copper? Tin? For dismantling
a rotary lock that had to be imported from the Expanse? This was worth silver, at the very least."
-Nox
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<Welcome to the Legacy, we are glad to have you here.
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Icon Key wrote:
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Directory
First Circle
-–—◊—–-
Second Circle
-–—◊—–-
First Circle
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Rank 4
- – —  Advisor (Alchemist) Cirrostratus |
Rank 2
-  Second-In-Command Vengeance |
Rank 1
 Clan Leader Locust ———————————— |
Rank 3
- –  Chief Advisor (Diplomat) Chione |
Rank 4
- – —  Advisor Poseidon |
Second Circle
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Rank 3
- –  Combat Medic Mage (Messenger) Windshear |
Rank 2
-  Cover Fire Warrior Macabre |
Rank 1
 Glass Cannon Warrior Boneyard ———————————— |
Rank 2
-  Ranger–Rogue Warrior (Forager) Eucalyptus |
Rank 4
- – —  Dignitary Undergrowth |
Amphithere had once decided to follow the digging team out to an excavation. She had just officially been appointed the clan's stonemason and carver, and intended to help out with the new quarry, gained through painstaking negotiations with a nearby Ice clan. Her eye immediately caught on a pale flash of an inclusion–quartz, or perhaps feldspar–barely visible in a shapely traprock vein. To the dismay of the miners, she insisted that the entire vein be excavated so that she could chip the inclusion free at her leisure. It took Amphithere the entirety of the short Icefield day to extract the impressive and nearly faultless mineral inclusion.
The boulder seemed to silently speak to her, demanding to be cut and carved, shaped, freed from an oblong sphere into something arching and elegant. Amphithere finally finished preparing the stone well after the team had returned to the lair at sunset, laden with a new bounty of ores and usable rocks. Mind filled with plans and schematics, she barely noticed her hunger as she took wing over the frigid sea, snatching an unwary flying fish from the surface of the water. She had completely forgotten to eat, having produced a grand total of one outcrop.
When the next day dawned, she fetched her tools and hurried off to the quarrying site. Exiting the lair, her mind turned to contemplating what she would carve. And she knew in a heartbeat: imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all...isn't that what they say? Her mouth curved into a smile at the thought, but she schooled her expression into sincere regret and flagged down Undergrowth and Eucalyptus, asking if they could spare a moment to pose for her. She quickly jotted down measurements and sketches, and gave each a small carving and her apologies for taking up their time. Amphithere rushed to secure her notes and fluttered to the quarry, now weighed down with a bag of tools and rapidly losing daylight.
Amphithere reached the stone and studied it carefully, with an artist's appraising eye. For a few seconds, pieces of the rock seemed to flicker, revealing pieces of a finished statue: a snaggletoothed snout, the elegant curve of a neck, the clean lines of shoulders or wings thrown back, trailing down to a pedestal. The most striking feature was the pair of luminous, hickory-dark pair of gems set in its eye sockets. Beautiful and unearthly timeless, it was utterly unlike anything she had ever made, or even seen. Though the boulder returned when she blinked, that single second was enough. She pulled out her notes and modified the posing and expression of her concept sketch before taking up her hammer and chisel and setting to work.
It was near dusk when Amphithere seemed to regain consciousness. But she looked up, and gasped.
A statue seemed to have materialized in place of the rock. In a daze, she admired the intricate detailing, all the while thinking, I did this. I made that. It was perfect down to every clawtip, and looked so realistic that it seemed about to leap off the pedestal and fly into the setting sun. The only difference from the patchwork statue assembled from her vision was that this statue gazed up at the sky with empty, dark sockets. Still slightly stunned, she winged her way back towards the lair, bracing herself to weather her mate's reprimands for spending so much time outside of the lair.
As she departed, she glanced back at the statue. In the dusky light, the shadows streaking its face almost seemed like tears, a yearning gaze directed at an unattainable sky. She shivered, and flapped a bit faster.
When she awoke, it was to the sound of the minuscule Windshear dropping something, or rather two somethings, beside her sleeping ledge. They bounced off the chalcedony floor of her den with an odd clang.
"Delivery for Amphithere."
Windshear left without stating who or where the package was from, leading her to assume that it was an anonymous commission from another lair. Amphithere lifted the objects to the light and gasped, startling Quetzal half-awake. She held two umber orbs, polished almost to a glow.
Exactly like the eyes of the completed statue she had seen.
For the third day in a row, she hurried off at dawn to the quarry, well before any of the other diggers awoke. She flapped up until she was eye-level with the statue, and pushed the brown gems into the eye sockets. They flashed in the dawning light...
And almost seemed to move, slightly, turning to focus on her. Ignoring the statue's 'gaze,' she conscripted a few couriers to deliver it to the mouth of the Legacy and personally dragged, pushed, and shoved the statue to its place in the center of the entry hall. Gasps, surprise, and praise abounded as meandering clanmates turned to admire the unbelievably realistic carving, though every dragon stayed a safe distance away for fear of chipping or scratching it. It was unquestionably her masterwork, and they showered her with compliments and questions.
"You know what sculptors say, that every statue was always inside of its rock." She laughed nervously. Perhaps literally, in this case. "I simply came along and helped it out!"
She waved off the praise with modest smiles and thanks, and gave evasive answers when her clanmates asked after the name of the piece. Amphithere's wry satisfaction at her own cleverness turned to ash in her mouth, and her Perfect Mimesis suddenly felt like an unspeakable blasphemy.
She hurried toward her workshop in the heart of the lair as soon as the admiring cluster began to dissipate, intending to shake off her peculiar mood with a few straightforward commission pieces. But she wasn't left to chisel a new lump of obsidian in peace, no. Not even an hour later, Nox's earsplitting shriek echoed through the expansive lair.
Amphithere rushed to the source of the scream, the storage cave. Midnight was trying to comfort the snarling ridgeback.
"Shhh, it was only a sparrow. Shhh."
Nox's eyes narrowed, the temperature dropping as frost bloomed over the shelves and crates around her. She took a long, seething breath and finally spoke in a malevolent hiss.
"It might only be a sparrow or three to you, but it seems like something else to me. Tell me, have you ever seen a River Flight or marauding raccoon pick a lock with such dexterity? Empty a cage of birds without damaging a single bar? No, we have been robbed. A thief, an intelligent thief, has struck this clan."
Midnight managed to console her that time, but Nox's tantrums didn't end there. From then on, she would throw fits over pilfered insects and animals, finding small bones and shells, sometimes mixed in with insignificant sums of pilfered treasure, tauntingly stacked in corners. Even Tenebris began to worry, pleading with his mate to stop fixating on her mystery thief, claiming that her spines were going gray from the stress. Nox's worsening temper was bringing winter to their island almost a full season early.
Meanwhile, Amphithere was plagued with nightmares–a tortured whisper in the dark, sometimes thick with sorrow, sometimes raging against its unseen prison, sometimes reminiscing, bittersweet, on its memories of freedom. She was forced to listen and unable to respond. She began to want to reach out and weep alongside the voice, began to want to whisper I'm so sorry and I know how it feels to be trapped, began to sympathize with this unknown being, even as she denied her growing suspicions of its identity.
She barred the doors to her workshop like it was midwinter and worked long into the night to put off sleep, inevitably dozing off in front of a carving. Amphithere would often wake to find that she had chiseled part or all of a crude figurine in her sleep, one with a snaggletoothed jaw, an elegantly arched neck, and wings–<fins>–canted back and trailing down to a circular base. Each one stared wistfully (with however intricate of a face it had) upwards, some with delicate tear tracks scored under empty sockets.
The carvings were...decidedly not nocturnes.
Quetzal, the kind soul, brought her food and news, and kept clanmates and prospective clients away from her workshop during her isolation. She tried to smash the little idols, but eventually gave up and allowed them to accumulate on a nearby shelf. Quetzal simply turned to her with soft eyes and a sad smile, and she found herself telling him everything.
He listened patiently, and offered a single sentence.
"Maybe you should do it."
Amphithere shook her head in confusion. "Do...it?"
"Destroy the statue. Doesn't it seem like it wants to break free?"
A refusal–it is the greatest thing I've ever made, it should be admired and preserved, always–warred with agreement–I know that I should, I have heard it pray and scream and weep so fervently for freedom–inside her.
The statue began to unsettle others, some dragons claiming the eyes followed them, others muttering that they heard gravelly laughter behind them as they passed through that atrium. More eerily, the statue's mouth was occasionally decorated with faint bloodstains around the times when food went missing. Sometimes when touched, the stone seemed a bit too warm, and when closely inspected, the carved claws and horns seemed fractionally longer. Amphithere remained in seclusion, claws shaking with the urge to burst from her workshop, tools in hand, and reduce her stoic, elegant creation–<lost soul, wrong body, wrongly imprisoned>–to rubble. But she knew the clan would stay her hand and refuse to let her destroy that 'masterpiece,' and so she slowly waned in the solitude of her workshop.
Until one rainy day, when a cache of gold ore went missing. It wasn't found after hours of searching, not in any nook or cranny of the storage caves, nor personal den, nor individual workspace. It wasn't found until dusk on that day, a few weeks after the statue's creation. But it was, again, a scream that led them to it.
In front of the pedestal, a pile of violet fur (Vanity, who had fainted) lay motionless. But a glance upward proved their fears: the statue was no longer poised and gazing skywards, but instead crouched above the stolen ore, wings tauntingly pointed at the gleaming pile, taunting snarl tinged with accusation and desperation.
<Surely now, they will–it will be over, done at last.>
When Quetzal brought her the news, Amphithere immediately selected a sturdy pick from among her tools, tore out the door of her workshop, and smashed it against the statue's neck. It bounced off with a reverberating gong. And with a sound like a little rockslide, the meticulously detailed head turned to look down at her, and those elegantly carved, realistic eyelids slowly blinked over the gems Amphithere had so carefully set in its sockets.
When it opened its eyes, its eyes were no longer gems.
When it opened its eyes, its body was no longer stone.
When it opened its eyes, it was no longer a statue.
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