Brickrune

Name: brickrune
Gender: female:
Age: unknown
role: forest-hunter
Offspring: none

(yes, the bio is long, but its only 6 paragraphs compared to what it originally was. lore written by xayxayx)

From the day she was born, Brickrune knew she was different. It didn’t take her long to figure out that she was immune to empathy, unable to care for other living creatures besides herself. Her fellow hatchlings played with one another and formed friendships with other clan dragons, especially Serah and Boris, their caretakers. But Brickrune did not. When she got bored, she would try to play with them, but she always got too caught up in winning whatever game they were playing, and ended up hurting the other hatchlings. This happened so many times that Serah and Boris were finally forced to forbid her from interacting with any of the clan’s young. Serah and Boris worried about Brickrune’s welfare—how would she learn to be part of a clan if she could not feel empathy towards her clanmates? Although she was isolated from most other dragons, Brickrune would often wander off on her own to explore. She taught herself to fish, and became adept at doing so. One day, she brought back a large fish to her nest and proceeded to consume the whole thing herself, Boris and Serah staring on in awe and surprise at the size of the meal she’d caught. Perhaps there was hope for her after all, they thought, if she could find her place in the clan as a hunter.

Their hope, however, was burnt to ashes the day that Brickrune crossed a line and was banished from the clan for good. She woke up bored and restless, and decided to go to her usual fishing pond and catch her own breakfast. The pond was fairly large, fed by a gurgling stream, which continued on to eventually merge with the ocean at the edge of Xayxayx clan’s territory.. She dove down and snatched a particularly large female out of the water and began to rip into it, and she savored every bite before tearing apart their mother to finish her meal. Even though her prey was quite large, she was immediately hungry again as she swallowed the last bite. and then haphazardly tossing the carcass on the shore before going after another plump female. the stench of dead fish becoming increasingly pungent, her attention was ripped from the disemboweled fish in front of her at the sound of an enraged roar. Amphitrite, the clan’s most formidable huntress in the water, had caught the scent of the carnage in the ocean, and had followed it upstream until she reached the pond over which Brickrune had been lazily flying. It wasn’t long before Amphitrite relayed the news to KucKuc, the clan’s alpha female, and Brickrune was permanently banished from Xayxayx clan. If she ever returned, the punishment was death.
From that day onwards, Brickrune lived on her own, killing and eating whatever she wanted. One day, she was flying over a winding river when an enticing aroma drifted up to her from underneath the canopy of trees on the riverbank. Brickrune descended, determined to devour whatever that delicious-smelling food was, and found herself in the midst of a large market. Unbeknownst to Brickrune, however, this was a black market, each vendor offering wares of varyingly scandalous illegal acquisition. Her nose led her towards a popular stall, and she pushed her way through the throng of dragons to discover a pair of Coatls behind the counter, underneath a sign which read: “Crystalize and Mountain’s Delectable Delicacies: 100% endangered, 100% fresh, 100% delicious.” The two Coatls scurried back and forth behind their stall, serving steaming piles of that tauntingly savory meat along with many other strange plants and animals, and Brickrune’s mouth began to water. The dragons around her handed over treasure and gems in exchange for their preferred illegal meal, but Brickrune knew a better way to get what she wanted.. The Coatls’ attention was fixed on the customers in front of them, and Brickrune was convinced they wouldn’t notice her as she grabbed a large slab of meat hanging from the side of the stall. As the overwhelming flavor of the meat hit her tongue, she turned to make a hasty retreat… and found that she couldn’t move an inch.

Some strange magic held her in place and Brickrune looked around for its source until her eyes met with those of the stall owners. They had ceased their frenzied movement, and turned to stare deviously at Brickrune. Mischief glinted in their eyes and Brickrune could swear she saw something flash before an invisible force slammed into her. It felt as if she had collided with a brick wall while flying full speed, and she crumpled to the ground, dropping her slab of meat. With a brief glance at one another, the lighter colored Coatl returned to the awaiting customers, and the dark-colored male left the counter and approached Brickrune. In a calm and slightly sinister voice, he explained that anyone who attempted to steal from him and his brother would face the penalty of the Thief’s Curse, a curse he had crafted himself and spelled over the stall’s contents. Anyone who touched a cursed item without exchanging something in return would first, be unable to escape unless the caster willed it and second, would be forced to feel intense guilt and regret for their actions. He looked directly into Brickrune’s eyes and demanded that she tell him why she had stolen from him.

Brickrune barely heard the Coatl’s words. Her mind was raging with powerful emotions, threatening to swallow her whole. The Coatl’s curse was strong, and it was forcing her to feel intense guilt not just for stealing the meat, but for every harmful action she had committed in her life. An image of the pond surrounded by the innards of dead fish rotting in the sun filled her head, and she began to weep, realizing that her actions had caused many of her clan members to go hungry and had insulted the Gladekeeper himself for upsetting the balance of nature. She remembered a hatchling that she had viciously bitten simply because he was better at a game than she was, and she imagined the fear and pain that he and his parents had felt. The faces of Serah and Boris flashed before her mind next, and she was overcome by remorse, wishing that she had been more grateful to them for raising her and taking care of her even when she cared so little for them in return. On and on the images went, crashing through her mind like gigantic waves, threatening to drown her.

Finally, after what felt like hours, the waves died down, her tears began to slow, and she looked up to see both Coatls standing before her with slightly worried expressions on their faces. The market had closed for the day, and they were now the only dragons in sight. The dark-colored Coatl introduced himself as Mountain and apologized profusely for the severity of his spell. His brother, Crystalize, offered Brickrune some delicious meat, and even though her guilt threatened to overwhelm her again, she accepted the gift and told the Coatls her story. They both listened intently, and when she had finished, Crystalize explained that they belonged to a clan that accepted Flightless dragons such as Brickrune, no matter what they had done in the past. Mountain offered to take away his curse completely so that Brickrune wouldn’t be so overwhelmed, but she vehemently refused. Now that she knew what it was like to feel, how could she ever go back to the way she had been? The three dragons agreed that Mountain would revise the spell so that her emotions did not overpower her completely, but she would live with the curse for the rest of her life. She joined Crystalize and Mountain’s clan, and finally began to experience life as she had never known it could be. She carried her curse with pride-- as a reminder of who she had been in the past and a promise to who she would like to be in the future.