Sruth

Sruth was born, weak and trembling, somewhere between the dim of the Hewn City and the crumbling Moonportal. Already hungry - for food, attention, praise - the Imperial was a shock of blue against the brightly stained surroundings of her homeland. Her clan were a utilitarian crowd, mostly made up of coiffed Coatls and fluttering, flicking Faes, who observed how Sruth stood out and took this as a sign from the Lightweaver herself that a more permanent relocation to the Hewn City was written for them in the sun.

And so, they moved. Sruth spent her younger years feasting her eyes on the looming skeletal buildings, amid the shade that twisted, carnivorous and yawning, at the corner of her eyes. She saw first hand the near-desperate, yearning set in the eyes of archeologists who risked their lives hunting down the haunted city’s buried secrets and within her heart finally flickered to life an interest (a need) for history (for importance).

Because, you see, it’s a fact that all elements are hungry, but it’s a bone-deep truth, an ancestral gospel, that history is glutinous. It does not merely eat, it consumes; history fills its greedy guts with the gluts of time every second, hour, month, and eon. History eats time, eats buildings, eats culture and civilisations, veritably feasts on the ripened remains of emperors past their extended deathbed. And Sruth - she will fill her own glutinous body with the hidden cuts of history.

It is a hard thing to deny the gnawing of your body, and Sruth did not contend well with moderation even before famine took root in her bones. Hewn City held no more appeal; the shade had left its aching mark on her already. The opening of the Moonportal was a blessing in plain sight, one Sruth did not hesitate to take. It was an easy thing, to slip out at night, and Sruth found her cooled colouring suited her better in the shadowed lands than it ever could in the Sunbeam Ruins.

Stumbling upon Aduantas was no accident, no mere fumble of fate. Sruth had heard whisperings of an engineer who had taken root within the shadow clan, a fire-land prodigy who fled to the Shadowbinder’s lands to experiment with the shadow-shade magics some dragons dabbled with deep in the woods. The well-recorded, regular eons of history did not interest Sruth, she had come to find. But this? This could be something new, something that could rock Sornieth if the engineer was as gifted as the rumors said, and the murmurs in Sruth’s blood erupted into a roaring emptiness at the mere thought of being the first to record, the first to feast beside history.

So, yes, it was no accident that she found Aduantas. The Matriarch - a hulking, red Guardian with intelligent eyes and a scarred leg - welcomed her and the idea of a clan-bound historian, unaware of Sruth’s real reasons for relocating. Now, she can be found lingering at the edges of the clan, eyes constantly watching and analysing, her living-stone statue constantly at her side. Of course, Sruth ensured that Cruthanta - the engineer - liked her, made sure to spend time at her side, complimenting her experiments and tests, but found herself genuinely surprised at how much she enjoyed the brash Nocturne’s presence; Sruth could feel the other dragon’s own burning hunger, enjoyed the fierce set to her body. Her own bones seemed to quiet down in her presence, though she never forgot why she was there, not quite.

Sruth enjoys feasting on engorged skyticks, and can occasionally be found crafting her own parchment.