Ckivsil
(#47321749)
"We've always been here. We always will be."
Sirese
Stonewatch Harpy
Click or tap to view this dragon in Predict Morphology.
Energy: 47/50
This dragon’s natural inborn element is Fire.
Female Mirror
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Personal Style
Apparel
Skin
Scene
Measurements
Length
6.75 m
Wingspan
8.55 m
Weight
427.28 kg
Genetics
Crimson
Savannah
Savannah
Obsidian
Noxtide
Noxtide
Storm
Basic
Basic
Hatchday
Breed
Eye Type
Level 25 Mirror
Max Level
STR
129
AGI
12
DEF
6
QCK
50
INT
5
VIT
10
MND
5
Biography
CKIVSIL
of the Indomitables
Ah, Ckivsil, the great Indomitable Ckivsil, proud matriarch of the Burningsky Aerie, brilliant protector of any and all who seek a home in her lair. Time took her from the land of her hatching, across Sornieth, to the frozen southern tundra and the ancestral land of her kind, but finally- and, perhaps, inevitably- back to the Ashfall Waste. Now, she is fiercely protective of those who have put their trust in her, some would even say to a fault: she has never hesitated to cross her own moral lines to keep them safe. She, and by extension her clan, values loyalty and trust above all; betrayal is the highest of offenses.
The inferno roars over any other sound- thunderous, deafening. Even the ground itself rumbles under the strain. The night sky is thick with smoke, glowing as tongues of fire reach upward toward the stars.
Through the thick ash that hangs low over the ground stumbles a hatchling Mirror.
She walks blind: her eyes are swollen shut from irritation, and the ever-present fire makes it impossible to make out any other sound. Her soft scales are coated in grime, and burns stretch down her flanks. She may be blessed by the Flamecaller, but she is far, far too young for her scales to yet be fireproof.
She struggles forward, but her steps are slowing. When she trips over her own claws, she shifts once and does not rise again. Her chest is heaving as she claws at the ground, but her effort is in vain: she will die without intervention.
Maybe it will be to the smoke in her lungs, or to a hungry Beastclan that happens by. It doesn’t really matter, in the end. Her fate seems sealed.
But as if scorning inevitability, she clings to life as the horizon quiets and night gives way to dawn. Ash settles thick over the ground and softens the sharp edges of the shattered landscape. For an indeterminable forever, it is quiet, and it is still.
Finally, time rattles into motion again: the silhouette of a single harpy scout breaks the endless, glittering blue of the sky.
She will never say, even years later, what made her pause. Perhaps she knows, somewhere in the underside of her mind, and perhaps she does not. Perhaps it should matter, and perhaps it does not, but this is the moment that makes all the difference: she drops from the sky and lands beside the ash-covered shape of the hatchling.
She’s a juvenile- still mostly brown-feathered, a stark contrast to her roost’s mostly pale grey and white adult plumage. She shoves her mask up on her face to get a better look at the lump in front of her.
What she will say, however, is that she didn’t think the hatchling was alive at first. It was only curiosity that saw her brushing away the dirt, and she jumps back when a coughing fit seizes the dragon.
When it finally abates, a ragged whine forces its way out of its throat. The harpy carefully picks her way closer to the hatchling, mind racing to figure out something she can do.
Typically, she wouldn’t be able to care less about a dragon hatchling. It’s a dragon, after all, and she’s a harpy.
But something keeps her from just taking off and abandoning the hatchling again. Dragons look after their own, she tells herself. She doesn’t need to worry about this one. Someone will come find it. It won’t be lost for long.
The hatchling shifts again, trying to drag its claws under itself. The harpy sighs as she watches the stubborn little thing, and finally lets herself admit that it would probably die before any dragons arrived if she doesn’t do something now.
She brushes more ash off the hatchling’s back to examine her flanks. She winces in sympathy when she realizes the burns aren’t just scorched scales, but go all the way to the skin- she won’t lose the scarring when she sheds.
Avoiding the worst of the burnt patches, she nudges the hatchling onto her back. She doesn’t trust holding her in her claws, lest risk hurting her even more. She has to force herself to ignore the whimpers of pain that slip out from the dragon’s jaws while she does. Finally, the hatchling is draped across her shoulders, as stable as possible.
There’s so much heat coming off the hatchling’s sides. She can feel it even through the thick feathers on her back.
Finally, she’s relatively stable. The harpy knocks her mask back down into place, and prepares to take to the sky again.
Taking off from a flat surface is always a struggle, and with such excess weight, it’s a miracle she can get off the ground at all. Her heart stays in her throat until she’s balanced on her wings.
She finds the thermal she’d been coasting on earlier, and soars back toward her roost. It’s a long flight. She has to hope that the thermal doesn’t break. She doesn't want to jostle the hatchling more than absolutely necessary.
Fortunately for her, it doesn't, and the hatchling remains still for the flight. The harpy calls out as she approaches the nest, signaling for urgent medical attention. She’s lucky most of her roost is generally neutral towards the dragons, or her hatchling would be doomed.
When she lands- stumbles to the ground, really, she tried to keep it smooth but the hatchling’s weight is still throwing her off- there’s a couple medics bustling out to take her. The harpy lingers close, but eventually one of the medics shoos her off, promising to contact her with any developments.
She hesitates, but the medic insists. Go hunt, or something, she says, it’ll make you feel better.
Maybe it will. Reassuring herself with the promise, she picks herself up and makes her way out of the roost. It’s nearly midday, now.
She leaps off a landing perch and flaps to gain altitude. The sun is warm on her back, but it’s a kinder warm than the scorching heat of the hatchling’s scales.
The Waste is quiet. It’s set in such stark contrast to the roiling storm the night before, the harpy almost feels like she’s breaking something divine just by being present.
But she spots motion on the ground below her, and all other thought flees her mind.
Some time later, she returns to the roost with a rabbit clutched in her talons. There's someone waiting for her.
“She’s woken,” the messenger says in lieu of greeting. “You should see her.”
She doesn’t bother to respond, instantly slamming down to the center of the roost as fast as she can move.
The hatchling is laid out on one of the beds. Built to hold a much lighter harpy’s weight, it sags under her, but holds.
Her amber eyes are just barely open, but pin the harpy in her place nonetheless. She draws upon her shaky draconic, hoping to any god who would listen it’s enough. “You are... safe. Here. Home? My home. Safe. Safe.”
The hatchling blinks once, long and slow, and for a moment she worries she’s done something wrong. But:
“Thank you,” the hatchling whispers, but says no more.
After a silence, the harpy makes to back out of the room, but the moment she does the hatchling’s eyes widen and she makes an aborted jerk toward her.
She stops immediately, and turns back to the dragon. “Don’t... leave. Please.”
Huh. Well.
Her talons clack loud against the wood floor as she pads across the room to the hatchling’s side. “I won’t.”
///
Sirese is an old name. Literally, it means protector. But it is more than that: it was the name of the legendary leader who led the palefeather harpies out of oppression in their homeland to freedom in the Ashfall Waste. They were the loosely-aligned palefeather harpies who would become the Ashfall Stonewatch Clans.
They were her own ancestors.
So yes, Sirese is a powerful name to carry.
It is also a stark reminder of what is coming. It looms heavy before her, but she knows she cannot back out now. It’s too close: they were only waiting for this.
Ckivsil is under the roost, sitting with her chin high and tail tucked over her foreclaws. She’s taller than Sirese, now- has been for several months. She’s staring off into the middle distance when the harpy ambles up beside her.
“You ready?” she hums. Ckivsil doesn’t look at her for a moment, but her wings shift down and around Sirese’s own shoulders. She leans into the dragon’s shoulder. She’s warm.
Ckivsil sighs. “Ready as I’ll ever be, I suppose.” Her common is steady, but thickly accented and gravelly from old smoke damage. She’s physically capable of making all the right sounds, but beside the rudimentary bits and pieces she came to the roost with, her language is from the harpies.
(Some part of Sirese hopes her accent will lighten in time. Even for a Mirror, whose ephemeral packs will come and go with the run, she can’t imagine the social consequences of sounding so distinctly foreign to her own species.)
There’s a rush of breath, and Ckivsil rises. She stretches her legs, her wings, and tips her head up to focus on the mountain range on the horizon. “I’ll be going east. I hear the winds over the Shifting Expanse are lovely this time of year.”
“Sounds as good as anywhere else.”
Sirese watches Ckivsil stand frozen for a moment that seems to last forever, tension thick in the air. “A kindness upon you,” she finally says, without meeting Sirese’s eyes. “You saved my life. I never thanked you.”
“I’d do it a thousand times over, for you,” Sirese hums. “Though you certainly don’t need my protection anymore.”
There’s a pause, and then, softer than Sirese thought Ckivsil could: “I’d want it, anyway, you know.”
Sirese turns her head sharply, but Ckivsil is still staring resolutely at the horizon. If she didn’t know the Mirror so well she wouldn’t be able to tell anything was amiss- but she does, and there’s the locked jaw, the unblinking stare, the wings folded just a little higher than comfortable.
But here’s the thing: what Ckivsil asks is enormous. She may understand, or she may not, but it is, regardless.
There is power, all Beastclans know, in the companionship of a dragon. They are creatures born and built of magic, so much that it seeps into anything and everything around them. Harpies who choose a place at a dragon’s side are stronger, faster, longer-lived. They wield elemental magic. They are so much harder to kill- but they are not any longer, in the proper sense, harpies. They have feathers and talons and masks, still, but become something else. Something draconic.
They are not welcome in the roosts even that raised them.
It is not a choice that can be undone.
(Was there ever going to be any other fate for Sirese?)
At last: “Then you will have it.”
Ckivsil closes her eyes. Sirese takes a step, and then another, and presses against the dragon’s- her dragon’s- shoulder.
She lingers for only a moment before hopping forward, spreading her wings, and leaping into the sky. Ckivsil follows on the ground below, falling into an easy gait that eats distance as quick as the wind can carry Sirese.
No one is here to watch them disappear. There is no doubt in Sirese’s mind that her roost will know what became of her.
And so they go: into the wilds of Sornieth, with nowhere to be and nowhere to return to.
Neither look back.
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Exalting Ckivsil to the service of the Flamecaller 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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