Another dragon, another fragmented story for info. W.I.P all over the place, you know how it is.

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He looked young, very young. He was a pearlcatcher hardly old enough to be called an adult. Tufts of hatchling-like fur still poked out from under his mane like weeds.

The red wore a robe

He looked like a fledgling treasure hunter the way it all hung about his form.

Ancient old tomes were scattered about as he pored through the pages of each one. He seemed tired, moving about with a touch of sluggishness that denoted a crippling exhaustion. Yet he was also nothing less than frantic. His entire manner was of a young dragon that hadn't slept in many nights.

Pages of the tomes rustled with the air you displaced when you approached, yet he hadn't seemed to notice your presence- even as he deftly used the tip of his tail to keep a tome at his side from turning away from the page he was saving to keep note of a particularly promising chapter.



If you looked closely at the bandages, you could just barely catch sight of what looked like a limb composed of dried old bones and sinew between the wraps- the bandages that were also soaking in blood that flowed out of his hide like molasses. Bandages much like the ones already on his leg were also strewn about. They were almost as numerous as the books he read.

He abruptly stood after knocking the tome that was in front of him far off with a frustrated flick of the wrist. It sailed through the air, decrepit old pages tearing free of the bindings by force of the air alone.

One of the flaps of the carrying case on his wing was loose, and it slowly shook with every step he took, enabling you to just barely catch a glimpse of gems glimmering with a beautiful sheen unlike any kind of crystal even the most skilled dragon could polish. They were completely and utterly flawless in every way, and even seemed to give off an odd aura of an ancient and unknown power that attracts eyes like a magnet to metal.

A type of crystal that prompts hands and claws alike to reach and grasp it before one even realizes he is doing so.




"Who are you and what do you want?"

His startled jerk shook off one of the bandages, exposing what was indeed a large portion of his leg, from the tips of his talons to his knee. Nothing but bone. Tattered skin and flesh just above the knee-line that rotted like a corpse, slowly leaking crimson fluid.

He quickly retrieved a new bandage, quickly and tightly wrapping where he was gradually rotting away to stop the flow as well as he could. Tueric used the rest of the bandage to slowly and carefully wrap the bone he somehow still had full control over until it looked as natural as he could make it look.


"Look, I don't have time to explain this to you. If you can't already recognize what is happening to me on your own, then speaking to you will only waste my time.

His next words shook with fear as he mumbled them under his breath, "I have no idea how much I have left."

"So please, go. It will be better for us both you do not try and get to know me."




"Still here? Fine. If you simply must know, all of these old books were written by dragons that suffered the same fate that haunts me now. All those authors are now dead. Happy?"