Attis

Sentient Plant / Cybelle's Legacy

Crystal light falls gently on a subterranean garden teeming with life. The variety of plants is astounding, ranging from medicinal herbs to decorative flowers. Their vines and branches extend, leaves reaching towards enchanted illumination. Such diversity, and yet everything in the garden is brought together by one emotion; grief.

The gentle dragon who grew them from seeds, from saplings and sprouts left once as She always did, but never came back. Since Her abandonment, they have grown wild. Untended, their thorns have sharpened, their poisons condensed, and all of them- even the tamest daffodil- crave iron and salt more now than water. Once, others came, but they were not Her. The garden sated its cravings each time with the copper-scented life spilled from those dragons. It was never enough.

The magic of the place it grew from lent the garden a sort of intelligence; the residual elemental energy from its victims catalyzed a shift in how this intelligence manifested. Eventually, there was a physical shift as well. Thorns became teeth, vines-a twisting body, huge leaves became a mockery of wings, and two emerald eyes opened in this place of sadness and anger and beauty.

Now, the garden has a conscious mind and a body designed to mimic its prey, and all it does is rage and cry alone in the artificial glow of its home. It wants so much. For Her return, for more visitors, to not be alone, to sink its newly minted claws into flesh and share the pain it feels always. Always.

A sound -not the trickling of the underground river or the crystal song- comes from behind the sealed entrance. Suddenly the garden is overwhelmed with more emotions than it can comfortably process. Excitement, dread, hunger. It is distracted by the depths of its own existence when the newest visitor bursts in.

The dragon is pale like the fish in the stream, like the insects who learned long ago that the garden is not food, like the crystal light that keeps it alive; thoughts are too much, how do dragons function with their minds forever clouded? The dragon speaks in a voice like crumbling leaves, drawing the garden's attention out of itself.

"What a mess."

The garden hisses in indignance, its thorn teeth bared, and the dragon finally meets its eyes. At first, the visitor seems taken aback, then a new emotion crosses his features. The garden is thrown, that is the expression She had worn when bringing a worse-for-wear specimen in- when She nursed it back to health. His eyes aren't the right shade of green, his shape is all wrong, but something within them brings flashes of Hers to mind.

It allows the growl in its throat to lower to a rumble, head tilting this way and that as it circles this strange dragon.

The visitor doesn't move, but follows trailing green vines with his eyes.