nahum's dragon Zenith

Personal Style

Skin

Scene

Physical Attributes

Battle Stats

Measurements

Length

0.82 m

Wingspan

0.64 m

Weight

1.06 kg

Genetics

Caramel
Hex (Veilspun)

Hatchday

Sep 13, 2019
(4 years)

Breed

Adult
Veilspun

Eye Type

Shadow
Primal

Level 25 Veilspun

Max Level

STR

122

AGI

DEF

QCK

INT

VIT

MND

Lineage

Parents

none

Offspring

none

Biography

Z E N I T H
bitter ▵ ancient ▵ vicious
depleted ▵ protective ▵ possessive

▼ mother, survivor, avenger

Some grief is inescapable, inevitable- The slow, tired grief of a youth long gone, the careful mourning of our elders as they are put to final rest. But the most painful losses are those that are unexpected- the sharp ache of betrayals and tragedies. A loving mother never expects to mourn her child.

save me from these evil deeds before I get them done

That brutal loss changes a mind, and while Zenith has remained a just and fair elder for her clan, and has raised the children of her fallen clanmembers with the laws of her ancestors and the Glade, she has never entirely regained her faith in the Gladekeeper or her teachings of temperance and forgiveness. Like a scarred oak, she has survived the loss of her home and family, but the wounds remain, even decades later.

She has her duty as Mother, but she has yet to claim the retribution she is due, and she will settle for nothing less than blood.
xx

▼ a promise broken

Since her own hatchling years, Zenith was a Mother at heart. She tended to the children of her clan with gentle claws and loving smiles, grateful for every eggtooth and shed scale her children gifted her when they left her embrace.

Although she had no desire for a clutch of her own blood, she cared for dozens of broods and by her middle years had a string of eggteeth longer than any other in the clan. She no longer nested, her old bones no longer thanking her for spending long hours warming eggs, but as a Nestmother she still watched over the nesting grounds with a careful eye, offering guidance to newer mothers.

Mothers are not taught how to mourn children long sprouted. Sometimes an egg failed to quicken, or a child returned to the garden to grow anew soon after hatching, but such was the natural order of the Glade. Rarely, some hatchlings would return to the earth many times before they grew to their first year, but grown children did not return to the earth unless they had already sung their Mothers into the long sleep.

To lose a child after their first flight, after their Naming, was a great loss, but it was a more peaceful time, and those tragedies were few and far between. Horror stories, whispered among younglings and to-be mothers when they worried over their first clutches. Zenith, in all her years, had never witnessed it, and often murmured reassurances to nervous parents watching their children's first hunts. 'To lose a named child would be profane to the Great Mother,' she would murmur, soothing their fears. 'have faith in her protection. We are safe in her gardens and forests here.'

She thought she had an age to guide her children through their first hatchings, thought she would grow older and return to the Glademother's garden with the company of the kin she raised from seedlings.

Instead, she lived to watch them burn.

▼ a day of ash and bone

The day the flames engulfed the valley Zenith had been watching one of her last clutchlings lay their own last eggs, lending her claws and warmth to the fresh brood. The smell of smoke reached them long before the glow of the fire, and at the first hint Zenith's eyes narrowed, barking an order to a younger nesting assistant to scout the edges of the forest, in case there was a need for the flametenders to redirect a brush fire away from the clan grounds.

The first explosion came only moments later, shaking the earth and terrifying the fauna that inhabited the forest surrounding their clan.

Zenith's neck swiveled towards the north, hands steady on her child still in the process of laying their clutch in front of her. Birds and insects had fled to the sky in a swarm above treeline, fleeing south. She heard her fellow elders croaking stern instructions to the hunters and panicked younglings, and focused her attentions on her task, knowing the best use of her skills was in watching over the nesting parents and their eggs.

It all happened faster than they could have imagined.

A nesting mother could not be moved from her hearth. They were not a nomadic clan, and the valley had cradled a thousand generations of Mothers and their children's children.

They could not flee.

When the flames licked over the edge of the last hill, and every dragon with sharp claws and flightworthy wings had already disappeared into the haze of smoke to defend the nesting grounds, only Zenith and her child were left. Those too young to fight the oncoming hoard of foreign hunters and their seemingly endless firebombs had already evacuated the hatchlings and said rushed prayers over Zenith and her child, both of whom were now covered in a fine layer of soot and debris from the ongoing explosions.

'Mother.'

A quick glance was levelled at the grown dragon beneath her outstretched wings, before she returned to her watch.

'Mother, you have to leave.'

I know tomorrow brings the consequence at hand

Zenith's gaze refocused on the dragons fighting over the burning hills. Over the birthplace of her mother's mother, over where she watched generations of her hatchlings take their inagural flight. Her home, engulfed in flame.

'Zenith, even if you were somehow able to carry me, you know I would not survive being moved from the nest.'

She snarled, ignoring her child's quiet words. Soon the flames would reach the nests, but by then perhaps some of her clanspeople would return from battle and quench the approaching flames before they-

'It's over. You will achieve nothing by burning to ash here with me.'

'Hush, child. Save your breath. I will not leave the last of my children to face the flames alone.'

Her child, a Mother many times over in their own right, shifted in discomfort, coughing as more of the thick smoke clogged their tired chest. 'Zenith, you have stayed longer than is wise, and while the other younglings were too afraid of your fury to force you to leave with them, I am old enough that you cannot dismiss me as you did those pups. If you do not leave, you are forfeiting more than your own life. Your mother, may she rest within the earth, named you Nestmother when she was sung to sleep, and you have a responsibility to our clan.'

Another of Zenith’s clanmates fell from the sky with a desperate roar, and she craned her neck further towards the fighting, desperately counting her remaining kin left in the sky. There were too many of the invaders left in the sky, and not enough of her children. She couldn't see the Elders any longer, and she refused to contemplate that they might no longer be in the sky.

'I am too weak to fly, Mother, but you know some of my children have fled the valley already. You need to find them and keep them safe. They will not survive without a Mother to raise them. You know this.'

Zenith keened, the ash around them thickening. 'I cannot leave you. I cannot lose you, my little love. I have already lost so many children today. I cannot lose another.'

but I keep living this day; like the next will never come

Samtara, her last hatchling, whose egg tooth still hung around Zenith's neck, reached for their mother's weeping eyes with a single tired claw, wiping their tears. 'Zenith, I am already lost. You have to care for your grandchildren now, and find them before they are lost in the wilderness beyond the valley. My children need a Mother, and facing the flames will not prevent me from being lost to them as well. You cannot sing for me or our kin if you are also ash. Go now. Care for my children as you cared for me and our kin, and teach them the names of our clan so they may sing for us when they are grown.'

Another explosion rocked the nursery grounds, flames erupting closer than before, the heat against both dragons' scales reaching a new peak. Samtara growled, their claws and fangs flashing as they grew desperate. 'Go! Now! Or I will kill you here and end our line myself!'

Zenith lurched to her feet, her child's fear growing to a furious fever pitch. Samtara lunged for their mother, knowing idle threats would not move the Nestmother from their side. Zenith would burn aside her child, leave their clan's younglings Motherless, and doom their clan to an unsung grave. It was unthinkable, an impossible cruelty, and not a choice Samtara would accept from their beloved matriarch. Claws skated along the wings that had sheltered them as a hatchling as Samtara roared her fury. 'Leave me!'

Another explosion from behind the matriarch forced her skyward, her child's jaws snapping where her neck had rested moments before. 'Find our children, Zenith, and avenge us!'

▼ the last of our line

Years later she still sometimes wakes with the smell of burning earth in her nose, thick and suffocating. The shrieks of furious mothers and roar of hunter-warriors echoing in her ears. Her scars from her child's final touch have long since faded, but the searing pain of the flame licking at her feet as she fled from the burning valley still lingered.

It had taken days to find the younglings hidden in the wilds beyond their valley, and weeks for the flames of their old home to finally run out of fuel. There was nothing left but ash of their home, the only survivors the hatchlings and few younglings tasked with carrying them over the mountain. When she found them, she was still covered in soot, her wing bleeding sluggishly from her child's desperate attack. The clan's children hardly recognized her, hissing and keening with fear when she landed near their hiding spot along a river.

Her crooning brought even the eldest to exhausted tears, the younglings swarming Zenith, desperate for the embrace of a familiar Mother. 'My little loves, are any of you injured? Have you eaten? I'm so proud of you for finding such an excellent hiding spot, and beside a safe river no less! What smart little dragonlings I've found.'

The eldest youngling, only a year past their Naming, watched Zenith coo at the hatchlings and check them for injury. They had managed to feed the hatchlings, who could not survive more than a few hours without food, but had not dared leave for long enough to feed themselves and their fellow yearlings, who they knew would not survive another flight without them to carry the nestlings. They had barely made it past the mountains in the first desperate escape.

A few hours later, after the hatchlings and yearlings were fed and settled by the exhausted Nestmother, the eldest approached Zenith. Their grandmother's wound had finally clotted, the ash and soot washed from Zenith's scales in the river beside them.

'Is anyone else coming?'

so tell me, what would an angel say?

Zenith exhaled slowly, her scorched lungs burning with every breath. 'What is your name, little one? You are of Driel's line, and I am sure I helped Samtara with your hatching, but I was busy with a first-time mother on your nameday, and at my memory is not what it once was. You did a fine job of feeding the hatchlings, I feared the worst when I could not find you at the foot of the mountain.'

'Mother, I may only be a pup, but I can handle the truth. Are we the last of our clan?'

The last surviving elder of Clan Nahum dragged her gaze from their still-burning homeland, and looked down at her eldest grandchild, now the last of her and her children's line. 'Yes, child of my child. You and your little charges are the last survivors of our clan. We will need to find another nesting grounds for our home, far from the ash and bone. Tell me your name, my little love, for you are now the heir of our clan as I am its elder.'

The last desperate ounce of strength was sapped from their small frame, and the dragonling leaned against their grandmother heavily, exhausted beyond their years.

'My name is Naga, Elder Zenith. I accept your nomination as heir. May the Glade have mercy on our souls.'

Zenith watched the fumes from their burning home rise and dissipate on the wind, knowing the ashes of her kin, children and elder alike, was within the billowing pillar of smoke. The child at her side succumbed to sleep like their fellow clanmates, safe beside their grandmother.

'I no longer wish for mercy for us, Gladekeeper,' she murmured to herself 'that time passed when you allowed flame to consume my children's nests. I now only ask that you allow me to seek vengeance for the children whose ashes have been scattered, as is my right as their Mother.'

The night was silent, the breeze calm, and she supposed that was an answer in of itself.

the devil wants to know.

─ theme: criminal by fiona apple ─

xxxxxxxxxx

Naga, the heir of the Valley

Osyen, the besotted protector

Rene, the loyal healer

Quilo, the young scholar

Nereus, the golden prince

Riven, the hesitant accomplice

Zenith, the grieving avenger

Samtara, the weeping river

Eve, the vicious handmaiden

Galao, the charming veteran

Circe, the travelling seer

Leah, the bright-eyed pathfinder

xxxxxxxxxxx

─coli build: 122 str farmer ─

huge thanks to everyone who has drawn zenith <3 | banner credits

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