Beast

It’s like waking up from a dream. Slowly and languidly, the silence turns to noise, and the noise to voices. The voices turns to song. As the magma rises in the Banescale’s chambers, and as the eggs around her slowly start to glow with life, she hears the song of her forebears. Thousands of ancient dragons chanting in her ears, telling her to fly far and fly wide. She opens her eyes inside her egg, a purple glow reflecting back at her. Her claws itch to break free and follow her ancestor’s advice, but something stops her.


There. Among the chants of the crowd inside her head is a distinct voice. They sing a different song, a somber lullaby, and the little hatchling strains to listen. Despite the heat of the magma outside, a chill invades the egg. This voice is telling her to fly free too, but some part of her wants to stay and listen. She can hear the claws of her siblings scratching her egg as they hurry out of the cavern, following her ancestors. Except… this new voice sounds like an ancestor too, but closer. Who are they?


One of her siblings presses to hard and her egg cracks. The voices leave, as if pulled out through the small hole, and she quickly tries to follow. She pushes with all the might in her little body until her egg bursts open. Relying on instinct only, she pushes herself off and spreads her wings. She can still hear the voices as they swirl away into the vents and so she follows, letting the heat of the magma carry her upwards. It isn’t long before she’s shot into the night, above The Great Furnace. She takes a moment to look at it beauty, the sight overwhelming to a hatchling as new as her, before flapping her wings to start towards the Starfall Isles. The chants fade in the open air, but the lullaby still leads her.



Weeks pass, then months. She spends that time wandering Sornieth after failing to find the source of the lullaby. The voice plagues her, singing to her whenever she lays half asleep. Sometimes she swears she can feel the cold touch of dead claws creep over her, and she always jolts up to snarl at nothing. She notices how the mist and fog seem to linger around her, making the shapes of dragons she leaves behind on her journey. She blinks and rubs her eyes, but the visions don’t leave. She’s just seeing things, right?


She has a strange recurring dream. There she sees the singer of the lullaby, a brilliant white and blue Fae. There’s always a sickly pale Banecale next to the fae, his eyes white and jaw slack. Even still, he manages to interrupt the lullaby in a voice strangely familiar. Through the song, deep shadows darker than anything creep forward, but she can never leave the dream until the song is over. At first it ended while the shadows were pooled around the others’ feet. Now it ends just before the shadows consume her, and she always wakes up with a sticky, bad feeling.


But the dreams and the fog aren’t what terrify her. Sometimes she wakes up somewhere she’s never been before. The dreams stop then, at least for a while, but she’s always left with a bad feeling in her gut. The feeling only worsens if she tries to go back to where she was only to find an empty clan. One day, after terrified weeks of hiding away from any sign of civilization, she comes across a group of travellers. They warn her of a terrible beast in the fog with glowing purple eyes, and tell her to be careful. She’s left shaking then they leave, fear coursing through her. She knows, after sleeping by a river some fateful nights, that her eyes glow purple when she hears the lullaby. She sinks to the ground and lets out a sob, staring at the fog that’s been following her for days.


The clan she killed stares back at her through Naomi’s eyes.

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Her Lullaby wrote: Fly free my dears don’t linger long, You’ve got to get to the great beyond. If you stay now you’ll hear me cry, For my little ones are gone. Fly free my dears don’t linger long, You’ve got to get to the great beyond. There they’ll greet you with open arms, And I won’t see you again. Oh, my darlings, What did I do to deserve this? Oh, my babies, What do I do now? The first was so sickly she couldn’t even stand The second never moved. The third followed her father, The fourth his first sister, And the fifth drowned inside her egg. The sixth never could see the sun, But the seventh last looked at the water. Lastly the eighth’s heart never beat, And I swore mine stopped as well. Oh, my darlings, I swore that I would protect you. Oh, my babies, Someday I’ll find out how.

Their Song wrote: Born of Fire and Flame, Banescale must rise! Flamecaller’s Children, take now to the skies! When the Flame calls, we know what we must do: Fly far and fly wide, we take and consume! Deep into the ice with magma we claimed, To take from the Ice God in Her Great Name The Children of Ice, unworthy and frail, In the face of our might surely would fail. Our pride was our fall, our ego our shame, As Ice overtook our Fire and Flame. We Banescale were one, our Flame shared one space; Our future did lie within one embrace. Arrogant! Foolish! We prideful banescale! Our future, our Flame, we grieve and we wail! Our Flame’s lost to Ice and frozen in time. We sing you this song now as we all die. If you should fly free, remember our song: Fly far and fly wide to see the next dawn! Born in Fire and Flame, Banescale now rise! Flamecaller’s Children must take to the skies! If you should fly free, remember our song: Fly far and fly wide to see the next dawn! Learn from our failure and join with the world, Our future, our Flame, flies with you unfurled!

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