Cabal

Rotting Plaguebringer Effigy

Trinkets

A crudely-fashioned stuffed doll that resembles the Plaguebringer. The dragon leather it's held together with is molding and smells awful.

1000

Bottled Embers

Trinkets

What is captured must be quickly released or smoke will be all that remains.

25

Black Hainu Collar

Trinkets

Hainu manage to slip out of any collar. The ground in their territory is littered with failed efforts.

30

The pride of the Plaguelands ran deep in Cabal’s clan—too deep for the liking of this scrawny hatchling. One of his earliest memories was of the clan elders glaring critically down at him. With their practiced eyes, they could tell that he would be slight and skinny for the rest of his life, and some of them darkly posited that it would be kinder to abandon him in the wilderness.

But the clan’s ethos prevailed, and it was that Cabal, like all the other hatchlings, had to be given opportunities to prove himself. This was not necessarily a kindness on the clan’s part. Opportunities were provided. That didn’t mean it was easy to take them.

To weed out the weak, hatchlings were encouraged to fight among themselves for whatever they wanted or needed. Life in the Scarred Wasteland was hard; therefore the clan’s members, even the smallest hatchlings, had to become accustomed to doing everything possible to get what they needed...and to endure deprivation, should they fail to do so.

Cabal became very used to failure. He was gangly and awkward and weak—unforgivably so, in the clan’s eyes. His fellow hatchlings always managed to pin him down with brute strength alone. They weren’t gracious about it, either: They always mocked him mercilessly, continued beating him even after he’d given up.

Many dragons would have broken under all the pressure. Cabal was not one of them. He grew to hate everything about his clan, and the hatred blazed brightly within him. It seemed to take on a life of its own, whispering to him that there was more to his life than this.

He believed it. His clan was nomadic, and they occasionally encountered other dragons or creatures out in the wilds. Many of them seemed frailer than Cabal himself—and yet they prevailed. If they had their secrets to survival, then he would uncover those, too.

Whenever he had free time between lessons or chores, he snuck away from the clan. Sometimes it was enough just to get a respite from them. Occasionally, though, he got lucky, and they encamped near Beastclan outposts, dragon lairs, or animal dens. Crouched behind a rock or dune, Cabal would watch these other beings, observing how they hunted...and fought.

Rage made him keen, and he learned much on these trips away from the clan. He was always severely punished whenever his truancies were found out, but he was past caring by now. He was learning....Was this not the ethos of the Plaguelands, too? He was adapting, evolving, surviving.

He remembered the first fight he’d ever won. In a wasteland of dark and dismal experiences, that one memory burned like a fire: bright, but hot and angry.

A sweltering day...He’d gone the entire morning without food. Out of the corner of his eye, an adolescent Nocturne crunched into a centipede. The sound stirred Cabal’s hunger, and before he knew it, he was sneering, “Why’d you start with the head? You need the extra brains?”

The Nocturne’s eyes narrowed. She bore down on him, her claws driving towards his face. Cabal locked gazes with her, and he leaped back and forth, seemingly dancing, even before she was close enough to strike. He heard laughter and ridicule from the others. But what he’d learned tumbled through his mind—

“Nocturnes mimic others. Catch their eye, and they’ll copy you without thinking....”

Instead of attacking his unprotected flanks, the Nocturne hatchling unconsciously mirrored him. He danced backwards, staying just out of her reach, whooping and hollering to enrage her.

“Let her get caught up in copying you...and then...!”

He made a single huge leap to the left. So did the Nocturne—and she smashed against the leg of a passing forager. The Wildclaw dropped his basket of mushrooms. It burst open, scattering clouds of spores everywhere...and before the dust had cleared, Cabal had leaped over the other youngling’s head, snatching up mushrooms along the way. As he ran, he heard the Nocturne screaming behind him—first in anger, and then in pain, as the clan’s elders chastised her for her failure.

Things were a little easier from then on. He wasn’t unbeatable—who was, really?—but he won some tussles; the weaker hatchlings began to avoid him. That made him feel fantastic: the realization that, for the first time, there were children weaker than he was.

He acquired a reputation, too, for his foul mouth, the stinging insults he hurled at everyone else. All the pain and rage he’d held in over the years came boiling out in tides of vitriol. He was quieter around the elders—he was angry, not stupid—but those his age, younglings or adolescents, were mocked as mercilessly as he had once been.

Yet the triumph that burned so brightly within Cabal eventually lost its luster. He had spent his whole life in this wretched clan, and while he was nowhere near the top yet, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be. He had a sudden vision of himself slogging up an arid mountain covered in prickly thorns...only to reach the top and find that there was nothing ahead but a greater wasteland.

“This can’t be it; this can’t be all of it!” His rage was somewhat tempered by the knowledge that there was more out there. He’d seen dragons from other lands, hadn’t he?

Inevitably, he left his clan. It was a cold morning when he stormed off; he would have gone unnoticed if not for one of the guards. The Ridgeback blocked his way with a colossal paw, demanding to know where he was going.

Cabal flew into a rage, bellowing invectives against her and the whole clan. He cursed them all, from the most ruthless elder to the most innocent hatchling, telling them that they were less than nothing, that he was through with all of them.

The guards would have beaten him mightily for that—but he was no longer part of the clan, and they no longer cared what happened to him. Not that they ever had. Cabal stalked away from them—for good this time.

~ ~ ~
Cabal’s subsequent wanderings were not aimless: He’d loitered around various fighters, hoping to pick up combat tips from them, and over the years, he had also caught snatches of conversation about a Skydancer warrior.

She was not some dumb brute who prized sheer physical strength like his clan did. She was skilled, fast and precise, causing the maximum amount of damage with the minimum amount of time and effort. That was the kind of fighter Cabal wanted to be. Not some mindless brawler, but someone feared. Someone respected.

His search for her was long. He passed through others clans’ territories; some ignored him while others took him in. Despite the kindness many dragons showed him, his character remained vicious, and they invariably cast him out again. Cabal didn’t care. They weren’t the ones he was searching for—though if they could provide him with information about the Skydancer, so much the better.

He eventually learned her name: Valr. This made his search a little easier. He spoke about her freely, despite others warning him not to. “She doesn’t like people asking about her, you know?”

“Oh, I know.” Cabal smiled thinly. “I’m rather counting on it.”

One day, as dawn broke over the Scarred Wasteland, he woke up to find sharp claws pressed against his throat. He held his breath, his eyes rolling upwards to see...

A Skydancer.

Exultation arose in Cabal. Heedless of the claws upon his throat, he laughed long and delightedly—and the Skydancer hesitated in surprise.

“You were looking for me,” she snarled. “Well, out with it, boy. Who are you, and what do you want?”

“You’re Valr!”

“Yes, we’ve established that,” she snapped. Her teeth, Cabal noticed with fascination, had been filed to vicious points.

He sucked in a deep breath. “Everybody says you’re the best fighter in these parts. I wanted to talk to you about that.”

“Could be tricky,” Valr muttered. She dug one claw in, and a trickle of blood oozed into Cabal’s feathers. “People don’t usually survive that experience.”

Cabal sat up, dislodging Valr’s claws, heedless of the blood, the threat. His eyes shone with glee as he declared, “I want to be as good as you are. I want to learn everything about fighting!”

Valr’s mane bristled. Who was this arrogant whelp to make such demands of her? “I’ll just kill him now,” she decided, and she automatically studied him to determine the best way to attack....

Instead, she noticed the scars that marked his body: Many wounds, long healed, testifying to hundreds of skirmishes fought and survived. “Callow he may be, but he isn’t inexperienced.” Her anger ebbed, and she found herself starting to smile.

Even callowness had its uses—and she thought she could see a way to use this youngling. Already she could see his willingness to obey her...and only her...

“All right, then, boy...What’s your name?”

~ written by Disillusionist (254672)
all edits by other users