Ilidae

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What was the expedition?

Of course, this was official. I was the sponsor and head of the expeditions. You can find the documents on all the details in the guild’s records. I will give you a small piece of history, or the parts they deemed “too long and too much” to put down. We were searching for the workplace and resting place of the great snapper “Baulder”.

He led a magnificent life of wealth and knowledge. His parties were held for days, his hoard was said to be larger than the bazaar, and his library was larger than even my own. Primarily, he was a physician and chemist and is known for his work in potions. He was credited with refining the health potions dragons take with them to battle. But Baulder is most famous for his creation of the youth potion. Of course, enchanters have the scroll of eternal youth but this was different. It was more of a potion of undoing. A drop was said to bring back ten years, and such, if a dragon would have lost a leg or any other bodily feature, the feature out regrow. The whole bottle would make a dragon feel new. Of course, what mattered most was the potion’s ability to bring back life to the dead. That’s what we were searching for when we looked for the tomb of Baulder.



What did you discover?

Exactly what was expected, a tomb. However, the crafty snapper put a lock on the entrance and if the walls were to break, the tunnels and tomb would crumble and crush us. The historians I brought along, they call themselves Baulder now, told me of the prolific message left on the door. The warning or threat of destruction to those who crossed the door if they had nothing to lose. I believe the message went such as “Only allow those with no family, hopes, or dreams to open and move past this threshold. All else will find no place.”

As for those who could carry out these words, carvings on the walls depicted dragons facing and watching the entrance. Further investigation revealed the old snapper had found a method to keep the souls of dragons preserved in the tomb. The process was a mystery but under each carving was a name, identifying print, and a pledge to protect the tomb. We assumed they were willing guards. All who touched the door would feel the pressure of a million memories and actions. We lost good dragons to find this fact out.



What happened in the tunnels?

I’m afraid the expedition got out of claw too fast for me. Or rather I was swept up in the knowledge we were gathering.

After that little discovery, we asked the guild for more expertise and more resources. Thea came. She was a treasure hunter, to put it simply, but she was good at gathering resources and organizing our force. There was no reason to question the presence of such a useful dragon. After a few months, I am ashamed it took me so long, I started to notice the large number of dragons arriving. Not only were messages coming in daily from other flights, nests were created. Eggs and hatchlings quickly filled the nests, I assumed they were from our workers, but that was not the case. Thea had interpreted the warning as a command.

Eggs hatched in nests of a different flight or without the parents present, would naturally have no parents. No family.

There were two full nests, but I knew there were more elsewhere. Thea started to expand into other flights and I rarely could get information from her or the messages. We gave them a fair life. They were told about why they were here. They could leave if they wished. We did not keep captives. Quite a few took to my lessons and for a while, I was at peace. But resentment brewed and soon the hatchlings, adults now, fought against Thea. Thea was an egg thief and manipulator in their eyes, nothing more. The tunnels collapsed and all of our progress was lost.



...

Ah, the silence. Should I have done more? Maybe. But I can not do anything anymore. The violence and greed I saw in those tunnels haunts me still. I know of Neuma, one of the hatchlings lives and searches for her birth place. She was like any fae, with a grasp of magic any other breed would have to work their life to achieve. But she could not do the things she can now. I will rest after giving you one more answer.

There was no potion. It was the souls. He found a way to travel between life and death to drag souls back into the living. Dragons without connections, passion, or hope were the easiest to inhabit with these souls. I believe the souls could find themselves within a dragon and grant them some of the traits of the breed. But this is only a guess. Thea didn’t believe me.

I do not wish to speak anymore. If I wake up, we may speak more. Speak about happier topics.

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