Khannerzha

Khannerzha's memory is not perfect, but she remembers with a strange clarity her very first conscious day upon Sornieth.

She remembers the egg's gooey bubble, the greasy film breaking and becoming flimsy as the pestilent ooze wept from within. She'd pushed her little snout out, taking deep huffs of the hot air outside, snorting and blowing the fluid from her face. Her nest had been nestled in the arms of an important clan, large and powerful, but she heard a call from far away almost as soon as she had clambered from the festering pool of the fang-lined nursery

She didn't understand the things that it was saying. She didn't recognize the voice. All she knew was that she was to find it. She shook out her wings, still wet from the fluid of her egg, and she fanned them in the baking afternoon sun. She was gone as soon as her wings were dry enough to use, long before she even had a chance to be given a name.

She flew through the night to avoid getting too hot underneath the sun and rested during the day so she wouldn't grow too cold as she was still. On her seventh day, she was almost fully grown. There was no moon in the sky-- or if there was, it was overcome in shadow. On her first day, there had been a full moon, like a glossy pearl hung from the sky tinted red by the foul smoke and miasma of her home.

In the distance, Khannerzha remembers, was a thick cloud mass, swelling and pulsing in the air, rolling like a rough black ocean threaded through with lightning. She remembers with a bittersweet wince her hubris-- her youth made her foolish. She believed she was far too fast, of course, to be struck by lightning, and by now her wings should have been strong enough to carry her through the squalls.

She was wrong. She was drawing so close to the source of the call, could almost make out the words, when there was a snap like bone right above her, booming so loud she felt it within her very core. There was a bright flash of white light and a sudden blast of extreme searing pain shot through her entire body. Khannerzha remembers little else except a pool of thick green oil, greasy and putrid, rising up to meet her as she cartwheeled limply downwards through the pestilent sky.

She remembers so little from her time in the Wyrmwound. It felt like time was stretched out into eternity, so she has no true idea how long she spent within its stinking depths. She remembers only an embrace; the white gleam of warm, dull bone; tattered wings pulling her close into a cocoon; the distinct sensation of finally having found the voice she was searching for.

Eventually, just like her first day on Sornieth, her head broke the greasy film upon the surface of the Wyrmwound's fluid and she pushed herself to the shore, clambering out and collapsing onto the withered flesh-webbed rock, gasping and heaving. She already knew she had changed before she opened her eyes. She could feel that the air that came out of her was thicker, like a fog she couldn't shake, and she could feel that same diseased fog weeping and dissipating into the air from where talons and claws met flesh, streaming from the gaps as if straining to escape.

She felt sharper. Honed both outwardly and inwardly. Her eyes opened and she saw the world around her in perfect clarity. She still lived.


Dragons do not believe her when Khannerzha says she is a daughter of the Plaguebringer. They say that she had parents, and some have even ventured into the Scarred Wasteland to find both her mother and father alive and well.. but they do not understand. She is a dragon who was born twice-- and her life only truly began after Her Lady's embrace.