Belladonna

Champion of the Wastes, Herald of the Shades, etc

The Abiding Boneyard was a place where dragons went to die. Maps made of the region were never quite accurate, and food was scarce and made scarcer by the fact that many of the already-gaunt animals were infected with the same kind of sickness immersed in the landscape itself. Any successful merchant was bound to have blood on their claws.

Clean water was nearly nonexistent, with the exception of merchants, the occasional rainfall, and several oases kept potable by powerful, ancient magic, the stuff of legend. These oases were a sign of salvation for lost travelers- or they would have been, were it not for the paranoid vigilance of the guards stalking their peripheries.

You never knew when someone or something would stumble upon you and decide that they were desperate enough to risk fighting over the scant resources you managed to find. Skeletal packs of Mirrors, half-mad from starvation and the sickly magic thrumming through their veins, were the bane of any creature foolish enough to travel through their territories. Hyenas stalked their prey for days on end, coming back no matter how many times they were driven off.

The air was arid and never smelled quite right, gentle breezes from the Windwept Plateau whirling into siroccos that carried the scent of rot and bubbling contagion. On particularly windy days, the smell of the Sea of a Thousand Currents or the smog from the Ashfall Wastes covered the landscape.

Jagged bones arced out of the ground, remnants of creatures long since gone.. along with the fresher skeletons of creatures who had died there. It was hard to tell how long they had been dead- the denizens of the wasteland knew the value of food untainted by disease, and by the time the vultures arrived, most corpses were already picked clean.

What was more troubling was the bodies that were left alone long enough to start rotting. Those were the ones that even the most desperate scavenger would back away from- ssomething issn't rightt, the wind seemed to hiss, and those corpses were left for the mushrooms to consume. Thankfully, those were few and far in between.

Virulent bubbles of disease-filled goo were strangled by sinew that pressed so close, passerby were sometimes doused with contagion from the suddenly bursting abscess. Membranes stretched over each other in layers so thick that an unwary dragon could mistake them for solid ground- until they took a step and fell into a diseased cauldron.

And then there was the emptiness in the true middle of the Abiding Boneyard- nothing but arid, rocky wastelands and the occasional skeletal tree or jutting ribcage. A few settlements dotted the landscape, traveler's hubs and abandoned homes, but food was scarce and so most of the Boneyard's inhabitants knew better than to stay in one place for long.

The Abiding Boneyard was a place where dragons went to die, and that meant that those who survived it were some of the hardiest dragons on Sornieth. Not necessarily the strongest or the smartest, but the most resilient. The most adaptive. Dragons determined enough to do what it took to survive.

But that didn't mean that it was every dragon for themself, not always. There was a kind of kinship that only blossomed amongst the denizens of the Scarred Wasteland, a strange bond stronger than any blood tie. The knowledge that the dragon beside you would always have your back. The mutual desire to survive, to grow stronger. Because a group was only as strong as its weakest member.

Of course, Mirrors didn't subscribe to that way of thinking. And certainly not the Mirrors that Belladonna belonged to, whose mindset was that the weakest member of the group would be lucky if they escaped alive.

She had been in that position, once. It gave her the scar over her eye and the certainty that she would never be weak again.

Wraith thinks (thought?) that the only way to protect himself and his loved ones was to be absolutely ruthless against any opposition, and it drives Gildie insane.

with fight-or-flight and he pretty much goes into a mindset of 'I win or I die', because that's what happened in his assassin days. There's some satisfaction in sparring, but his first response is always going to be fear. And for Belladonna.. I'm still working on her lore, but it's very oriented in Mirror pack savagery. Long story short, the fact that she grew up pretty much feral and wildly savage (an especially vicious pack that stayed primarily in the Wasteland- Shade-touched?) and had to suddenly stop moving around so much, stop challenging others with her claws, stop herself from going too far in training spars.. it manifests in a lot of pent-up violence that she takes out on the local monster population.

(saved from old bad lore)

..she flew alone to the night-shrouded Portal and fought alone against the creatures that slithered from Beyond, until she faced a Watcher and saw her reflection in its single, horrible eye.

She was bloody enough that she could barely tell the color of her own scales, and her claws and fangs were stained black from the ichor that she had spilled. The emblem that normally glowed above her head had fractured into a splintered halo of dark, runic magic- the same kind of dark magic that her enemies wielded against her.

She looked like a monster- just another mindless creature to slaughter and never give a second thought, another creature from the nightmares of a hatchling who heard too many scary stories.

The thought struck her that she and the Watcher weren't so different after all.

Then something else struck her- a bolt of magic that slammed into her chest, throwing her to the ground in a cloud of white fog. It seemed that the Watcher had taken advantage of her distractedness, and she didn't bother trying to fight or flee as her vision blurred, then tunneled, then went black.

VoltexUnleashed

Miss bell seems like she would make it nice and quick. A quick death is best so here it is.

link I love Belladonna! Her name really suits her. :3