Iris

Wood Ear Deer

Familiar

This creature has little in common with its mammalian namesake. Wood ear deer are cultivated to protect dryads' secluded groves.

2000

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White Rot Deer

Familiar

After a season, wood ear deer enter a second stage of life. This veteran is an even more effective guardian.

2000

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Bonewood Log

Organics

A brittle log of dried, dying wood. It is unclear what type of tree this came from originally.

85

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Potted Peacevine

Organics

Poisonous, but pretty! Peacevine lives on very little water and very little sunlight, making it an ideal lair decoration during long, dark winters.

29

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Root-Bound

Iris had to grow up a lot faster than most dragons. Her parents loved her very much, but traditional gaoler society was as cold and harsh as the ice fields they originated from, and she was pressured from all sides to join an order for as long as she could remember. At such a young age, she didn't even bother to question it. She trained, fought, fell, got back up again, and as soon as she was able, she left her clan in the Tangled Wood to become a Seeker. "Dedicated to hunting the lands of Sornieth to capture and contain Shade creatures..." Not the most ideal job description, but she would get to travel the world this way, and by the gods was she excited.

Her initial destination was Dragonhome. Around the beginning of her journey, she'd heard reports of unusual creatures spotted around the Highland Sanctum, and she felt up to the challenge. She could have gone straight past the Pillar, but she decided to circle west through the Viridian Labyrinth. and explore a little more of Sornieth beforehand.

What the young gaoler had failed to account for was that the Viridian Labyrinth was, well, a labyrinth. Iris spent weeks wandering through the overgrowth, trying to regain her bearings, but to no avail. Growing up in the Tangled Wood, she should be better at this... She was repeating her approach of "walk in a straight line until you hit the edge of the domain" for the 12th time when she heard the strange voice.

"What is one so young doing in a place so dangerous, all alone?" She stiffened, looking around for the source." "...M-my name's Iris... and I'm a gaoler warrior of the Seeker order!" She tried to put some kind of authority into her statement, but the voice clearly didn't buy it. "Warrior? Seeker? You look barely old enough to seek your own meals, little one." There was a tone of concern in the voice, but she bristled, searching for who to glare at. "I'm old enough to know what I'm doing!" An obvious lie. "...Well then, little Seeker, in which direction lies your quarry?" Iris looked down, ashamed of her poor sense of direction. "...Mmm, I thought so... They call this place the Viridian Labyrinth for a reason, little one, this is no fault of your own." "...Where am I, then?" "The north end of the Labyrinth... Beastclan territory. And night is soon to fall." She stiffened even further. The Labyrinth at night was frightening enough on its own, but she had no chance against a Beastclan's night patrol.

"We can give you a safe place to rest, if you would like."
"...We?"
The voice chuckled, and called out
"Calloth, show yourself, please? And call off our guardians, this dragon is no threat."

On cue, the gigantic tree to the right of Iris unfurled and twisted, revealing a gnarled wooden face that seemed to smile at her. She flinched as one of the large pink bottlebrushes hanging from its branches reached over and stroked her horn. Looking all around her, deerlike creatures made of twisted wood and speckled with garden lace emerged from the undergrowth where they were stalking her, some giving her suspicious looks before going about their business. One of the smaller ones lightly headbutted her, as if asking to be pet.
"Clover, be polite to our new friend!"
The deer's leaves all perked up at once, and it looked up towards the canopy. Iris followed its gaze, only to meet the eyes of another creature made of branches and vines, this time in a more humanoid shape. She chuckled, and jumped down next to the gaoler.
"Your name is Iris, yes, little one?"
The fledgling glared, but nodded, once.
"It is a pleasure... My name is Verdana. Let me take you to my tree."
The branches composing her body began to writhe and twist, and she shifted into a quadrupedal form quite similar to that of Iris. With a flick of her wooden tail, she beckoned for Iris to follow.
"How did you- don't dryads walk on two legs??"
Her eyes were wide as she followed along.
"Most of them, but we Old Growth dryads have far more powerful abilities."
"Whoa... I haven't learned anything yet, but I can do this!"
Iris inhaled deeply, shut her eyes and... sneezed. A large plume of shadow escaped her nostrils, obscuring the air in front of her as she jumped through the black fog. Verdana grinned.
"Not bad, Iris... with some practice you could-"

Before she could finish, a spear flew through the air and plunged through the gaoler's neck.
She collapsed to the ground gasping as Verdana looked on in horror, searching for their attackers. Serthis... she had warned this clan over and over again to leave her territory alone. It was time they learned the hard way.
With an unearthly shrieking, Clover called the rest of the herd of wooden deer to drive off the intruders, but Verdana didn't seem interested in merely driving them off. A glow emanated from within her chest as a deep rumble shook the earth, and titanic roots burst from the undergrowth to ravage the serpentine tribe. That glow was the last thing Iris saw before her vision faded completely to black.

"...Iris? Iris, are you alright?"
She groaned, and forced herself to open her eyes. She was in an alcove between two roots of a massive willow, blue-green leaves trailing down from hanging branches in a gnarled dome. Verdana was sitting next to her, one branchlike hand on her shoulder. The fear in her eyes lessened slightly when she saw that Iris was awake.

"...what... How am I alive...?" She tried to lift her head, but the roots around her neck held her close to the ground. Oddly enough, there was no pain from the wound itself, just a dull ache. That spear went right through her neck, she shouldn't have been able to survive that. "...Old Growth dryads have... very powerful abilities." Iris shook her head to clear it, barely paying any mind to the roots that pulled themselves free of the earth instead of her neck. "Oh... Healing abilities?" "...Not exactly..." Verdana looked down. "I tried to fix the damage, but that spear almost decapitated you, and I could not save you without... binding you to my tree."

They shared a long moment of silence as Iris processed the implications of this.
"...I can't leave."
"You can go farther than I can."
"But I can't leave the Labyrinth. I can't be a Seeker, I can't... I can never go home.
"...I'm so sorry, Iris..."
Verdana pulled the small gaoler into a hug. She slumped against her, emotionally and physically exhausted. The two spent the night together like that, sometimes talking, sometimes crying, sometimes just sitting in silence, but at some point or another, they fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Iris missed her home in the Tangled Wood, and she grieved her opportunity to travel the world as a Seeker. She told Verdana about what she had seen so far, about the glowing mushrooms of the Wispwillow Grove and the perpetual twilight of her home clan, about everything from the bustle of the Trading Post to the beauty of the Gladeveins at the other end of the Labyrinth. She became better friends with Clover, who apparently did grow actual clovers from his antlers, and was bound to the same tree as she and Verdana were. She even got to know the other dryads in the area, Old Growth and otherwise. Calloth didn't speak much, but he was still incredibly friendly, and often had a flowering wreath to give her when she visited. If she wanted to talk, she could visit the redwood grove a mile southwest, they had plenty of gossip on the local dragon clan, and even talked her into introducing herself to them. Eventually, the Viridian Labyrinth became her home.
Unfortunately, not even the middle of the woods is entirely safe from politics.
The local dryads had been getting more and more stressed lately. Tensions had been rising with the local beastclans long before Iris had been stabbed by that Serthis patrol, and it had only been getting worse. Skirmishes turned into full on battles, and nearby Dominance conflicts had been putting both sides under immense pressure to survive.
Iris supposed it was only a matter of time before they discovered the location of their tree.

Alchemists of the very same Serthis clan that had gotten her into this mess had learned of it a while before, but they took their time in preparing their weapon. Of course, the weapon of choice for this clan of snakes was poison, and what a strong poison it would have to be, in order to take out an entire old growth willow.
They came in the night, staking out the tree for days at a time to teach these dryads a lesson for daring to ally themselves with dragonkind. Iris and Verdana were asleep at the time, but the sudden bolt of pain awoke them at the same time.

The gaoler's eyes shot open with a gasp, dragging herself to her feet as Verdana began to scream. The only illumination was the few streams of moonlight leaking through the willow's leaves, but for a dragon of the shadow domain, it was more than enough to see the masked serpentine alchemist pouring a thick, caustic sludge over the roots of their tree. Clover's shrieking joined the cacophony, as the wooden deer writhed on the forest floor. Iris wasn't as strongly bound to the tree as they were; the pain was blinding, but not crippling. Before the Serthis could poison them anymore, she lunged at her, pinning her to the ground with one paw. She had grown quite a bit since her last Beastclan encounter, and killing this intruder was an easy matter. But the damage was done.

It took hours for the pain to fade away into a dull, tired emptiness. Iris felt drained as she lay on the forest floor, watching the bark of her tree and the skin of her friends wither and bleach into the color of bone. Clover's once lush bark had dried out to an ashen gray, and his leaves had withered and rotted. As she looked down at her paws, she saw the same was happening to her. The roots weaving around her limbs had blanched, and parts of her fur had turned silver. Verdana fared the worst. Her blue-green leafy mane had fully wilted, and parts of the bonelike bark had begun to peel off. As soon as she could, Iris pushed herself to her feet and over to her companion.
"Verdana, what- how do I fix this??"
The withered dryad stared up at her tiredly, her eyes glazed.
"Just... need to rest..."
"There's gotta be an antidote or something to this, maybe-"
Verdana just shook her head.
"...hibernate."
Iris swallowed, and nodded. Gently picking her up with her talonlike wings, she carried her over and placed her against the sickened tree. She had seen this before, but as the tree unfurled to swallow her friend, it seemed to creak much more than usual. Before she returned to her tree, Verdana lifted her head and smiled.
"...I will be awake again before you know it... I promise."
Iris nodded again, and managed a smile in return. As the dryad was fully engulfed by the tree, she wanted to cry, or scream, or anything, but all she had the energy to do was sigh.
A light headbutt against her side pulled her back to reality. Clover looked up at her, head tilted, dead moss hanging from his bleached antlers. Iris stroked his head with her tail.
"She'll be awake again before we know it... We've just gotta keep her safe until then."