Eossan

Riss Lineage I am a member of Riss Clan's informal warrior lineage. GEN 3: Vassal > Yilissa > Eossan

"How old is this place?" Eossan asked.

His voice echoed through the large, sunken chambers of the old dragon crypt.

His Great Uncle, Nassorik, contemplated the question.

"Matriarch dug the first of the crypts out long before I was hatched," he replied, in the slow, deliberate manner that said he was Remembering. The colours in his Pearl shifted, like sand in an hourglass, revealing nothing of the shape of his thought except that they were delving deep. "So, younger than Matriarch, but older than me. They did not look like this back then, though. The cavern was big, but not this large or this deep. At first we would cover the dead in stones and leave them in the central cairn. But as the clan grew, we had to expand, and dig them back out again to put them into the proper tombs."

Said tombs lined the walls of the chambers that stretched deep into the Cairnstone Rest.

The crypt was the only thing left of the clan's ancestral home. Eossan had never seen it before now, not any of it. He had hatched in the Tidelord's domain, in Flotsam Town, where his clan lived transient lives as refuges. They had returned only a few years ago, called back by some unnameable sense. Eossan knew why they had left. The old clan's grounds had grown unstable, with caverns collapsing, and most of it had been lost to a tremendous cave-in. Other clans had muscled into the nearby regions and were not friendly.

Clan Riss could have fought them for territory, and perhaps would have even won. Eossan had seen few other clans with so many warriors as theirs. But tremors through the earth threatened even the neighbouring lairs, and so instead his family had journeyed to the coast, passing down through the Starfall Isles, then on to the Sea of a Thousand Currents. That was where Eossan's mother had been born, and himself as well. He had grown to adulthood on the shores of a floating settlement, in a lair made of wood and planks and lashed together ships.

It was hard to imagine a place more different than Dragonhome.

Yet, here they were. Back 'home' at last.

The clan had come back up along the coast, passing by the Starfall Isles, which Eossan had thought quite pretty. They had dug their way back to the old lair's crypt from the opposite side, building their lair between the Cairnstone Rest and the shoreline. The ocean beach was stormier than the seaside, with jagged rocks and steep drop-offs, perilous for ships and dragons alike. Eossan had not been sure that they would be able to make much of it, but the Earth dragons had a sense of the ground, and in digging they had discovered an underground river and cave system. From there on they had carved a wending lair, seeking a destination that only the oldest of them knew, until somehow at last they found it.

Eossan's father had been born in the Starfall Isles. His grandmother had joined the clan from the Scarred Wasteland. In a way it felt to him that there ought to be really nothing of himself in this place, and yet, he felt a queer resonance that went all the way down to his bones. It was as if he remembered some part of it, but that couldn't possibly be true.

His Great Uncle paused before a row of tombs.

The crypt was not in the best condition, but nothing had penetrated the thick slabs of stone that kept the dead at their rest. Eossan knew that the clan had done their best to seal the whole place off before they left, to leave their fallen kin to their rest, undisturbed by looters or scavengers. Not that there was much to loot or scavenge. Clan Riss did not bury their dead with treasures. In this dark, massive place, there were only rocks and bones.

Eossan made to move on, but Nassorik did not move.

"...What is it?" he wondered. These tombs looked no different to him than all the rest.

Yet, his Great Uncle nodded towards something, and abruptly Nassorik took note of a stone tablet. It was wedged between two of the tombs. His eyes had taken it for just another rock at first, skipping over it, but now that he had seen he noted that there were others like it as well.

"That is my father's," Nassorik explained. "My sister, Eossa, is entombed to the left there. You were named for her. But my father left us, and when word came back to us of his demise, there was no body to retrieve. Eossa and I made that marker for him."

Eossan looked towards the tomb of his Great Aunt, and shivered.

"How long ago was that?" he wondered.

Nassorik shook his head. His Pearl churned.

"Long ago. Before your grandfather was even an egg. When my mother was still with us, when the tremors had not yet grown severe." Again, Nassorik shook his head. The melancholy mood of his abated only a little.

Sometimes Eossan found it hard to believe that there was anyone in the clan who was older than his Great Uncle. Though of course, there was. Old Adon was the most ancient dragon around, but his memories were fractured by his cracked Pearl. The Matriarch was old enough to have helped rear Nassorik, of course, and there were others besides. But none of them had the same air of antiquity, Eossan thought. They all lived mostly in the present still, barring a few moments of introspection or nostalgia.

It was his Great Uncle who seemed to swim in the past, to struggle to pull his head from it at times.

Yet, when he did, his had a quite affable countenance.

"You should pay respects to your namesake," Nassorik determined, yet turned away. "We will come back later with incense, and both of us will speak with the dead a little. They've been neglected too long."

Eossan shot a hesitant glance towards the stone before he had to hurry up to keep pace with his elder.

"Do the dead ever speak back?" he couldn't help but ask. He'd been grown many a turn of the seasons, now, but suddenly he felt like little more than a nervous hatchling, jumping at strange shadows and chittering back at queer noises.

Nassorik looked at him with knowing brown eyes.

"Speaking to the dead is not about what they might say. It is about what they might hear."