Hyperpop

Not knowing much else, Hyperpop set off for the Scarred Wasteland. They know about diseases and stuff, right? Hyperpop wasn't sure if the murky green that covered his talons and lettered his sides really counted as a "disease," but he sure was sick of it.

Someone as pretty as him (well....formerly) wasn't going to rough it in the pus-infected wilderness, so he located a hotel and rented a room.

It wasn't the improvement he'd thought it would be.

There were rats and bats and some dude who kept going on and on about the "natural beauty" of the gnarly little scrap of land they found themselves on. Half the wood of the building was clearly rotting, but when he said so, the manager apologized and asked if he would like to switch to a room where all the wood was rotting.

Hyperpop felt very quickly that he was more likely to pick up an extra impediment here than he was to get rid of his own. He paid for the night's stay, quietly checked out, and ran from the building as fast as he could.

Hyperpop may have had his good looks stolen from him, and he may have just narrowly escaped a den of rot and ruin, but he was still a drake of tenacity and determination. It was this very determination that saw him take wing away from the Scarred Wastelands and into the great unknown, as the effects of his curse grew day by painful day!

He had left the lands of Plague behind him, but where he would go next was a mystery... On the outskirts of the Windswept Plateau, Hyperpop finally rested his eyes after his perilous journey. That night, a seemingly normal dream turned on its head as the Mirror was visited by a strange, elephant-like creature who called itself a Dreameater.

"You who dreams of disease and contagion..." The creature spoke, "...A fine meal you have left me. However, brighter dreams may yet find you if you seek the tower that never stills."



As the morning sun woke him, Hyperpop nervously followed the instructions left for him. He asked the surrounding settlements for any word of a moving tower, and soon he had chased down the floating Opaline Tower of the Nerada clan.

Cautiously, he asked for any dragons who knew of curses and medicine. He was directed to a wise, though very busy doctor, who appraised him curiously when he arrived.

"You claim to be... cursed? Strange, I do not smell the telltale scent of a curse about you..." The doctor said.

"What? But I am, Doc!" Hyperpop protested. "One day I was gorgeous, cream of the crop, and the next day I woke up with... with..."

"...With?"

"With this stuff growing all over me!" Hyperpop extended his front paws, revealing the shimmering muck that stuck to his limbs.

"...This... stuff?" The doctor stepped closer, inspecting him thoroughly. "Your name is... Hyperpop, yes? Young Hyperpop, listen to me... the markings on your skin are runes. They are not a curse, but a gene."

The Mirror's jaw fell open in disbelief.

"A gene? There's... there's no way! My dad had runes, sure, but not like this, and I was born with the most beautiful scales, and wings as strong as can be! This curse was never -"

"Genes can appear over time, young one."

"No, no, I'm telling you Doc, this ain't right! The colour is so murky... so... unsightly!"

"So you claim to be cursed by... aesthetics?"

"That's it! There has to be a way to -"

Then the doctor shifted closer, squinting his tired eyes at the runes that dashed up the Mirror's hide.

"Now... that is a little strange. It is believed that every dragon's runes depict some kind of message but yours... the language is ancient, near lost, but from what words I know... I can read a warning. "

At that, Hyperpop swayed, coming close to fainting. The doctor sighed, resigning himself to the fact that there was indeed a mystery to unravel with this traveller after all, be it a mystery of aesthetics alone, or something more sinister... How unfortunate. The Nerada clan would certainly have their claws full.

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