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ALATIF Ancient Earth Clan Druid/Herbalist Mate of Cosmic

"Born an orphan in Greatwyrm's Breach, but raised in the Gladeveins, Alatif walks her path with a paw in each world. Her heart is drawn both to the earth beneath her claws, and the trees that whisper above her wings; her mind mirrors the wanderings of a deer in the woods. As a hatchling, the mysteries of her parentage were trivial to her; she knew only what she saw, and what she felt. But as the moons passed, doubt wormed its way into this gentle dragon's heart; who was she? Where did she belong? The dragons around her seemed so at home, so sure of themselves. Why wasn't she? One night, when her confusion and malcontentedness had come to a head, Alatif spread her wings and took to the sky..."

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"I took a little journey to the unknown I came back changed, I can feel it in my bones I played with forces that our eyes can't see Now the earth's got a hold on me"

Unhatched Earth Egg Dragon Eggs A rough unhatched boulder of an egg. It is extremely heavy, and pebbles fall away every time it shakes. The hatchling within must be very strong. 0

Nature Runestone Dragonmade An ancient stone bearing the ancestral rune of the Gladekeeper. Such a find should be kept as a prized possession. 110

Shattered Glass Dragonmade Be careful where you step. 44

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Earth Sprite Familiar Entourage of the Earthshaker. (Rockbreakers Ceremony Holiday Familiar 2013.) 0

She didn't know where she was going - her heading was northwest, The Behemoth on the horizon in front of her, but she had no destination. The air rushed through her thick fur, the smell of the earth clinging to her paws despite being a hundred metres in the air. Who am I?

No one could answer that. Alatif had traveled everywhere her wings could take her - she'd been from the Worldedge Wetlands to the Parched Canyonwalks and found no answers. Her parentage was unknown, her birth lair a giant gaping hole in her memory. Every time she came close to finding the truth, it slipped out from underneath her, like water running through her claws.


The obelisk tilted her head towards the skies, watching the stars twinkling above her, the constellation of the Starry Ampelope wheeling to the east. She wondered whether the Earthshaker or the Gladekeeper could tell her where she belonged - not that she would ever have the opportunity to ask. The prospect of Mirkwood agreeing to exalt her sent a thrill of fear through her heart.

"It would be a great honor, Alatif," she imagined him saying. "To find the truth and the Gladekeeper - who are rather one and the same - is something for which any dragon would travel to the ends of Sornieth."

She shook her head, small tufts of fur flying off into the air as she did so. "No, I still have much to see, much to do..." She trailed off, her wings lowering slightly, sending her drifting closer to the earth. "Much to find."

The Behemoth grew in the obelisk's field of vision; she was flying directly at it.

Some dragons believed that the Gladekeeper lived within the trunk of the Behemoth; Alatif didn't think she believed that, but she was running out of ideas - what did she have to lose? She angled her wings towards the giant tree, tilting her body towards a current of air and letting the atmosphere do most of the work for her. She laughed to herself humorlessly, the sound a low growl in her throat.

"What have I come to, Gladekeeper? Seeking out a tree? What does a tree know?"

That was probably blasphemous to even say, she thought. What nature oriented dragon in their right mind would speak down to the Behemoth? Though she wasn't inborn nature, Alatif was connected enough with her home that she did feel a twinge of guilt. "I really hope the Gladekeeper doesn't live in there," she muttered. "I'll look a fool if she does."

As the land below her slowly transitioned from earth to giant, gnarled roots, the obelisk began to drop altitude once again, her wings carrying her to a large bough towards the base of the Behemoth. She alit; her heavy body, not built for landing on trees, swayed for a moment, and she extended her wings to steady herself.

The size of the tree nearly took her breath away. She knew the topmost branches could be seen even from the Southern Icefield, but nothing could give her perspective like being perched at the bottom, staring straight up.

Though it was the middle of the night, and the boughs and leaves above her should have shielded any and all light from reaching her position, a dim green glow seemed to emanate from the tree itself, enshrouding its surroundings in a nature-esque aura. Looking at it all, Alatif understood how so many dragons could believe that the Gladekeeper herself lived here... perhaps it was true.

She shook her head. "What am I looking for...?"

The obelisk turned, facing towards the colossal trunk of the tree, and tucked her tail under her as she laid down. The air around her hummed with the sound of life; though most dragons that lived here would be asleep for the night, the tree was still alive - swarming with squirrels, birds, insects, and even the occasional micro deer (how did they get up here?). It was calming; the noise of life seemed to quiet the thoughts in Alatif's mind.

She had almost drifted off to sleep when her eyes found the hole in the trunk.

It wasn't large - just a few metres tall - enough for an obelisk to get in, but definitely not comfortably. Unless it widened on the inside, there would be no way to turn around and get out. A recipe for disaster for any dragon trying to get inside. Alatif leaned forward, hearing a deafening silence from within the pitch black emptiness within. Strange... the whole tree, humming with life and light, and yet this hole in the trunk was so eerily silent.

"Don't go into the strange hole in the Behemoth," Alatif mumbled to herself, all the while standing up and shaking leaves out of her fur. "Nothing good ever comes out of going into dark holes."

But curiosity got the better of her. Alatif inched forward, her head in the air, nose twitching as she breathed in deeply. There was a strange smell wafting out... something... familiar. Familiar, and yet completely unknown to her. It smelled like the home she had never had.

Was it really the Gladekeeper? she wondered to herself. All this time, was she right here?

She couldn't keep her paws still; she moved forwards, her paws moving of their own accord, and watched as the green glow disappeared from her legs as soon as she stepped inside the opening. Silence enshrouded her, the noise from the bough disappearing as if someone had covered her ears in sand.

Unsettled, Alatif hesitated. Could this be a trap? She wasn't sure. Who would set a trap in the Behemoth? It didn't smell of Rot in here - besides, no Plague dragon could possibly make it past the hulking ridgebacks that guarded the tree.

She pressed forward.

The tunnel, though it widened slightly, just enough for Alatif to walk comfortably, remained relatively narrow. Her initial assessment hadn't been quite right. Though it was far darker in here than outside, the dim green glow continued to permeate the inside of the trunk. It did, however, continue to be oddly silent. Nothing appeared to live in here - not even a single insect, which usually covered trees from top to bottom.

"So strange," she whispered to herself, the words dampened by the ridged walls of the tunnel. Her claws scraped against the wood beneath her.

The tunnel seemed to go on for ages - it went straight on, without a single curve or turn, taking Alatif to the very center of the massive tree. The green glow grew brighter the further she traveled, and the tunnel began to widen - almost unnoticeably at first, and then very suddenly. Before she knew it, the tunnel that Alatif had been traveling through was wide enough to comfortably fly in.

Seeing this, she took flight, her curiosity pressing her onwards. Answers were ahead.

The obelisk flew for what seemed like hours, gliding on a current of air that seemed to be taking her to the center of the tree. Whatever was in there, it was like every element wanted her to find it.

And then, from one moment to the next, Alatif saw that she had emerged at the other end of the giant trunk. Or... she squinted, and stumbled to a clumsy landing at the very end of the tunnel. She looked again. No... she was still inside of the Behemoth.

What she had first taken to be the sky was a massive cavern filled with green light. The tunnel ended abruptly, the wood coming to a sheer drop to the floor of the cavern. The ground below was covered in fertile earth, trees erupting through the ground and spreading their branches towards what was not quite the sky. In the middle of the cavern was a great empty space, covered in long grass that looked like some behemoth of a dragon had taken a nap on it many millennia ago.

The Gladekeeper... she was not here, but she had left her mark.

Above Alatif was a great green sphere of light, more gentle to look at than the sun, but nearly as bright. It must be what sustained the life of the behemoth, and the miniature landscape that lived within. It illuminated all corners of the cavern, shining light on the wooden walls that were just barely visible on the other end.

Shaking, she took a step forward, peered over the sheer cliff made of the hardwood of the Behemoth, and spread her trembling wings. It felt dangerous to travel to the center of the cavern, but it felt as if she was being called there. And so she leapt - the air rushing around her, taking her towards the mossy ground.

She landed a few moments later, at the edge of the empty circle of grass, and took in a deep breath. Whatever was that lay at the center of the Behemoth, she knew she would leave with more knowledge than she had entered with. She stepped forward, the grass caressing her forelegs with a tenderness that she had never felt before. Everything in here seemed to live and breathe with a special kind of life.

Having reached the center of the tree, Alatif came upon a second, smaller ring, sunken into the center of the wood. Only a few meters across in each direction, there were two objects resting in the Behemoth's nest. Alatif took a closer look.

"Rocks?"

The word escaped her mouth, where no words had been able to escape until now.

She looked closer. No, those weren't rocks; they were both pulsing with life. One of the objects, though it had first appeared to be a craggy stone, was an unmarred earth egg, resting in the middle of the Behemoth. She gasped, stepping into the nest, and reached out with one paw, touching the egg gently. She felt life beneath her touch; the egg was warm, like a stone that had spent all afternoon basking in the sun. No, she thought, she shouldn't touch this egg. It wasn't her own.

The startled obelisk withdrew her paw, turning her attention to the second object. This one was certainly not an egg, but she recognized it. It was a moss-covered golem, slumbering next to the egg, its chest rising and falling with rhythmic breath.

Gladekeeper only knew how long it had been slumbering here - moss-covered golems could only be awoken by dragons from the earth clan that had created them, and that lineage had died out long ago. No one in Sornieth knew where their ranks had gone - the earth dragons with the power to breathe life into hardened rock. Their secrets had been lost to history, and so had most of their golems.

Any golems left sleeping when the ancient earth clan had disappeared were in an eternal slumber - and that was most of them, unfortunately. The lucky ones that had been left awake had been slowly dying out one by one. This was a critically endangered species, and one of its members was asleep in the middle of the Behemoth.

Alatif regarded the sleeping golem with a fondness that seemed to take over her entire body, and she settled to her knees, sweeping her tail around both egg and golem. She closed her eyes.


It seemed like an eternity later when Alatif awoke - she returned to consciousness slowly and unwillingly, feeling like she had slumbered as long as the moss-covered golem beside her. The golem playfully batted at her tail, and she smiled, patting its head with one of her paws before the scene in front of her had sank into her awareness.

The golem was awake?

Alatif scrambled to her feet, staring at the playful golem, who yawned and heaved itself into a sitting position. Its green eyes glowed with the same light of the sphere that lit the cavern of the Behemoth, and shone with knowledge that had been long lost. It looked to Alatif like a child would look up to their mother, and under that gaze, Alatif knew what she was. Who she was.

She looked to the egg beside her, saw the light from her own eyes glint off the crystalline mirrors embedded in the surface of the egg, and knew that she was not the last. The earth clan had not disappeared... they were here, in the Behemoth, lost by the earth, but found by the Tree.

The Behemoth seemed to rumble under the shocked obelisk's paws, and a deep, unearthly, motherly voice echoed from the depths.

You are born from the earth... raised by the tree... embrace your past and your future.

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[permanent dragon in this lair]