Lorg

Your breath comes out in small frozen clouds as you stumble across the floes towards the frozen huts and dens you can barely see in the distance. You’ve been wandering all day, having woken up in a deep snowbank, it’s a wonder you’re still able to function with how low your body heat was earlier.

Your foot catches a raised piece of ice and you careen into the solid frozen ground. There’s no movement, you simply lay there as your body fights to get up again. It’s so cold out…but you’re steadily getting warmer. Surely it would be fine if you took a quick nap, right?

“Do not sleep now, Traveler. Get up.” The voice is a quiet whisper from somewhere in front of you. You lift your head and meet emotionless icy blue eyes. “Get up, Traveler. We must go.” The dragon took a step back and you finally get to see the full image of him.

He stands tall, as most Imperial Dragons do, and reminds you of the sky before a storm, dark and colourless. You notice he holds himself with a grace that must have taken ages to perfect as well as years fighting and taking orders- or giving orders.

You move to push yourself up to on your legs, feeling determined to follow this dragon’s orders for a reason you can’t quite place your talon on. Your legs give up beneath you and you begin to fall back to the icy ground when you feel something dart under you and support you. The Imperial was using his tail to hold you up and support most of your weight.

You give him a grateful nod that is easily ignored by the warrior. He turns and begins to slowly walk toward the settlement in the distance. You whisper a quiet “thank you” when you realize that he is walking slowly so that you may support your weight on his tail.

The two of you walk in silence. The only sound to be heard is the ice and snow crunching beneath your paws and only your paws. There are no sounds coming from the footfalls of the dragon in front of you.

You suddenly come to your senses as the warrior in front of you stops, making you nearly run into him. You blink and look around. Somehow, you’re inside the clan territory now, but you have no memory of entering nor have a memory of the majority of the walk to the territory. You shrug it off, perhaps the cold was messing with your memory.

Behind you are walls made of a mixture of ice and stone. You try to look around yourself more, but you are only met with snow-filled air and the Imperial dragon. You can’t even see any glows of fires in the snowy air. You notice that it is quiet, yet you feel comfortable with the silence where you would usually be full of the urge to fill it.

The Imperial turns towards you and speaks once more, “Welcome, Traveler, to the Silent Floes. Home to the lost and death-kissed.”

The dragon then turns and begins to walk away, leaving you alone to support your own weight on shaky legs. You shake your head and call out to him, “Your name! What is it, Sir?”

He turns and stares at you, cold eyes flitting over your figure as if trying to come to a conclusion about your character before nodding.

“I am Dirigo, Protector and Founder of these floes.”