Leonid

Raptorik, being descended from corvid birds, like collecting shiny things. So when, while on an expedition into a deep part of the Hewn City, a local clan encountered a little dragon statue made of glittering pink calcite, they picked it up and took it back to their nest, where they ran a lucrative business on the Light/Shadow border doing star chart readings for travelers, as well as gambling with them (the house always won, of course; these are Shadow-territory creatures we're talking about).

Unbeknownst to them, the statue was, in fact, Leonid, who'd turned into her statue form to survive a raid by Shadow forces on the Hewn City that took place hundreds of years in the past, as a hatchling who couldn't fight back or flee fast enough in dragon form. And she'd been trapped, in stone form, still able to see and hear but unable to move, completely aware and unable to sleep, for centuries. Needless to say, she was very pleased to have more interesting surroundings than being half-buried under rubble, and became fascinated with the Raptorik's techniques. Once she was confident her surroundings were safe, she let the statue facade drop a bit and started letting animum flow again, allowing her to finally grow past the hatchling she was during the raid.

The Raptorik were pretty shocked to find that their latest shiny thing was, in fact, a living dragon, but they took it pretty graciously when the now-adolescent Leonid introduced herself and expressed an interest in the flock business. She set up shop alongside her unwitting parents and started running tarot and gambling operations herself, combining her knowledge of selective card shuffling to her advantage in the casino and her knowledge of cons to her advantage for the fortune telling, becoming quite the prodigy at both.

Then, one day, an exalted army from Fire territory rampaged through the Hewn City looking for loot and weapons, crushing the Raptorik's hideaway in the process. Leonid wanted to defend the only family she could remember with her now larger size and stronger magic, but upon getting flashbacks of the Shadow raid, she froze solid, returning to statue form, where she remained for the next 10 years, the colorful feathers and silks on her body the only hint that the now larger calcite statue had once been a living dragon. Still aware, she watched her battered family fly away, leaving her behind once more because try as they might, they couldn't lift a dragon-sized hunk of solid rock.

And then, in case that weren't bad enough, Enforcer moved in and started exploring the Hewn City for shiny things, happening upon Leonid and, with the help of several larger dragons, carrying the statue back to the Hewn Suburbs, planning to transport it back to their sanctum. Upon detecting that she'd been picked up, Leonid refused to be pushed around again and transformed back into a dragon, firing enough bursts of breath at Enforcer and their cronies to stun them before flying off towards the Tangled Wood. She wasn't going to deal with that kind of shenaniganery again.

Of course, Enforcer doesn't take being denied well and also has the power to manipulate spacetime, so upon seeing Leonid flying away, they warped her perceptions of space time and trapped her in magical wards so no matter what direction she flew, she found herself drawn back to the Hewn Suburbs. However, since Enforcer had decided that Leonid was even prettier as a living dragon, they allowed her to remain in a form that could interact with the world, leaving her to finally settle in the Suburbs, against her will. She works two jobs: one assisting Mark in his fortune telling and another as Fera's research assistant, intending to learn more about Enforcer's wards and spacetime warping around the Hewn Suburbs and how she can break through them and get out of there. While she knows that Raptorik don't live very long, so her original family are long since dead, she's tired of being dragged places by creatures that only see her as a pretty collectible.

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_{Banner base photo by Parent Géry @ Wikimedia Commons; edited by Enforcer}