Anemone

Canopic Jar Trinkets A decorative jar that contains the remains of an ancestral dragon. It is a bad omen to touch, move, look at, or sell this type of artifact. 72

Anemone "My father's task is also mine. What do you believe in?"

Memento Mori Generation 4 Nascentes morimur The beloved daughter.

Memento mori (Latin: "remember that you have to die") is the medieval Latin Christian theory and practice of reflection on mortality, especially as a means of considering the vanity of earthly life and the transient nature of all earthly goods and pursuits. Memento mori has been an important part of ascetic disciplines as a means of perfecting the character by cultivating detachment and other virtues, and by turning the attention towards the immortality of the soul and the afterlife. This curse would be traced down his lineage. All Vigil's children were destined to die, like any dragon. But they would be given a second chance. It was up to the children if they would accept the bargain.

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Anemone lifted her head from where she feigned sleep on her rocky perch, and stole a glace up at the sky through a crack in the cairn above her. Nearly midnight.

To revivified dragons animated by the power of Earth, celestial cycles meant nothing; they answered to the forces that moved fault lines and raised mountains. Many of the skeletons and fossils that haunted the caverns of Dragonhome had never seen the sky - at least, not in their second life. Meanwhile, ghosts that were untainted mostly preferred to cross over in the coldest hour before dawn, when the warmth of day felt like a lifetime past. Not that they should be allowed to roam freely, of course, but many of them could be referred to her Krewe, who would help them with their unfinished business and prepare them to pass on.

But Shadetouched spirits - they chose the hour of midnight, until they had the strength to challenge Sornieth's sun. If Anemone had her way, they would never get their chance.

There! The Gate cracked open, and a spirit clawed through. A mundane Gaoler could not have seen it at all, and most Memento Mori would have thought it it an ordinary ghost. But Anemone was a Gatekeeper like her father before her, and he had prepared her for this. She breathed in, slow and deep, letting her nose filter out the scents of earth and decay to identify the unique taint of the Shade. Yes, there was more than the passive background scent to this one. This one was prey.

Her geist flew to action at her thought, darting from its concealment among the cave floor debris to bite at the foreclaws of the unclean spirit. At the same time, she summoned power, no longer a sleepy pile of fur but a wellspring of energy. Magic wrapped around her foe at her command, binding it from snout to tailtip, and blocking its own sinister workings in a cocoon of Ice and Earth.

The Shade-ghost snarled with malice, but her ambush had been well executed. With her wings, Anemone tore the Avernian Gate open wider. Lifting her prey in her jaws, she stepped through. A brush with her tail and a whisper of power closed the Gate behind her, leaving her in the Underworld. Here, an echo of the Pillar still stood. Acheron had begun a prison there, to contain tainted spirits such as this. But she was in the shadow of Cairnstone Rest, far away from her destination.

Anemone allowed herself a moment more. This close to the surface the hazards were smaller, and the power of Earth could still be felt, neither living nor dead - or perhaps both. It felt comforting, somehow, like a reflection of her own dual nature. Then her prisoner stirred, and she shook off her reverie. It was midnight, and she had a long way to go before morning. The Underworld could be lovely, dark and deep, but she had promises to keep, and miles to go 'fore she could sleep.

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