Archeron

As the ice began to thaw, fog drifted across the wooded landscape. It's tendrils twisting around the thick roots and thorns. All coming from a small nocturne.

As the full moon began to climb in the sky she shuddered, her form twisting and cracking over the two dark eggs beneath her. The fog pouring out of her mouth like a spring, Claws and fangs sprouting from her hands and mouth, white fur overtaking her black form, hiding the crimson drapery she was clad in. Untill she was no longer there. In her stead was a massive pale wolf. As the transformation completed he stretched, almost as if waking up from a long nap. With a deep breath he howled into the sky.

Almost as if on cue the eggs hatched, one looking much like the large grey wolf himself. And the other dark like the nocturne who had hatched her. The fog curled around their two forms, almost like a pair of gentle hands as the large wolf knelt down to them.

"Hello little ones" he rumbled grinning. These hatchlings would never know of the cold hands of death.

Instead they would become them.



It had been a hopeful sentiment, really. That Archeron, named after the river of woe and misery itself, would never know death's frigid grasp. But parents can only keep a hatchling in the nest for so long before they need to learn to fly, and the little barghest was no different. Unlike her smaller brother, she ran right into the thick of the world, stalking the shadows and whispering to those closest to her. She feasted on dreams, hunting those who held doubt deep within their hearts.

Of course this couldn't last forever. A wolf on the hunt could only cause so much trouble before a hunter was sent to put an end to the multitude of disappearances. She went from the hunter to the hunted, racing through snow-laden trees and hiding in abandoned burrows wherever she could. The dreamers slowly faded, her hunting grounds left barren of anything the barghest could even try to consume.

It wasn't the hunter who took her, in the end, but the harsh winter she'd been living in. Hidden in an old burrow, the snow piling up outside, young Archeron took what was meant to be her last breath, her mind wandering the winter woods she'd fled to as soon as the hunter found her trail. Was it a dream? Something more? How ironic, a beast feasting on dreams wandering one of her own in her final moments. This was her eternity, her forever, until she sank into the earth like so many others.

"You don't want this, do you?"

The barghest didn't know when the odd wolf began to lope by her side, blue eyes glinting against the harsh light of the full moon. Something was off, even by the standards of a wolf. Thick purple plates running along their back, claws so long they left trails in the snow with each step. They even had tusks, long enough to dig into their fur. Their eyes were too bright, their proportions just a little off, to the point it would normally set Archeron on edge. However, she couldn't help but focus on their words.

"No. No, I don't. But death is final, isn't it?"

The beast beside her laughed at that, giving her the sort of grin one would expect from a dog enjoying quite the game of chase. She thought for a moment about how wolves didn't laugh, nor speak for that matter. Intelligent? Yes. But sentience was a fine line, and normally only drakes turned into such creatures, or perhaps clever familiars, could display something like this. She waited, wondering if this dream was theirs and not her own, until they finally spoke again.

"Yes, normally. Yet fortune is blind, and has found you in your final moments."

Such an odd thing, that. Fortune found her? She was dead, wasn't she? How was that fortunate? She struggled to find an answer, anything that made some sort of sense. After all, death was normal. Even if she didn't want to die, that was just how things went. All things come to an end; death was just the end of life. It was the odd wolf's next words that gave her everything she needed to know, and so much more.

"You don't want to die, so I'll give you a second chance. What you do with it, little pup, is up to you."

Archeron didn't remember what she said. Honestly, all she remembered was the bone the wolf had dug up, the one she'd marked with her own teeth and claws. Then she woke up, forever changed by what she'd seen, by where she'd been. Her fur reflected the stone around her in the den where she'd lost her life for the first time. Her wings were flecked with specks of white, like the blizzard outside. Yet despite everything, she'd survived, marked forever by the cold touch of death she'd felt.

It seemed, in a way, her parents were right.

She would become death.



This Barghest stalks the woods of Sornieth, her eyes ever watching for drakes whose dreams are haunted by their past mistakes. She takes her time, slowly digging deeper into their subconscious with each night to assess the situation, and to act as their judge. She feasts on their dreams as she does so, until only two options remain; guilt misplaced or guilt well earned. If it is the former, she'll approach the drake in their dream, giving them some form of comfort before they wake. When they come to, their guilt is less, their hearts lighter. Those whose guilt is warranted, however, meet her fangs, never waking again.

This is how most encounter the Barghest Archeron, descendant of Ire and Alabaster.



Gen 5 Nightcallers (wrong primary color - carrier?), Gen 11 Momento Mori (reaper) & Gen 3 Barghest


Flecks and Dark on ??/??/????