Creative Corner

[center][center][columns][item=golden collar] [nextcol][size=6][Color=#9e350e][b][i]The Lotus Hunter[/i][/b][/color][/size][nextcol][item=ancient knife] [item=dainty lilypad][/columns][/center] ----- [u][b]Intro[/b][/u][/center] I've found writing FR related things to be a nice way to warm up for writing my original projects, so I thought I'd make a thread to archive the FR stuff I'm writing at the moment! Feel free to post or message! As these are writing exercises, feedback and constructive criticism is much appreciated. ----- [center][u][b]About[/b][/u][/center] I'm writing this story as lore for Juno, one of the first dragons I hatched and gened from an elemental egg. A brief summary of her lore can be found in her bio. [center][url=https://www1.flightrising.com/dragon/53921023][img]https://www1.flightrising.com/rendern/350/539211/53921023_350.png[/img][/url][/center] At the moment, I only have one story arc planned, but I might continue the story further if I have any new ideas. I also haven't decided whether or not I'll tie in Juno's lore with that of my main clan. This story is set in Sornieth, but I will not be strictly abiding by all aspects of FR lore. ------ [center][u][b]Contents[/b][/u] [b]I: Trespasser[/b] - [url=https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/cc/2888851/1#post_44062706]Part 1[/url] - [url=https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/cc/2888851#post_44093595]Part 2[/url] - [url=https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/cc/2888851/1#post_44125381]Part 3[/url] - [url=https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/cc/2888851/1#post_44154726]Part 4[/url] - [url=https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/cc/2888851#post_44185115]Part 5[/center] [center][b]II: -[/b] - Part 1 (WIP)[/center] Current word count ~ 3,800

Darkness, and incomplete silence.
The trickle of water in the Fountain of the Lotus and the loud, wheezing breath of the older priestesses was white noise in the otherwise still room.
Juno opened one amber eye to look about herself. She knew full well that this was against the teachings of the true mediation form, but she didn’t think the Lotus would mind. A precious and venerable thing it was indeed, but Juno was not convinced that the Burning Spirit truly inhabited the flower, as some of the others believed. After all, the histories of the Temple stated that the Lotus had been brought here to the desert from the verdant jungles of the north as an offering for the Spirit.
Some of the older priestesses had lost their way, she thought smugly. They turned their adoration to the flower for its special properties rather than the Burning Spirit to which the Lotus belonged.
She picked them out one by one as she gazed over the gathering of meditating dragons, the thick smoke of incense obscuring those furthest from her.
The gentle ringing of a small bell interrupted the background murmur of the fountain, signalling the end of the sunrise meditation. The other priestesses began to open their eyes and stir. Juno blinked as if her eyes had been closed the entire time. The High Priestess, an imperial dragon so ancient that it seemed all the colour had leeched from her scales, dismissed the gathering, sending them all to their daily tasks.

As the gathering began to disperse, some of the more gregarious priestesses offered polite morning greetings to Juno, which she curtly returned. She herself lingered in the innermost sanctum for a time after it had emptied.
The gentle first rays of light shining in through the small windows of the vaulted ceiling dissipated some of the smoke from the fragrant incense, revealing the Fountain of the Lotus more clearly before her.
The fountain consisted of a rectangular basin the length of two guardian dragons, decorated with broad turquoise tiles on the outside. The floor of the fountain and the wall against which the basin sat were elaborately mosaiced with geometric designs depicted in smaller tiles of indigo, white, green, and red. In the center of the pool, floating in crystalline water, was the Lotus.

The enormous white flower defied logic; it never wilted or died, despite lacking a place to take root in the Fountain. Instead, it shed a single petal each month, and the priestesses used this to create a tincture which granted them exceptional longevity compared to other dragons. With any essence of the Lotus that remained after this, a weaker elixir was brewed, then sold to pilgrims and merchants for a princely sum.
Juno ran her claws over the fine golden chains studded with bloodstones that were draped over her rust-brown scales. Such adornment could be found on all but the most austere of the priestesses of the Lotus, so rich was the wealth it granted them. The source of this wealth was a jealously guarded secret. The priestesses and Temple servants were forbidden to speak of the Lotus to outsiders, and the pilgrims who ventured to the Temple were not allowed within the walls of the innermost sanctum.

Juno gazed thoughtfully at the Lotus for a time, eventually deciding that she had best begin the days’ work, despite her reluctance to do so. She most preferred hunting, but today was assigned to the gardens, and there were cactus fruits and dates to be harvested and water to be collected from the spring. She left the innermost sanctum, but the powerful perfume of the Lotus followed her, detectable even over that of the many sticks of burning incense, lingering as always in every crevice of the Temple.

The day passed mostly uneventfully out in the gardens. It was dull work, but the sun was pleasant at this time of year, before the worst of the desert heat set in. Juno didn’t envy those priestesses assigned down in the archives, stuck transcribing long passages from dusty old tomes until the evening.
The best part about working in the gardens, she thought as she hastily stuffed a rich, sweet date into her mouth, was being able to eat on the job.
Several hours into her work, she spied the High Priestess and a few others walking through the gardens with three dragons who were unfamiliar to her. A grey ridgeback, unremarkable in patterning, had a small blue fae sitting on her back, and a pale mirror walked beside them. All were dressed in worn traveller’s gear. Must be pilgrims, she concluded, before returning her attention to the fruiting cactus plants.
As the wide sky began fade from powder blue to a soft pink, Juno shrugged on the woven straps of the baskets filled with fruit and hauled them towards the kitchen wing of the temple, where several temple servants were overseeing cookfires in hearths, preparing for the evening meal. The head of the cooks, a mottled green snapper, thanked her.
“See the pilgrims?” He asked with his characteristic lack of formality.
“In passing.” She replied.
“Tourists is more likely, I think. Could barely muster up a prayer for the Spirit between them.”
Juno was inclined to agree. More and more, the Temple played host to so-called pilgrims who didn’t seem to care in the slightest about learning the ways of the Burning Spirit, and who instead wanted only to gawk at the door to the forbidden innermost sanctum. It worried her. It should have worried the rest of them, but the High Priestess remained unconcerned.
From the kitchen, Juno was summoned to the innermost sanctum by the chiming of a bell, and there she settled before the Fountain of the Lotus alongside the other priestesses for the sunset meditation. This time, exhausted from labouring in the gardens, she was able to keep her mind clear and her thoughts on the Spirit.

In the evening meal that followed, Juno shared a cooked goat and charred pumpkins with a piebald spiral priestess named Tali with whom she was reasonably friendly. She was surprised to see that the pilgrims were not present in the Feasting Hall. Upon noticing this, she questioned Tali.
“Are the pilgrims eating separately?”
Tali shook her head.
“I think they left actually. I was preparing offerings for the Spirit in the Grand Chamber when I saw them leave through the main Temple door an hour or so ago.”
“Just before the sunset meditation? Surely not. They’ll be stuck out in the middle of the desert for the whole night.”
The spiral shrugged, equally as baffled as Juno.
“Perhaps they returned at some point, but I certainly haven’t seen them since.”
As she continued tearing off chunks of cooked meat, Juno resolved to ask the High Priestess about the pilgrims, but before she had the chance to do so, the old imperial retired to her quarters, where she was not to be disturbed by any but the most senior of the priestesses.

None of the priestesses aside from the High Priestess were given designated sleeping spaces within the temple. They were permitted to sleep anywhere save the innermost sanctum and places such as the kitchen where they would be in the way of servants performing night-time duties. Some chose to sleep in groups, gossiping in whispers late into the night, but Juno was not one of these. That night, she had settled down in a corner of the hallway between the Grand Chamber and the inner sanctums. Windows on the outer side of the hallway opened onto the gardens, where faint silver light from the narrow crescent moon was bathing the glossy leaves of the date palms.
Juno was restless, moving in and out of sleep. In her wakeful periods she watched how the pale light faded as the moon moved further across the ink-black desert sky freckled with stars.

Eventually, sleep all but deserted her completely, with no telling how many hours remained before dawn.
It cannot be too late in the night, she thought. I am still so tired that the stars shift in my vision.
She blinked, and a chill went through her as she realised that a portion of the sky was still moving.
Wakened by adrenaline, she rubbed a claw over her eyes, but the strange shape in the sky continued to move.
It was moving towards her, she realized. Towards the temple. In a few heartbeats, it had passed out of her line of sight over the temple roof.
Juno wondered about it. Was it a desert creature? Some magical phenomenon passing over on the way to somewhere else? It couldn’t hurt to check.
She walked quietly out to the garden, and once there shook her purple-streaked wings out before leaping into the air.

Her powerful wingbeats carried her to the exterior of the vault of the innermost sanctum, where four small windows opened in a white dome. Juno was too large to fit through the windows, but she was able to alight on the roof and peer down into the depths of the dingy chamber below. Though the innermost sanctum was shrouded in shadow, her keen hunter’s eyes saw clearly what was occurring at the Fountain of the Lotus. The mysterious amalgamation of night sky she had seen from the ground was a dragon. A coatl, she thought.
The dragon was a dark phthalo blue in colour, but speckled all over with bright white points that she had mistaken for stars.
This intruder had, she realised, deliberately waited for the cover of night, when they knew that they wold be able to camouflage against the very sky itself.
The dragon appeared to be holding a large, but apparently fairly light, wooden box, and as she watched, they reached a tentative claw out towards the Lotus resting in the pool.
Juno opened her mouth, preparing to cry out an alarm, but before she did, an idea occurred to her, and she closed it again without uttering a sound. This could present a unique opportunity. How quickly, she wondered, could a small coatl like this cross the desert on the wing?
With luck, not quickly enough to evade her for long.
She was silent as the coatl slowly pulled the lotus from the water and tucked it into the wooden box, latching it closed afterwards. When they unfolded their wings in preparation for ascent, she ducked out of view behind the dome, on the opposite side from which the coatl had arrived. She heard soft wingbeats grow steadily louder and held her breath when claws clicked lightly against the plaster of the roof.
She could have taken them by surprise then. The conflict would likely wake some of the other priestesses and she would be lauded as the hero who saved the Lotus. But it would not be enough. She needed to let the priestesses fear for their precious Lotus first. That would make them all the more grateful, in the end. Then they would truly see her as a worthy successor to the High Priestess when she brought it home.
The sound of wingbeats signalled to her that the trespasser had taken off. She heard them fade gradually as the coatl disappeared back into the night.

A shrill cry of alarm awoke Juno just before dawn, and it took a moment of panicked confusion before she recalled the events of the night before.
She shook herself awake and stumbled down the hall towards the innermost sanctum, crossing paths with many of the other priestesses who were doing the same.
Inside, the High Priestess was accompanied by Tali to prepare for the morning meditation, and it was the latter who had cried out.
“It’s gone!” She shrieked “The Lotus!”.
The wizened imperial beside Tali could only shake her head and stare in disbelief.

Some of the elder priestesses began to take charge of the situation immediately. They sent groups to find out if the servants had moved the lotus for some reason and others to search the entire temple, but Juno knew they would find no trace of it.
After they had co-ordinated the search parties, they began to discuss with one another in urgent tones.
“This cannot be! It must be in the temple somewhere! No outsiders know of the Lotus.”
“Perhaps once, but word spreads like wildfire these days…If it is not found, then we…”
“Are any priestesses or servants unaccounted for?”
“If it is not here, then it must have been taken by those travellers who arrived yesterday. There is no other option.”
Juno seized upon this last statement, leaping onto the flat lip of the fountain so she was looking over the gathered crowd of anxious priestesses.
“Sisters!” She cried, and was met with many baffled stares, especially from the older priestesses who seemed somewhat disgruntled that a youngster was attempting to assume a degree of authority.
“Our wise elders are quite correct.” She nodded her head in an exaggerated display of deference to the gathering of old priestesses.
“We here, both priestess and servant, are all loyal vassals of the Burning Spirit, and would not do harm to the Spirit’s great treasures. The only conclusion left to us, then, is that the outsiders have deceived us, and betrayed our hospitality to take what belongs only to the Spirit.”
She heard murmuring amongst the group but could not tell if they were in agreement or were questioning what right she had to speak so.
“But fear not.” She continued before any of them could challenge her.
“For I am willing to brave the desert to track them down and bring them to justice for their crimes against the great Spirit.”
Silence. The priestesses turned slowly to look at the High Priestess. Though the old imperial still seemed shaken, she had at least regained a façade of composure.
After a pause, her husky voice rang out clearly in the hush.
“On what merit? Why should you be sent?”
Juno looked thoughtful, as if she had not already contemplated a response to such a question.
“I am the finest hunter within these walls. And I can travel swiftly on both foot and wing.”
Wildclaws were famed for their tenacity in combat and taking down prey, and she was the only wildclaw priestess in the temple.
“Then would we not sorely miss your skills here? Would we not suffer from the loss of the prey that you provide?”
This question caught Juno off guard, and was not one she had practised when rehearsing this situation the night before, after the thief had departed. She thought quickly.
“Indeed…But the weather is fair and the trees bear plenty of fruit. I have complete faith that my sisters will not allow any of our number to go hungry.”
“Besides,” she continued, “I do not expect that this will be an overly long errand.”
The High Priestess was quiet for a moment, considering, and the others watched with anticipation.
“Very well. If the priestesses searching the temple find nothing, then our sister Juno will seek the Lotus in the desert, that it might be reclaimed and returned to its rightful place in the hoard of the Burning Spirit...”
Jubilant chatter rose among the priestesses, and Juno fought a grin of triumph.
“However!” The High Priestess continued, raising her voice.
“She will not do so alone, and I will select others willing and able to accompany her. Juno, come to my chambers after you have broken your fast. I would like you to set out as soon as possible, but there is much to be discussed.”
The High Priestess took her leave, and the excitable discussion continued among the rest. As Juno stepped down from the fountain, many of them, including Tali, came to personally offer her praise for her courageous words.
But Juno, who moments ago had shared their elation, had found her mood immediately soured by the High Priestesses’ last words. She had not counted on sharing the glory of the retrieval of the Lotus with anyone.

Juno knocked on the elaborately carved wooden doors to the High Priestesses’ chamber, and barely a moment later, they swung open on creaky hinges.
A senior tundra priestess on the other side said nothing, but inclined her head and motioned for the wildclaw to head further in. The chambers of the High Priestess lay at the very rear of the temple, and it seemed to Juno that they were not swept and cleaned nearly as often as everywhere else, likely at the request of the High Priestess herself. The air was thick and musty, and desert silt seemed to have drifted in and settled at the edges of the rooms. Despite this dustiness, the floors and surfaces were tidy and a pleasant fragrance lingered in the air alongside that of the Lotus, which was rapidly growing fainter due to the flower’s absence and would soon fade completely.
The blue and white tile motifs on the temple walls were more elaborate here, and Juno followed their patterning along as she walked through two entrance halls, until she came to the third and last chamber.

Here, the ceiling was vaulted, as in the innermost chamber, though there were no windows atop. At the very end of the room was a slightly raised platform reached by several shallow steps, where a rug and several cushions indicated that the High Priestess slept. In the wall behind this, fragments of the desert dunes were visible between the slats of a large wooden lattice.
To Juno’s left were a packed scroll rack, several chests, and a fountain, similar in design to the Fountain of the Lotus, though much smaller in scale.
On her right, the High Priestess and several others who Juno did not know well sat at a low stone table embedded into the floor which was piled with scrolls and tomes.
“Juno,” the High Priestess rumbled “Please, join us.”
There were four dragons at the table already. She knew the lead coloured guardian was an older priestess named Pyra, and that the pale pink fae beside her was named Milli. She did not, however, know the name of the buttercup-yellow pearlcatcher. This last, Juno suspected, was likely a young servant rather than a priestess, judging from her lack of adornment aside from battered goggles which she currently wore around her neck.
Juno lowered her head respectfully.
“Esteemed sister, I hope you will reconsider the need to deprive the temple of more than one priestess while I go to retrieve the Lotus. This will be a quick errand, I assure you.”
“I will not.” The High Priestess replied without hesitation. “For your companions already sit here beside me. I do not wish to have had them gather here for nothing.”
Juno stared, speechless. These were to be her companions?
She had assumed that they were there to advise the High Priestess about the expedition, but it seemed that the imperial actually intended to saddle her with an old dragon, a tiny fae who would be useless in battle, and a servant.
“Well…it is indeed generous of them to be willing to accompany me.” Juno said through gritted teeth, trying to save face. She sat down before the table and tried to ignore the looks that she was sure the other three were casting at her.
A map of Sornieth was unrolled on the table, and the High Priestess placed a claw at a point on the border of the ashfall waste and the shifting expanse where the temple had been added in ink.
“This, of course, is the location of the temple.”
She moved her claw slightly to the west.
“And this is the nearest significant settlement, called Obsidian Springs. There is a large market here where metalworkers trade their goods for treasures and oddities from around the realms. I believe that the thieves will head towards the market to sell the Lotus as quickly as possible. They will know how much we value it and that we will be after it, even if they have no idea about the true extent of its power.”
“And if it is not there?” Pyra asked in a deep, gravelly voice.
The High Priestess shook her head sadly.
“Even if they do not try to sell it, the thieves will have to stop to rest and recover there after crossing the desert. There are no other nearby settlements… But if you cannot find it, you may have to go further and seek help from the seers of the great sea. I pray it will not come to that, but we must have the Lotus back.”
Here, she exchanged a meaningful look with Pyra.
The other three did not have to wonder at this. Pyra and the High Priestess were among the oldest dragons at the temple, and if they did not have the Lotus essence tincture within a month, their years would catch up to them rapidly.
The imperial rolled up the map and, much to Juno’s chagrin, handed it to Pyra.
“I suppose introductions are in order as well. I’m sure you all know Juno now after her rather…passionate speech this morning. A fine hunter and tracker. As for Pyra, she is an elder priestess and a very wise strategist. You could not ask for a better leader.”
Leader?! Juno was fuming but tried to appear collected. We’ll see how long that lasts.
“Milli is a keen archivist who has learned much of the world outside the temples. I am sure that knowledge will be useful.”
The fae bowed her head in acknowledgement.
“Nadine here has visited Obsidian Springs before with the other servants on their trading errands. She will be able to show you around the town.”
The pearlcatcher was beaming excitedly.
“I’ve only been with my ma and pa before, never on my own, but I’ll remember my way round!”
“And now,” The High Priestess continued, “onto some practical considerations…”

While they finished discussing other considerations of the journey, the High Priestess requested that packs be prepared for each of them. Now, these were brought to the imperials’ chambers, and each expedition member slung a bag over their shoulders, with the fae’s containing only her notes and light food supplies for herself.
The High Priestess looked them over, satisfied with their preparedness.
“May the great Burning Spirit protect you and guide you to the lost treasure. We will all pray for your swift return”
The tundra who had been at the door escorted them out of the chambers and through the temple to the Grand Chamber, where the enormous temple doors were opened and bright midday light flooded in, bathing the statue of the Burning Spirit that rested there.
After one last prayer to the spirit, the four embarked through the doorway, beginning their journey west. Juno glanced around at the three companions that had been inflicted on her.
Her plan had come to pieces before she had even left the temple.