@MMM Arcane Daily Lore
Day One: Planting the Seeds
Written By: Draco981
“Meraki! This is not the time nor the place to try hexing the wildlife!” scolded Galdur, a Coatl. “You all are making very poor examples for House Dreamstrider!” they shouted, to no avail. They sighed, turning to the Nature staff with her who were trying to aid in getting the students rounded up with a similar lack of results. “I’m very sorry about them. I know they can be chaotic but I thought we could get them to be a bit more decent around other flights.”
“Well, to be fair, our students don’t exactly seem to be helping,” a Nature teacher mentioned. It was true. Mingling with the Arcane students, not just Galdur’s class, were dozens of Nature dragons exchanging words, thoughts, and ideas with their new classmates.
“So, you rarely have to write papers for homework, let alone have homework at all?” Antares asked. The Pearlcatcher from House Starseeker had gone on the exchange program solely to study. While she had been talking with the Nature dragons she shares a lair with, the topic of the different teaching styles between the flights came up. The Nature dragons shook their heads, prompting Antares to bring her head back slightly in surprise.
“Our homework, if we have any, is a lot more claws-on,” one of them explained.
“But you don’t even write down the results of what you do?” Antares asked.
“No,” was the response from several dragons.
“Huh. Reminds me a lot of Mihm, in a way. Actually, no, Cedar fits that better. Granted, he rarely gets the chance to write his stuff down.” Antares smirked to herself, drawing a claw across her pearl. “Cedar’s a Runesworn student and always getting themselves into trouble,” she explained, seeing the confused faces around her. “She always tries experiments that are severely against the rules and tries to hide it, but she couldn’t hide a Fae from an Imperial, let alone keep a secret. In fact, for everyone’s sake, I wonder what she’s up to right now…”
Cedar chuckled to themselves as they added a few more of the strange herbs to their vial. They weren't supposed to be experimenting right now. They knew this perfectly well, but he was just within the first line of trees from the clearing and well under the canopy, there was no way anyone could see him! Even now the Aberration kept one head focused on her experiment and the other kept watch, even though they doubted anyone could see them. Nope, those few dragons definitely weren’t looking at her, wondering what she was doing.
This experiment was going to go perfectly, and the best part was that no one was going to know. No one at all! This wouldn’t be like any of the previous times. He had a much better hiding place than when he was caught in one of the Observatory’s telescope domes. And this time Cedar wouldn’t let anyone know. She wasn’t quite sure how it slipped out that the fireworks blowing up the exam rooms was her. She’d only told, like, ten dragons. That was enough for it to stay under wraps, right? Either way, there was no chance it would be nearly as obvious that Cedar was experimenting like this. It would certainly be less obvious than whatever Mihm and that one Nocturne had going on, anyway.
“I’m so happy the teachers gave us a lair together,” Mihm said to Kai.
“Ah, yes, because that’s the most important thing about this exchange program. Not the exchange of ideas or understandings, or everyone from Arcane learning about our own ecosystem,” Kai said wryly, his green eyes narrowing at Mihm.
“Hey! Fostering friendships between Arcane and Nature was one of the goals too!” Mihm exclaimed. Although there was no hiding what Kai was getting at. The Aether from the Shatterspell house had a long-standing friendship with the Nocturne, and this exchange program was merely an excuse to see him. “I just hope Antares doesn’t ruin this for me, though.”
“She’ll only ruin it if you let her,” Kai advised.
“Well then I’m already letting her, apparently. Do you know how many times she’s won the Star Student award? She’s so good at everything she does in her academics and the fact that she knows it only makes it worse,” Mihm whined. Kai simply laughed lightly at the Aether’s cries. Mihm threw a pillow at him out of petty anger.
Needless to say, there was no shortage of activity at the Wild Sanctum, with everyone doing their own things. But thankfully for the staff, a spectacle to unite everyone’s motives would soon unfold.
“Look!” someone shouted, pointing a claw to the sky. Heads poked up, looking to the heavens above as the astral rain began falling in full force. Dozens of beautiful streaks of light arced across the sky. Ooohs and aaahs were heard as the show unfolded, the sky never seeming to empty for more than ten seconds.
Galdur looked up in awe and sighed with relief.
Perhaps after this, I can get everyone’s attention and we can head to sleep, they thought.
“What’s all the fuss about?” Antares wondered aloud, hearing the sounds of wonder from outside.
A Wildclaw Nature student wandered out the door to go see what was going on. “There’s a meteor shower!” he shouted. Antares and the others quickly got up and went out the door to see the spectacle.
“Now that’s a beautiful sight. We get these all the time in the Starfall Isles,” Antares said as they all walked to join the crowd. “Strange though. This shower is never this eventful.”
Underneath the trees, one of Cedar’s heads looked at the crowd. “What is everyone looking at?” they wondered. Their other head turned towards the group of people as well. Noting that they were all looking at the sky Cedar looked up as well, but his view was obscured by the canopy. Unable to shake his curiosity, he carefully set his experiment down on the jungle floor and walked out from under the green ceiling. She turned around and looked up, gasping in awe of her own as she saw the stellar rain from above. It was beautiful, Cedar knew they all were, but each meteor shower always felt like a brand new experience.
Mihm crashed into the cushions of her bed as Kai whacked her with his pillow. After throwing her own pillow at the Nocturne, Mihm found herself in an impromptu pillow fight with her companion, and Kai proved to be quite capable with his stuffed weapon. While laying on her back, Mihm looked out the window and managed to see a few streaks of light from outside. She gasped excitedly and quickly rolled over, ignoring a strike from Kai to the top of her head.
“There’s a meteor shower outside!” Mihm shouted. She bolted towards the door, knocking Kai over before he had a chance to react, not even registering the “Oof!” he gave in response. Mihm ran outside and was quickly joined by Kai in watching the show from above.
“I see now why your flight likes these so much. I must say, I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” Kai admitted.
The crowd watched the show above unfold for several minutes. The meteors didn’t seem to stop, or even let up slightly.
“How long is this going to go on for?” Someone from Nature asked.
“We don’t know. Many meteor showers last for entire nights, but this one is… unexpected, to say the least,” Galdur answered. The streaks of light continued to appear until at one point, four large balls of light came into view. Their speeds were much slower, and they seemed to get larger, almost flickering as they made their way across the sky. Each grew immensely bright. Brighter than the sun, and lighting up the sky so much that it appeared as day. Many dragons, especially those from Nature, had to look away or cover their eyes, as the light was nearly blinding. The spectacle was rather scary to those who’d never seen it before. The meteors each faded out, leaving much smaller dots of light traveling down in their wake and continued to travel downward before moving behind the cover of the jungle.
“What just happened?” Someone asked, sounding afraid.
“I assure you all it’s nothing. Those were likely some larger or denser meteors; they take a lot longer to burn up in our atmosphere, that’s all,” Galdur answered reassuringly.
“Did they hit the ground?” Someone else asked, sounding more nervous than the last dragon.
“Oh, no, I strongly doubt it, they probably burned up entirely,” Antares said matter-of-factly.
“What?! How can you say that?! You saw the meteors continue to head down after the air bursts!” Mihm exclaimed.
“There’s no way those things did any damage. We could head out there and we would find absolutely nothing.”
Before Mihm could make another enraged response, Galdur came in between the two to break up the tensions. “Now, both of you, cool it down. It’s late as it is, I’m sure you’re both just angry because you’re tired. And I’m certain that our fellow Nature dragons are tired as well. Perhaps tomorrow we can do as Antares mentioned and go looking for impact sites, but for now, off to bed. And that goes for all of you!” Galdur finished, turning to the rest of the crowd.
Mihm gave Antares a death glare, but Antares either wasn’t intimidated or flat out didn’t care. Antares turned away and headed back to the Starseeker rooms. Galdur looked towards Mihm expectantly. Kai came up behind her, put a claw on her shoulder and said, “Let’s go,” and walked with Mihm back to the Shatterspell rooms, the Aether grumbling about Antares every step of the way. Galdur turned to her own students and began herding them towards the Dreamstrider rooms. Back under the cover of the trees, Cedar waited until the coast was clear, even though they’d now been seen by several dragons given they’d walked out into the open. Once enough dragons had gone inside, the Aberration ran as silently as they could (which wasn’t very silent at all) towards the Runesworn rooms.
That night, everyone’s minds were filled with thoughts of what the next day would bring.
No one expected that they would be abruptly awoken by calls of distress in the morning.
Mihm woke up with a start, finding Kai trying to shove her so that she would get up.
“Mihm, there are dozens of Nature dragons outside; officials, at that. I have no clue what’s going on, but they all look really stressed out. Worse still, I feel like something’s messing with Nature’s leylines,” Kai explained with a nervous tone. Mihm bolted upright and ran towards the door. She and Kai were joined by dozens more Shatterspell and Nature dragons, all wondering what the commotion was about. When they made their way outside, dragons from all Houses were gathering to hear what was going on.
“I don’t understand it! The grass is changing color!” one Nature dragon shouted.
“Everything’s growing at way faster rates!” shouted another.
“And all the flora are mutating!” yet another called out.
“Please, calm down! One at a time!” Galdur shouted back, trying to keep everything in order. “Get your thoughts together and tell me what happened.”
“Well, last night, we all went to bed as normal, and when we woke up, everything was completely different! The grass is changing color, all the plants are growing faster and appear to be mutating, and on top of that, the energy of the area feels off as well,” someone explained.
“So it happened… entirely within last night…” Galdur repeated with suspicion in their voice. “Where is this happening?”
“There’s several places. We’ve got reports from the Everbloom Gardens, somewhere in the Shrieking Wilds, the Worldedge Wetlands, and some place not far from here, near the Gladeveins,” was the response.
“So, four distinct sites…” Galdur said, putting the pieces together in their head.
“The meteors must have landed there!” Mihm shouted, giving the obvious conclusion before Galdur could.
“There’s no way, we watched them burn up,” Antares refuted.
“How can you say that when there is clear evidence that they’ve landed!” Mihm said, outraged.
“This is no proof of their impact at all! The only way to say for certain is if we went there and found out!” Antares spat back.
“Both of you, enough!” Galdur ordered. The two students fell silent, Mihm sitting on her haunches with a huff and crossing a pair of her arms.
“Actually, now that you mention going to these sites,” a Nature official said, choosing their words carefully. “We could use help when it comes to figuring out everything that’s going on. I mean, there’s a lot of new species to document, and we may end up needing to find a way to stop the spread of whatever is causing this.”
Mihm’s eyes lit up at the proposition. “We could split up! One house goes to each impact site!”
Antares exhaled through her nostrils and decided not to call out Mihm’s insistence on calling them impact sites. Galdur attempted to get everyone under control but their efforts were in vain. All that was then on the minds of the Arcane dragons was exploring the Viridian Labyrinth in search of what was going on. Meteor impacts or not, there were discoveries to be made and dragons from all Houses were eager to make them.
Soon, decisions were made and groups were formed. Runesworn would head towards the site in the Shrieking Wilds. Cedar hoped they could find new hiding places for her experiments there. Galdur, after trying to dispel the need to split up, eventually conceded and decided they would bring their class along with the rest of Dreamstrider to the Worldedge Wetlands. Antares reluctantly decided to accompany her fellow Starseeker students and head to the Everbloom Gardens. She tried justifying the idea to herself that she would use this to prove Mihm wrong, but in truth, she didn’t like the idea of heading out and doing field work. While the Shatterspell house would try to find the site near the Gladeveins, Mihm decided she had a better idea.
“You know what, to prove just how wrong I’m sure Antares is, you and I should go visit all the sites and see what the houses are up to!” she said to Kai.
“Uh, are you sure you’ll be able to get away with that? I know you’re really just eager to get more proof on her,” Kai mentioned.
“Oh, sure I can do this! I can just say that we’re gathering data from all sites on the magic effects, especially the leylines. Then we can head to the Wild Sanctum and send the data back to the Oculus. We can also just send back any information in general as I’m sure those back in the Starfall Isles are wondering what the heck happened,” Mihm assured.
“Well, if you say so,” Kai said back, a tad unconvinced at the Aether’s explanation of her plans.
With that, everyone made their preparations, and soon, all four houses and the Nature dragons with them were off towards the sites, everyone wondering what they would find once they got there.
Artists: BrassicaOracle #42996,KestrelW #687593, MaryseSkippy #338664, ReddyforFreddy #623718, Infenza #175955, ST6X #213005, Koyako #67711, MasqD #84560
Lore Writers: QueenAlais #193752, MysticMeat #85155, ema2 #681916, bexster94 #626928, Ocernia #695757, zombats #199581, Lundlaeva #13217, Draco981 #658978, GoodRageSky #516649, Vaszarraena #710908
