Roleplay

"Yeah." Rhydel nodded in response, looked up in consideration for a moment once again, and began rambling on, half to himself, as Rye thought back to his clan. "Wonder how we got so lucky with our emperor... she's so polite, and I've heard Luminax acts like a wild animal- Oh!" His focus was turned, instead, to the skydancer's newest question.

"If you think she doesn't enjoy her position now, you should have seen her when she was first turned. I'll be honest, I didn't get to see it either, she was the very first one in the clan, but I've heard stories a-plenty. For the first year or so, all of her time was split between acting absolutely rabid and being chained down for the safety of the clan, or being investigated by our scientists and apothecaries, or, her favorite activity, crawling under the heaviest object she could spot and lay there and not come out for hours or days.

"They wouldn't throw her out of the clan because her in-life parents were still alive and well, one of them still is, and the virus very specifically does not want you to die. You know how you, in theory, could bite off your claws but your brain doesn't want you to do that so it would be really physically hard? For us, that applies to our entire being. This virus is all about preservation, and it would be a feat I can't even fathom to make yourself kick the bucket again at this point. We really just have to... wait until we wear away, I suppose."

Rhydel took a moment, both to clear his throat, and to gather the words he wanted to use next. "Relietta is perfectly content now, though. She's proud to be in the position she's in, to have grown as much as she did, and to lead an entire collective of folks like her. She seems on the edge so much because a lot of us just think and act differently to living dragons. It took me a lot of practice to remember how I used to talk towards other people. I used to be just as bad as any of the other undead."

"Interesting. Very interesting." Rye wondered how his Council would react to this news. The Council were of four different flights, but the Nature Councilor is the unspoken leader of them all, given the Clan's territory. She was a... Passionate, is a nice word. It was a toss of a coin whether she would be overjoyed or horrified at the discovery of this virus.

It had been a long day for the trio, and it finally caught up to the one who had not yet nodded off. He yawned, showing off his impressive rows of teeth for a Skydancer. After a couple smacks of his beak, "Dear Rhydel, I do believe it is about time that I join my cohorts in slumber. We've had..." A weak laugh. "Quite the day, as you can imagine."

"Oh, certainly. The boneyard is quite tiring when you're not used to it, not to mention the clan, I perfectly understand. Make yourself as comfortable as you need, I usually just rest on whatever cushion I can grab." He passed a warm smile to Rye. With the confirmation that everyone was headed to sleep, the skydancer stretched his wings behind him and pushed his arms out as far as they would go to stretch out his muscles.

"Tell me if you need anything. Diryi should be dropping off food soon, so you could eat in the morning if you'd like." He wiggled a bit and shook out his feathers before leaning down towards his book. "Don't leave the room until I'm up, Italia roams the halls in the morning and she doesn't take well to being startled."

"We aren't picky, have our own barbecue if we do wish to heat things up." Rye smiled, Flair huffing in her sleep as she unconsciously heard herself be called a barbecue.

As Rye and Flair finally dozed off, Anwir opened her lavender eyes and sloooooowly pulled her maw into a grin.

Time for some chaos.

She very gently fluttered off of Flair's head and up to a cupboard, scuttling across and weaving through books and vials and objects of all sorts. They were all very interesting, but the talk of an Emperor - and a polite one at that - intrigued her. With a bit of magic, she cloaked herself to be semi-transparent, as well as nearly noiseless. She did not hide her scent, but she didn't have much of a scent to her to begin with... She smelled like a beetle and mushrooms.

When Anwir came to the edge of the shelving before peaking down to make sure Rhydel was sleeping or otherwise distracted. Believing she found an opening, she would gently flutter through the space and through the entrance of Rhydel's room, scrabbling to hang onto the walls of the hallway. She gazed about, having excellent night vision if the hallways had gone dark. The Veilspun was mostly soundless and invisible, but would indeed get caught by someone looking for trouble.

And wander the possibly many halls Anwir would try, committing the upwards spiral stairs as a way out, or simply fluttering back to Rhydel's room and act like nothing happened if she were caught, but she really wanted to find this Emperor, or something interesting. The Undead were interesting enough; the Council would want to have this juicy bit of information.

The night had been drifting upon the Wasteland by the time she made her great escape. She caught the precise moment when dragons began to retire to their rooms, those who remained on the surface finding their spots to sleep and those who actually had rooms, who seemed, for the most part, to be living dragons and the more sapient of the undead, were coming down the stairs in waves of four or five, chatting to each other before drifting off behind curtains to their sleep.

The curtains seemed less for privacy and more for just a makeshift door into the next room, as it would have been outrageously easy for the veilspun to get a peek at where everyone was going. With her size and her method of hiding, plus every dragon being distracted by drowsiness or their clanmates, she went totally unnoticed. When the bustling settled down, she had all the room into the world to see into, well, the rooms.

All of them were different, too. Some were much like Rhydel's, with some shelves and belongings but otherwise mounds and mounds of pillows, as it was likely the only comfort these dragons got. Relietta didn't ever retire below Marrowmouth, but Calamity did, and her particular room was frigid. It was unclear where the cold was coming from, as the room itself didn't contain any obvious sources of ice, but there were vents here and there that would occasionally let out a puff of what was surely frost. She settled down in the center of it all, in a depression sinking slightly down in the floor, a single blueish blanket set out beneath her. She slept standing upright. Not a single aspect of it seemed comfortable.

Others were similar to her condition - it seemed these dragons were good at hiding their need for other environments, as each room was almost comical in its suitability for the user. There was one coatl who was doused in seething coals when he snuggled into a bed of fiery timber, and a skydancer slept a little ways away from him, doing his very best to avoid the blazing heat on the other side of the room. The wildclaw Anwir could have recognized as Eridan was entirely submerged in a bath of water hollowed out of the ground, and Diryi and Dessess both joined her in the room, their heads resting on her back, but themselves sitting in a more earth-like, rocky terrain. That purpley spiral that had been especially interested in the visitors was entirely curled around a perch, made of a dark wood that pulsed violently with veins of rushing magic.

Finally, a lead! One all-white, shimmering, well-dressed imperial emerged from the group after all the rest had gone to sleep. She looked especially grumpy with her life the moment she stopped talking to those around her, as if she had been putting up a face of tolerance, but the last thing she said to a fellow imperial was that she hoped Italia was asleep by this time. She trailed all the way down the hallway, her hefty tail dragging lazily behind her, looking awfully glum for her glorious appearance. The hallway went so far that there stopped being rooms on either side and, all of a sudden, the roof got big enough for at least three imps to be standing up on one another's backs. The sconces became few and far between until, finally, she reached an enormous door, the width and height of the hallway itself, circular in shape. The glittery imperial grasped the ring door handle in her foreclaws and heaved it open with all her might, exposing a room almost the size of Marrowmouth itself, currently, drenched in darkness - had the hallway really descended that far? At least it was a gradual slope, nigh-unnoticeable.

If there was light to be had in this room, the imperial didn't turn it on yet. But there was definitely, definitely something in there - it simply, oddly enough, didn't feel empty.

Anwir was almost enamoured with the idea of perusing every inhabitant’s room, but knew sooner or later there would be a dragon who would be able to persieve her.

For now, seeing the Emperor with her own eyes would do

For now.

The Veilspun fluttered and scuttled across the walls of the Imperial’s trail, staying well behind the immense and glittery dragon’s bulk, keeping only near her tail. As the Imperial delved deeper, Anwir only grew more and more excited. The darker the better! Her lavender eyes could see even in magical darkness.

The darkness didn't last for long. The shimmering imperial slunk down into the doorway, descending a moderately sized flight of stairs that was entirely shrouded in shadow. Surely it was invisible to the normal dragon's eye, especially a light-flighted dragon, of all people, but the imperial's step appeared to be nonchalant and practiced. Before she had finished the stairway, the door began to shut - Anwir could have seen the prehensile end of her tail tugging on an iron bar installed at the bottom of the wood, easily serving as enough grip to shut with the pure strength of an imperial's weight.

The moment that door rattled the ground with its firm shut, surely a hundred sconce torches were engulfed in flame and flooded the chamber with a dim light, just bright enough for all the shapes within it to be clear to the typical dragon. The source of the fire was clear, as one gargantuan head in the room's middle drew back and puffed a little cloud of smoke from its nostrils.

The emperor. Surely three times the size of the imperial Anwir had followed, appropriate for the three heads she possessed. The one in the middle was the most pure white and the largest of the three, the secondmost on the left and possessing a red underbelly that trailed down to her chest, and the smallest on the right, head a deep gray but highlighted in pale yellow every now and then. They conjoined on broad shoulders, following back to three tails that curled around each other at the base as if one, and, further down, disconnected out into separate tips. It was unclear how many wings or legs she had with everything neatly folded to her body, surely at least three pairs of each? What was clear, though, was that this emperor wasn't rotting. She had passed that stage - the pieces of her body that had once torn away were reduced to bones. Patches of skeleton around her arms, some along her necks, the middle head with a missing piece of skin from her right eye down to her nostril.

The heads weren't looking at the imperial, though, which said imperial looked obviously distraught about, as if she was always the focus of her attention when she was in the room. They were staring straight ahead, at the invisble veilspun.

At first, Anwir thought nothing of Italia’s gaze in her supposed direction. She scuttled some more along the wall, but noticed Italia following her.

Oh no.

She skittered across the wall in a figure eight to see if the Emperor’s gaze would follow, and when it did, Anwir... Simply froze.

I’m not here! I’m a bug! Yes! A bug! Hardly a snack! Look away!

Oliva huffed and planted herself down directly in front of Italia's enormous chest. "No hello? No good night? Hey! What are you even-" The imperial's head briefly followed Italia's gazes, but she spotted nothing on the walls. "What are you looking at? Is the fire distracting you again? Let's-"

She couldn't help an exasperated gasp when Italia ignored her completely, rising to her feet and stepping to the side of the much smaller dragon. Gods, she looked even bigger upright. Her heads stood straight and tall, and her legs, of which it appeared there were nine, supported her weight as it heaved forward with every step. Italia stopped just before she bumped into the wall, Oliva following close behind to find out what all the ruckus was about.

Oliva still hadn't a clue what she was looking at, but the emperor seemed entirely confident. The two heads to the side cocked in curiosity while the one in the middle leaned forward right up close to Anwir. Her nose alone could have crushed the veilspun.

Her voice was grizzly and baritone, lightly echoing after her words came out, as if the vocal cords of one of the zombies had been exalted unto those of a deity's. "Hello?"

AAAAHHHHH I’M GOING TO GET EATEN— Oh.

Anwir was frightened out of the spell concentration, and she quickly became visible, trying to flatten herself against the stone as best she could and peeking through tiny fingers covering her eyes. After a moment of realization, she flittered away from the wall and above Italia’s snout so she could see her better— oh who are we kidding, if she saw Anwir invisible *all the way over here*, she could probably see her through walls. She simply hovered there for politeness’ sake.

“Ah. Pardon me.” Anwir combed at her silky, multicoloured locks, some of which got stuck in the branches of her horns; the flower buds were growing back. “Hello! My name is Anwir. You are so... Very big!” She hid her nervousness through laughter. She had never been this close to an Emperor before. Yes, she had seen a few over her years on Sornieth, but always from the safety of her dark, brambled forest.