Burningflame

Lore Dragon - Permanent Resident

Gladekeeper’s Call chapter 2, part 1 - The Search for the Speaker (Burningflame/Bram/Nysthermos)

The sky was red, the crimson orb spreading its light, smoke dimmed, as the earth and water returned its reflection. The two dragons, looking like apparitions risen from the bloodied earth, given breath by the choking air itself, red war made manifest, stalked the streets. If any remained alive in that afternath, they did not show themselves. Monsters walked here.

“Son of Plague, are you done yet?” The larger asked his companion, who chuckled grimly.

“What need have they of me?” The Bogsneak’s crest and wings flared high, looking much like the flames which surrounded them. “They have plenty of rot on their own. But even my mistress turns from foulness such as this. Why are we still here?”

“Treachery.” The Guardian agreed, fanning bloody fins, his body embered coal. “Over now, at least. Except…”

“Except?”

The Guardian did not answer. Shouldered open doors left agape in a small-windowed prison. No one had bothered to lock them. There were no locked doors anymore, here.

“Empty. I told you.”

The Guardian did not answer. His companion saw no need to follow him below. There was treasure for the taking, up here, if one was not squeamish. The Sons of Plaguebringer never were, of course.

Darkness, Broken doors where they were not open, save one. It didn’t matter. When the red Guardian added another broken door, even the rays of the setting sun illuminated only blackness within. Blackness that shifted,and rumbled ominously.

“Have you come to kill me then?” Arcane eyes opened in the impossible darkness, narrowed, lifted, seeming disembodied. “Or are you a spirit come to fetch me to our Father?”

“Neither. The Usurper is dead, and the Monster who laid him low stands before you. Yet is the King your charge, and the Prince dead with him. My Search is over.”

The blackness rumbled again. “To no purpose then, for there is nothing left to guard. The Shade has won.”

“There is you. Nysthermos, the One Who Spoke.”

“To deaf ears.” To search out a place to guard, a grand thing. To guard one who was meant to tip the balance of the world an even greater one. But he had failed. The King his charge, and the youth after him, who had been meant to heal the land, lay dead. That a single minion of Shade was gone, as well, was no solace. “I am no one.”

The red Guardian was silent.

Between the strength of two, the chains were broken. Where one had come, two emerged. A solid shadow, deeper than night, more than twice his size, fins touched with the breath of twilight left after the sunset.

Three climbed to the pinnacle overlooking the city. The land, lost despite everything. The Guardian who had become war, dipped his head, shamed by the victory won too late, and worthless. His cry, despairing.

“I have become what I should not be. By our Father, speak again, to Bram who needs you!”

The blackness gazed into the west, towards a home left long ago. Words remembered, once spoken to a reluctant jailer, returned again, solace for both him and his deliverer. Nysthermos could not see this last flicker of hope die out again, that had almost died in him. He spoke.

"I can see the sun from here. Look how bright, how beautiful. Can you feel its promise on your scales, in your heart? I can. It promises another day, and life in this one. I'll never give up as long as I can see the sun.”

(Story inspired by original quote from Schingiuire "I can see the sun from here. Look how bright, how beautiful. Can you feel its promise on your scales, in your heart? I can. It promises another day, and life in this one. I'll never give up as long as I can see the sun.")


Gladekeepers Call, Chaper 1, part 2 - To Save a Monster (Burningflame/Bram/others of the Called)

It was hard to fight anything in this burning chaos, between the leaping flames and the choking clouds of foulness. It was even harder to fight someone, who had eyes in the back of his head - nevermind his neck, both flanks, his tail. One moment, exploding in front of them, wings spread, leaping, shrieking - another, dashing, jumping out of the way of one carefully laid ambush after another, and to add mortal insult on top of it, laughing scornfully at their efforts as he fled them easily.

“I am Dust! As in, I leave you in it!”

He prided himself on being the fastest Wildclaw of this or any other flight. In the air certainly, but even on land, no mirror could outrun him either, or twist as quickly through this labyrinth of destruction. But these were too easy. Thugs, mere minions of the Shade-controlled that he hated so much. That seemed to be in every place he moved to, no matter how fast he was. Were they after him, or did he just see them that much more clearly than everyone else?

….stop sending me the small fry, you idiots, are you that much afraid of me….

————

The self-proclaimed ‘Dust’ didn’t realise he was being watched. Opportunist that he was, the bogsneak Burningflame was happy to let someone else test his quarry.

“I need him.”

“He may be our only hope.” came the tentative whisper of the young Ridgeback Kyril at the Bogsneak’s side.

Burningflame shook his headfins abruptly. “Would you mind not waving that snoot at me? I feel like I’m going to be impaled, every other word from you! And yes, if we can stop him before they tire *him* out. I want out of this sooty mess, and I won’t leave without Bram.”

“He’s Shade-fouled, and arcane at that.” The sly voice of the female bogsneak neared contempt. “Why should you care, son of Plague?”

“Come closer, my lovely Verea, and I’ll tear out your pretty throat for that. That is my business, understood?”

Verea grinned toothily, showing how thin their truce really was, and turned away. She was doing this for her mother, the Gladekeeper, and for no one else. If Guardian Ophanim weren’t here, son of Plague but born of nature, it would be the other bogsneak’s blood on her snout.

If it weren’t for Opha’s vetting, Burningflame wouldn’t have either the nature witch or the young ice fool. He laughed to himself. An icer who hated the cold. At least he gave him respect for the wicked-looking lightning that coursed through his curcuit trails. The Shade was thick here, and the warning also warned other useless idiots away. Good thing. They might be able to cleanse one and one only, if Opha was right. And he, Burningflame, decided who that would be.

“Time to form up. End of the far row there. Can’t you hear him?” The son of Plague gestured where a fiery Guardian roared his fury near the edge of the destroyed city. “Time to do our own speedster herding.”

They all had some aspect of Fire about them, though only had three born of fire among them. Clan-lord Tenebrae and Farseer Ophanim has been insistent, that all the flights had to work together to fight the Shade. For this test, and it was a test, Opha had come, bringing nature and Plague, ice and fire and wind, to bring a son of Arcane and a son of Wind home.

In form of flame and soot, burned things and bone, several dragons formed a gauntlet of illusory destruction, a rifled path to send their bullet to its target.

“Kym! Up!” The bogsneak leader shouted, and the swift daughter of fire flew upward, sending a barrage of fireworks back along her course at one startled Wildclaw who was not expecting death from above.

———

Dust lept and rocketed forward, too startled to even think of a clever retort at the rapidly receding ember. Clouds so thick, getting away his only intent. On either side, flame with smoke rising, snapping jaws of the fire-born missing him, but only barely. The dark bulk of murky char, flames rising far above his head, bones from which flames licked, and he bolted past them, past a strike of lightning that illuminated a row of huge brilliant emerald eyes, Seer to Seer, that rippled shut along the only way forward -

Into the open maw of the largest, bloodiest looking Guardian he had ever seen. Jaws snapping, arcane eyes dimmed with Shade.

The hated Shade. Finally.

Dust had never moved so fast, or fought so hard. Tearing,biting, rending was his aim, but the Guardian was clever, quicker than his bulk seemed possible, as if he’d trained all his life for battle, knew every form of attack before Dust could even think of it.

Then he heard the words in his head, as if formed of the wind that flame made. So many voices, but not at him, not against him. For him, lifting him.

...don’t try to win! Tire him, tire him, do what *you* are best at! Taunt him, twist him, keep him moving til his own body is his enemy! Keep going, keep going! Move Move Move!...

Dust was the whirlwind, the dust devil, never stopping. He was never where jaw snapped, where wing slashed, nor gigantic paw slammed. Then finally, finally, the behemoth slowed, his heavy head raked the ground as he stumbled.

“Kyril! NOW!!”

Lightning filled his field of vision, and the scream from the monster Guardian was like nothing he had ever heard. Then, only darkness.

————-

Dust woke groggily, to quiet voices. Flame still lit the underside of billowing smoke, the air still stank of things that were not meant to burn.

“I’m glad it worked, I did not wish to kill you.” said a young voice, and the lightning-tech-armored Ridgeback pushed a basket of charred meat before the bloody Guardian, treating him like a treasured friend, instead of the monster he had been.

But as the Wildclaw lifted his head at the smell, finding a similar basket next to him, the Guardian swung his head towards him.

“Is it true, what I hear, that such a little thing as you saved me from the Shade?”

Dust shook his head. The fire-scaled Bogsneak answered instead. “It was all of them, Bram. I have never had to say thank you to anyone, and now, damn you, you have *forced* me to say thank you to at least eight dragons at once!”

The toothy sneer paid lying witness to the deep gratitude in the bogsneak soldier’s voice.

“It won’t be the last time, I wager.” returned the becalmed fiend, between gulps of meat. “Now I need to kill the monster who made me one, the one who killed the King and the Prince his heir.”

Dust couldn’t help but see the way the bogsneak looked away from Bram. Over his head, he saw the other Seer shake his head. *Not the time to tell him.*

He didn’t know what he’d gotten into, didn’t know any of these dragons, and only one was from Wind. He’d always thought flights stayed to themselves, and breeds too, mostly. But they’d outsmarted him and made him a weapon to save someone’s life. They cared about each other, worked together to fight the Shade. He could get into that. So he might just stick around for a while.

:::::::::::::::::::

Cast in rough order of appearance:
Bram Guardian Arcane
Burningflame Bogsneak Plague
Nysthermos Guardian Arcane
Dust Wildclaw Wind
Verea Bogsneak Nature
Kyril Ridgeback Ice/Lightning’s Gift wielder
Kym Pearlcatcher Fire
The “Rifle” Path:
Durah Guardian Wind
Ellipsis Guardian Fire
Goodfellow Guardian Fire
Ophanim Guardian, Multigaze Seer; Plague parents, born of Nature

—————

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(More lore to come)

[Of Clans and Shade protagonist]

Lore appearances in Guardian Bram, Mirror Zulu and Wildclaw Dust

(Origin lair: KellyTheWolf; her favorites)