Broken

Ringwyrms are the descendants of heretic-scholars from the Light Flight who sought to tame Shade energy. Each believed the world's truths might be clarified through this communion, but the roles of researcher and subject became blurred. Whatever fate ultimately befell them has been lost, stricken from history. Many thought it best the Scholars remain buried with the knowledge they wished to unearth, both for Sornieth and for the outcast remnants of their line...

The story of Broken, Ringwyrm of Decay, part Dragon, part Shade, Healer of the Clan of the Called

Gladekeeper’s Call - The Wyrm Alone, Yet Not Alone, part 1

Ophanim, the Sentinel, the Farseer, was troubled, and consulted with Tenebrae, and the others of the Called.

“I do not know what I am seeing, Wind-wise. Counsel me.” The Many-Eyed Sentinel had seen this for days now. Son of Plague, yet Nature-green eyes rippled open and shut along his Guardian flank.

“Neither Shade, nor Shade-enslaved, nor Shade-bearing…” The Clan-Lord’s mild Tundra gaze moved over the behemoths around or rather, above him. Of all flights and species, counselors and friends.

“Do I simply destroy it when I find it?” said the shy Ice Ridgeback with Lightning’s gift. Kyril already crackled in his agitation, his head reared high. The Guardians, Lancelot who bore Shade wisps now, trapped safely within filigree-bound star-fields, and Bram, once enslaved, turned to him and spoke as one. “Peace, slave-freer.”

Tenebrae spoke softly. “We do not know what we face yet.”

“Only that we shall find it. The day, or rather night, comes. Soon, we will know.” the Sentinel seemed tired. He had seen so much, and more than once, did many eyes close awhile before heavy-lidded opening. “Soon…”

“Yet I sense no danger, and my perimeter is large,” said the Wildclaw Dust, his own Multi-gaze sharp, as he called from his endless windy movement around them. Even the clan’s fireflies and mages, Faes, Dancers and all, spun lazily in their quiet watching gyres, hearing, seeing nothing.

The group parted, to make room for one unexpected.

“Libra, why come you here? You are sick, you do not have the strength for this! Ori, why did you not stop him!” Tenebrae, the ever-calm, began to show the edge of worry.

The light-scholar came forward slowly, supported by the elder Guardian whose hoary hide and long beard made it seem like he should be the one to need support. “Nothing will keep me from my charge,” rumbled the ancient. “And he - “

“And I have the knowledge that you seek,” said the ailing young scholar, one who once had borne the Shade within, and sickened still, his body failing him little by little. Unable to keep up with the decay of consumption, despite all the healers of the clan, he knew why he paid dearly. The end, so long delayed, was close. He had only one more task that he must do, before the rot within, beyond even any Plague ability to cause or cure, would take him.

“I sought forbidden knowledge in the light-lands, and found it. The buried heretic-scholar scrolls should have remained so, but for my arrogance.” Libra trembled, but swung a heavy head around, to catch all their eyes. “I will be the vanguard, and seek the one who seeks us - “

“No…” came the rumble all around, taken up by the lighter, brighter and odder sound of their fellows, every dragon and beast tongue in alien accord.

“Libra is right.” Came the shadow voice that hung above all their heads. The Nocturne mage, who had built the sentient machines in dragon-form, for the Shade hunt. “We will go tonight to find what seeks us, and is waiting, silent, for us.”

“Ambush? Then how no harm see?” The Fae mage Tok, tiny, but most powerful of all of them, in the wooden-clatter notes of his kind.

“There is none.” The Shadow-voice in mimicked wooden notes replied. “What we seek, is yet trapped, and in grave danger and alone. Destruction its fate ere long.”

“All the better then, isn’t it?” The deep-earth rumble of the one who held Tok as charge, the Onyx-encrusted Sap. “We are not the only ones to hunt the Shade, who eradicate the scourge that sucks our world dry! Let whoever hunts beyond our perimeter have their prey, then. Let Ophanim sleep, and it will be over by morning.”

“No!” The Sentinel roared, startling the assembled crowd. He was quiet, except in grave danger. Yet, there was no danger here, nor had the Sentinel said there was for them. All the multiple eyes of those that looked back at him, held one question. Why?

“You do not want to see the future I see, if we do nothing.” The pain in the Far-Seer’s voice was deeper than they had ever heard. Desperate from lack of sleep, he lifted head and tail and wings, the bright eyes of Nature reflecting the last rays of day, all along his body like a pointer. “Bid farewell to the Home of the Call, Nature-brethren. Though the respite was kind, the Light Realm awaits.”

Libra slowly began to move along the way that the Sentinel, who pacee ahead showed him. There was no need really, as The rest of the nomadswww followed, trusting in those who had been Called before them, who had accepted them, companioned them in all their trials and never yet proved false of heart.
——-

“Maggot! Filth!” Catch him brother!” The silverblack Guardian called to her twin, paired with her, the charge of both, the Light-borders that had long been encroached upon. Their enemy, the Shade-corrupted shells that meant to spread their reigns, piece by piece, over all of Sornieth. The legacy of the heretic-scholars, and if and when and how they found their spawn, any of them, that was their end.

The purposes of the Ringwyrm kin, alien to them, twisted into dark legends and murderous tales, with enough truth in them to quail the bravest, so when those spiral worm-things rose into the battlefield, the Light Guardians wished themselves fire and lightning to destroy them. Like the fungi their lairs resembled, spreading under the earth as the Corrupted spread over it, there were none among living dragonkind more loathed than they, more likened to living poison than life.

Then it was that Winterborn, held pinned under his claw the last of them, barely it seemed out of hatching form, calling in its strange twisted tongue for elder sisters, elder brothers, either killed or vanished under the earth. He pressed just enough, to feel the back of the curling writhing thing, helpless in churned mud, snap.

The scree of pain joined by bellow so loud, so near, that the victor’s whole massive body shivered in resonance, almost paralyzed, and twitched away from the now dead thing.

“Almost. Not Quite.” The shadow voice hissed past his ear, as a Nocturne landed and a maelstrom of wings and walls of solid flesh beat against him and shoved him and his sister as if *they* were hatchlings Two against a full clan, but there would be no death here tonight..

“Almost. Not Quite.” The voice called, over and over, and joined in all the languages of all of dragon and beast kind, until the grieving bellows silenced, the loudest having been the one who saw that it had to happen this way, the one whose many eyes saw nothing more and wondered why it was raining.

The Nocturne Mage, lifted the twitching form, and lay it on a frame tied around the neck of the ailing scholar. She had prepared for this, and helped the youngling latch onto his flesh and drink.

“Feed and diagnose, and heal and be healed, until two dying lives revive each other. Shade made flesh, by flesh Shade-eaten, be made whole.”