Adrasteia

Teia was on her way to the library. Rain was pouring down and as soon as she entered the main hall, one of the librarians came running over with some towels. It certainly would be a disaster, if some dripping water would come in contact with the treasured books and parchments, destroying one of them. A nightmare for every bibliophile--the book lovers-- and the young Bogsneak surely was one of them.

A stack of books was already waiting for her, she requested them yesterday as she did every day for as long as she could remember. Now, she would go to find an isolated desk somewhere in the librare, settle down and start reading. No visitor was allowed to reshelve their taken out books, because apparently so many did it incorrectly for such a long time that it has become a pure nightmare for the librarians. They were still looking for certain books, some of them might be lost forever--until a curious student might stumble upon them while rummaging through the shelfs. Today, after being read, books are to be deposited at two desks in the middle of the room for the librarians to put them back to their acknowledged place.

Adrasteia soon read through her stack, but then decided to not disturb one of the staff members by requesting yet another certain book. At this rate, she’d never able to find anything really interesting. Therefore, Teia stood up and took a walk through the deeper parts of the library, searching for unique lore to satisfy her thirst for knowledge.

After strolling around for some time she suddenly noticed what seems to be a shortcut, right at the very back of one tiny, dusty reading room. Thinking about it, the dragon was sure to have never noticed either of them before. After hesitating for a moment, Teia went in and was surpriced that--instead of leading back to the known parts--she found heself in a hidden section of the library! The books there were older, covered in dust and haven’t been opened for a very long time.

Curious, the young dragon got closer and started looking through the titles. Then she pulled out an ancient tomb, old and leathery, with mysterious runes painted on its cover and she could feel a strange aura coming from it. Still, she decided to take a brief glimpse at the tomb's content and opened the strange book.

It had all sorts of strange formulas and drawings in it. Was it magic or science? Alchemy was a subject Teia always had a certain interest in and this book seemed to deal with some rather dark parts of it. Parts better not left alone. But Adrasteia continued reading and unconsciously decided on giving one of the formulas a try.

She smugged the tomb out of the library--an act she had never carried out before and had never even thought of doing until now--and took it back to her home. There she started gathering up all the ingredients for the experiment, heated the fire below the cauldron and began.

The brew she made had a strange combination of indefinable colours and was giving off an unimaginable odor. But Teia diligently followed all the instructions given, so the brew in front of her had to a success!

All of a sudden, strange sounds came from the cauldron as the brew started to boil. The young dragon knew immediately, something was going wrong and tried to remove it from the fire. But it simply was too late. The content she made explode. The brew scattered around and made a big mess out of Teias place. Lucky as she was, Adrasteia was able to take shelter behind a table so none of the slime came in contact with her skin.

Peeping out of her hiding spot, the dragon made sure the danger was over before coming out again. Her place needed a few days of intense cleaning, but there didn't seem to be any major damage. Ander there was still the outcome of your experiment!

Curious--but very careful--she moved through the mess on the floor to take a look into the cauldron... At its bottom, to Adrasteias great disappointment, only some deep green slime was to be seen! The experiment had been a failure!

All of a sudden Teia noticed a motion out of the corner of her eye. Then, the remains of the brew started gathering at one spot, transforming into something…else. Something that was alive! She hurried over to the book to see, if she might have overlooked a small print, but couldn’t find out anything about this strange occurrence!

Excited, and maybe a little bit afraid, the dragon watched as the slime kept gathering, changing form and consistency—until giving birth to a new lifeform! One, that very soon would become Adrasteia's new familiar…