Azarah & The Author

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. Up until the Ninth Cycle, known colloquially to this Strand as the “Song of Storms,” creatures of astrandic origin had remained isolated to their respective manifestations.

Azarah frowned, left eyebrow raising as she read. Bound in thick leather and secured by two metal clasps, the book felt heavy in her hands. It seemed intended for a scholar’s desk, not to be toted around the wilderness. Despite the sheer amount of information it boasted, Azarah had yet to learn anything even vaguely practical to her current situation.

As another blast of searing flame obliterated a nearby stalagmite and a guttural roar echoed in her ears, Azarah ducked back behind the large boulder obscuring her and continued to read.

The events surrounding The Convergence introduced a multitude of diverse fauna, including those of draconic variety, into the local ecosystem. This Strand, known as “Myrendir” to its inhabitants, suffered the near-extinction of multiple species due to the integration of the fire-breathing reptiles native to the Strand designated as “Caldera.”

Sensing the boulder wouldn’t keep her concealed for much longer, Azarah looked up, searching the clifftop for another place to hide. A short distance across the large field of limestone formations, she spotted a viable place underneath a naturally-formed archway. It sat just to the left of the river running through the middle of the plateau. While narrow, the river flowed swiftly, carving through the landscape before cresting over the cliffside into the forest below.

Stuffing the book in her satchel, she began to slink across the gap, staying low, carefully positioning herself behind boulders and other rock formations as she went. Reaching the archway, she quickly crouched down and reopened the book.

While the frigid climate and icy winds of Miriheim (Strandic Designation: “Peaks”) would prove inhospitable to all but the most resilient of the cold-blooded serpents, the temperate weather systems of Myrendir allowed for dragons to survive, reproduce, and biologically diverge into various subspecies.

Azarah shivered. She knew endless sands and an unforgiving sun, so while the breeze was mild, it felt bone-chilling to her small frame. She also couldn’t help but feel, even on this open cliff face, a bit claustrophobic; everywhere she turned she saw an endless number of trees, a thick forest stretching out to the horizon. She could appreciate the beauty of it all, but it felt so foreign to her.

While most retained their wings and other flight-enabling characteristics, some draconic varieties, like drakes, exchanged these capabilities, along with standard draconic intelligence, for more robust features: larger musculature, thicker scales, and much more impetuous fire-breath.

Alright, so clearly a drake, she thought. She hadn’t spotted wings or anything similar on the back of the beast, and it was much bigger than the wyrms she was familiar with. She looked down, realizing the earlier blast had singed the hairs off her left arm from a good thirty paces away. Her bronze skin remained untouched, but she doubted it would stay that way for long.

Red drakes are particularly dangerous, superseded only by black drakes. Red drakes tend to present themselves more aggressively, taking any encroachment on their territory as an egregious violation. It should be noted that any attempt to make contact with this draconic variety is strongly ill-advised.

As if that wasn’t obvious, she thought. Leaning out from behind the stone column, her new vantage allowed her to catch a glimpse of the drake as it passed between rock formations, its crimson scales reflecting the evening glow of the sun. As it continued to search for her amidst the myriad of outcroppings scattered along the cliffside, she could feel her heart pounding in her chest like her father’s kettledrum.

Annotation: it should also be noted that this compendium is a work of perpetual revision and addition, and that the author strives diligently to both quantify and qualify the vast sea of conjecture and theory constituting Strandic Cosmology…

Unbelievable, Azarah thought, rolling her eyes. The drake roared, expressing its own frustration as it searched the monoliths for its prey.

“Look,” Azarah whispered, her curt tone expressing both her exasperation and her fear. “We both need to get out of here, right? Can you at least give me something useful?”

Annotation: The Strands seem to detest classification, yet this author persists in the endeavor to archive the ephemeral nature of—

“Fine! I’ll let you tell me all about the Skaldean Empire and Isso’Da linguistics. Deal?”

The text on the open page shimmered, then faded, and was quickly replaced by an article titled in bold ink:

“The Limitations of Various Draconic Subspecies in Aquatic Settings”

That’ll work, Azarah thought.

Eyeing the bubbling river as it disappeared over the cliff, Azarah closed the book, tucking it back into her satchel. She took one cautious step out from underneath the archway, then took off in a dead sprint as another roar erupted from the drake. She felt the ground begin to rumble as she ran, the screeching sound of claw upon stone filling her ears as the beast thundered towards her. With the book closed, she heard the familiar deep, authoritative, and painfully monotonous voice resonate in her head:

Annotation: Red drakes, even during infantile stages of development, can easily outpace most low-Yield bipedal humanoids while on shared terrain.

“Right.”

As the drake quickly closed the gap, Azarah held up her right hand. Swirls of soft emerald light began to emanate from inside her satchel, trailing up her forearm before coalescing between her fingers. As the drake reared its head, jaws open wide, she clenched her hand into a fist and pointed it at the ground. The light lanced from her fist into the stone, sending fragments of rock in every direction. While not terribly powerful, the force of the blast was enough to launch her into the air. The drake’s jaws snapped together around the space she occupied only a moment before, the sound echoing in her ears like a forgemaster’s hammer on steel.

Well, I guess your information hasn’t been completely useless, she thought as she sailed over the edge of the cliff.

Spinning in the air from the momentum, Azarah caught a full view of the drake. Smoke curling from rows of jagged teeth, the massive beast snarled jets of flames from its nostrils in frustration, golden slit irises burning with primal rage as it watched her fall.

Azarah continued to spin as she fell, the rushing flow of the river rapidly approaching before she finally crashed into the icy current. Immediately swept up in the torrent, she tried desperately to hold her breath as the force of impact threatened to tear it from her. She reached out, searching frantically for anything to grab onto. After a few snapped twigs and branches, she finally caught hold of a tree limb wedged between two large river rocks, using it to pull herself ashore. She crawled onto the bank, coughing as she collapsed on a bed of shale. She laid there, staring back up at the cliff, now a considerable distance away. She could still hear the drake’s outrage as it howled in dismay, seeing small jets of flame shoot into the air as it roared.

Annotation: while The Archive is theoretically waterproof, the author prefers that it maintain minimal contact with aquatic bodies in order to avoid testing the aforementioned theory.

Azarah groaned.

A few silent moments went by, then the voice continued: …Now, while the Skaldean Empire and the Isso’Da may seem unrelated, originating from different Strandic manifestations and existing during different Cycles, there are several non-trivial correlations between the longstanding monarchy and the horned bipedal ungulates native to the...

Azarah closed her eyes and, considering the journey ahead, hoped desperately that she’d drift off to sleep.