Isle of Vist: The Dragons of Vella Grund

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.

We shared our lands with other species, smattered alongside our home country’s cliff sides and mountains. Alas, they had no luck against the dragons. And now, neither do we. They have moved inwards. Us humans have begun our routes underground. Through the tunnels we have forged into the largest mountain, Sviet, in the Isle of Vist. Our solitude has not been easy to maintain as our people hide away. The dragons came from a place humans believed to be overwhelmed by hurricanes and earthquakes, and home to our Gods wraiths. The home of destruction by the seas lies many rests away in the land of Vella Grund.

The Isle of Vist has remained a haven for travelers for centuries, a home to be given as refuge. The Isle has been under supervision of its original settlers, the family of Tregr and their kin. They have always been known to keep safe biddings and steer away from battle, men of pacifism. Luckily in Vist, dragons hadn’t affected us, those in the family of Tregr, believed they didn’t even exist. Until the summer solstice began in the year of the 8th 100 hundred. Many of our people had traveled to the far mainlands of what was to be discovered as a new land. We only heard from those who came back, they claim with horrible poetry of being stricken with greed, and blood soaked wheat fields flustered in the heavy winds. We were afraid and the choice to stay was obvious. For dozens of years we slowly lost brigades of our people. Believing that those who stayed would be safer in those new lands, but we are not safe anywhere, other than the Mountain Sviet; A colossal act of our Gods. Towering over our Isles furthest edges, has given us refuge in its darkest crevasses. Sviet birthed into a shelter to our small armory, a hidden chamber built three ancestries ago.

I woke up in the mountain on the 10th day of the dragon's raid, and my mother was all I had. She was the first one taken. Delivered into the sky by a sleuthing, and white-eyed dragon. It had a broken presence with blackened, charred horns, and gray wings that bore the marks of diabolism. It struck just above the ground with a tremor through our toes, breaking the surface of our clover fields as it flew straight upwards. I remember the voice deep like an ocean trench, and the screams of my mother ringing like an iron plate against a stonewall. There was silence after, as they only struck one person a day. All that fell from the lurid and sunless gray above us, was my mothers tunic. It was in perfect condition, no rip… No blood… What do they do to them? What do they do to us? I have to know. We see them once a day, they stay until dusk and disappear. We do not see the same one coming back to take us, what do they plan and believe? Seven people are gone. We have hidden well enough to keep three days of people out of their coal stained claws. We must save more. We do not know their intentions with us. We do not project ourselves on this land as the only ritualistic species… They are not just dragons. They shape into many different colors or types and sizes, some able to break their own bodies to transition into a human. These forms they possess have never been understood. The years before their invasion were blundered with laughter and poetry and we sang, danced, and feasted together as one people. But today, our days are infected, we shiver and whimper in the ice whipped drafts of the Mountain Sviet.

Why they have returned, scares my people more than the dragons themselves. They aren’t just hungry, it's clear… So, what do they really want?