Mentions, in Order: @Mooffins (Byron), @HoaxHoodwink (Citra), @Simslp (Lynmar), @Lizmun (Heishan), @JuliaFaye (Arianwen), @Birdsfoot_Violet (Ishïka), @War_pig (Ailred), @seoulmate (Amelina), @Lizehrd (Emrys), @BluKnight10 (Mosheng), @Stellarrix (Asim), @mochha (Lorelei), @MantaRey (Cordenia), @Mystiluu (Lyali), @Hierophant_ (Ellamae), @Scribbe (Lyonel)
Some members of the Blue Crown Conclave and friends are going to Draackenrust, seat of the Central Matron, to look at the architecture for a day. Below are a series of PoV accounts from different points of the trip.
Wyverns, PoV Byron Croy
If anyone ten years ago had told Count Byron Croy that he would be sitting at this time astride a great gravity-defying lizard with the wingspan of a generously spacious cottage, he would have called them thoroughly insane. Most unfortunately, he thought as the wind buffeted his forehead and cheeks, the thoroughly insane would have been proven in hindsight thoroughly correct. Vyara had introduced this wyvern to him by the name Senhyäla, and a majestic beast she was, with shimmering dark blue scales and a cold underbelly that would be hard to see silhouetted against the sky. Five saddles sat down her body longwise, with straps and ties to affix the passengers' knees and ankles securely to the mount save for Vyara who rode in the front and insisted she did not need such a thing. Aside they were joined by Citra's mount Inra, a younger but quicker and more lithe Wyvern, with these two together providing enough space for those who would be making the journey by Wyvernback (Lynmar and some others insisting in its stead to travel by Leyline, a process left unexplained to Count Croy, and Heishan visibly flying alongside with Arianwen in needless, over the top proof of their Hunter endurance). Though the words that came from his mouth were few, there was a certain weightlessness to the experience that the Count could admire: the way the breeze ran around his shoulders, the cloud-cover soared past below, and every once in a while the distant ground peeled into view as green-gray glimpses of field and forest. Besides, he could muse with a dark little bit of humor, he was surely doing better at this than Ishïka sat behind him who had been gripping the Wyvern's spines and basically lying forward with widened eyes the entire time while turning her head away any time anyone looked at her.
Speaking over top of the prone Ishïka with Byron while Vyara flew in the front was Ailred, himself happy to narrate from his own experiences the answers to what questions the Count might have. And while Byron did not wish to spoil the experience of the flight with too many questions, he did tease a few answers out of the man that might have been harder to arrive to were it Vyara he were asking as they held conversation back and forth. "Is there some sort of military application to these beasts, groundskeeper?" Byron glanced over his shoulder while he spoke, just a little bit, so that he could hold Ailred mostly in his field of view. "Very much so," replied the Maquixtl, "but more for the Isldar. Wyverns don't breathe fire or ice like the legends say, and they aren't immune to arrows, either. It's more like having a very good horse. Get from one place to another quickly." Some gesture of a heavy, scaled hand was swung forward for emphasis. "Gets more interesting when the enemy has airships you need to take down. Or air castles. Hah!" Ailred was clearly alluding to the Dorkarthi, the fell Vampires of Ellador with their magical Dreadforts that rained terror from the sky. One had been over Regalia several years prior, Byron recalled from a particular encyclopedic tome he had been perusing, and caused quite a bit in the way of damage before something had forced it to retreat away. "And do you think our enemies are to have such things?" The Count had to raise his voice just a little bit to call over the buffeting push of the air roaring past with a slight dive down to breach below cloud cover as opposed to above it. "If you've heard the news from the south, Count, that's happening already!"
Byron's would-be reply was silenced by another dip, further down. His attention snapped forward, only to realize that Vyara was taking them rather low over a cresting series of Anglian hills with a tower posted atop them every so often at particular distances. The wheat fields below were golden like anywhere south of Axford that they had already distinctly passed over, but now there were pale white and blue Wyverns watching them from the tops of the towers, one of them calling out to the passing mount every once in a while, which opened its razor-toothed maw to sing back to its kinsmen. "Is this Elf country, miss Ithal?" His line of questioning about Wyverns would have to wait. Turning her head briefly back, Vyara replied while maneuvering around the surface crest of a low forest in the way, "not yet, but it is where the tower forward outposts begin. Usually they prefer to see you when you are approaching, which means one must fly low rather than high. It is common wisdom that 'only a fool would fly in for everyone to see,' but that is only true when you are in the land of enemies, and not of sworn brothers and friends." Answer enough, then. Citra's smaller Wyvern drew up close alongside, having not shared in most of the back and forth calls of the Isldar beasts between the towers with the pass by and looking a little bit worried for itself, assuaged for now by the occasional neck pat from its rider. "I'll be splitting off. Landing should be in ten or twenty minutes, I want to take the lake route." Some nods were exchanged between the riders of either Wyvern after Citra spoke, their hands then jerking right and their flight path peeling away in that direction as Arianwen and Heishan also separated to go with them, with Vyara aiming straight towards a small ashy pinprick on the horizon that slowly, moment by moment, began to develop into the contours of a gray-masoned tower.
Not just a tower, remarked Byron to himself. The largest creature he had ever seen, a blue Dragon the size of a castle, sat perched atop it on hind and fore legs with wings idly rested against its body, and three smaller Dragons just a little bigger than Vyara's Wyvern dancing in the air around them. Every once in a while when a smaller Dragon drew too close, Byron swore he could see the larger one's lips adjust a little as if to snarl in warning to the flight path, only for them to correct at the last moment and the expression to fall back into place with it. Drawing nearer and nearer, the reins pulled left and Vyara guided them away from aiming towards the main tower and off towards what looked like a giant honeycomb to the side absolutely crawling with Wyverns mounting and dismounting, entering and leaving, like a hive of Dragon Worshipers here in the middle of nowhere, lost in northern Anglia. "What was /that/?" was all the Count could manage to ask, half-breathlessly, while they pulled in for a landing and were helped to adjust by a few waiting stablehands who slipped into the room. "Lord Regulus," replied Ailred in his slip from Wyvernback to land on the ground with heavy boots, "King of Dragons."
The Buildings, PoV Amelina
The main object of the trip to Draackenrust had been to gain insight into how the different buildings there might somehow provide inspiration for the restitution of a Dragon Temple in the city, a cause political as much as it was physical. Count Croy hadn't had to accept the invitation by any means, but had likely done so as a political stunt to endear himself just a little with the Regalian conclave of Dragon worshipers, mused Amelina in time to the idle click of her heels. He was there on her right, and Emrys the Tyrian with his cloak of purple guarding them both with a hand on the pommel of his greatsword, along with Ishïka trailing politely with and a small group of local guides, who were vaguely half Isldar and half Anglian in number. She was rather determined to act the part of the hostess and play these different faces off of one another. While news in the capital was not always the easiest thing to parse, Amelina did have a decent enough understanding of the idea that Croy wanted to broker something on behalf of the Dragon conclave, only she couldn't quite conceptualize of what, or why, and the idea that she could not conceive of it bothered her. Heel-clicks stopped and pulled her out of her lulling considerations as they came before a squat-looking stone brick building and the Anglian guide began to explain in Common. Every once in a while the focus of their attention was interrupted by someone or other looking aside to an exaggeratedly gestured conversation Ishïka was having with a sour-looking Isldar in the corner, but Amelina did not go over to intervene.
"The local style is quite simple, and likely not to be well received in the grand Isle. Your suggestion for a… flower field, though," he remarked with a look aside to Byron, "is perfectly feasible, my Lord." The man's hands clapped once and he pulled aside while Amelina, Byron, and Ishïka talked a little amongst themselves about if it would be a better idea to approach with a pitch in the true to form Anglian rustic style, or throw the whole idea out the window as far as the plan for the restitution of a Temple went and just enjoy the trip as tourists instead. Taking advantage of the little gap in his duties, the Viridian Emrys went to subtly pull aside his cloak and bundle it up, leaving it at the foot of a painted shrine of Regulus with swaying purple candles and putting his hands on his hips in distant consideration. A few townsfolk watched him with some confusion, and then understanding with a look from his purple cloak back to him, seeming to think that it indicated some sort of Dragon loyalties instead of relevance to the Imperial House. One doughty-looking farmhand stepped forward to give him a clap on the shoulder before sauntering off, the clatter of metal jolting his spine upright again and reminding him that he should slip back to the rest of the group so as to not miss the rest of their conversation. For the time being it seemed like he hadn't: with Amelina leaning more in the Anglian style direction and Byron against it, they'd agreed to put the matter aside for now until they saw some more buildings, shifting off in another direction.
The Apothecary, PoV Valenia
Valenia had bitten off by far the largest group of companions, pulling Arianwen, Heishan, Lynmar, Mosheng, Citra, Asim, and Lorelei with her on a collective traipse aside to the apothecary's quarters and adjoined smithy and stables to see if they could make themselves of any sort of use to the locals. Anglia is a muddy place, she could not help but repeat in her mind with every step: mud, mud, mud. How it clutched around her ankles like it was trying to drink her whole and clung to her boots for dear life, a little spell directed towards the floor discreetly every once in a while knocking the caked dirt off so that it would not stain the hem of her fine skirts. Further south was even worse, she glowered to herself - Axford, for example, was like crawling through a bog after the rain season had run its course. At least Draackenrust was sort of rocky with hard ground to walk on where the patches of grass could not grow and the dirt did not run deep enough to soak up the storms, rocky enough that she could travel without ruining two pairs of perfectly good shoes. Heishan, on the other hand, seemed very much at home. The short woman was excitedly talking Lorelei's ear off about how the 'Mud King' (whatever that was) would be right at home here, and she should have brought him with her, and was going to absolutely do that the next time they had a reason to come to Anglia. At least they were talking in Common and not Wai-lan, smiled Valenia a little with a tilt of her head, the squat buildings far from the towers and spires where the Wyverns were roosted finally coming into view. Here the roads turned from rustic dirt to more thorough cobble, the party ducking through the nearest doorway to the left: the apothecary proper.
Finding the place thoroughly staffed already, they settled instead for splitting up a little and making conversation, each of them having a different particular thing that they had come there to assess. For Valenia that was asking after their needs: she'd made a decent sum off of the Arcane Affinity, enough to vend supplies if she needed to. Anglian Witches are proud sorts and unlikely to accept anything not picked by their own hands; but even with their polite refusals bogging her down, she was able to get an understanding of the general condition of the place. Draackenrust is very much in the middle of nowhere: the witch iterated to Valenia that nothing happened there unless someone brought something that was happening there. It was the wisdom of the Matron, though, that such a quiet place could be used to project influence from relative safety, and that it could theoretically start holding a lot more people very quickly if things went disastrously in Ellador or somewhere else in the world, relating the story of the successful purge of the Vampires from Anglia and the lull of complete safety that she personally felt this had bought them.
There was room for Valenia to ask some more personal questions as well, with Asim having drifted over to stand alongside expressing a vague sense of protectiveness over the Witch she was talking to. Though it was rather lengthy, there was one exchange between the three that would prove of importance enough to memory: "Kindness is never a failing," urged the Anglian medic, "it takes strength to be kind, because you can only be kind from a position of strength. Cruelty knows all forms," she hummed as a potion began to bubble, "but you can only spare someone who was already at your mercy." Triumphantly raising her finger, Valenia whirled around as if to arm herself with that point against either of the two Red Hunters who she had brought with her, only to see that neither of them were in the room anymore. Instead they had crossed to the other side of the narrow ditch road and were excitedly talking with a hulking Urlan blacksmith about a greatblade he was working on, a gesture spared every once in a while to show where he was hammering a certain divot or groove. There was a part of her that considered striding over to make the point anyway, but seeing Heishan smile with interest, smothered that part and smiled to herself instead with the decision to simply let her be happy. At least Lynmar, Citra, and Mosheng could be located. Citra in a corner engaging in what looked like a little bartering with the stock keeper buying up potions for an unclear purpose with the largest simpering grin on their Allar face, while Lynmar, Mosheng, and Lorelei picked through the library in the corner together. She chose to drift aside and join the latter. "I can't read any of this," Lorelei pouted softly to Valenia about the dusty Old-Anglian tomes, while Mosheng gave Lynmar an intently curious death-stare while he very slowly word by word narrated a translation of a heavy leather-bound tome about the intricacies of Regulus Worship.
"Converting?" Asim stepped forward and nudged the Sihai a little with his elbow and a laugh, only for his eyebrows to knit down and a surprisingly lengthy explanation to follow. "In my country Dragons are worshiped one way, and I have only ever known Dragons to be worshiped one way. Then I came to Regalia: and here, no one can agree on how to worship Dragons. If I am going to be involved, I think that I should know more perspectives than my own, or I am just doomed to make the same mistakes." This prompted some nods of agreement from around the little reading circle and a pause in Lynmar's narration for his eyes to squint up a bit, before with a glance down, he went to continue - before Asim raised a finger for him to pause some more. "I think the most important thing to understand," he said, "is that Regulus' belief of Symbiosis is actually a very new thing. The Regulus who was worshiped in Anglia before Cataclysm and our Regulus are very different people. Ours reassembled the tatters of Draconism from scratch and built his own clergy and his own followers to guide the way. These books are well and good, but they are going to teach you about a practice that has been overwritten by living orders. Which is why they're just in a corner of the library, and very dusty, and not on a shrine for the pilgrims to read. So by all means enjoy the historical curiosity, but just remember not to put it into practice. A living man will always be a hundred times more important than the most descriptive tome." Clapping his hands together once, Asim slipped back, and the reading continued.
The Tower, PoV Sun Heishan
Sun Heishan had never seen anything quite like it: the genuine article of Elven architecture that spiraled to the heavens, white stone on the outside, pale and opalescent inside with fine rock that ran in swirls impossible to form by the Mundane hand. With Vyara at hand on her way up the thousands of steps that carried the visitors to the audience chamber at the summit, there was time for an explanation. Elven towers like this one, stated the Isldar, were designed to intimidate the guest with the majesty of the patron. Much like the Sihai palaces of ten thousand causeways that Heishan was familiar with where a meeting with the King might take an hour to merely arrive to, the troubles one had to go through to cross paths with the one at the top was considered a form of deferential submission through effort. At the mercy of Vyara's architectural rambling, Heishan was not able to get out much more than a stray, derisive mutter of "Elves…" or two before they arrived at the top and crossed past the fur-clad Urlan guards who stood watch at the final inner gate. The hall itself was bereft of any such attendants, only Cordenia herself who sat on an uncomfortable-looking rough-hewn stone chair with a spear leaned against one arm and a scroll draped over the other. A large Elf indeed, Heishan remarked to herself from behind lilac eyes: closer to Lyonel than anything else she might have expected. There was a motion she made to stoop into the traditional bow before being stopped by a hand flicked aside from Vyara, who she watched pace a few steps forward and dip into a bow of her own. Heishan's ears flicked out in expectant attention, only for the dialogue that issued to stream in the Elven tongue and not the Common one, robbing her of even the courtesy of context. Expression glowering, she did her best to guess nonetheless: it looked like an introduction, a greeting. That much, she could understand.
Cordenia replied in a lordly way, with a flick of fingers aside and a raise to a stand from her seat. Heishan nervously flicked eyes between her and Vyara, awkward sentiment mounting for every moment that she could not understand what either of them was saying, but not daring to raise her voice and interrupt them in a Matron's hall of rule. Standing behind Vyara, she could only see Cordenia's expression, which seemed to have mottled from its stoicism into something vaguely concerned. Her next question had a halting sort of tone to it that ended on a punctuated intonation, both eyebrows raising up. Though Heishan was not too sure, she briefly considered aside, she had heard something that sounded like a name. Suldaal, Vyara's mother. The Hunter's expression tightened in thought. Her eyes were jolted back up from her musings by a sudden worsening of tone after whatever Vyara had said in reply whilst she was not paying attention, Cordenia's voice raising in consternation, almost scolding, and then betrayed, and a little angry, thick eyebrows pinching down over eyes which hissed a brighter tone of purple. By contrast, the other Archon with her was soft and deferential, so ashamed of whatever it was she had just replied with that her stare was pinned to the ground and her ears were pulled a little flatter against her head. It was a good thirty seconds before Cordenia stopped shouting at her, only for the three-word reply from Vyara to make the situation even tenser. Not sure what to do, Heishan took a half-shuffling step back to clear a little space while the Matron drew up to Vyara and grabbed her right arm at the fore, fingers white-knuckling.
That, too, changed something. Cordenia's eyebrows furrowed in a different sort of way as she abruptly stopped talking and felt her way around the wrist, fingers pressing to tense against the surface of the arm. Against some ineffectual, quiet protestations from Vyara, she reached down and pulled the glove off of the now revealed prosthetic metal hand that sat there, then looking up into her eyes and asking something quieter. There was an exchange of short sentences between them that lacked whatever hostility had been mounting in the moments just past, before Cordenia gently slid the glove back on and laid a hand on the back of hers. It was utterly silent in the hall for the next ten seconds. Heishan's mind was screaming in the back of her head that this was a place she should not be, and a time she should not be there, and that whatever had just passed between these two people, she had absolutely no business knowing it, but had become privy by accident to something she could not help but want to figure out nonetheless. Her eyes flit back and forth, at this point blatantly staring. It was that stare that would draw Vyara's head to turn a little bit over her shoulder and roll her neck back as if to indicate the companion she had brought with her to Cordenia, dispelling whatever else it was might have been said next, and spoke the only Common words of their trip into the Spire. "I present to you Sun Heishan, Hunter of the Red Dragon Caius." The mood shifted as Cordenia pulled her hand back and let Vyara's slip out of hers, turning aside to take in Heishan properly. Some sweat beaded on her brow in the face of the Matron's stare, though she didn't dare reach a hand up to visibly wipe it away.
"Acceptable," was all Cordenia had to say with a nod, before meandering very, very slowly back to her chair, and sinking into it. Her hand flicked out, dismissively. "You are welcome back, provided you do not cause trouble here. And Vyara," she began, offering something else in reply. Think as she did, though, she did not seem to find a way to put it into words, only shaking her head and then nodding it once. That, and the turn of Vyara's shoulders aside, were all the hints Heishan needed to bow forward and then whip around to shuffle back down the stairs with her.
Wyvern Keepers, PoV Ailred
Ailred, Lyali, Ellamae, Lorelei, and Lyonel separated later on in the evening to enter the Wyvern roosts. As Lyonel declared very loudly in Ailred's face so that there would be absolutely no mistaking of intentions or false camaraderie, he was going to look at his Wyvern because he entrusted it to the care of the hands at Draackenrust, and not because he wanted to do something with Ailred, and would be spending as little time with Ailred in his field of view as physically possible. All Ailred could do in reply was raise both of his eyebrows and wiggle them tauntingly just a little bit, though his eyes briefly snapped aside to make sure Seven Days was still securely sheathed in his belt just in case things got nasty. The Wyvern tower itself much resembled a large honeycomb crawling with the beasts around the edge as they took off or went for a nap in the little outward-facing alcoves painstakingly carved out for them, with the archway for visitors carrying them to a spiral staircase structure in the center that would allow them to ascend or descend the different levels of the roost. True to his word, Lyonel immediately grunted and wordlessly pivoted to a side door away from the Isldar guide and the rest of them as soon as he spotted one, with Ellamae curiously slipping after him rather than remain with the rest. To them, though, some overt exposition was given: new to all three, even to Ailred, who had studied himself on the great tomes of Wyvern rearing in the past. "The bond between an Isldar and a Wyvern is for a lifetime, until the death of either the rider or the Wyvern. If it is the Wyvern who passes first, then the rider must select a new one born on the day of the prior's death, and if it is the rider, then it is the rider's kinsmen who must care for the Wyvern until its expiration."
A rather kingly task that was, chuckled Ailred to himself, as Wyverns could live for a century or two if cared for properly, and maybe these ones lived longer - like the pets of the Ailor, who could inexplicably persist in the world as long as their owners did. "Just tradition?" He asked the guide with his hands folded behind his waist, while Lyali and Lorelei also nodded along in interest. "Part tradition, part Magic," hummed the guide: "even we do not really understand how the first Wyverns were tamed and bound to the will of the Dregodar, or by what means the loyalty of these ancient, wild creatures was attained. There are many superstitions about rearing the child and the Wyvern together, or what color Wyvern to pair to what personality, but in my personal opinion these are just superstitions and we happened to get lucky with a sort of accidental domestication brought on by necessity. Only after the flight to Ellador, mind you, did we begin to tame Wyverns." As for Lyonel and Ellamae, they would go down their side corridor and immediately come face to face with Lyonel's own mount that he had entrusted to this place. He was a hulking red-scaled creature with a permanently glowering expression, a Maquixtl Chantli Wyvern that out-sized the Isldar ones by at least two times over but had all the regal grace of a sack of potatoes given an angry, frilled head. "You fly this thing?!" Ellamae jolted back and almost shouted at the sight, sort of compressing himself against the wall and spreading out against it like spilled jelly. "Yep." Lyonel sounded a little smug, if it was possible for Lyonel to be smug, walking forward and giving it a few pats on the snout. "Old reliable. Never let me down. I'm surprised he doesn't mind the climate here, but I'm not complaining. Easier for me to just leave him here. His name's Tēcu."
Back with the guide, it was Lorelei and Lyali who had the same, simultaneous question: "How do I get a Wyvern of my own?" The tall, lithe man scrunched up his face a bit in thought and pointed first at Lorelei with an indication of "Dexai, though not right now obviously," and then across to Lyali with an indication of "Guldar." He seemed relatively confident in his judgment of their respective origins, then elaborating: "there is a lot of complication with these creatures, things we know but do not understand. Since you already come from Wyvern-riding peoples, it feels like less of an abject risk to have you pick up your own traditions, rather than try to stuff you into ours." That seemed to satisfy Lyali, but not Lorelei, who had another question: "but I rode one here. Is that safe for me to keep doing?" "Well, yes," spoke the guide, "if it was already tamed by another rider, who is flying it while you are also on there, that is fine. Just do not try to 'take it for a spin,' as I hear it to be said, or you are risking something untoward happening." Another question followed - "Are Maquixtl and Sihai Wyverns any different?" The guide nodded with a gesture, holding out his hands as if to indicate breadth. "Maquixtl Wyverns are big and slow, created more to hunt the great creatures of the jungle, than for travel. Stronger than ours, wider. There's one a guest is keeping in the side rooms." Must be referring to Lyonel's, mused Ailred while they spoke. "Sihai Wyverns are pretty, but in my opinion don't really have a military application. You folk have airships that do the job better, and the money to build them, so you never really had to bother with martial applications." With that done and dusted, the guide would continue to lead the way forward, leaving Ailred with a fine series of tips on what to do with his own Wyvern (should he finally manage to get his hands on one, someday) before the sun rose on the next morning and they were obliged to make their way back to Regalia.
Some members of the Blue Crown Conclave and friends are going to Draackenrust, seat of the Central Matron, to look at the architecture for a day. Below are a series of PoV accounts from different points of the trip.
Wyverns, PoV Byron Croy
If anyone ten years ago had told Count Byron Croy that he would be sitting at this time astride a great gravity-defying lizard with the wingspan of a generously spacious cottage, he would have called them thoroughly insane. Most unfortunately, he thought as the wind buffeted his forehead and cheeks, the thoroughly insane would have been proven in hindsight thoroughly correct. Vyara had introduced this wyvern to him by the name Senhyäla, and a majestic beast she was, with shimmering dark blue scales and a cold underbelly that would be hard to see silhouetted against the sky. Five saddles sat down her body longwise, with straps and ties to affix the passengers' knees and ankles securely to the mount save for Vyara who rode in the front and insisted she did not need such a thing. Aside they were joined by Citra's mount Inra, a younger but quicker and more lithe Wyvern, with these two together providing enough space for those who would be making the journey by Wyvernback (Lynmar and some others insisting in its stead to travel by Leyline, a process left unexplained to Count Croy, and Heishan visibly flying alongside with Arianwen in needless, over the top proof of their Hunter endurance). Though the words that came from his mouth were few, there was a certain weightlessness to the experience that the Count could admire: the way the breeze ran around his shoulders, the cloud-cover soared past below, and every once in a while the distant ground peeled into view as green-gray glimpses of field and forest. Besides, he could muse with a dark little bit of humor, he was surely doing better at this than Ishïka sat behind him who had been gripping the Wyvern's spines and basically lying forward with widened eyes the entire time while turning her head away any time anyone looked at her.
Speaking over top of the prone Ishïka with Byron while Vyara flew in the front was Ailred, himself happy to narrate from his own experiences the answers to what questions the Count might have. And while Byron did not wish to spoil the experience of the flight with too many questions, he did tease a few answers out of the man that might have been harder to arrive to were it Vyara he were asking as they held conversation back and forth. "Is there some sort of military application to these beasts, groundskeeper?" Byron glanced over his shoulder while he spoke, just a little bit, so that he could hold Ailred mostly in his field of view. "Very much so," replied the Maquixtl, "but more for the Isldar. Wyverns don't breathe fire or ice like the legends say, and they aren't immune to arrows, either. It's more like having a very good horse. Get from one place to another quickly." Some gesture of a heavy, scaled hand was swung forward for emphasis. "Gets more interesting when the enemy has airships you need to take down. Or air castles. Hah!" Ailred was clearly alluding to the Dorkarthi, the fell Vampires of Ellador with their magical Dreadforts that rained terror from the sky. One had been over Regalia several years prior, Byron recalled from a particular encyclopedic tome he had been perusing, and caused quite a bit in the way of damage before something had forced it to retreat away. "And do you think our enemies are to have such things?" The Count had to raise his voice just a little bit to call over the buffeting push of the air roaring past with a slight dive down to breach below cloud cover as opposed to above it. "If you've heard the news from the south, Count, that's happening already!"
Byron's would-be reply was silenced by another dip, further down. His attention snapped forward, only to realize that Vyara was taking them rather low over a cresting series of Anglian hills with a tower posted atop them every so often at particular distances. The wheat fields below were golden like anywhere south of Axford that they had already distinctly passed over, but now there were pale white and blue Wyverns watching them from the tops of the towers, one of them calling out to the passing mount every once in a while, which opened its razor-toothed maw to sing back to its kinsmen. "Is this Elf country, miss Ithal?" His line of questioning about Wyverns would have to wait. Turning her head briefly back, Vyara replied while maneuvering around the surface crest of a low forest in the way, "not yet, but it is where the tower forward outposts begin. Usually they prefer to see you when you are approaching, which means one must fly low rather than high. It is common wisdom that 'only a fool would fly in for everyone to see,' but that is only true when you are in the land of enemies, and not of sworn brothers and friends." Answer enough, then. Citra's smaller Wyvern drew up close alongside, having not shared in most of the back and forth calls of the Isldar beasts between the towers with the pass by and looking a little bit worried for itself, assuaged for now by the occasional neck pat from its rider. "I'll be splitting off. Landing should be in ten or twenty minutes, I want to take the lake route." Some nods were exchanged between the riders of either Wyvern after Citra spoke, their hands then jerking right and their flight path peeling away in that direction as Arianwen and Heishan also separated to go with them, with Vyara aiming straight towards a small ashy pinprick on the horizon that slowly, moment by moment, began to develop into the contours of a gray-masoned tower.
Not just a tower, remarked Byron to himself. The largest creature he had ever seen, a blue Dragon the size of a castle, sat perched atop it on hind and fore legs with wings idly rested against its body, and three smaller Dragons just a little bigger than Vyara's Wyvern dancing in the air around them. Every once in a while when a smaller Dragon drew too close, Byron swore he could see the larger one's lips adjust a little as if to snarl in warning to the flight path, only for them to correct at the last moment and the expression to fall back into place with it. Drawing nearer and nearer, the reins pulled left and Vyara guided them away from aiming towards the main tower and off towards what looked like a giant honeycomb to the side absolutely crawling with Wyverns mounting and dismounting, entering and leaving, like a hive of Dragon Worshipers here in the middle of nowhere, lost in northern Anglia. "What was /that/?" was all the Count could manage to ask, half-breathlessly, while they pulled in for a landing and were helped to adjust by a few waiting stablehands who slipped into the room. "Lord Regulus," replied Ailred in his slip from Wyvernback to land on the ground with heavy boots, "King of Dragons."
The Buildings, PoV Amelina
The main object of the trip to Draackenrust had been to gain insight into how the different buildings there might somehow provide inspiration for the restitution of a Dragon Temple in the city, a cause political as much as it was physical. Count Croy hadn't had to accept the invitation by any means, but had likely done so as a political stunt to endear himself just a little with the Regalian conclave of Dragon worshipers, mused Amelina in time to the idle click of her heels. He was there on her right, and Emrys the Tyrian with his cloak of purple guarding them both with a hand on the pommel of his greatsword, along with Ishïka trailing politely with and a small group of local guides, who were vaguely half Isldar and half Anglian in number. She was rather determined to act the part of the hostess and play these different faces off of one another. While news in the capital was not always the easiest thing to parse, Amelina did have a decent enough understanding of the idea that Croy wanted to broker something on behalf of the Dragon conclave, only she couldn't quite conceptualize of what, or why, and the idea that she could not conceive of it bothered her. Heel-clicks stopped and pulled her out of her lulling considerations as they came before a squat-looking stone brick building and the Anglian guide began to explain in Common. Every once in a while the focus of their attention was interrupted by someone or other looking aside to an exaggeratedly gestured conversation Ishïka was having with a sour-looking Isldar in the corner, but Amelina did not go over to intervene.
"The local style is quite simple, and likely not to be well received in the grand Isle. Your suggestion for a… flower field, though," he remarked with a look aside to Byron, "is perfectly feasible, my Lord." The man's hands clapped once and he pulled aside while Amelina, Byron, and Ishïka talked a little amongst themselves about if it would be a better idea to approach with a pitch in the true to form Anglian rustic style, or throw the whole idea out the window as far as the plan for the restitution of a Temple went and just enjoy the trip as tourists instead. Taking advantage of the little gap in his duties, the Viridian Emrys went to subtly pull aside his cloak and bundle it up, leaving it at the foot of a painted shrine of Regulus with swaying purple candles and putting his hands on his hips in distant consideration. A few townsfolk watched him with some confusion, and then understanding with a look from his purple cloak back to him, seeming to think that it indicated some sort of Dragon loyalties instead of relevance to the Imperial House. One doughty-looking farmhand stepped forward to give him a clap on the shoulder before sauntering off, the clatter of metal jolting his spine upright again and reminding him that he should slip back to the rest of the group so as to not miss the rest of their conversation. For the time being it seemed like he hadn't: with Amelina leaning more in the Anglian style direction and Byron against it, they'd agreed to put the matter aside for now until they saw some more buildings, shifting off in another direction.
The Apothecary, PoV Valenia
Valenia had bitten off by far the largest group of companions, pulling Arianwen, Heishan, Lynmar, Mosheng, Citra, Asim, and Lorelei with her on a collective traipse aside to the apothecary's quarters and adjoined smithy and stables to see if they could make themselves of any sort of use to the locals. Anglia is a muddy place, she could not help but repeat in her mind with every step: mud, mud, mud. How it clutched around her ankles like it was trying to drink her whole and clung to her boots for dear life, a little spell directed towards the floor discreetly every once in a while knocking the caked dirt off so that it would not stain the hem of her fine skirts. Further south was even worse, she glowered to herself - Axford, for example, was like crawling through a bog after the rain season had run its course. At least Draackenrust was sort of rocky with hard ground to walk on where the patches of grass could not grow and the dirt did not run deep enough to soak up the storms, rocky enough that she could travel without ruining two pairs of perfectly good shoes. Heishan, on the other hand, seemed very much at home. The short woman was excitedly talking Lorelei's ear off about how the 'Mud King' (whatever that was) would be right at home here, and she should have brought him with her, and was going to absolutely do that the next time they had a reason to come to Anglia. At least they were talking in Common and not Wai-lan, smiled Valenia a little with a tilt of her head, the squat buildings far from the towers and spires where the Wyverns were roosted finally coming into view. Here the roads turned from rustic dirt to more thorough cobble, the party ducking through the nearest doorway to the left: the apothecary proper.
Finding the place thoroughly staffed already, they settled instead for splitting up a little and making conversation, each of them having a different particular thing that they had come there to assess. For Valenia that was asking after their needs: she'd made a decent sum off of the Arcane Affinity, enough to vend supplies if she needed to. Anglian Witches are proud sorts and unlikely to accept anything not picked by their own hands; but even with their polite refusals bogging her down, she was able to get an understanding of the general condition of the place. Draackenrust is very much in the middle of nowhere: the witch iterated to Valenia that nothing happened there unless someone brought something that was happening there. It was the wisdom of the Matron, though, that such a quiet place could be used to project influence from relative safety, and that it could theoretically start holding a lot more people very quickly if things went disastrously in Ellador or somewhere else in the world, relating the story of the successful purge of the Vampires from Anglia and the lull of complete safety that she personally felt this had bought them.
There was room for Valenia to ask some more personal questions as well, with Asim having drifted over to stand alongside expressing a vague sense of protectiveness over the Witch she was talking to. Though it was rather lengthy, there was one exchange between the three that would prove of importance enough to memory: "Kindness is never a failing," urged the Anglian medic, "it takes strength to be kind, because you can only be kind from a position of strength. Cruelty knows all forms," she hummed as a potion began to bubble, "but you can only spare someone who was already at your mercy." Triumphantly raising her finger, Valenia whirled around as if to arm herself with that point against either of the two Red Hunters who she had brought with her, only to see that neither of them were in the room anymore. Instead they had crossed to the other side of the narrow ditch road and were excitedly talking with a hulking Urlan blacksmith about a greatblade he was working on, a gesture spared every once in a while to show where he was hammering a certain divot or groove. There was a part of her that considered striding over to make the point anyway, but seeing Heishan smile with interest, smothered that part and smiled to herself instead with the decision to simply let her be happy. At least Lynmar, Citra, and Mosheng could be located. Citra in a corner engaging in what looked like a little bartering with the stock keeper buying up potions for an unclear purpose with the largest simpering grin on their Allar face, while Lynmar, Mosheng, and Lorelei picked through the library in the corner together. She chose to drift aside and join the latter. "I can't read any of this," Lorelei pouted softly to Valenia about the dusty Old-Anglian tomes, while Mosheng gave Lynmar an intently curious death-stare while he very slowly word by word narrated a translation of a heavy leather-bound tome about the intricacies of Regulus Worship.
"Converting?" Asim stepped forward and nudged the Sihai a little with his elbow and a laugh, only for his eyebrows to knit down and a surprisingly lengthy explanation to follow. "In my country Dragons are worshiped one way, and I have only ever known Dragons to be worshiped one way. Then I came to Regalia: and here, no one can agree on how to worship Dragons. If I am going to be involved, I think that I should know more perspectives than my own, or I am just doomed to make the same mistakes." This prompted some nods of agreement from around the little reading circle and a pause in Lynmar's narration for his eyes to squint up a bit, before with a glance down, he went to continue - before Asim raised a finger for him to pause some more. "I think the most important thing to understand," he said, "is that Regulus' belief of Symbiosis is actually a very new thing. The Regulus who was worshiped in Anglia before Cataclysm and our Regulus are very different people. Ours reassembled the tatters of Draconism from scratch and built his own clergy and his own followers to guide the way. These books are well and good, but they are going to teach you about a practice that has been overwritten by living orders. Which is why they're just in a corner of the library, and very dusty, and not on a shrine for the pilgrims to read. So by all means enjoy the historical curiosity, but just remember not to put it into practice. A living man will always be a hundred times more important than the most descriptive tome." Clapping his hands together once, Asim slipped back, and the reading continued.
The Tower, PoV Sun Heishan
Sun Heishan had never seen anything quite like it: the genuine article of Elven architecture that spiraled to the heavens, white stone on the outside, pale and opalescent inside with fine rock that ran in swirls impossible to form by the Mundane hand. With Vyara at hand on her way up the thousands of steps that carried the visitors to the audience chamber at the summit, there was time for an explanation. Elven towers like this one, stated the Isldar, were designed to intimidate the guest with the majesty of the patron. Much like the Sihai palaces of ten thousand causeways that Heishan was familiar with where a meeting with the King might take an hour to merely arrive to, the troubles one had to go through to cross paths with the one at the top was considered a form of deferential submission through effort. At the mercy of Vyara's architectural rambling, Heishan was not able to get out much more than a stray, derisive mutter of "Elves…" or two before they arrived at the top and crossed past the fur-clad Urlan guards who stood watch at the final inner gate. The hall itself was bereft of any such attendants, only Cordenia herself who sat on an uncomfortable-looking rough-hewn stone chair with a spear leaned against one arm and a scroll draped over the other. A large Elf indeed, Heishan remarked to herself from behind lilac eyes: closer to Lyonel than anything else she might have expected. There was a motion she made to stoop into the traditional bow before being stopped by a hand flicked aside from Vyara, who she watched pace a few steps forward and dip into a bow of her own. Heishan's ears flicked out in expectant attention, only for the dialogue that issued to stream in the Elven tongue and not the Common one, robbing her of even the courtesy of context. Expression glowering, she did her best to guess nonetheless: it looked like an introduction, a greeting. That much, she could understand.
Cordenia replied in a lordly way, with a flick of fingers aside and a raise to a stand from her seat. Heishan nervously flicked eyes between her and Vyara, awkward sentiment mounting for every moment that she could not understand what either of them was saying, but not daring to raise her voice and interrupt them in a Matron's hall of rule. Standing behind Vyara, she could only see Cordenia's expression, which seemed to have mottled from its stoicism into something vaguely concerned. Her next question had a halting sort of tone to it that ended on a punctuated intonation, both eyebrows raising up. Though Heishan was not too sure, she briefly considered aside, she had heard something that sounded like a name. Suldaal, Vyara's mother. The Hunter's expression tightened in thought. Her eyes were jolted back up from her musings by a sudden worsening of tone after whatever Vyara had said in reply whilst she was not paying attention, Cordenia's voice raising in consternation, almost scolding, and then betrayed, and a little angry, thick eyebrows pinching down over eyes which hissed a brighter tone of purple. By contrast, the other Archon with her was soft and deferential, so ashamed of whatever it was she had just replied with that her stare was pinned to the ground and her ears were pulled a little flatter against her head. It was a good thirty seconds before Cordenia stopped shouting at her, only for the three-word reply from Vyara to make the situation even tenser. Not sure what to do, Heishan took a half-shuffling step back to clear a little space while the Matron drew up to Vyara and grabbed her right arm at the fore, fingers white-knuckling.
That, too, changed something. Cordenia's eyebrows furrowed in a different sort of way as she abruptly stopped talking and felt her way around the wrist, fingers pressing to tense against the surface of the arm. Against some ineffectual, quiet protestations from Vyara, she reached down and pulled the glove off of the now revealed prosthetic metal hand that sat there, then looking up into her eyes and asking something quieter. There was an exchange of short sentences between them that lacked whatever hostility had been mounting in the moments just past, before Cordenia gently slid the glove back on and laid a hand on the back of hers. It was utterly silent in the hall for the next ten seconds. Heishan's mind was screaming in the back of her head that this was a place she should not be, and a time she should not be there, and that whatever had just passed between these two people, she had absolutely no business knowing it, but had become privy by accident to something she could not help but want to figure out nonetheless. Her eyes flit back and forth, at this point blatantly staring. It was that stare that would draw Vyara's head to turn a little bit over her shoulder and roll her neck back as if to indicate the companion she had brought with her to Cordenia, dispelling whatever else it was might have been said next, and spoke the only Common words of their trip into the Spire. "I present to you Sun Heishan, Hunter of the Red Dragon Caius." The mood shifted as Cordenia pulled her hand back and let Vyara's slip out of hers, turning aside to take in Heishan properly. Some sweat beaded on her brow in the face of the Matron's stare, though she didn't dare reach a hand up to visibly wipe it away.
"Acceptable," was all Cordenia had to say with a nod, before meandering very, very slowly back to her chair, and sinking into it. Her hand flicked out, dismissively. "You are welcome back, provided you do not cause trouble here. And Vyara," she began, offering something else in reply. Think as she did, though, she did not seem to find a way to put it into words, only shaking her head and then nodding it once. That, and the turn of Vyara's shoulders aside, were all the hints Heishan needed to bow forward and then whip around to shuffle back down the stairs with her.
Wyvern Keepers, PoV Ailred
Ailred, Lyali, Ellamae, Lorelei, and Lyonel separated later on in the evening to enter the Wyvern roosts. As Lyonel declared very loudly in Ailred's face so that there would be absolutely no mistaking of intentions or false camaraderie, he was going to look at his Wyvern because he entrusted it to the care of the hands at Draackenrust, and not because he wanted to do something with Ailred, and would be spending as little time with Ailred in his field of view as physically possible. All Ailred could do in reply was raise both of his eyebrows and wiggle them tauntingly just a little bit, though his eyes briefly snapped aside to make sure Seven Days was still securely sheathed in his belt just in case things got nasty. The Wyvern tower itself much resembled a large honeycomb crawling with the beasts around the edge as they took off or went for a nap in the little outward-facing alcoves painstakingly carved out for them, with the archway for visitors carrying them to a spiral staircase structure in the center that would allow them to ascend or descend the different levels of the roost. True to his word, Lyonel immediately grunted and wordlessly pivoted to a side door away from the Isldar guide and the rest of them as soon as he spotted one, with Ellamae curiously slipping after him rather than remain with the rest. To them, though, some overt exposition was given: new to all three, even to Ailred, who had studied himself on the great tomes of Wyvern rearing in the past. "The bond between an Isldar and a Wyvern is for a lifetime, until the death of either the rider or the Wyvern. If it is the Wyvern who passes first, then the rider must select a new one born on the day of the prior's death, and if it is the rider, then it is the rider's kinsmen who must care for the Wyvern until its expiration."
A rather kingly task that was, chuckled Ailred to himself, as Wyverns could live for a century or two if cared for properly, and maybe these ones lived longer - like the pets of the Ailor, who could inexplicably persist in the world as long as their owners did. "Just tradition?" He asked the guide with his hands folded behind his waist, while Lyali and Lorelei also nodded along in interest. "Part tradition, part Magic," hummed the guide: "even we do not really understand how the first Wyverns were tamed and bound to the will of the Dregodar, or by what means the loyalty of these ancient, wild creatures was attained. There are many superstitions about rearing the child and the Wyvern together, or what color Wyvern to pair to what personality, but in my personal opinion these are just superstitions and we happened to get lucky with a sort of accidental domestication brought on by necessity. Only after the flight to Ellador, mind you, did we begin to tame Wyverns." As for Lyonel and Ellamae, they would go down their side corridor and immediately come face to face with Lyonel's own mount that he had entrusted to this place. He was a hulking red-scaled creature with a permanently glowering expression, a Maquixtl Chantli Wyvern that out-sized the Isldar ones by at least two times over but had all the regal grace of a sack of potatoes given an angry, frilled head. "You fly this thing?!" Ellamae jolted back and almost shouted at the sight, sort of compressing himself against the wall and spreading out against it like spilled jelly. "Yep." Lyonel sounded a little smug, if it was possible for Lyonel to be smug, walking forward and giving it a few pats on the snout. "Old reliable. Never let me down. I'm surprised he doesn't mind the climate here, but I'm not complaining. Easier for me to just leave him here. His name's Tēcu."
Back with the guide, it was Lorelei and Lyali who had the same, simultaneous question: "How do I get a Wyvern of my own?" The tall, lithe man scrunched up his face a bit in thought and pointed first at Lorelei with an indication of "Dexai, though not right now obviously," and then across to Lyali with an indication of "Guldar." He seemed relatively confident in his judgment of their respective origins, then elaborating: "there is a lot of complication with these creatures, things we know but do not understand. Since you already come from Wyvern-riding peoples, it feels like less of an abject risk to have you pick up your own traditions, rather than try to stuff you into ours." That seemed to satisfy Lyali, but not Lorelei, who had another question: "but I rode one here. Is that safe for me to keep doing?" "Well, yes," spoke the guide, "if it was already tamed by another rider, who is flying it while you are also on there, that is fine. Just do not try to 'take it for a spin,' as I hear it to be said, or you are risking something untoward happening." Another question followed - "Are Maquixtl and Sihai Wyverns any different?" The guide nodded with a gesture, holding out his hands as if to indicate breadth. "Maquixtl Wyverns are big and slow, created more to hunt the great creatures of the jungle, than for travel. Stronger than ours, wider. There's one a guest is keeping in the side rooms." Must be referring to Lyonel's, mused Ailred while they spoke. "Sihai Wyverns are pretty, but in my opinion don't really have a military application. You folk have airships that do the job better, and the money to build them, so you never really had to bother with martial applications." With that done and dusted, the guide would continue to lead the way forward, leaving Ailred with a fine series of tips on what to do with his own Wyvern (should he finally manage to get his hands on one, someday) before the sun rose on the next morning and they were obliged to make their way back to Regalia.
