#mama is a greater deity LOOKING LIKE THAT.... i had to play dress up with her

[fr-blackiebelle]

The Sunrot Resurrections: Part I - Overture

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@incalyscent, @tangelojack

When Juarve was a little girl, she heard the dead whispering.

She was prone to wandering, and her mama never paid much attention to where she went. Her mama never paid much attention to anything at all.

Juarve would walk out of the caverns, past the guards, past the wards, and head into the Boneyard. Some of the dead sang sweetly, humming old prayers and hymns on their long-still breath. Others would bemoan of their violent ends, while others wanted revenge for their long-ago murders.

She would come home as the sun set, and nobody missed her. She would hide among older brothers and sisters, all dressed the same in black pelts and hides. Her father had too many children too fast to keep them all straight.

Sometimes she told her mama what the dead told her, and Cosette would tell her to stop playing games that would give her nightmares. So she stopped telling her mama what she did during the day.

Once she told Ragbala, the fervent holy-healer, about the things she heard. He was a friend to all the younger dragons in the clan, and would always take their questions seriously. “There’s a logical explanation for this,” he assured her. “You aren’t mad, I’ll figure it out. Don’t you worry one bit.”

He introduced her to his friend and fellow holyhealer, Firasas. They held her steady and called her magic from her body. She had a vast surplus of plague magic, though perfectly harmless. They could drain the excess from her, with the cost of suppressing her potential as a mage. She politely declined, as she could not imagine the silence.

Years later, how she wished to turn back time.

A fae rode into Virulent on the back of an elk. He was old, with tattered wings, bleary eyes, and dented armor. A warrior once, but now he preferred to trade goods. Her father agreed to give him a place in the clan.

Juarve was curious about this stranger, and asked him what happened to his wings. Her mother never taught her tact.

The fae flicked his blackened, stubby wings, then whispered out in carefully-practiced tone of amusement; “I served dragons greater then I, child, and got my reward for it. A little squabble with some ice mages was enough to ground me.”

And so began their friendship.

She never learned what his name was, not until much later. She thought him as the stranger with the twisted back, and he thought her as the Chieftain’s last daughter.

He was a quiet ear, this stranger, and would let her ramble on for ages. He rarely spoke until she told him of the dead, of the dreams.

“I saw my mama in my dreams last night, but she was all wrong. Her skin was pale and her armor was gold and her eyes were bright red.”

The stranger had seen her parents before, he knew what they looked like, knew that this was wrong. He gave her a strange look. She continued.

“I saw my father too, and he was wearing a headdress over his face.”

The stranger took her deep into the Boneyard.

They traveled by night, by the moonlight. She was fearful of a mirror attack, but the stranger said that he would kill them if they did. The glint in his eye made her believe he wasn’t joking.

He rode atop his elk, and the elk pulled a cart. There were a few rations, but nothing filling, and only enough for a fortnight. He packed a bizarre amount of salted meat, as neither of them had teeth suited for that. There was a bale of hay for the elk, and a few more sacks that she was forbidden to look in. She walked beside the cart.

Juarve did end up looking in a sack, out of curiosity alone. There was a golden war-gauntlet, meant for a larger breed, carved with runes and battle-blessings. It was beautiful, and must have come from the Ashfall Waste judging from its craftiness. She made to touch it, to touch this gold finery and run her unworthy claws against the loveliest thing in the Wasteland. It burned.

On the pad of her thumb and forefinger, the fur was burnt away and the flesh was scorched. The pain went away as soon as she let go, but her arm tingled for days. Why the stranger had this infernal, cursed armor, she did not know. She didn’t think she wanted to.

One day, three days into the Boneyard, they found what they were looking for. Or so the stranger said. It looked like just more bones from a distance.

She saw a graveyard of bones, lined neatly by the row, whispering of their murder. Whispering of a death by ice and magic. Some of them laid on their sides, bones picked clean and white, while others laid jumbled in piles of ash, bones splintered and blackened.

They found the ruins of a great bone wall, torn down like someone wanted it to be forgotten. The stranger stalked around its width until he found where the gate used to be. Nearby were three skulls, each antlered, each burned, each with a rope through a eye socket to link it to the others. The fae cut free the skull with heavy black antlers, and let the other two lie. The fallen skulls whispered of their unrightful deaths in battle, surrounded by fire. The black-antlered skull was silent.

This was the first time in her life she had encountered this. The silent dead. It was downright bizarre, and left a sour taste in her mouth. It made her think about Ragbala’s offer to take away her magic. She took along the other two antlered skulls, tying them around her waist, just to fill this foreboding silence.

“My name is Mars,” the stranger told her, that morning during supper, unprompted. He said nothing more, but appeared heartened by the finding of the skull.

It took them another two nights of wandering to find something else, though this was even more puzzling to her, as it blended in with the rest of the Boneyard. Why they needed this one, she didn’t know.

The guardian had died on their back, the long fingers of their wings flared outward. The hot Wasteland sun had cured the thin tendons that held the bones together. Other than their skull, the skeleton was untouched.

The skull was a ghastly thing. Juarve said that the dragon must have died by being beaten with a rock, and the stranger agreed with her. Its jaw was broken in three and laid amongst its neck, and teeth laid scattered all around in a halo. The whole face was caved in to a gaping black hole. She would not had been able to identify it as a guardian besides its deep chest and shape of its horns.

“We’ll need to collect the bones,” Mars said. “We need every one of them, child.”

And by ‘we’, he meant her. She scooped up handfuls of teeth and sand, picked up long fragments of bone, and strained to lay ribs lengthwise in the cart. Mars traced out protective wards in the sand, and kept watch from his perch in the blackened skull’s antlers.

When every last piece was picked from the filth, they set off again. Mars painted a ward on her forehead, and the tingle in her arm spread to her spine. Juarve followed the cart, quietly. The guardian just as quiet, and she stared into the black, ruined depths of the skull as they walked.

It was when they saw a tendril she realized where they were going.

On the horizon was a red wall, bumpy and twisted with tendrils. The soil was starting to become a darker red then the rest of the Waste, and the air grew more humid, and stayed warmer at night. They were approaching Rotrock Rim, and the Wyrmwound could be their only destination. The tingle in her body began to grow stronger, like her leg if she sat on it too long.

“We should reach our destination in the next night,” Mars told her, examining a map. “And we’re not in the path of any known clans living around the Rim, especially the Hellreek, so we shouldn’t have any trouble.”

They reached the Wyrmwound while the moon was still high.

There were pilgrims, ragged and hungry, praying along the rim. There were preachers preaching, there were pairs throwing in food as sacrifices. A band of raiders, led by a fearsome warlord, were throwing in pink-eyed captives for success on future raids.

Mars backed the cart up to the edge, and began to throw bones into the churning liquid.

Juarve helped him, moving the largest bones. She launched the great rib-bones, each the girth and length of a small tree, and found almost fun in it as they struck the surface with almighty splashes.

While she was throwing bones, the fae stopped to trace runes into the soil. The liquid began to bubble where the bones were striking, like a pot about to boil over. Some of the pilgrims wandered close, curious as to what was happening.

As another bone disappeared, she felt something warm drip down her face, and touched her scorched hand to her forehead. It came away red, the ward painted on her forehead had begun to bleed. She held the hand up, words caught in her throat.

Mars came over and touched her forehead, no pity in his eyes. He caught a fistful of red, a fistful of blood, and climbed back into the cart. Only the ruined skill remained, staring over the Wyrmwound with its ruined face.

He spat into his bloody palm, and began to trace runes onto the skull. Down the lengths of the horns and the space between them, anywhere the bone was intact. Dragons on the other side were coming over, she could see them pointing and running.

Mars began to chant, stopping his hand from painting, talking in tongue older then draconic. A tongue that only the oldest wyrms could know. She did not know it, but somehow the words were hot in her ears. He was called the deities by their names, she realized, not by their titles. This was blasphemy, and her body ached with the plague magic inside her, making every fiber of her being sing.

“By the binding bones of Artaios, by the endless heavens of Ghurab, by the depthless seas of Rhenik, by the eternal forges of Akiri. By the will and order of the Lightweaver, I beg of thee, O Jhortanas, Mother of Rot, Sister of Life, Bringer of Plague, to grant life to this Daughter of Plague, who was struck down before she could prove her greatness and worthiness to life.”

Mars moved behind the skull, bracing himself against it, preparing to push.

“O Jhortanas, know that her resurrection will bring upon change to the Wasteland, know that your domain and your will will spread far, know that the Sister of Shadows will cower and yield to you and the Sister of Light, and that the Sister of Life will once more taste your claws.”

He pushed the skull to the end of the cart, so it teetered, about to fall.

“O Jhortanas, accept this boon and alliance, and grant this Daughter of Plague life once more.”

Mars tipped the skull over the edge of the cart, and it rolled into liquid of the Wyrmwound hard enough to splash. Juarve was struck by droplets of the magic, and her clothes began to sizzle. She did not feel it over the beating of her heart and the dull throb of magic in her bones.

For a few long seconds, nothing. Nothing at all.

Then the skull resurfaced, its empty, black, smashed in grin bobbing in the acid, its surroundings in a frenzied boil, then slender fingers of red plague magic began to trace the runes.

Fragments of bone began to slide from the depths of the Wyrmwound, from the Plaguebringer’s cauldron of rot, and fitted themselves back into place, giving shape to the guardian’s ruined features. When it was reformed enough that Juarve could see the black pits of its eyes, flesh rose from the liquid. It attached to the bone, it covered the runes and she could see the shape of muscle forming. The jaw snapped back into place, and long strands of flesh rolled down to shroud it. A tongue flashed pink behind the sun-bleached glimpse of teeth.

She was horrified, disgusted, and in shock, and she couldn’t stop watching.

As white scales began to envelope the muscle, the head started to rise from the surface. It was supported by a red neck, ivory scales striping into place up and down it. Then the wings, broad and elegant with the membrane lashing between the bones, the holes rapidly sealing. A white snake of a tail.

The resurrected Guardian moved to the lip of the Wyrmwound, and reared. Her back rose, red magic pouring off like water, her white claws digging into that dark red earth. A cry, a deep primal thing, rose from the hollow of her sun-bleached chest to tear out of her tattered throat. She climbed from the depths of all Eleven Hells, returned from the dead, and lived.

Juarve went to her knees, and so did Mars. Half of the pilgrims had fled into the night, while the rest threw themselves willingly into the Plaguebringer’s embrace.

“Toril,” Mars cried in a voice a wonder and reverence that did not suit a old wyrm.

She dipped her head, regarding the fae with a red eye, a eye as red as the magic that created her. Toril stared at him for a long few moments, then swiveled her head to look at Juarve.

Her other eye, she saw, was gold.

#Virulent Lore #Clan Lore #Mars #Juarve #Toril #goddamn that is some good lore if i do say so myself #have fun caly #and have fun tj #i threw a hellreek mention in there #which is realistic because they're RIGHT THERE and it would suck if mars's plans got found out too soon so he has to be careful about that #i don't know if you read the tags #i hope you do because my tags are quality #i'm really proud about how it's turned out #i mean #I've improve a lot since i started writing lore #since like two years ago #i've been planning this for like six months #and i wrote it in like four hours #gold star for me