| Clutch 26 | |
|---|---|
| Dam | Gold Oriapeth |
| Sire | Bronze Roheith |
| Theme | Dangerous Places to Be |
| Number of Eggs | 11 |
| Clutching Date | 29 August 2022 |
| Hatching Date | ?? October 2022 |
Globular Expanse Egg
From a distance, this egg will always appear soft and gelatinous; the blend of pastel pink and dusky purple stripes create a baffling optical illusion. With each head turn, the hardening ovum appears to ungulate faintly, slivers of rainbow pearlescence glimmering and catching the light. Shadowed aubergine stripes maintain a uniform distance down the sides, lending a soft appearance. The tendrils hold together the rippling surface like gift wrap string, stretched bands of sinew that tether the trembling creation. Subtle circular impurities pock the otherwise perfect pale rosy pod, scattered throughout, breaking up the calm perfection. At the base, the color deepens substantially, blending perfectly into dark Igen sand beyond jagged gray feelers that are definitely there. Or not. It depends on how close one wishes to get.
Mind Touches
Elective Cerulean Abyss swishes past slowly, the mind rhythmically undulating in a dance all its own. The dark blue surrounding you varies only minutely, glassy, and still beyond the ever-present pressure to move forward. Tugging you onward, you suddenly feel boxed in; Without recognizing the change, you're surrounded by glowing pink globs, all moving in sync with an unseen metronome. oO Wooosh ~ Wooshh Oo, you feel the current dragging you into the crowd, electricity sparking as you sense an interconnection between the strange half-circled creatures and yourself. Abruptly your arm is brushed again, and a shooting pain shoots through you. The mind caught up in its display seems tickled at its power to cause pain. ~Sometimes the only way out is through~. Before you can go any further, though, the connection fizzles, and the young one is lost in its strange world.
Elective Cerulean Abyss soaks into your shoes, cold that brings numbness, light flickers, and goes black as you adjust to an entirely deep blue world. Pressure from all sides forces you backward and forward, rhythmically rocking your body which is no longer in your control. ~ Movement is freedom~ the mind says with a gurgle of bubbles that fizz effervescently around you. ~Unless you aren't moving by choice~ back, forth, side to side, pushed and pulled by an invisible tide, you cannot do anything but go with the flow of this young mind's whims. Without warning, it releases you, suddenly floating as a light above and dark below allows weightless bliss to enter, extravagant joy, and the wonder that comes from simply existing washes over every thought or impulse. ~Without movement, there's no life~ Even with the fleeting thought, the mind invites you deeper into its depths. Nothing to fight about, an offer to coexist in a young one who has nothing better to do than float about on the Igen sands. Eventually, you're released back, possibly a little dazed.
Elective Cerulean Abyss engulfs you back, your space crowded as a herd of squishy globs forces you along. Curious about your next move, the hatchling inside nudges at you, encouraging forward motion. In your guts, you sense that staying still spells disaster. ~Go, Go, Go.~ Encouragement from the young creature as the path ahead closes off, tiny electric currents race with stinging pain anywhere the orbs touch. Stillness is pain; there's a racing panic as you're frozen, fear coursing through you. Zip-ZAP-Zaap, any contact is an eternity of agony, each moment a lifetime of pain, and there's no escaping. Swiftly you're no longer alone. You feel the young one beside you bubbling with joy, a paternal swell of concern as it ushers you forward with great speed. ~When you cannot see the way ahead, ask for help~ Everything blurs, the pink globs are suddenly fun obstacles to dash around, gleeful giggles and squeals of delight until the big blue meets you once more, and you're back on the sands.
Hatched
Prismatic Phosphorescent Eternity Green Klyssyneth impressed to X'in (Xinra)
Why's It Sticky? Egg
A deluge of black sludge is the initial impression of this egg. Moldy, dark patches of gray start at the top and ooze down both sides; spindles of shiny ebony interlace along the shell and seep outward like rotted tree roots that refuse to succumb to the peace granted by complete decay. Long fingers of putrefaction battle against queasy phosphorescent green undertones. It's unclear if either shade would improve upon the unsettling visage. All the gloom and shadow form despondent curtains that ensconce an eerie red center that's mildly obscured by whisps of smokey grey, yet the eyes are always drawn back to that sliver of red, an unsettling disparity without any visible purpose other than to unnerve the viewer. There's a near-constant lacquered appearance, somehow shiny like exposed tendons. The entire form is visceral and ominous.
Mind Touches
A World Undone beckons, an eerie pulsating scarlet mist flashes a pulse turned to vapor in your mind. You're suddenly pulled beneath the fog, a feeling of slimy wetness sliding down your arms and oozing with a squish in between your shoes and your feet. You're sinking deeper. Unwittingly you are delved into the beast's maw. Heavy steam begins to rise from your body as every inch of your skin feels coated in hot sticky goo. Darkness deep enough to stall time, endless in a void as the feather-light sensation of tiny tip-tapping feet skitters across the shroud of gel you've been encased in. Tip-tap. Tip-tap. You're trapped. Tip-Tap. The mind of the egg peaks into your newly created home, many eyes staring at your soul. ~What are you afraid of?~ asks a voice that is every object you've ever lost tied together with bits of string. Not waiting for a response, there's a rush of wind, a crack in your own shell revealing a sliver of red light, your own personal hatching as the tiny bit you can see of the outside world looks shockingly like the hatching sands. Noticing the potential escape, the mind pushes you out with a shove of indignation, the feeling instantly vanishing from your limbs.
A World Undone has you now, and the landscape is vastly different as you're plonked into the middle of a dank, wet version of the hatching sands. To your left, there's something in the shadow, crawling up the wall and out of site before you can fully picture what it is. It's here, nearby, right above, or below. It's all around you. Dust swirls in black motes, and a preternatural wind full of cobwebs that adhere to your arms and face continuously reaches out with sentient fingers, greedy long appendages that dig into your mind. ~Do you have an escape?~ The voice that's your first memory of despair paired with the taste of grave dirt, two unchangeable occurrences that still somehow were a surprise. ~What inevitability do you avoid?~ Despair rocks through you, desolation and decay all around as you notice veins of black fungus impregnate the stone and weaken the foundation. A once safe place is nearly unrecognizable, the very ground you're on begins to shake, and without warning, you're sucked out and tossed away to ponder the questions posed.
A World Undone everything is falling apart; piercing wind shrieks around you. Transported to the middle of the bowl if it had begun to disintegrate, the rock itself sheers off in chunks that add to the shrapnel of debris flickering past you. Gargantuan angry storm cloud crackle with lightning that strikes the sandstone ruin to your left, a world-shattering continuously as if stuck in a loop of the end of days. Seering metallic hail that looks like thread pounds down, the mind forcing you toward the hatching grounds. There are holes in the stone, bits crumbling around you as the hatchling follows with clinical interest. ~Are you prepared for the worst to come?~ It asks, diving in and dragging your happiest memory from you like a thief. All of your favorite parts are slowly corrupted, a seething rot that removes anything that makes the remembrance worth seeing. ~Who would you be if you had nothing?~ The last thought before you're tossed out, leaving you to your nightmares.
Hatched
A Scholar's Consequence Blue Sciath impressed to Apheli (Apheli)
The Birth of Mankind's End Egg
This hulking, bulbous egg is lumpen and misshapen, a dragonhealer's nightmare squatting threateningly upon Igen's shadowy sands. The color of a putrid pumpkin, this egg is a bright, eye-wrenching orange crisscrossed by scabby brown webbing. Lumps and bumps are lighter in hue, less a sickly salmon and more yellowed, seeming to pulse with unnatural life against the grotesque parody of a gourd. One particular protrusion, found near the apex of the egg, seems to have burst apart, split through the middle, and the red-veined interior stares sourly forward, seeing all, hating all.
Mind Touches
Desperately Seeking Solace darts into the shadow of your mind, hiding from the chitters in the dark, the clatter of dozens of tiny feet against the rough stone coating the floor of its mindscape. Curled into a tight ball, you get the impression that if it had a back, it'd be hunched up in terror. You sense the frantic flutter of a mind against your own, seeking entry, seeking solace, seeking anything to drive back this terror. You feel it rifling, little pinpricks against your thoughts like tiny curved claws, seeking your own memories of safety, of careless joy, of friends and family and bright summer days where there is naught to worry the heart. It curls through your memories, rubbing up against them - then something startles it and it dashes off. The air about you vibrates with a rumbling purr before fading into nothing, dumping you back on Igen's Sands.
Desperately Seeking Solace slinks in from nowhere and everywhere at once, simultaneously pressing against you and yet seeming to stay at arms' length. It's not entirely certain if it feels you are a place of safety from the constant clatter and chitter of its mindscape, or an intruder to be inspected and - if necessary - expelled. It may not know itself. Once more, claws prick against your thoughts, a weight pressing down as if something were climbing into the midst of your memories, eeling through them without any regard to privacy. This time, it doesn't seem to be looking for good, however, but rather bad - frightening, actually. It seems desperate to see when you have known fear, and, more importantly, how you've handled it. Finally, after a brief search through your scariest memories, it lets out a soundless shriek that bounces off the rough walls and dashes away, leaving you to fall back to the Sands alone.
Desperately Seeking Solace saunters up to you as you return, that vibrating rumble emanating from all around, shivering through your bones and into the recesses of your mind. This time, it doesn't seem inclined to snoop; instead, it just curls around you and there's a sudden weightiness to its presence, as though it has? fallen asleep? Despite the chitters, despite the clatters, despite the drips and noisome smells and sights around you, it seems that this yet-unformed-mind has determined that you are a safe space, and it's going to settle in for a good, long sleep. Of course, the length of a good sleep is subjective - even as it relaxes against you, it's suddenly back awake, alert, and spooked. Never mind then. It's off, melting into the cacophonous darkness, and you are unceremoniously expelled - but not before feeling the brush of a warm nose and tickling whiskers in your ear. Thanks. Bye.
Hatched
An Experiment Gone Awry Bronze Strith impressed to NPC B'rat (Berat)
The Light Never Touches This Egg
Shrouded in shadow, this oblong egg seems to drink in the light, spitting it back in stutters and sparks that do naught to illuminate the shrouded shell. A glint near the base might be eyes, or something more sinister yet. It's hard to tell when there's the suggestion of shapes, the promise of patterns, and yet nothing concrete, nothing to catch the eye as existing upon this mortal plane. And always, always, no matter what side one stares at, a shadow stands, both apart from and a part of the monochromatic menace that makes up this egg. It could simply be a darker patch, a point where no light dares shine; it could be something more, an occlusion created by one unseen by any viewer, but nevertheless present. Watching. Waiting. One misstep, and any who slides beneath the influence of this egg may never be seen again.
Mind Touches
Silence in the Shadows is there. You can feel it all around you, but you cannot hear it, nor can you see it. All there is is darkness and breathing - the hot, heavy breath of someone too close for comfort, and far too interested in you. And there's another sound - the steady beat of a heart, thudding in time with yours. Or maybe it is yours, your own heart in your ears, thumping, thumping, thumping. What is it you feel? Is it nerves? Fear? Terror? Or do you live for the thrill of the dark? Do you enjoy the sensation of chills crawling up your spine, setting the nerves afire with fearful anticipation? Is this yet one more side of pleasure for you, or will the next thud of your heart be your last? Thump. Thump. Silence. Awaken!
Silence in the Shadows is impressed you have returned. Not everyone has, though it is not certain why. There is naught here to fear but darkness. Naught here to feel but chills. Naught here to hear but that heavy, labored breathing and the rhythmic thud of a heartbeat echoing throughout your skull. It's all you, of course. There's no one else here. And yet, someone is watching. Someone is listening. Someone is wondering. Why did you come back? Someone is listening. Tell it your secrets. Tell it your truths. Or tell it nothing at all - it will find out one way or the other. To come is to bare all, willing or unwilling. Will you let it happen? Will you fight off the intrusion? Or will you flee back to the hot sands and dubious comfort of the Weyr? Choose. Now!
Silence in the Shadows is surprised. It did not seem to expect you to return this time. Briefly, there's a flicker in the darkness, as if a lamp flickers to life overhead, swinging in an unseen wind, casting a pale excuse for light upon the shadows below. Something seethes beyond, a churning mass of bodies, or perhaps one body made of a hundred separate muscles, always on the move. A brief glimpse, but that is all - then the light is gone, and the world is darkness once more - darkness and breathing and the sound of your heartbeat echoing in your mind. Never mind that. It's harmless. Really. You believe it, don't you? A sensation of weight draws closer from behind, and the breathing rattles off the confines of your skull, echoing oddly until it sounds as if there's more than just one set of lungs sucking in the air. More than two. More than a dozen. Harmless. Harmless. Laughter follows you down as you drown in shadows, only to be spit back upon the Sands, the echo of laughter still ringing in your ears. Or between them.
Hatched
Come and Play With Me Green Anlath impressed to NPC Tyrbek (Tyrbek)
Room 237 Egg
You would think that the darker colors of this egg would simply blend into the black sands of Igen weyr. Not the case with this egg though for certainly your eyes will be drawn to the repeating pattern. Completely covering the egg from top to bottom are thick black lines that draw hexagons all over. Around those black lines are also thick orange lines making you wonder which color is actually making the shapes you see. Is it the black or orange? With the black lines are red diamonds that make you question how those became part of the pattern. But a part of it is for once you step back you can see the whole pattern. This may be where you question if someone cut out a large swatch of carpet from some creepy mostel and draped it over this egg. Over and over again the pattern repeats itself until you must look away or the black.orange and red will be all you can see.
Mind Touches
All Work and No Play. touches you with an icy feeling to the back of your neck. Don't turn around…Too late. Your mind is ripped violently from the sands to a dark, dark, place. A dark and creepy place to be exact. From everywhere and nowhere at once, or perhaps it's all around you, a voice calls your name. COME HERE AND GET YOUR MEDICINE YOU LITTLE SH*T! Perhaps you're compelled to seek out this voice or perhaps fear stunts your mind to freeze you in place. There is an intense feeling of being watched within this cold and dark mindscape of the young hatchling. There is no warmth at all to be felt. There is a sense of judgment. Judging. Waiting. And most of all watching. Slowly, ever so slowly the feeling fades until once more the heat of the sands can be felt and your vision is returned to normal. « We'll be waiting » echoes ominously in your head.
All Work and No Play. returns with that same icy feeling to the back of your neck. It's enough to cause a shiver to run along your arms before once more blackness envelopes you. You've shown your courageousness very well by sticking around. Perhaps you're being rewarded now for within the darkness is a different feeling completely. In fact despite the darkness there's a festive mood that perhaps surprises you. Or perhaps it isn't a surprise for somewhere deep inside you there is a sense you've done all this before. Happy party goers flash before you senses with shouts of "Midnight! Midnight!" What exactly happens then is anyone's guess though suddenly you feel the urge to leave. QUICK! GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN! But…wait. It's TOO LATE! Someone is there. « A drink for you before you go? Do tell me all of your troubles. » This unknown yet oddly familiar voice is urging you relentlessly to have a drink and unburden yourself of all your troubles. Do go on and tell them everything that's wrong. Have no fears, your deepest secrets are safe with us. Tell us everything! There will be very little resistance to your worst memories being dredged up and presented to you like a movie film of This is Your life. Too soon or perhaps not soon enough, you're dumped out of this mindscape and tumble to the sands in a heap.
All Work and No Play. makes its return to your subconscious with a motherly feeling this time. There's a gentleness to the touch as you simply drift away from the sands to a warm and bright place. Perhaps it's a place out of your memory of a happy time in your life. Somewhere that you felt safe. There are no words this time to taunt you. No harsh or scary feelings of doom. You simply have a sense of peace about you. For now. So sit back and enjoy the happy memories that seem to spring up out of nowhere. Laugh at the good times you had. It's a fleeting moment or perhaps it lasts longer than time itself.. There's no telling how long this good feeling lasts before suddenly you are flung abruptly into the green… bushes? Hedges? You get the feeling you can wander for hours and not escape. There is also a sudden chill to the air and you are downright freezing within minutes. Fear creeps along the edges of your now numbed mind. There's a sense of hopelessness within your heart that lingers as the Sands slowly return. For now there will be no returning to this mindscape but the memories will take much longer to fade.
Hatched
All Work and No Play Blue Jakketh impressed to NPC Red'rum (unknown)
Plain Outside Deadly Inside Egg
This nondescript, small, gray egg might not catch your attention at first. Surely there is nothing to draw the eye to this little mottled one sitting all alone to the side. Should one wander over though, perhaps if all other eggs have been dutifully observed, one may see tiny details not noticed from a far. Thin blacks lines run vertically near the top of the egg all along the circumference. At first one might not be able to see they are indeed in a pattern. Spaced just far enough there is a feeling of windows with each window displaying a tiny black orb looking out. Are these eyes watching to see who approaches this seemingly simple egg? Remember sometimes appearances are deceiving!
Mind Touches
The Watcher offers nothing but silence upon the very first touch upon its shell. Slowly your vision fades until there is nothing but darkness. Darkness and silence that stretches out long enough to really test your nerves. How long can you stay within the embrace of the darkness before you go mad?! How much time passes? Minutes? Hours? Seconds? Suddenly a booming voice cries out with a scream. It's a single word yet everyone who touches it will hear a different word. What word will you hear? Gradually the darkness fades to reveal you are alone in a small room. But wait, if you're alone then where did that voice come from? There is an eerie feeling of being watched that makes you look over your shoulder every few seconds. What do they want? Judgment is thick in the air. What do they think of you? Is this an approving stare or disapproving? The room disappears before you find out and the brightness of the sands sting your eyes briefly.
The Watcher creeps along behind you with an impatient tap to your shoulder. If you turn your head you'll no longer see the sands. Instead you'll see that same room with the same gray, windowless, walls that have trapped your mind so tightly. There is that now familiar feeling of being watched but this time perhaps it's a little more expected. Without warning the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Is it a warning. An icey touch trails along your arms down to your palms. « Who are you?? Why are you here? » there is a pause before the disembodied voice asks once more. « WHO ARE YOU?! WHAT DO YOU WANT?! » these questions could be asking for the immediate or perhaps they have a deeper meaning. What is it you want in life? Where are you going and why are you here now?? Answer the questions slowly or quickly but answer them you must for the pressure on your mind is suddenly intensified a hundred fold. A thousand fold. Before you fold from the pressure you're back to the sands. Will you return? Even here you can feel the eyes watching you. And waiting
The Watcher gives no warning but merely whisks you away, away, away. Rolling gray fog engulfs you and carries you off to the endless blackness that goes on and on and on. There is an intense feeling of falling that seems to last forever. Again just before you may lose your mind you come to a sudden stop. Those who have been watching are back. This time though their questions are more pointed. « Where are you going from here? Tell me everything about you?» And more importantly « WHY DO YOU STAY!??! » There is nothing more and silence will be all you get from this egg forever more.
Hatched
Came on a Pale Horse Bronze Pharochith impressed to NPC A'stur (unknown)
Long Memory Of Violence Egg
The shell of this egg appears rough, as if a gnarled protective bark has grown over it to shield it from the heat of the sand below. Its color is, well, dark and dense. Perhaps at it's base an umber with stippling of olive and hunter greens growing like the oldest colonies of moss over patches of dark grizzled grey-brown. Here and there dark striations cause undulating forms, wrapping over one another in some wild pattern of root or branch like shapes. At a quick glance or viewed just in the periphery it seems as if the knotted pattern moves or shifts now and again. It definitely gives off a forbidding vibe as it practically coils in on itself in form, as if it would like to be away from the heat, the eyes, all of it.
Mind Touches
Forbidding Fog opens reluctantly before you. Thoughts drift out of reach on gnarled trunks covered in shaggy growths of moss, netted with silvery webs of some long vacated creature. The faintest rustling travels through a canopy of leaves that drown out all but the haziest light, the sound like whispers passing secrets along as your mind drifts over interlacing roots and writhing vines. Now and then one seems to reach out and catch at your mind, as if to trip or throw you off balance, but when reflected upon it appears not to have moved at all… still the deepening sense of watchfulness grows steadily with no end in sight.
Forbidding Fog snaps shut behind you with the crack of a tree branch. It hurtles down landing just inches from your deepest fears, as if to draw attention to them in an unwelcoming fashion. The haze is heavy now, adding to the heat of the sands it feels close around you, humid and stifling. Yet there is a path among the twisting and writing roots and scraggly undergrowth. Paranoia could easily set in with the feeling of disapproval growing. Indeed there's a sense that this path, barely there through tufts and tussocks of dry grasses, is less than innocent in its destination. Here and there rustles across undulating bark and shadows in the dense fog at great distance could easily bring on the sense to run or shout… yet neither of these would do you any good. You wind around slimy fungus and spiky dried thistles slowly aware that you are in fact descending. The mist about you has becomes cool, which would be welcome if the growing sense of hostility were also abating. Looming through the fog a great hulking shape of heavily bowed tree sits ahead, as if this is what you were always meant to find.
Forbidding Fog has begun to clear, revealing the great hunched shape. Long finger-like tendrils of branches hang down like unwashed hair, barely revealing the grizzled and hoary grey hide of trunk beneath. Long knotted roots reach out to you, both moving and unmoving at the same time. Indeed even the sway of the branches can be seen as both natural and unnatural with promises of a cool respite murmuring through their leaves. The gentlest sound, like pleasant water lulls you forward under the gently shifting limbs, bringing you nearer and nearer the cragged bark. The cool and gentle voice, unintelligible yet familiar, seems almost to be coming from within a great crevice in the trunk itself. Bringing you deeper in… nearer… and nearer… till SNICKT. Blackness. Only the leafy shiver of distant and malevolent laughter- then the mind is gone.
Hatched
A Fantasy of Wind and Flame Gold Verzhuqueth impressed to Ligeia (Ligeia)
Devoid Of Color Egg
A bit of cloud sits on the sands. No, at closer inspection it's definitely an egg. Pale and billowy like an ominous summer thunderhead from the sky above is yet here sitting in an oblong shell. Something to this egg's tone and lack of sheen make it appear as if you could almost reach into it and yet there's the distinct feeling that this would be a bad idea. even touching it seems to go against every fiber of human instinct. When passed by or around it's as if the cloudy forms are moving, swelling up towards the apex of the egg's curiously oblong shape. It is, indeed, devoid of color as described. However if one stares at it too long it seems almost to turn a steely aqua. That could just be a trick of the light or heat. Like those little crawly things that peak out of the cloud forms now and then.
Mind Touches
Boiling Abyss stretches out before you. The darkest of blues, so dark it may as well be the black of between. Or is it black? Or is it between? It could be for the breathlessness you feel and the cool washing over your thoughts… except it's warming up rather than cooling down. Somewhere below you, glowing like the sand at your feet yet distinctly not as dry or as stable, if sand could be described as stable. Blackness is broken with a cloud of bubbling heat billowing up from below. White hot and quick, it shoots past your mind followed by two more, like warning shots off the bow of a ship. Do you continue to sink into the depths below?
Boiling Abyss continues on as you descend further. The temperature rises well beyond that of the sands, beyond what any skin could tolerate. You'd imagine somehow that light should surely be emitting from this intense heat and as if beckoned into existence by such thinking, a light, faintly emissive comes hazily into view below. Another plume of hot bubbles billows up towards you, or are you going down faster? You must be for sharp craggy spire is moving up past you beneath the plume which hasn't yet ended. Soon more similar spires are erupting around you as bubbles and heat assail your senses with a barrage of demanding questions. Who are you? Why are you here? How can you be here? The phosphorescent matte white that clads these interrogating forms glows in some ethereal aqua haze so they appear like boiling ghosts surrounding your thoughts. The light goes out. The heat remains but the questions are just a trickle of echoing bubbles for a moment in the stillness.
Boiling Abyss tarts to build again. The ghostly glow is returning, faint at first. As it does a tickling sensation creeps over your mind, more questions, more probing. But as the light builds with the clouded eruptions shooting forth, it's not bubbles that are revealed but little crustaceans, many legged and spindly crawling over your mind. They are equally pale as the jagged henge surrounding you, gently probing your wants and fears. Heat builds again more and more till a cloud of bubbles surround you and you are no longer descending. Rising now within them, you are in a scalding swirl of choking chemicals. One by one the little creatures tumble off as you go higher and higher, the ghostly figures below only a faint thought before the bubbles dissipate and all crawling things are gone. You are alone again… floating in the boiling abyss. The darkness feels pleasantly cool in comparison. One last bubble drifts up before your minds eye before POP! Everything is gone.
Hatched
From The Depths Looking Up Blue Abyssoth impressed to NPC Atlanta (Atlanta)
Not Even Birdsong Egg
Despite its presence, there are concerns, whispers, that perhaps this egg is inert. It never seems to move, base firmly planted in the same swath of sand in which it was birthed, peak straining futilely towards a patch of light with no hope of ever reaching it. Perhaps this lack of illumination, this dearth of warmth, explains why this ovoid is so small and drab, muted forest greens cloaking its shell in somber stripes, greying branches blotting out the sky. Silvery mist courses betwixt the trunks of these ancient sentinels, effectively shrouding any other aspect of this haunting forest from sight. Indeed, the only sign of life is a single red string that twines itself from bark to argent bark, tying the fate of this egg to some point buried in the sand, yet unseen.
Mind Touches
The Way Back is deep, dank, dark. For a long moment, there is nothing but nothingness, a dearth, an emptiness that has never felt warmth. This world is sightless, starless, senseless, not a breeze nor a scent to be perceived upon it. It's almost as if the egg is as the dragonhealers feared, gone before it ever had the chance to truly live… And yet… From the misery comes a sound, threadbare, whisper-thin, but there nevertheless: a heartbeat. No, two, twin dragon hearts beating soft and slow, practically a cacophony, nearly a din in the otherwise empty landscape. Badum-dum-dump. Badum-dum-dump. Badum-dum-dump. Thoughts slide against yours, stirring sluggishly, struggling to find something within you that has purpose, has meaning. Light flares, briefly searing, so very very much for even its own fragility. It narrows as though with a wince, softening from bright white to a bleeding red, a singular line that streaks off into the darkness, pulsing in time with the thready throbs of its hearts. There. The effort of doing so little but also so much has clearly exhausted the egg's mind - it doesn't even have the strength to properly push you back to the sands - but there is a tenuous something lingering in your mind, as though now that it has you, it's afraid to let you go.
The Way Back pulses faintly still, that fragile light flickering off into the darkness of its mind - or rather, what that darkness used to be. It seems as though an unskilled hand has taken aspects of your life, your past, and attempted to render them in the third dimension. There's a shadowy chair here, a blackened hearth way over there, a tree or bush or is that just a flower shivering in the ashen dark. It's all rather strange, everything painted in shades of black as though made of shadow, dimensions sometimes stretching into Dali-like proportions in the ever-pulsing light. Despite the uncanny rendering, there's a shaky sense of pride emanating from the egg's shell, as though this were some progress it previously thought unobtainable. Questioning underlines that hazy emotion, heartbeats looping slowly, tentatively around your mind as though seeking your approval… and perhaps fearing your condemnation. Stilled like prey facing down a hunter's bow, it waits until - with sudden, unexpected motion - it bolts, leaving you back on the sands.
The Way Back quivers, heartbeat strands pooled into one pile, as though unsure how to receive your return. There's relief, to be sure, but also a sort of tension as it reaches out to hesitantly, oh-so-carefully touch the very tip of it's red-red string to your consciousness. Emotion surges, blooms, aching in its multitudes. There's sadness and pain and something that borders on madness, but there's also kindness, pleasure, and understanding - new understanding that it wasn't the objects it saw when its mind first raised itself to touch yours that were important, but the feelings they inspired. It's still proud of itself for what it was able to do, for finally achieving what all its siblings seem to do so effortlessly, but it understands now that it wasn't broken just for being different. It's grateful for the illumination - literally, metaphorically - and can only hope to offer that exact emotion back to you as you part: hope, in all its troubled brilliance.
Hatched
Haunted Wood Green Sphyrtath impressed to NPC T'ish (unknown)
Raging Behind in the Egg
The pock-marked black of this egg's shell is seared in twain, jagged streaks like cliffs torn apart still reaching for the flesh from which they were sundered. Every inch of this ovid is just as blunt and brutal, as though it has long learned not to sacrifice pain and economy for something as simple as mercy. The searing flame of a planet's core shoves up from its apex, drips and dribbles of lava cooling into fractured black along the egg's sides, searing spittle and hocked gobs of heat singing its far corners. Even that is kind compared to the gutted spill of magma at its very center, a firefall plunge that antagonizes this egg's darker halves, proves that they will never meet again until this egg's very heartsblood runs cold.
Mind Touches
The High Ground isn't the harsh, brash smash into your mind that you might expect - no, its punishment is the slow and insidious sort that starts by lending a hand of friendship. It's only too aware of the kinds of creatures its siblings are, of course - it can sense them, terror-ridden, weak-willed, none of them worthy of you. You are the sun in its sky, the wind in its sails, the breath in its lungs, fresh and brilliant and new. It hums as it leads you into lushness the likes of which inspires philosophers to utopia, trees tall and strong and hung with unreal fruits of glistening green and pearlescent purple. Crystalline flowers burst from verdant fields, bubbles floating upon a sugar-scented breeze. They float and twirl about you, touching down upon your skin without popping, giving even you - er, ahem, especially you - your own iridescent sheen. You belong here, after all, here with it and these untold wonders of which you've only scratched the surface. It tires now, executing a last ebullient spin about your person before settling onto its back as though content to count the clouds, but surely you will be back, friend? Please? It'll be waiting for you!
The High Ground might not squeal, but it's a near thing - it is so very, very pleased to see you, emotion vibrating between the two of you. It knew you'd see sense, it knew you'd come back, that you saw the thing that existed between you two and felt the very same way. It had faith in you, and rare as it may be sometimes, that faith was rewarded. It slips around as though taking your hand, dragging you away from sunlit glory into the first inkling of darkness you've experienced. Rot, hot and cloying, stuffs itself up your nose, something sinuous, sinister brushing up against your hand as you're pulled deeper, deeper, deeper still— and then you emerge into a massive cavern, one studded upon every surface with gems the color of a rainbow, bursting with colors beyond imagining. Never in the real world have so many stones blended into a single melange, rubies fading into topaz, topaz blurring into emeralds, sapphires and diamonds and crystals your mind doesn't even have names for bursting from the cavern's every seam. It's all set to glittering by a waterfall's luminescent plunge, mist shimmering on a breeze, light beaming in from an unseen source hitting it just-right until it glows like a spire of flame in the dark. Warmth exudes from the egg's mind, at first simple pride, pride that runs as deep as this cave, deeper, perhaps too deep as that warmth becomes heat, becomes an inferno, one that scorches the very air from your lungs just as you find yourself back on the sands again, body intact.
The High Ground has you now, doesn't it? There's no turning back for you - you ignored all the red flags, forgave all its warning signs, and here you are, right where it predicted you would be from the start: in a world of its own making, standing here as its vicious greed and your weak sentiment rend it all apart. The cavern crumbles around your ears, precious gems plunging into sudden sinkholes, the ground giving way in a massive circle that leaves only you and it unscathed. The once-beautiful sky of the fantasy world appears far, far above you, that earlier smell of utter putrefaction suddenly overwhelming. Everything that once was beautiful and precious has gone rotten, bruised fruits falling into the ever-growing crevasse, splattering your skin in their sickly-sweet demise. Glassy flower petals slice like shards, bubbles bursting to release noxious black smoke as the sun blazes in the sky above with an unholy light. It is matched by the inferno now bubbling far below, a rising hell that is beginning to threaten your position - and still the egg will not release you from its grip. If anything, it is eager instead of afraid, manic, raw with the power thrumming from deep inside its shell. This is the moment, the choice that will define both of your futures: will you stay here with it, reign at its side as cruel rulers of whatever ashes are left, or will you forsake it, leave it to the repercussions of its own self-destruction? Should you wait too long, it will make that final choice for you. With an abrupt lurch you find yourself back in your body upon Igen's sands, the egg beneath your hands strangely cool to the touch, emphasizing that it will have no more to do with you… for now.
Hatched
Too Great a Destiny Brown Anarth impressed to NPC I'ver (unknown)
The Future's Ancient Enemy Egg
At a glance this egg is an ominous sickly gray with absurd flashes of color. The wider base of the shell peeking out from the warming sands dabbled in tones of rich earthly green and brown. A tantalizing patch of life and hope which only those fighting in that most dreadful of skies above can give hope. It seems an impossible dance they do, the smudges of green and blue. They twist, arc, and turn almost in upon themselves with random spurts of bright flame licking towards the hated timeless thoughtless soulless enemy raining down death but for their bravery. In this dystopian vision, they bravely face near insurmountable odds against an enemy from which they have no easy escape, no means to flicker into the cold safe darkness but for a few heartbeats. Proof of their despair is found in a small ichor streak falling uncontrolled as blue and green brethren dodge out of the way. At its end is a patch of fern green, ichor and engulfing silver strands consuming one ill fated. For here there lies no encompassing darkness to save them. Here one feathery touch brings only the most horrific end, where mercy lies in the talons of a humbled bronze flying upwards to meet the ill fated from the ground below.
Mind Touches
The Light of Hope glimmers, a speck in the far distance of the dark empty void you find yourself drifting within. It is a promise of something: of hope, of light, of life and escape. Escape from the nothingness around you that drains your energy, drains emotion and pulls at your very core to give up, give in. You might, but for the light which doesn't grow bigger but somehow you can feel grow closer, warmer, pushing away your long journey across time, space with the light enveloping and overwhelming you as you blink and find yourself before a dangerous looking tangle of thread upon the future's ancient enemy egg.
The Light of Hope soars into the future with you riding the sunlit beams in crystal blue skies. It is a breath of fresh air, a joyous celebration of survival in clear skies and in simply being. The land blurs below you, indecipherable but yet clearly NOT Igen's sandy expanses for there are to many swatches of green that compete with smaller patches of red, brown or yellow. Best not to focus really on the ground far below, trust your ride! The mind envelops around you, strong, supporting, this one will never let you fall. Time ceases to be in simply living life for some uncountable expanse until inevitably there is a disturbance. A smudge of grey edging the bright horizon and you feel the pull of this mind draw to duty. There is work to be done and it will not be shirked, no matter the odds, nor difficulty of the path before it. You, you however don't have to be dragged along and the presence fades leaving you to your own thoughts.
The Light of Hope returns in a cloud of firestone ash and smoke. It's hard to tell if this one battled directly or in support of those on the front lines, either way there is a deep sense of satisfaction for having triumphed this day. The fumes and ash slowly clear from your vicinity as the presence can't seem to quite settle, trying to share images of things it doesn't yet understand. The simplicity of a dragons mind, it exists in the here and now, unbothered by the complexities of human machinations playing chess, or poker as it were. Undeniable support that can be honed into so many things, the suddenly warm hard shell beneath your fingers is a great promise. The promise of so much possibility, of things to come which always will be for they already are. Only, do you play a part in that future? Only time will tell, but it will not /break/ for you to know one moment ahead of what is already destined.
Hatched
Night of the New Moon Forest Green Hiraeth impressed to Danni (Dannissin)
