Whispers

Whispers of the Dragon's Dreams

You are flying far above a vast forest, a canopy of unbroken trees that stretches to the horizon in every direction. Exhilaration pulses through you with every beat of your powerful wings, with every pull of muscle and sinew against the cool air, with every small gust of wind across your scales. You are flying in exultation, lord of the earth and the skies. Your keen senses smell the blood from miles away; your inhuman eyes spy the target while you are a mere speck in the limitless sky, a spot of blood in the perfect blue. You can hear the enemy�s heart beat in his chest in terror of your impending arrival.

They don�t have a chance.

Muscles ripple across your body in total harmony, a mechanical perfection matched only by the pure grace of flight. The air curls around your wings and lifts you into the air�your domain, your realm of mastery, your battleground. No one can defeat you here. Slowly, languorously, like a great cat stretching as it stirs from sleep, you alight one magnificent limb on the leaf-covered ground. The membranes of your wings, as thin as silk and as strong as steel, make a maelstrom where you land. The towers stand before you, graceful spires of crystal and glass, glowing with the light of youth. You rear back, drawing the clean air into your lungs. You feel within you the furnace, the pure potential of raw magic, as it mixes with your saliva, the brimstone that leaks out of your nostrils as you gather the fire in the great bellows of your lungs. You relish the terror of the little ones as they see you at last, too late to harm you, too late to even raise a hand in defense. You can taste their terror, savoring the screams and wailings of helplessness and despair�

You taste your own grandeur as the fire comes forth and the burning begins.

Flight, again, the incredible freedom of flight, taking to the skies on great crimson wings that your waking mind knows you do not yet possess. You duck and wheel, diving to tear the wings from an elf with one great claw, clutching another in your mouth, relishing his screams for mercy before you blast his ashes onto his comrades with a great lungful of fire. The elves fight you, they try to fight you, but their tiny swords cannot penetrate your invincible scaled armor, and their breastplates shatter under the tremendous pressure of your jaws. Their magic is no match for your innate power, for you are one with the Weave�it flows through you like blood.

The skies fill with blood. The last of the avariel are crushed, and then fall.

Now you fly free, in the skies that you have won. Your enemies are crushed and scattered; their blood has watered a thousand thousand trees in this great forest. Now you rule all, as far as you can see. You wheel in capricious joy, jetting a gout of flame in the empty air, bursting with triumph.
But now there is a shadow. You fly, but always the dark spot shows itself below you in the shifting pattern of the trees. You cannot escape the shadow. It follows you, ghosting your every movement, obliterating your shadow with its greater form. Petrified with fear, you look up at the shadow�s source. No, no�it cannot be. Not him!

A dragon, his scales like blood in the setting sun, far older, far stronger in Art, far more cunning than you could ever be. A great red wyrm whose form blots out the sun and casts the whole forest into shadow. He waits. He hovers there, just a few flaps away, an ancient red with a missing tooth, holding a black heart in his hands as if in offering. You do not understand. But when the dragon speaks, his words terrify you beyond mortal comprehension.

�Welcome, son of my blood.�