Ascent of a Dragon

Aleph pries open her eyes, her body numb and frostbitten. Ugh... I should've been paying more attention. Her blurry vision begins to focus, the flickering light of a fire beside her coming into view, as well as the panicked skittering of a white arachnid around the small burrow carved around them. Her snout is assaulted by curious pokes and prods, testing her life signs. Lifting her head she meets the amber gaze of the golden perpetrator, grinning as he continues to prod her awake. "You're awake!" The spider chitters gleefully. "I thought you died!" "I almost did." "What?!" "Hoh!"

"How? What happened? Were you assaulted by some kind-of dream demon trying to devour your soul in its quest to acquire dominance over the realm of dreams?" "Uh... Hypothermia. I'm cold blooded." "..." "..." "I was close." You really weren't. "Why is this only a problem now? You've been fine the past several days!" "I've been using Aether to insulate myself, but it's been getting a lot colder as we go down, and it's been a while since our last camp. I kinda didn't notice my body going numb." "How do you not notice that?!" "Well pain is easy to notice. The absence of pain is another matter. Keep in mind my body is designed to run almost entirely on Aether, so stuff like muscle pain and fatigue are seldom factors I need to keep track of." "Dragons are weird..." "I agree."

"Oh, and by the way, dream demons don't eat souls. They eat desires, or just normal food like everyone else." Lyly pauses, staring at Aleph aghast as if her greatest fears have been made true. "Dream demons are real?" She squeaks. "You didn't know?" "I'm never sleeping again..." Aleph shifts, wrapping herself around the camp fire to keep warm. "Hey Goldy, how many camp balls do you have left?" Placing a hand on his satchel, he opens it and displays the contents. "Thuree." "Lyly, do you think that'll be enough?" Pulling herself out of the terror-stricken stupor she placed herself in Lyly looks up, peering at the camp balls, and then at Aleph. "Depends how long you can go without heat, but without knowing which way or how far to go I'd say no."

"I think I could last maybe-" "Hold on. How long was the fight against the birds?" Goldy stokes the flames, pouring some weird flammable fluid on to keep them going. "Uh... A minute?" "No! It was twenty! How long was your fight with the monkey?" "Not sure... Felt like less than a minute." "That was ten minutes! Okay, how many days old are you?" "Um... Ten? Maybe?" "Not even close! I know you have no good reference for time down here, but I'm not trusting your timing sense! Oh and you're thirty-four days and twenty-eight hours old by the way." "Wow! Impressively specific! How many hours are in a day?" "Forty. Obviously. Does that change in the future or something?" "I wouldn't know." "..." "..."

"So anyway, what's the plan? I'm happy to go back up for now. My original plan involved waiting for you to grow older and just power through this place. I still think that's the better choice." "Too slow. I've made the mistake of inactivity before and it ended poorly. Besides, the longer I take the further I get from my goal." "Which is what exactly?" "I forgot." "Then it mustn't be important." "No, it's very much a matter of existential importance, spanning several worlds." "But you don't remember what it is?" "Nope." "Fuck's sake... I'm not going to convince you to take it slow, am I?" "Not if there's a faster way. I'll stay within the realm of possibility, but I'm already feeling too slow. The thing I fear most, is that I'm already too late to complete my mission..."

Lyly pauses, considering the situation. Goldy simply continues to poke. "Fine. What ideas do you have?" "I can fly. If I pick a random direction I can glide us over the terrain until we either reach the centre, find the edge, or run out of time. Goldy can use his fire magic to keep me warm mid-flight. Worst case scenario I can go in a straight line so we know the way back." "No offence, but it took you twelve days just to learn how to glide in a neat arc. Is long distance flying not a bit of a jump?" "Stamina is no issue for me. And this is mostly just jumping and gliding in a straight line, so I should be fine."

Goldy nods, coating his fists in flames in a show of affirmation, as if he'd been a part of this conversation the whole time, while Aleph stares resolute into Lyly's eyes. "Fine! Gang up on me why don't you!" She huffs, folding her pedipalps. "We can go when the fire ball thing runs out. You are healing right?" "I can regenerate a little. Should be completely free of numbness in a few minutes." "Right... I think that's normal for dragons? Hold on a second..." For a brief moment Lyly seems to go limp, her glow dimming slightly before returning to normal. This seems familiar... "Yea, no. That's abnormal for your age. Granted, most dragons are apparently descended from some dude called Farghuash, which you aren't so anything goes really. But still, you haven't even reached your first quart and you have the fastest regeneration of all known dragons. You're objectively weird." "I'm objectively perfect."

Lyly sighs, laying down by the fire as she contemplates what she's gotten herself into. The trio wait, soft winds blowing above them as they lay in the small burrow carrying wisps of powdery snow. Aleph's body heals in short order, her muscles returning to full functionality and her lightly frostbitten extremities thawing and restoring. Soon the fire begins to dim, leaving only the light leaking in from the cores in the sky and the faint glow of the spider to light the burrow, signalling the time for them to move on.

Aleph stands, Lyly hops atop her perch, and Goldy clings to her back. Crack! Aleph leaps, forming a small explosion of snow from where she set off. Swoosh! She glides, violet lights dancing around her wings as the bitter cold winds brush by. Flame coated palms lay atop the dragon's back, keeping her warm as a seemingly endless array of evenly spaced pillars blur by. Thirty minutes pass, the winds growing warmer and the snow coated floor lessens, revealing the grey stone beneath. Obsidian feet skid into the rocky ground below, disturbing a thin layer of pale-blue moss as she comes to a stop.

"It's actually warm here..." "We're pretty deep right? Maybe all the outer walls are like this. Either way, this is a good place to rest for a bit and then we can double back in the opposite direction of the wall." "Sounds good. Lemme grab a snack while we wait." Lyly skitters into one of the pouches adorning Aleph's back, emerging with a cooked lizard leg and beginning her nibbling endeavours. Aleph, for her part, spends their short break helping Goldy practice his 't's.

Using Lyly's finished nibbling as their signal to set off, the trio stand. Goldy grabs the cleaned bone, biting through and sucking out the marrow before tossing the rest for Aleph to incinerate in her weird dragon stomach. They set off, rested and warm, now gliding back towards the snowy centre of the cavern. The wind grows cold, grows bitter, grows sharp. Crystals of ice begin to form on the tips of Aleph's wings, offset by the flames Goldy coats her with. Soon, harsh winds begin to overtake the friction with the air, disturbing her balance as they blow parallel to her path. After almost an hour of flight, a wall begins to form in the distance, writhing and biting in a deadly amalgam of shifting snow.

Aleph lands, a small hole in the deep snow being carved around her as Goldy expands the crater. "I take it this is what you were talking about?" She asks, surveying the storm ahead. "Yep." The spider replies, popping the p. Quite impressive considering she has no lips. "Well, I'm all for trying new things, but I don't think I can fly through that. And I doubt it would be easy for Goldy to stop the wind and keep me warm while flying." "Yea, I guess we'll have to walk the rest of the way. The way down should be in the dead centre, just below the core. But it's massive, and weird thermodynamic bullshit ends up with the storm not reaching too far down so we should be good once we reach it." "Huh. I kinda like this weird thermodynamic bullshit." "Thermoss... synassic?"

Stepping forward, Aleph pushes aside the snow as Goldy continues to bend his flames around her. Claws brush against the ground, scraping away a layer of fibrous white instead of the hard stone one would expect. Huh... I guess moss really can grow anywhere. "So how's your cold resistance?" Aleph asks, her eyes poking up towards the arachnid atop her skull. "Eh, I can handle pretty much anything barring the more extreme Mana-based stuff. That's what I made this body for after all." "You made your body? How?" "Don't sweat the details. A girl's gotta have some secrets for the epic plot-twist reveal later on." "Ooh I can't wait! " "Hoh! Mee tsuu!" "Fuehehe!" I have three theories already!

The winds pick up, snow swiftly blanketing the trio as they plough through. Violet surrounds Aleph, the insulation barely able to slow down the heat loss within this frozen tempest as orange flames dance around obsidian scales and golden fur to make up the slack. "So how do we know when we make it?!" "What?!" "Did you say something?!" "I can't hear you!" "What?!" "What?!" "Hoh?!"

The storm devours the trio, threatening to consume them whole. Icy winds battle against Aether and flames, slowly winning as the heavy tempest begins to snuff all attempts of conjuring a flame. Switching approach, Goldy releases his hold on the fire, instead grasping the storm and prying open the jaws of wind gnashing at them. "Rruhn!" He bellows, holding the storm at bay, even as his own fingers grow numb. Aleph sprints, barrelling through the snow ahead without stop. Bubbles of violet swirl around, forming their own small tempest as she charges towards the eye of the storm.

The ground slopes down, and her charge continues. Ice begins to form around her claws, on the tip of her snout, and coating her wings, yet her charge continues undeterred. Claws grasp at stone beneath the snow, each step throwing herself forward until her feet meet... nothing.

The ground vanishes beneath her, and as they fall the storm vanishes with it, leaving a wave of warmth to slam into them from below in its place. The sudden drop causes Goldy and Lyly to lose their grip, separating as they fall into the endless nothing surrounding them. Aether surges, pulling her companions back to her and, flap! Crack! She soars up with one powerful motion and sinks her claws into the ceiling. The hard stone barely gives, leaving her grip weak. Even Goldy fails to bend it, leaving them hanging precariously atop the endless ceiling of the boundless void around them.

"When you said it was a big drop... I wasn't expecting this."

Lo'osa Eyoloyo'un

One of three sky islands within Magnus Mundus, more commonly known as Losa Eyonon. It is unknown how long the island has been held in the sky, nor do we know the mechanism with which it is held. Visible from the eastern-most edge of the central continent, Losa Eyonon sits several kilometers in the sky, almost always coated in a layer of clouds. The island itself is only sometimes visible during hot years on clear days of the mid-season. Coating the base is the same brown stone found in the circular island it hovers above, leaving little to the imagination of where it comes from.

The name Lo'osa Eyoloyo'un roughly translates to the broken island in the sky. Being so far from the central continent it becomes difficult to determine the history and culture surrounding the area. Additionally, its proximity to the eastern tundra limits the ability to send expeditions. What we do know, is that it predates the fourth great war, and thus most of our surviving history. If anyone is to remember, it would be the ancients, yet this is one of the topics known to be off limits. One ancient in particular, Divine Beast Caxhaniel, is known to make regular trips to the island during cold years, only returning to her frozen lands after an eightday.

- Excerpt from Anya Chiff's 'Shape of the World'