The Tomb-Listener

This sensation was... different. New, certainly. Impossible, at first, to comprehend. Good or bad could not at once be ascribed to the feeling. Heat, but from the outside. Ever had the dragonfire burned in Strahmeyun's core, but this fire was external, a feeling of burning unfamiliar to dragonfolk. The instant passed, and realization soaked in. It was pain. It wrenched, it burned, it consumed and it tore. It surrounded him as though he were drowning in a searing sea of fire. It was a destructive energy, of unnatural intensity, that pulled every particle of him one by one.

But it was only a flash. The flaming agony snapped away. Then it was gone, and Strahmeyun was whole, and felt the cold grasp of ice. Frost and snow encased him, and thick white gusts of wind swirled round. Darkness oppressed every visible corner, and even the sky was stormy and devoid of starlight.
Strahmeyun, struggling to fill his empty, groping mind with the memory of... anything, had emerged from an imprisonment in un-reality, in oblivious nothingness. He could feel, at last, that he was real again. This frozen encasement was a new birth.

I awake.

The cold winds swept past him harshly, and it jogged something akin to a memory, this was not where he used to live. Or at least not exactly. But any memory from his old life, even his old home, were patchy and inconclusive at best, and nonexistent at worst. His body would ache and groan but that would quickly subside, as a silver dragon he was wise and attuned to these things, so he would realize this pain was the after affect of being thrown forcefully through planes and worlds.

Finding no other or sign thereof in sight, Strahmeyun stretched his stiff limbs and lame wings, shut his eyes and breathed deeply, then re-opened his eyes as he incited his flight magic deep in his heart. With a low rumble from his throat, he lifted off the frozen, stony ground.

He crashed back to the earth, startled, as his body was not properly prepared to take off. He gave a fierce screech and a few bursts of fire, then vigorously hurled upwards with a sharper and more mindful focus on his flight magic. After more than a century, he could not manage to fly as freely and absent-mindedly as he once did. Still struggling to reacquaint with his own skin, he rose amidst the snowy mountain gales and circled about, searching for a sign, a first step. For though he remembered some of the old world, much would have changed, he knew, in the long years of his absence.

In that instant he was struck by something, not physically, but mentally. Something was off, there were things in this world that shouldn't be. He could feel a leakage of abyssal energy to the north, and far to the south on a small island he could feel another plane beginning to leak into the prime material plane, but he couldn't tell which one.

Something else struck him, it was knowledge, more exact than before. The basic concepts of how long he'd been gone finally struck him. A thousand years, maybe more had passed.

Further clues evaded him. Lacking clairvoyance and relying reluctantly on intuition, he turned his flight path north, fearing the sting of abyss that haunted him from his imprisonment, and sensing the need to investigate.

With vigorous might, he stirred the blizzard winds with the blade of his body, and took swiftly to the sky, his eyes searching, waiting for breaks in the stormclouds to reveal guiding stars.

He would quickly find the stars and constellations required to guide him north, though he would notice they had in time changed, a few were gone, and a few new ones had appeared in their places. He would not be able to make the journey north quickly, after so long being imprisoned he would need to rest and eat. Whatever horrors that awaited in the north would remain there as he journeyed.

For many miles he flew, for days on end, as hoary mountains gave way to stalwart hills and verdent valleys. In time, a weariness pulled on him, a sensation more severe than any before his imprisonment, and his mind was brought into a shifting haze. Slowly his body succumbed to grayness and torpor as he began to sink lower toward the earth below.... Until at last, ringing clearly as a bell, a calling voice wrenched him from the daze. Reinvigorated, Strahmeyun bent his attention swiftly to the sound. His ears sensed only the bleak swirling of the winds, and yet in his mind there rose a chorus of cries, internal yet distant, a symphony of distress that echoed with old energies--sorcerer's work. Below him, warm-bloods slept undisturbed, hearing only the silence of the night, for this call was not for them. No, the voices sang out for the heart of a dragon, and the pull of their desperation resonated in Strahmeyun's bones as though they were metal struck by lightning. A knowledge of fell dangers and dark fates for the warm-bloods swept into him.

Strahmeyun drew upon the draconic spirit within his heart and answered-- "I am coming." He pitched his wings and veered, swooping toward the source of the mighty call....

When he neared the cry for help, he would see a small settlement, by this point he was well outside of any major kingdoms, but it was obviously a human town. The only thing about this town that stood out was the fact that in it's center stood a rather significant sized mage's tower. Obviously the town cropped up around the tower, not the other way around.

The distress call was coming from the tower where he could sense nearly everyone in the town was hiding except the military which was fighting at the walls with everything they had. At each of the three main gates there was a horde of undead, each covered and controlled by red vines which seemed to be sprouting from their chests and tangling in and out of their bodies through their mouths, eyes, nose and ears, and any other orifice they could fit in.

As Strahmeyun approached, his great shadow crept over the combatants. The resurrected paid no heed, but the town guards were seized with a new fear, and looked up at what they thought was their doom. For a moment they were frozen, their eyelids trapped open as they stared at the winged shape, dark against the light of the sun, growing larger and larger as it drew towards them. Then a number of the men turned frantically as if to flee, while others, old soldiers staunch and unmovable, held their focus and continued to raise blade and shield against the host of corpses without the briefest pause in the rhythm of their sword-strokes. Still others, young men with bold and hasty hearts, rushed to hoist the ballistas on the wall and take aim at what they thought was a new winged threat. Bolts flew from the wall-towers, forcing Strahmeyun to roll and yaw quickly out of the path of their path. Still, the dragon bore on towards the lines of battle.

Just then a swift wind and a titanic blast of thunder thrust out from the sorcerer's tower, and a voice shouted down from the tower to the walls, "Fear not the skies! The serpent answers the Tower's call and brings us a new dawn--take heart men!"

As if to prove these words true, at that moment Strahmeyun tore into the mass of undead, wrenching them apart with his fangs and hurling them into the air with claw and tail. He held in his rage and breathed no ice, lest he crush the corpses, the soldiers, and the town alike. The Captain of the Guard smiled with relief, and issued forth a triumphant blast from his battle-horn. The men cheered, and were emboldened. With new courage inspired by the wrath of their unexpected ally, the guards broke into a war-chant. Their mail-coats rattled, their upraised swords gleamed in the sunlight, and with their shields they formed a fearsome wall, menacing like a mouth with glittering teeth of steel.

A flurry of bolts, arrows and stones spewed from the walls and tore vicious gaps in the enemy lines, while footmen fighting at the gate advanced the line slowly, step-by-step, inching the shield wall forward as it mowed the host of foes in its path. "Forth! Forth! Forth!" they chanted, marching steadily onward. Louder and louder grew their shouts, hypnotic in their rhythm. All the while corpse and vine were ripped asunder by fang and talon, and a great swath of the battlefield surrounding Strahmeyun was rendered clear of the undead foe.

With a sudden fear, the reanimated army turned at once and fled away from the town as swiftly as the cursed vines could bear them, away towards the hills. But lo! As the enemy routed, Strahmeyun turned away from the walls to face the fleeing legions, and finally after patient restrained the dragon rose into the air and let icy dragonbreath loose from his throat. Streaks of destruction cleaved through the air and pummeled wide swaths of grassland like a hammer of frost against an anvil. The undead, too slow to escape, were blown into icy fragments by the vengeful torrent until all their numbers dwindled into nothingness. With the last corpse vanquished, the great rumble of storm in Strahmeyun's throat quieted to a dull growling, its rage exhausted. The dragon descended to the ground and paused for a moment, peering out for any last signs of motion, but all was still. Behind him the townsguard were roaring with victorious song, bellowing out triumphant lyrics and proud hornblasts. The bells of the city rang, and the terrified and shivering citizens peered out their windows and doors, crying tears of relief and kissing the heads of their young ones. Laughter erupted forth amidst the bell-chimes, and the village came alive with a vivacity it had not felt in all the years that they could remember. But the sorcerer's tower, and Strahmeyun, both remained silent.

After the quick and brutal defeat of the small undead hordes, the people cheered and hooted and hollered for their silver savior. But the mage's tower remained deathly silent, until a voice echoed out over the area, the people heard it too this time, as they all turned up to look. It was this tower's archmage, a wizened old elf with tanned olive skin and long white hair with some wisps of brown going through it, showing that his hair used to be a rather beautiful shade of brown, like hazelnuts.

"Great Silver One! We thank you for saving our humble city! We humbly beseech you come and speak to us here in the tower, if our texts are correct Silvers can maintain a humanoid form for as long as they wish. If you answered our call, you need to know more, and there is much to know."

Years had passed since Strahmeyun last heard the speech of an elf, and this archmage's elegant voice felt as soothing as music, and old aches seemed to vanish from the dragon's scales. But heavy worries still weighed on his heart, and the greatest of these was due to his ignorance. Questions remained surrounding the changed world and its newfound perils, and answers lay in that tower, no doubt. Up he rose, turning about and arcing into the sky in a forceful leap. Strahmeyun soared over the walls and forced the jubilation of the town to a sudden halt as the townsfolk shuddered in horror, then gasped in amazement as the colossal serpent warped and changed instantly into the small figure of a weathered and silver-haired man who tumbled out of the air and landed on the outstretched balcony of the tower.

Now facing the tall elf-mage in the form of a bent and aged human, Strahmeyun righted himself from the fall to the balcony and pulled a grey woolen cloak about his shoulders. He gazed at the wizard and the other robed figures filling the dim room, and after a pause spoke.

"I listen."

The room was full of various kinds of magic practitioner, from wizards to warlocks and from druids to sorcerers. Their leader was obviously someone who used a mixture of nature based magic as a druid, and divine magic as a cleric of some deity Strahmeyun did not recognize.

He bowed his head as did the rest of the room and they beckoned him to come inside and sit with them. "My name is Letholian Gre'ani, please come in. Dragons have been gone for nearly two thousands years, you are bound to have questions! We can answer any of them as best we can, and we will also explain what is happening with those...things you dispatched for our town."

Strahmeyun labored slowly in speech, for he was never sharply skilled in maneuvering a warm-blooded tongue and jaw.
"First, tell me what lore you know of the abyssal energy that I feel entering this plain, and the disturbance I sense in the north. No doubt you sense these as I do, for in a tower so high one sees far, yes? Or perhaps the knowledge of these disturbances is common these days, and not just the stuff of scrying wizards?"

Letholian nodded slowly and sighed "Yes we have sensed these disturbances as well, it is most definitely not common. It is very worrying. The most threatening one is in the north as you said, but there are two smaller rifts that have ripped into the under dark, also Abyssal in nature. We aren't sure what has caused this, but we do know that it is corrupting nature somehow, specifically in the north. That's what those undead creatures were, corpses controlled like puppets by veins growing through their veins. We knew there would be corpses for these vines to animate, there are any number of abandoned villages with cemeteries or old battlefields to the north, or small unguarded towns. But there were too many for that to be the only cause. We did happen to discover how it was getting so many corpses. Someone has created a demiplane connected to the Shadowfell, and is collecting corpses there, and sending them to the North to be animated."

Strahmeyun nodded. "So it is by the machinations of a corrupted will, and not merely an accident of nature that these terrors arise. Or at the very least you have some enemy who stokes the flame of this abyssal anomaly.
'For my part, I am a protector of nature and of the natural order--the threat of necromancy alone would be enough to warrant my alarm and swift action, ere the evil compounds itself as more lives are extinguished and bodies subsumed. Though I suspect, as I am sure you suspect, that necromancy is neither the worst nor the root of all that troubles this world and its natural order.
I will hinder this evil if I may, and will array all such powers as I can against it. But this brings me to you and your order, master Gre'ani. For your call was for a dragon and no other--I could sense this much. I know that you would not take such a risk lightly and therefore I expect that my part to play in this drama is greater than I would have guessed. Tell me, for what purpose have you summoned me?"

The elf mage before him nodded and said "As you may have sensed, you are not the only dragon to have returned to this world. You're kind has been gone for thousands of years, the world is scared of you. You are myths and legends to them, but to us and some other independent mage towers, you are...so much more. Our order was originally known as Kovgam Trekis, which as you know, is Dragon Tongue, for Metal's Breath. Our founders were brought together and taught by a Silver and a Gold. So now that dragon's have returned, we were hoping we would find one to help us stop the necromancer, which would slow the spread of the abyssal leakage and it's undead. But also, find a dragon who would become our new master, and lead us."

At this, Strahmeyun surveyed the dark room, full of silent and staring faces beset by a doomed sadness beyond fear. The faintly crackling torches on the wall revealed eyes overcast by tired grief that comes only to those who have come to know more about death than about living. Dusty books and yellowing papers haphazardly bedecked the tables such that only specs of dark wood penetrated through, signs of a frantic struggle against an enemy that refused to be fully known. Only Letholian held a posture and countenance free of dismay.
Strahmeyun stood erect, his face grave and his voice steady and forthright. "Destiny leads me on an errand of death, a path of enduring struggle against the powers of Necromancy, and so my fate is bound to your cause. I vow my aid to your order for as long as my power can thwart the necromancer's will. You have survived hardship and suffering. Now your enemy will suffer me. As for the lasting leadership of the Kovgam Trekis, my role remains to be seen. For there are matters more pressing; we will reconvene at the errand's end, if still we both live."
As he spoke, the fog parted briefly in the wizards' eyes, and the weight of gloom seemed to lessen on their shoulders. A few drew closer, acutely attentive. Letholian remained statuesque.
Strahmeyun continued. "You will guide me with what you know, and I will listen. But I will hear more voices than yours. I hear the voices which are silent to your ears. I will go north, to the resting places of the dead, and take their counsel."

Letholian nodded and said "That sounds like a good course of action, we can aid you little in this matter unfortunately, but we can give you the location of where we think the demiplance's entrance resides. From there, if you destroy the demiplane's anchor that should cut off a significant amount of corpses reaching the vines to the north, though by now they already have a significantly sized grouping of undead legions. But even if this shadowfell demiplane isn't the cause of all of this, destroying it will make handling the abyssal leak much more manageable."

The location was farther to the North East, in a large circular canyon that seemed to be form by some kind of magical blast or anomaly. That was where they believed the demiplane was connected to this world. They warned that there would more than likely be undead there.

A pale wizard with sunken eyes and too may lines on his young face sheepishly produced a map and offered it to Strahmeyun. Strahmeyun bowed, unfurled the map and studied it, committing it to memory. The old man bowed again, pivoted, and returned to the balcony. Strahmeyun's true form emerged, and a  great dragon erupted from the tower again, speeding above the town and beating the villagers with a vigorous wind. But the amazement of the townsfolk was cut short-- in a moment, he was well beyond sight. The brown, curving hill-lands sped away beneath Strahmeyun, and flattened out into green plains studded with boulders and embroidered with lacing streams.

In the distance, a curtain of looming mountains framed the plains with jagged blue. But against this curtain of blue lay a darkness, a warped and pulsating haze like a black scar on the horizon. The sight of it cause Strahmeyun to falter, and nearly threw him to the ground. Suddenly a choking heaviness overcame his throat, and breath failed him. Only with great struggle of will was he able to wrench free and retake control. He was all the more wary now.

Still in a state of vigilance, Strahmeyun spotted his prize-- layer upon layer of stones jutting up from the level earth, pillars in concentric circles that sprawled across a wide stretch of ground. They were rough, misshapen by long years, but stood as straight and proud as ever. In the center, a great monolith towered above the rest, a monument wreathed in crawling ivy. Beneath the stalwart stones and grasses, fell warriors lay entombed beside their blades and shields. Ancient and terrible battles had been fought here at the Grave of the Forefathers, and the valorous deeds of this place were revered long after they were shrouded by time and reshaped into whispered myth. In amongst these hallowed stones Strahmeyun descended and softly landed.
"Speak, honored dead of the Grave of the Forefathers. Long have you known death, and you are wise in its ways. Deep is your rest, yet now a power to the north rouses souls from slumber. I go to battle this new terror. What say you in counsel, fell ones? I listen."

He would feel energy pulse and ebb as the long dead spirits of this place tried to speak, but something, somewhere was weakening them. It felt so far away, so feeble compared to what it should have been. But he did managed to hear some things from them, very cryptic, broken things.

Shadowfell.....abyss is......mortal realms.....cracking borders.....

Strahmeyun's heart grew heavy, and his eyes widened with a dreadful knowing. These spirits had been proud, their voices loud and firm... though not now. They were mere whispers, weak and trembling as starved and strangled by a force far stronger. Roused to a sudden conviction, Strahmeyun launched from the earth in a fury, and sped death-bent toward the rippling black haze on the horizon. No longer did he quail at it sight; he set his stare sternly against it, and his course was straight. With all his force he thrust forward, but still he slowed as he pressed onward, and as the air became thicker and heavier closer to the dark scar.

As the scar grew near the air nearly smothered Strahmeyun, and he struggled to climb in altitude as he reached the rocky crags and ghylls at the edge of the low vale. Gray stone grasped up from the ground beneath him, as if petrified arms sought to entangle and consume him. All around now in the air was blackness like dense smoke; neither horizon nor sky could be seen, even by dragon's eye. Strahmeyun gagged-- he reached the Tear.

As soon as he entered the breach into the Shadow Fell, it felt like he was hit by a brick wall of oppressive feelings. Depression, hatred, loneliness, hopelessness, it all hit him at once. Before him lay an area he would know to be the Shadow Fell, but not the true Shadow Fell. As the mages said this was a Demi Plane, manifested within but also without the true plane of Shadow Fell. The Shadow Fell itself would have been a vast colorless wasteland of gray ash like sand and gravel, with a few outcroppings jagged rocks and clusters of dead and charred trees. This had the grey sand and gravel, the jagged rocks and charred trees. But it was like a dead forest within a winding desert of ash, and sitting tall and ominous at it's end was a huge horrific twisted cathedral, looming over everything, as if watching over this cursed creation of a plane.

Seeing no other choice, Strahmeyun set his sights on the monstrous cathedral, and took in a deep breath. Suddenly he gagged, realizing the blood-curdling stench as ash floated into his nose and throat. Strahmeyun hacked and heaved, and spit out a burst of ice that rolled over the ash waste. Shaking as if to slough off the gray and ominous feeling of the place, Strahmeyun took off, flying at the slowest pace he could manage toward the dark spires of the looming building. As he ventured on he darted his head this way and that, searching for danger as paranoia crawled through his veins. Here or there he weaved around the rocks and dead trees, peering all about them for fear of something lurking, and once or twice sending out a torrent of icy hail at piles of ash that shifted in the cold wind.

Most of the time his blasts of icy hail would connect with ash and dust, his paranoia telling him there were threats where there were none. But as he got closer to the cathedral, one of his blasts hit something solid. "keh, svabol ui nomeno? xarzith? irral si mi lorita, hak si mi lowda!? svabol pazienra ui nomeno!?" Draconic, there was a dragon hidden somewhere in the dust where his breath hit.

http://draconic.twilightrealm.com/ this is the draconic translator we use on this forum))))

"sia isthasy renthisjic!" With the sound of a familiar tongue came a brief levity in Strahmeyun's heart, but it did not lift the shadows from his mind utterly. "si mi bivai, austratir ir. sjek truly wux re lorita tenpiswo, hak nomagqe hesi tuarnoi nomag qe ganima. Come, please show yourself. Be ye friend or foe, I give my word not to harm you unprovoked. It may be that we can help each other, you and I." Still, Strahmeyun held back, heart thudding as he questioned what this voice might be. An illusion? A trick? He had nowhere to escape, and nowhere to hide.