Dragon, The Terrible

She arrives as the Dragon predicted, well before daybreak.

Osthryn slows to a walk as she nears the Western Gate, crouching within a copse of trees when she notices the city wall looming closer.

The Western Gate is not fully closed, it is manned. She does not know how many people would recognize her in particular. More importantly, she would not know how many would now suspect that she is a Dragon. It is not likely that any of the common folk would be a problem, but she does not now how deep the Necormancers' influence stretched before this. Anyone associated with the Keep, library, or even the Temple could be a threat. Guards included.

Osthryn has grown attached to the face and shape she has worn for the past four hundred years. It is reflection of herself, it is what she knows. Shapechanging in general is discouraged in the North. For exhaustively clear reasons. However, for now, she might be able to pull it off.

The trees grow taller around her, and all of a sudden the night around her appears brighter, sharper. She slinks out from between the trees, black as the night, and pads lightly to towards the gate. The concentration she must muster is far more intense than what she is used to when holding her human shape. She had grown so used to that shape that the focus required to hold it had all but faded into the background of her existence. Perhaps this is what Silovar means, meant, when he felt that holding a human form is not a viable permanent state.

The Dragon bemoans the selection of her shape, longing to unleash its fury. Osthryn puts it to rights with the smug pride of a cat with a bird newly snatched from the sky in its mouth.

She has always wondered what this shape felt like.

"Oh! Hallo kitty!" calls one of the guards as she enters the gate, the lumbering armoured figure creaking loudly as he bends toward her, extending his hand. Osthryn stares at the hand blankly, completely caught off guard. She flits her gaze to the helmeted face, then turns and runs through the gate, a dejected "Aw, damn it..." following her into the night.

"It's your armour, George. And you moved way too quickly. Imagine how you must look from that poor thing's perspective. No wonder you scared it!" the guard's companion laughs.

"You may be right," George sighs, "It just looked so pretty!"

Their conversation fades into the night, Osthryn steadily making her way down the faintly outlined streets to the Library, glad for her cat-sight in the darkness. The city is eerily quiet -- good for her plans, but a bad sign. Usually even at this hour some windows would sport readers by candle- or magelight. Some tavern-goers would be returning home, and some intensely early-risers and restless sleepers would be taking a walk. Though tonight, the only feet on the streets seem to be the boots of the guards and Osthryn's paws.

Good for the common folk, bad for Necromancer hunting, Osthryn muses, the Dragon's voice mingling with her own.

Osthryn leaps up the Library steps, the cold, smooth marble under her paws making her miss her boots and the shield they provided. The door is closed and locked, as would be expected at this time of night. She sidles around to a window, leaping onto the sill. The window is latched from the inside. Osthryn peers around to see if anyone sees her, green orbs shining from a black void -- the street before the Library is clear.

The window obediently unlatches and swings open at Osthryn's commanding stare, and she hops lightly inside. Her shape fades, and a human woman stands, grateful she does not need to spend so much energy focusing on keeping her cat form.

The only light comes from idle wisps, nestled into the shelves as if asleep, little flames flickering contentedly. The writing desks are empty, with nothing left on them to indicate which mage or scribe used them last. Osthryn needs no such indications to know where to begin her task -- the habits of the mages she served were intimately known to her. She makes a beeline to the desks closest to the ladder she usually climbed.

Mages and scribes are creatures of routine and convenience, and without fail, these desks would be occupied by Oswald and Frederick. That Oswald worked for so long next to a Necromancer never to realise it points to just how well camoflauged this threat was.

The personal research repositories for each mage and scribe were stored in the library for their convenience, and where in the Library they chose to keep these tomes was at their discretion. While they would sometimes take the step of safeguarding their work with an enchanted latch, physical safeguarding was once again subject to habit. And like Osthryn would expect, Oswald's tome of research notes is a very convenient distance from his desk. She knows he will have copies of his notes and scribbles strewn throughout what could be the whole of Grosberg with his insistent scribbling once seated before any flat surface. His study, especially, will contain much of what is stored here and much more besides.

Osthryn is not saving this for Oswald. She is saving this for herself.

The Dragon scratches at the back of her mind, scolding her for her dawdling. Osthryn sighs, and focuses on the tome held in her hands, willing its shape to change. She tucks the shrunken tome, now as wide and tall as a query card, into her kirtle.

She looks up at the idle wisps, some slowly stretching themselves out of inactivity upon registering her presence. Osthryn walks to the centre of the circle of writing desks, climbing atop the central table. The shapechanged Dragon holds out her hands, and for the last time, Osthryn calls forth for a wisp.

Obediently, silently, the blue lights appear from within the walls and between the tomes to heed her. Hundreds of wisps, far more than she ever saw inhabit this library, float down to her. One by one they light onto her hands, and as each one is dismissed forever, it leaves some of what it knows with her.

She thanks them, desperately drinking in what little knowledge they can give her, the Dragon filing away what they know. What this library knows. While magic as it is known now is what threatens her and Silovar, it is what he "tended with the remnants of his pride". Even as she plunges the world of magic into darkness for those who would benefit from it, she will keep what little she can alive within herself.

The last of the wisps fade, leaving their existence after what was for some of them hundreds of years of service. Then Osthryn stands alone, in the darkness. The emptiness that the wisps leave behind is like the solemnity of the Library's death. A dagger of pain twists in Osthryn's heart at the thought, a pang of grief finally piercing through her denial and anger.

Osthryn approaches the ladder, and resolutely takes hold of it with both hands. Slowly, she climbs, hardly noticing the imperceptible lateral sway that so often put her on edge in the beginning. Like a conditioned habit, she almost stops to fish around for nonexistent query cards in her pocket when she reaches the midpoint. She pushes on, climbing higher than she ever has before. A ghost of the first day she met Silovar sidles into her mind as she climbs, like a bitter hand gripping her throat. This will erase so many memories, so many tangible parts of who she became since Silovar chased her wisps away.

But now those very memories sour, in the Library that inadvertently created the hand by which Silovar would die.

"We could always catch ourselves if we fell, though, we might just break something."

Osthryn laughs through her tears when the memory of Silovar's voice rings out in her mind. She looks up at the beams of the vaulted ceiling that is now less than her own height above her at the very top of this ladder, and then down, scanning the space that surrounds her.

"Indeed, Silovar, this place is too small for a Dragon. We would definitely have broken something."

Osthryn lets go of the ladder, leaping down the centre of the Library's dome. Her throat constricts in anticipation -- she never thought she would do this in her life. But Oswald was correct, she was merely a troubled Dragon, not a defective one.

The Dragon's wings dash against the wooden beams as they emerge, breaking them and cutting through the structure with the power of each beat. Osthryn lets the debris of the rapidly deconstructing roof fall around her as a heat she never had the privilege of feeling before rises from her chest. It was a risk to be seen like this, but she did not know how else she would save them.

The Dragon is certain of her survival as she lets the terrible heat of her fire spew forth, stone and mortar turning soft and tomes turning to ash in the wake of it. Osthryn watches with mingled sadness and relief as the fullness of her identity razes her first real home to the ground.