- Diary Entry must have an Authored event
I had the dream again. The memory of that harrowing event seemed just as vivid as though it were yesterday. I can still feel the dread chill some days.
Perhaps it is time to commit this tragedy to the page. The events that follow this account, I am told, are well know. The Slaying of the Great White Dragon Nixënár is legendary across Tide. How a mighty warrior of flame and steel sought out the beast.
But it seems, few NOT from Antaur remember the first encounter beyond the Barrier Mountains
Small at the time, Antaur was little more that a dozen or so extended families who had settled in the foothills of the Barrier Mountain range only two generations before. My grandfather told stories to the nomadic life of his grandfather, that he was happy to have left behind. He told yarns of the caravan his father took part in during the great crossing from Thorne to Tide and how he when younger than I am now helped fell one of the first trees to build the longhouse at the centre of town. How he was proud to be one of the first settlers over 60 years ago. His favoured story was one of the crossing itself, and the meeting of the “DreadWyrm”. He would tell this story to all the young children, myself included. Even at twelve I had sat enthralled and hung on every word of his tall tale.
If only I had know. Every word was true.
In the autumn of that year, the hunting parties had to travel further a field to find game. They ranged into the higher hills in search of mountain goats and elk, hoping to bolster our stores before winter. However, when one band did not return. When they were a week overdue my father, Pax Wren, gathered a party to search for them. They found only one sole survivor. But he was a broken man, chattering senselessly about a “storm of ice and steel made flesh”. He screamed in his sleep, and only found peace when he passed away three nights later. His last words to careers, “the eyes in the dark will find you”.
No one realised that the “Eyes in the Dark”, the “Storm of Ice and Steel” and the “DreadWyrm” of legend were one in the same.
The morning following his death a border patrol from the Pauviel’s Tirismálos. Two units, one of 5 scouts and another of 3 archers lead by a towering champion. As child I had seen elves before. Scout patrols had been welcomed in Antaur since the days of my grandfather, each standing slim and tall, wearing simple leathers and a green tabard emblazed with the stags head of the country we now called home. Scouts and archer only really deferrable from the length and power of there bows and the number of arrows each carried. The champion however, not a soul among us had seen his kind before. The being stood a full foot taller than my father, clad in bronze armour, the stags head enamelled in burnished gold on his greened pauldren. The helm of this being was a snarling dragons head. Then the head spoke and the gathering crowd recoiled. This was no helmed, it was the face of a dragonborn.
After the initial shock he introduced himself as Wulverax Dulthanderrac. He and the heads of the founding families spoke a while and Dulthanderrac offered the help of this unit. The townsfolk and the soldiers gathered wood for a funeral pyre, and that night we sent our fellow on in the way of our ancestors.
As the pyre grew larger a chill wind blew down from the north. The sound of rolling thunder filled the air, but not a cloud could be seen in the starry sky. Then I noticed the elves became uneasy. A scout moved to Dulthanderracs side. The thunder rumbled again. Closer yet still I could not see a single cloud, let alone a flash of lightning. My mother noticed the scout and knight whispering and asked my father what was wrong, but before he could answer the thunder deafened us. Loud and close, but now we could tell it was no thunderclap, but the beating of fell wings. A piercing shriek filled the air. The dragonborn turned to the crowd.
“Find Shelter.” He boomed, “Deep as you can. Cellars, store rooms, anything below ground.”
The shriek filled the air again as a geezer of ice and fury drowned the towering pyre of flame as the hugely ancient white dragon landed in the square. Some scattered in varied directions. Others ran into the nearest timber homesteads. My father ushered my family to the longhouse. Half its height was below ground and its store chamber fully below the surface. I did not see what happened next. I heard high pitched shrieks and deep booming roars. Flashes of blue and orange light filtered through the floorboards above my head. Then a great crashing as the longhouse roof collapsed. After a moments eerie silence the thunderclap of great wings was heard and with a triumphant cry Nixënár returned to her lofty perch deep within the mountains. The fire that has so irked her, extinguished and her challenger laid low.
No one moved from the storeroom until daybreak. The site that greeted us was one of ruin. The funeral pyre a mass of frost covered logs. Two entire houses thick with icicles that showed no sign of melt despite the warming morning. The longhouse roof shattered where, we are told the dragonborn fell after being batted aside. He lives, though his arm is broken, his armour is shattered and his jaw missing a great many teeth. As we come out of our hiding place the champion rounds on us.
“I will return with an army and rid you of that beast. You have my word.”
We all rejoice until he says to the townsfolk, “However I have lost three scouts and an archer this night, so I will need to bolster my force to make it home.”
Without warming he orders my elder cousin Tellar Wren, Kirdan and Kiranne Sparrow and the Herons eldest boy Titus to join him and escort him safely back to Nemethil. This is met with less happiness, and when Titus turns the offer down two scouts take a knee and level drawn bows at his father and mother. As my father steps forward to argue this treatment an archer levels a bow in his direction.
“In times of greatest need the Tirismálos may bolster its ranks as needed. Your kinsmen will serve only until the crisis is over.”
The elders relented despite the bitterness of the lie they knew this to be.
It was a the following summer before the army returned in strength to seek out the dragon. And a further year of campaigning to wound the creature and drive it out.
While we waited for the Tirismálos, nearby towns send carpenters and stoneworkers to help us rebuild our town. Since that first night every home is at least partially build below ground, and each have a stocked shelter for times of need. And need we have. That winter brought two more attacks. Each claiming the lives of many townsfolk including my yougest sister. The day of my thirteenth birthday the Tirismálos sent craftsman of there own to build a modest keep on the northern boundary of town. Thankfully the elvish craftsman listened to our own and built the keep as much below ground as they could. Only a bell tower and a gate house standing fully proud of the earth. By spring the townsfolk manned the keep. The bell tolling if the sound of wings was ever heard or a white streak ever spied. By the midsummer Antaur stopped counting the attacks. Due to the sturdy buildings and deep cellars losses were less, though in his fury the DreadWyrm had dug a family out of there cellar just to show us she could. Our folk became proficient with the bow to harass the monster until she grew tired of our arrows. I even scored a few hits myself from the Drakehold keeps wall.
For a number of weeks before the army was due to arrive, supply caravans would travel from the lowlands town of Cassari. These wagons and beasts of burden would need escorts and guide up the foothills to the township. Many families of Antaur began offering such services, my own at the forefront. And when the armies departed, there mission complete, traders continued to hire Wrens and Sparrows to guide them through the winding forest paths or the rocky hillsides towards Pigeons Roost. My father says wandering is in our blood. Not surprising then that the town feels half empty during the summer time. Families could be scattered across the continent but will always try to be home for the winter months. Cold is a time of togetherness for the folk of Antaur