Chapter Text
The first time Hannibus saw Vindicta, he thought he had seen a ghost.
She stood on a low hill not far from the grand history-tree. He nearly didn’t notice her, as he was engrossed in carving the tale of his first meeting with Shakorexis on a wide section of bark - if not for the two dragons squabbling behind her, he wouldn’t have even looked over his shoulder.
He recognized the larger of the two dragons immediately as Therragorn, her white scales glinting brilliantly even in the dust-filtered sun. The smaller one, initially, was less familiar, until he reared up and spread his tattered, spike-edged wings.
Gorvek.
That’s when he noticed the armored Ilujanka between them. He could see the design of her helmet and cuirass - exquisitely blued runite trimmed with gold - from where he stood, and it was as if the cold hand of the Empty Lord himself closed around his heart at the sight.
Morvannon.
No, she was dead.
Gone.
Her and her - their - egg.
It’s a trick. An illusion. Punishment for- his thoughts snapped to the pale Dragonkin and his promise- abandoning hope.
Disbelief and sorrow turned to anger - the volcanic, boiling, throat-searing anger one could only learn from being bonded to a dragon for an appreciable amount of time.
How dare this stranger, this imposter, don her armor and mount her dragon.
He found his hands curled fiercely around the handles of his carving tools, joints popping like wet wood in a fire. Just as quickly as the anger had flared, however, it was doused with reason.
Gorvek, that near-feral beast who let no one save the fiery-eyed Morvannon anywhere near his saddle, would’ve snapped up anyone who dared even look at her weapons and armor without good enough reason.
Who are they, then? He wondered.
He wondered for a while, watching as Gorvek made a snap for Therragorn’s neck, only to be batted away by the forelimbs he lacked.
Having come up with no solid answers he particularly liked, Hannibus began to wonder who that egg might have become if Morvannon had lived, beyond his second child and the first Ilujanka hatchling in a very long time.
Nothing. His imagination yielded no scale colors, no pattern of stripes, or arrangement of spikes. No voice, no laughter, no smile or frown. Not even a name. He and Ishnuli had chosen Krularon’s name long before his egg was even laid. When Hannibus had tried - and he had tried his best - to convince Morvannon to do the same, she had hissed.
“If we give this egg a name now, Hannibus, we’d be inviting bad luck right into our saddles.”
“By the Olun’dai, it’s worse luck to let a nameless egg hatch!”
“Think for a moment. With Zamorak and Zaros at each other’s throats as they are, we could die any day now. Even if we do survive, the egg might not be fertile. Would you rather be pleasantly surprised and award our child with a name, or be thrown into mourning because you grew attached to a named child that never was?”
They had not named their egg, and true to what Morvannon had said, she had died not two weeks later.
She was right in more ways than one, too, he thought. There had been an absence of any considerable emotion regarding that lost egg when he’d gotten the news. No pang of sorrow deep in his chest, no eye-watering regret like he felt there should have been - all mourning had been reserved for Morvannon and the others he had grown up with and fought alongside.
He slumped back against the tree, tools hanging slack in his hands. The dragons continued to argue in the distance, yet he banished all thoughts about the Ghost of Morvannon to the back of his mind.
After all, he still had much to write upon the tree before his story was finished.