Chapter Text
Polian Mox was not a warrior, she had been born in the green woods north of the city and walls of the dragon's keep where the lords of the mire dwelled and ruled over the surrounding lands. Her clan had lived well in the trees, as was the nature of wood-elves and her own heritage with draconic ancestry somewhere so long ago it was forgotten peppering her skin with a smattering of silver scales on her cheeks and brow, below her ears at her jaw and anywhere really that you might expect a hatchling's crests to start to form. But in her meager fifty-seven years, the scales had formed but not grown. Mox was many things - she counted the greater list of what she was not, when asked however - not a warrior, not a magician, not a mastermind, not a dragon...
Some of those were more relevant than not, of late, but it was the battle she was trapped in that filled her mind with terror and panic. She had never fought a living creature before, not in a life-or-death battle; she’d always been able to sway beasts to avoid such horrible choices. But these men who they fought now…
The mighty goliath had fallen and when she'd tried to heal him, reaching out through the earth to bind his wounds... the magic had slid off him like water over armor. She felt the foul taint from the blood thirsty dryad and sobbed, hefting the little wicker and brass shield ineffectively - the gnome before her raised his staff and there was a mighty blast of thunder. She was thrown back hard, and struggled to pick herself up off the ground as an armored woman rushed forward, ignoring her own wounds to block Mox from the attackers. She picked up a pebble and infused it with the forest's might, and threw it as hard as she could - fortunately, the man was less than a dozen feet away, the pebble struck him in the temple and exploded, and with a scream he fell down dead before the warrior could strike him.
Ionra glanced over her shoulder to Mox, grinned once, then rushed the dryad that was still standing while the others peppered it with magic fire and more exploding stones. She stood up, her legs were shaking, her chest burned and her head was ringing but Mox blinked and wiped the sweat from her eyes. She tried to ignore the blood she saw on her sleeve and raised her staff as the thing screeched at Judah. Her friends were hurt but she felt so tired, tired and heavy, she tried to summon another spell and felt how very little of her power remained. Tears filling her eyes, she whirled and the words that flowed from her lips were ancient, growling and rasping and the water in the air collected as she channeled her bloodline's magic for one last desperate try. Ice grew impossibly fast, coating the end of the staff, forming a massive and jagged shard that, with a hard twist of her arms, broke away and flew at the tall creature that should have been lovely and gentle, that she should have been sitting near and listening to with rapt attention. She watched the ice slam into the dyrad's chest and explode; it tore a huge hole in her while both Ionra and Judah dodged away from the spray of ice crystals and bits of wood easily. The dryad stumbled, raised her hands and began to scream.
It all happened so fast after that, Ionra's rapier stabbed into her side, another pebble from Cirre exploded. Judah's axe sang through the air, and with a sickly wet crunch, the dryad's head rolled away and the body fell forward in the suddenly silent grove. She stared, horrified, at the putrid thick sap-like blood that flowed from the body and felt her stomach twist threateningly. There was a groan from behind her, Mox wheeled and saw Zodzar lifting himself out of the mud, he was covered in gore but was alive and she had a half-moment of joy, then she saw the fury in his face and Mox trembled. She backed away, stumbling into one of the small streams and then darted along its path, crawling through the mud to find a tight space under the boulders where she could hide and hugged her knees hard, as her heart pounded and she gasped for air like a fish out of water. She couldn't breathe, and she was terrified, her mind rushed with a thousand thoughts and she couldn't grasp single one to focus upon.
'I can't,' she wanted to scream, 'I can't breathe.'
There was no air for the words and she reached up to her throat, clawing at the skin, trying to open a passage for breath. She was dizzy and then she felt a cold, like hands gripping her own, pulling them down from her face and a voice in her mind spoke with stern certainty.
'You must calm down, it is alright.' Gavarenth's voice was not gentle, but the ghost was trying to be kind. She tried to listen, whimpering and clutching her staff as tears streamed from her eyes.
'I can't,' even her thoughts stuttered in her terror, the frail woman could not bend her emotions to her control.
The cold around her intensified and she gasped in shock, she could see her breath. Gavarenth's voice was deeper, louder, it filled the tiny space and frost grew on the stones around her in the presence of that powerful soul, 'You are a dragon, my hatchling, and you are safe. The fight is over, you did well. Your friends are alright.'
'They hate me,' her tears burned on her cheeks, hot shame pouring down her frozen face. 'I'm too weak.'
'Your ice slowed her,' the dragon countered calmly, the cold wrapped around her body like a blanket, it was sharp and shocking but it didn't hurt. Something about the cold felt right, she tried to slow her breathing, found it easier. Gavarenth crooned approvingly and she took another breath as the ghost spoke again in her mind, the cold between her shoulders spread to wrap around her and pressed close against the back of her neck. 'You are small and timid, but when they needed you to be, you were ferocious. I will teach you to be fierce in every way, my little nestling. I will protect you.'
Mox opened her eyes, was about to speak aloud when she heard a roar and a clatter - combat - and the words became a weak sob. She stammered hopelessly, "N-no, I-I-I ca-can't. I- Gav-gava-renth, m-my m-my magic i-is is gone!"
The dragon was silent for a moment, she felt the cold around her recede slightly, pulling into her as though the dragon's ghost was trying to infuse her with more power. She reached for it, but could summon little more than a small vine crawling up her staff from the mud and blooming. Zodzar's voice rang out, a bellow of battle-fury, and Mox's terror won the internal conflict. She didn't remember deciding to do it, later, but in the chaos of battling the re-risen dryad and her cohort, a small rabbit with brown fur and a strange white mark between her shoulders darted out of the stream bed and fled down the stony hill back the way they had come. She found their camp below but did not pause, instead she raced along the boggy land until she reached woods and sprang into the underbrush with such speed that even a wolf would have been surprised. Mox ran for hours, finally she found as the afternoon sky darkened towards evening, a dead tree that had fallen upon itself. The roots were half-exposed and she crawled underneath to lay trembling, furry ribs heaving with exhaustion as she shut her eyes and panted - it hurt to breath, it hurt to move, her senses were screaming for her to hide but she couldn't lift a paw to go another step. She shuddered and opened her eyes, watching her paws stretch and shift, her fingers flexed and her staff seemed to grow from her hand like a quick-springing sapling and realized that even the earth’s magic could only hide her for so long.
The cold crept along her skin again, Gavarenth had been silent throughout her flight - she squeezed her eyes shut and gasped soft sobs of shame as the tears fell down onto the damp earth. Her staff was simple, a fallen branch from one of the trees in the heart of her clan’s home that she had taken up and felt the forest accept her when she touched it with her magic the very first time. Now it was as though the staff and moss knew what she needed, she felt her magic flare and extend to the ground around her, she opened her eyes and watched as her desperation took form. Moss and vines grew up from the floor of the forest, filling the space she had crawled through and closing it over with sheets of hanging leaves that hid her from the outside. The stump she lay in was dead but new growth had already begun to take hold and the green growing did not stop until she was sheltered from the rain and wind, from eyes of hunters or stray travelers, laying on a thick bed of dark moss while ice began to frost over the inside of that rotten wood - hardening it to stone as she let her eyes flutter closed, and exhaustion drew her down into the well of memory that she tried so hard to avoid in the light of day.