towerofanimus | In Which A Dragon's Affairs Are Meddled With [Open!]

Entry tags:

In Which A Dragon's Affairs Are Meddled With [Open!]

Characters: Phaeris and anyone!
Setting: Starting in dorms, during the day, moving throughout the tower - so if you would prefer a different locale, go for it.
Format: Prose, please.
Summary: Phaeris awakens, and does not take well to his changes.
Warnings: Wakfu spoilers to start, anything else will be edited in.

The letter left for Phaeris was completely missed, primarily because he had other, more pressing matters on his mind. Namely the fact that he was not on his island, and he could not sense his siblings anymore.

This was not a good thing.

He doesn't notice the suit he was put in so much, as in a mild panic, he shifts into his dragon form, tearing the thing apart. The collar, however, is not noticed until his transformation is done and he realizes he's not as large as he's used to being. He's not that much larger than his usual self, really, and it's... Unsettling. He attempts to tug on the collar for a moment, but finding it unyielding, he opts to barge out of his room, into the hall, and from there, throughout the tower - periodically calling out two names: Yugo and Adamaï. The further down he gets through the tower, the more unsettled his voice and movements are, as panic sets in.

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"Eeek!"

As luck would have it, there is a fragile-looking human with very long hair stepping out of her room a few doors down at about the same time that Phaeris comes barreling out. Said human practically leaps back into her room when she catches sight of him, dislodging a chameleon from her shoulder - she darts back out to pick it back up before retreating back inside to peer at him cautiously from the doorway.

The chameleon makes a chittering noise and points at the dragon with its tail; Rapunzel nods, lowering her voice.

"I know, Pascal, it's a dragon. Mother warned me about them..." Pascal gives her an unamused look, which she returns. "She might have been wrong about some things but what if she was right about this?" Phaeris did look more outwardly terrifying than a lot of the things she had encountered so far on her journey, but... she peers at him again. He had been calling something before, hadn't he? "...but what if she's wrong about this, too?"

Still staying in the doorway, she comes to the decision to call out to him, thinking that if worst comes to she can always make a dash for her trunk to get her frying pan.

"Excuse me! Um... Mister Dragon? Oh, what if it's "Miss Dragon"... Are you looking for something?"

The startled noise merits an initial glance from Phaeris, but hsi attention quickly goes back to what he was doing before. The strange girl was not who he sought.

However, his focus goes back to Rapunzel once she addresses him. He turns toward her, though continues to look around until he speaks. "Phaeris seeks his family. Phaeris... Cannot sense them anywhere, and this worries him."

"Your family?" Rapunzel repeats. She exchanges another look with Pascal on her shoulder and her brows knit together in concern. "You mean... more dragons like you?"

What he says about not being able to sense them makes her blink. "How does someone... sense another person? ...or another dragon, as the case may be..."

"One dragon," Phaeris answers, holding a front foot slightly off the floor for a moment to show height, and then adjusting to compensate for his own smaller-than-usual size. "And two ...people," he adds, hesitating on the latter word, as just saying that would move quicker than trying to explain Eliatropes. He raises the first foot a touch higher, then a second about as high as he is tall. "Adamaï, Yugo, and Qilby, in that order."

"...Phaeris fears he does not have the time to explain how. It is something intrinsic to Phaeris' people, and not being able to do so only suggests terrible situations." He makes a low, grumbling noise, glancing around the hallway for several moments before turning back to Rapunzel and Pascal. "Do you know where we are?"

She stiffens when he raises a foot off the ground; it will take time for her not to assume that a dragon lifting a foot means it's going to try and claw her up. The horror stories from Mother Gothel had been effective at making her wary. But after a few seconds she relaxes, though she doesn't recognize any of the names.

"I can help you look," Rapunzel says uncertainly. "But it looks like there are a lot of rooms..."

More than she has ever seen in her life.

She shakes her head in answer to his question. "I don't. I've never seen this place before... it's not like where I spent most of my life." She frowns and her nose wrinkles. Trapping people in towers seemed like her mother's style, and though she could imagine her locking her up to punish her for running away, she has no idea why she would put a dragon here too, or why there would be so many other people around, if the beds were any indication. "So you don't know where we are either?"

The reaction does not go unnoticed. Once Phaeris lowers his feet, he straightens up a bit. "Perhaps you will be more at ease if Phaeris is like you," he says, and shifts to a more humanoid appearance. "Phaeris appreciates your offer - though you will need to know what they look like." As he says this, he makes careful hand motions, and creates illusion-images to go with the names as he re-lists them. "Adamaï, Yugo, and Qilby," he says - though after a moment, Qilby's shifts to a different appearance. "Phaeris would advise not approaching Qilby were you to find him," he adds with a distinctly disdainful tone and a rather deep frown.

"Phaeris has not seen a place like this before," he explains. "It is certainly not the island Phaeris was on before, and he did not have this," he adds, tugging at the collar on his neck.

Rapunzel blinks, disbelieving, before staring at Phaeris for a long moment or two once he had made his change. She brings up a hand to wave in front of her eyes, then looks at him again. No, he's not completely draconic anymore. Yes, that's sort of bizarre. No, she has no idea how he did that.

Part of her isn't sure she wants to know, but a larger part of her is even more curious.

Her staring intensifies at the images of the people Phaeris is searching for, and her jaw drops. It takes a few seconds for her to manage to nod. "I will definitely let you know if I see any of them."

A hand comes up to the collar around her own neck and she frowns. "I'm no stranger to being locked up in towers, but this is new," She agrees. "Maybe we should look around. Two heads are better than one." From her shoulder, Pascal chitters almost angrily, and she moves her hand from her collar to pat him on his head. "Excuse me, I mean three."

There is a long and complicated answer involving the will of a goddess and a great dragon imbuing their children with great abilities to explain the shapeshifting, but in the end it just boils down to Dragon Bullshit™.

Phaeris gives Rapunzel a curt nod in thanks, then raises his eyebrow slightly at her being used to towers. "Tower? Is that what this place is?" The interaction with Pascal causes Phaeris' expression to soften just a bit - he doesn't actually smile, but he does frown less.

"That's what one of them said," Rapunzel replies, thumbing over her shoulder to indicate the room she had darted out of. "There isn't supposed to be a way out, but we had to have gotten in here somehow..."

Her tower had the window, for example. And the hidden door at the very base that she didn't know about. There had to be something like that here too. If they can find one here, maybe her hair would be long enough to climb down... there are a lot of possibilities, but Rapunzel won't know them all until she has a chance to look around more.

And now Phaeris frowns full-force, with just the slightest hints of visible anger. "If someone thinks themselves capable of imprisoning a dragon, Phaeris will show them the error of their ways," he says with a fair bit of gravity. "Phaeris has duties to attend to, and cannot waste time here. However, he does accept your offer. If... some of Phaeris' family is here, they will likely be useful in getting out of here, if we truly are imprisoned."

Logically, Rapunzel knows it isn't her he is angry with. She isn't the one who trapped them here, but all the same she can't help but back up a few steps with a wary eye on Phaeris when his frown deepens. She's read stories about angry dragons, and they usually ended with charred humans until a dashing knight in shining armor came along.

It is his words that put her a little more at ease, her shoulders relaxing and a small and uncertain smile pulling at her lips. "Even if they aren't stuck here, getting to know the place will help us find a way out so you can go back to them, right?"

Thankfully, unlike the average dragon in such tales, Phaeris only directs the hostile aspects of his anger on those that actually deserve it, and thus keeps his temper in check.

"Phaeris...supposes you are correct," he finally answers in a resigned tone, sighing and letting his shoulders droop a bit. Were his sister here, she would likely suggest a similar course of action - and she'd be right. "In that case, Phaeris will accompany you two. He suspects that if whoever has taken us may be dangerous, to have taken Phaeris without his knowledge."

Nobody was doing well for any reason lately. So many things had happened last month, their time was waning faster than he could ever want, and now his carefully-crafted plan had a major dent in it - Ruana was constantly awake. How would they be able to do anything now? Were they all doomed?

These thoughts, all valid fears, were wiped away when a turn onto the stairwell results in being smacked in the face with a leathery wing. Enoch can't help but stare at the dragon. He'd never actually shared space with one...

"Ah...what's the matter?" That was a stupid question. Clearly the dragon was new here...

By this point, Phaeris has been trying to come to terms with the fact that he was not finding his brothers, rationalizing it by the fact that what he had seen so far was pretty awful - it was for the best if Yugo and Adamaï weren't here. Weren't subjected to this. But leaving them alone as they were...

Damned if they do, damned if they don't, really.

The impact against his wing and the question shake Phaeris out of his thoughts, and he stumbles a bit to the side, putting space between himself and Enoch. "Phaeris...was seeking someone. He apologizes for running into you, that was not intended."

"Phaeris..." He repeats the name, as if seeking confirmation that's what it was. "If you've just arrived, you...it's likely you won't find who you're looking for. I'm sorry."

That is, he might not want to find who he's looking for. Because they're here, but if he finds them he will find they are shadow children that will drain his energy away over the course of days. But not yet. He'll try to get the newcomer at least acquainted with the basics first.

Phaeris' initial reaction is to make an angry snarling noise and flare his wings out - at least as much as he can in the confined stairwell, which coupled with his less-than-usual stature makes him a fair bit less intimidating than such a motion would generally be.

"Phaeris refuses this! It is absolutely necessary that Phaeris gets back to them!"

So much for trying to be nice, but being unable to get back to his brethren is a bit of a sore point.

Enoch tenses at the anger, but doesn't draw his weapon. He would only when it is clear there is intent to attack.

"There are many for many of us it is necessary to return to. That's why we're trying to restore our worlds."

"...restore?"

The dragon fixes Enoch with a suspicious look, leaning his head in a bit. "What do you mean, 'restore'?" 'Cause, well. Destruction was something he was attempting to prevent.

"Did you see the note when you awoke? It seems far-fetched, but...I can assure you, it's the truth. Our worlds have been destroyed by something outside them, something stronger and faster than anything on them, even their own creators. A disease of some sort..."

At least, as far as he is aware. A year earlier, he might have tried to break this gently, but months and months of repeating it and experiencing this tower's horrors have worn him down.

Hearing someone shouting names over and over again means one of two things. One is that these people are here and being hurt and someone is worried and sad about it. The other is that they have just woken up and are looking for their friends.

It's about the time that new people wake up each month and Romeo had never heard the names Yugo or Adamai even though he had met most the people here.

He followed the voice and saw the dragon, he didn't really look surprised or scared at his appearance. "Hello sir. Did you just wake up?" He tried to make his voice calm, so that he didn't scare him. Pinocchio hid in his shirt, nose peaking out the top.

The sheer bluntness of how Romeo asked his question gave Phaeris pause, and he lowered his head a bit so he could be a bit more on the kid's level. Even if he was worried and unsettled, he could still be somewhat civil. "Phaeris indeed just woke up. Do you know where Phaeris is, little one?"

Romeo nodded, glad that he had made the creature stop and listen to him. "I do, you're in a tower, sir, it's on a different world than where you come from and all the worlds are destroyed but we are trying to fix them. It is ran by bad people but most the people who live here are nice."

He smiled reassuringly. "I'm Romeo, I've been here for a long time so I can help you."

"Destroyed...?"

Phaeris' eyes widen, and he turns his head side-to-side slightly, not sure what to think or say at this point. However, he does know two things - he's in another world, and this kid said something about 'bad people'. Given his previous anger, he makes a leap of logic, then snarls and stamps one foot. "Qilby, that traitor! Phaeris will make him pay!"

Romeo skittered back a tiny bit at the show of anger, but only because he didn't want to be squished beneath an angry foot. "I never heard of no one called Qilby. But the bad people are called miss Ruana and mister Riki. There was mister Dax and mister Jason too but they are dead now, and there's Zo but he's not bad really."

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In Which A Dragon's Affairs Are Meddled With [Open!]

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