It was while the girls were waiting for someone to take them to Nidus Avengaea that Dacatie heard a strange noise in the Healing Den's lower areas. She knew that being down here alone wasn't the best of ideas, but magic flowed properly and she could always cast defensive spells to aid her. It was dark, she held her staff up and imbued it with a soft yellow-white glow to see. This part of the Den was more rough-hewn, less constructed and more excavated-looking. It was colder, less friendly. Spooky.
She might have called the others in but she heard something scuff the floor first. Distracted, she followed the sound carefully. She didn't think of casting an invisibility spell on herself or her light, so whatever it was was going to see her right off.
She saw it first though. Her heart lept into her throat, and then plummeted like a stone. What was this thing? It wasn't huge, but it was no small creature. It had wings, she guessed by the way it moved. But it was limping along heavily, and it glowed faintly red in her magical light.
It looked up to her, startling her but she recovered quickly.
"Are you all right?" She asked, and the creature gave an odd kind of nicker, almost like a horse, but... not.
Decatie approached, and noticed that the creature had almost armor looking bits, claws, horns (one broken) and was a bit more draconic than horse-like. Its wings were 'feathered', though she wasn't positive if you looked closely they'd really be feathers like a bird has. It was about the size of a horse, small for a dragon even here at the Den (she'd seen a few around this size, but this one was a little skinnier, gaunt perhaps, and four-legged where a lot of the locals were bipedal).
He lowered his head, by now Decatie was certain of its gender for no real good reason. She carefully reached out and touched him. He was warm, she'd almost expected this half-spectral creature to be chill to the touch like a ghost or something. His blue eyes glowed softly, his wings folded down carefully, and he hobbled a little closer. It was then she noticed that he only had three legs. One of them, the left fore, had apparently been severed. Recently.
"We've got to get you to Baeris, she'll know how to fix this." Decatie announced. "Come on, I can't stand the thought of you being down here alone. What bit your leg off, anyway?"
His eyes went narrow and he turned, looking over his shoulder and adopting a guarded stance. His tail curled defensively around his hind legs, and he huddled closer to her.
"It's still here?!" Decatie said, suddenly dropping her voice to a hard whisper. "Then let's scramola!"
They vacated the area, heading back to the brighter lit corridors that had people in them. A number of the folks there glanced in horror at this glowing creature, some vocally wondering where it had come from and shouldn't it be in the infirmary? The wound up in the dragon infirmary, where Baeris did her level best to patch the wounded creature up.
"Dulath tells me he belongs to you, is this true?" Baeris asked, washing her hands off and making sure that the resting creature was comfortable.
"I suppose he does, now," Decatie said, as her friends came along. "Elgar is his name," she added shortly.
"You named him Elgar?" Asked Selina, "that's a weird name for a dragon."
"He's.... he's my familiar," Decatie announced. "I just get the feeling he wants to protect me as much as I did him. And look, he glows." She grinned, and spent the rest of her afternoon there with the recuperating Elgar.
***
Word apparently got around that the girls were in search of Familiars, and a parade of small creatures kept being introduced to them by the Den's enthusiastic inhabitants. Flitters of all sorts, alis-gryphs (small sparrow-sized gryphlets to one that someone called a purebred ibissynian), water-born sea-flits, insects, conventional reptiles, toads, miniature horses, spare summoned imps, a house elf, and finally an angry looking black-haired man was paraded by the other girls.
"I told you I wasn't theirs," said the man as he walked off - led by someone who looked just like him only less angry. The Healing Den was like that, weirdly reminding the girls of home.
But there came a time when one particular person traveling back from a world, Mirus by name, had gotten their hands on a couple young furry creatures. They were like nothing the trio had ever seen. Wanda latched onto one of them almost instantly. It was mostly yellow, with a darker orange streak along both sides, fluffy nose fur, and a poofy tail. The thing was about three feet long, but it had the wobbly gait of a puppy. A puppy with eighteen legs! It was like a mammal-catarpillar! She sniffed a bit, opened her green eyes wider, made an adorable cheeping noise, and hurried her tromping walk toward Wanda.
"Look at her! She's adorable! And she likes me!" She cried, giggling and raising her arms as this multilegged creature trundled around her body in search of something.
She landed up on the girl's shoulder, with most of her body still wrapped around the girl's arm. It was a rhoemdra, the dragonrider who'd brought them told her, but this one was special. "She's always been alert, looking around when the others were just sitting there eating. I think she was waiting for you."
"They're not normally smart," Baeris added, looking up from a piece of paper that she'd apparently printed which had 'care and treatment' on it from the owners of the rhoemdra farm they came from. "But it's obvious this one is."
"Trundlebuggy," Wanda laughed, as the rhoemdra scampered around her legs and sought out one of her wands. "Oh - hey! You can pick it up?" Though the creature was obviously still a 'pup' and quite small, its front four limbs seemed to have a little more dexterity than the rest, and instead of sizing something up to eat it, this one picked up a wand in its first limbs and brought it straight to Wanda. Another pair of arms held a bag which contained her rune stones. "Oh, this could be very very useful," she said.
"So now... that leaves me," Selina said, "and I already know I need to go to Sgiath wolfkeep to find my friend. Maybe I should do that, while we're waiting?"
"We can meet you at Avengaea," Decatie said, and finally they did have to bid their friend farewell as she was off to the wolfkeep.
***
Selina looked around cautiously, as there didn't seem to be too many humanoids around. The place was bright, warm, dry. Dusty, actually. It was an old castle, with ruined towers above that had hastily slung signs keeping people and four-footers out. It was almost noon, quite warm under the sun. She didn't mind, but she was getting a bit anxious. Finally a quick bark from one of the local wolves alerted her, and she smiled when she saw them. It was a female with three young in tow, and one of them immediately strutted forward. He had mixed grey and burnished brown fur, and ... "Wings," she whispered to herself.
"Yup, I have wings!" Radenn said proudly. "And magic! Well, I'm not very good at it yet."
"But I am, I'm almost graduated from school - maybe I can help you learn a bit?" Selina said. She wasn't afraid of this wolf cub, he had a gangly look and a friendly demeanor. That was important, because he'd have to get along with lots of other people and their familiars!
"Then it's settled?" Said the wolf's mother, Mnoa. "Good, now for you two, scoot," she shooed the other pair away - and one of them wandered toward another wolf thing that was waiting, while Selina was there.
Name: Tolaal-Sen'radenn
Gender: Male
Breed: 3/4 Reririan, 1/4 Alskyrian
Litter: 2
Parents: Mnoa Rulkin x Tolaal-Sen'amann
Height: 3'2
Color: Common Grey
Magic: Life Magic
Personality: creative, rough
*****