Capeworld Comics

“Life can get really weird really fast, you know? Like that time that jerk Glass kidnapped me and then pretended to be me while I was stuck in a cocoon underground. But no matter what happens, I’m happy, because I’m me. And I like being me. And I’m never going to stop being me. I’m Edith. I’m not Edith plus Fiadh or Edith times Fiadh. I’m Edith 110 percent! I’m going to be Edith forever and ever!”

 

–Edith on Edith

 

“She can be annoying at times. She’s fidgety and forgetful and a little immature. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to drag her to night club. But she grows on you, trust me. She’s a light. When the world gets really dark, she shines.”

 

–Tanya Abelman, AKA Skychilde

 

 

Name: 

 

Edith Ogden

 

Technically, her name is Edith Ogden and Fiadh, but Edith is what she prefers to be called as it helps her parents and “keeps things simple.” She will still answer to Fiadh.

 

Supername: 

 

Dragongirl

 

Edith considered the name “Firecracker,” but reconsidered after Matthew Roy said it made her sound wimpy. She likes the simplicity of “Dragongirl.” She’s a dragon. And she’s a girl. She’s Dragongirl.

 

Average Grade: 

 

D+

 

Edith doesn’t have the best study habits, or really any study habits at all. Getting her to sit down and study is like trying to walk a cat. It’s possible to get results, but not likely.

 

Emergency Response Class: 

 

2

 

Edith doesn’t like Emergency Response Class. She doesn’t like rough housing and she doesn’t like the pressure of having to worry about protecting the innocent and fighting bad people. When she was in Class 1, she was worried that if she advanced to Class 2 she would choke under the pressure and humiliate herself in front of her friends. Class 2 deals with directly responding to simulated disasters, crimes, and emergencies. It’s not for everyone, though the school encourages students to at least try it. In life, random emergencies aren’t something you can opt out of.

 

Edith was determined not to take Emergency Response Class 1 until her abduction by the supercriminal Glass. Hired by the BOL to infiltrate Martin’s and place world splinter generators, Glass kidnapped Edith and took her form. Glass knew that Edith was known to wander around the school and hover here and there, and that made Edith the perfect disguise. No one would question why Edith was picking up and messing with things. She did stuff like that all the time.

 

After being rescued by her teachers, Edith felt responsible. She wanted to get stronger. She never wanted to be a victim or be used to hurt her friends ever again. She signed up for Class 2 the day after the incident.

 

Edith has been doing a lot better in ERC 2 than she thought she would. She’s worked past some of her nervousness and has become confident and skilled enough in emergency situations to assist in ARGO operations in the alternate universe designated “Willow-Wells” as part of Martin’s multiverse studies “field trips.”

 

Edith still struggles with sparring. Coach Emmy often has to remind Edith that striking her opponents doesn’t mean touching them, it means hitting them. She’s also not very good at making decisions under pressure. Her peers have learned that when Edith is team leader during “giant monster attacks the city,” they should probably take the initiative in saving the city.

 

Personalized Curriculum: 

 

Flight Club, Night Club, Identity Balancing, Form Mastery, 

 

Flight Club was the first class Edith signed up for. She loves to fly and sees flight club as a nice break between her more boring classes (which would be nearly all of them). A jaunt above the clouds helps Edith clear her head, work out her restless energy, and refresh herself so that she doesn’t fall asleep in Dr. Jugend’s civics class. 

 

Since she likes to fly outside of school, Flight Club helps Edith by drilling into her the importance of “alert flying.” Thanks to Flight Club, she’s never gotten lost while flying and has never broken any of the myriad Skyman laws that plague free flyers.

 

The only time she’s gotten in trouble while flying was when she flew too close to a duck and it bit her nose.

 

After joining Flight Club, Edith became friends with Martin’s star flyer Tanya Abelman who encouraged her to join Night Club. She knew that Edith had a dragon’s desire to seek out bits and pieces of other dreams to add to her astral limlal and suggested that Edith try treasure hunting with friends. 

 

She liked flying through the sky with friends, so why not try flying through dreams with friends?

 

Edith liked the idea, but she was worried about other students seeing her astral self. In physical space, Edith is a cute girl, but in the dreamworlds, she’s a multi-eyed dragon that is as far from cute as a creature can get. 

 

Tanya told her that her worries were foolish–though she didn’t actually say foolish, she used another word that got her in trouble–and that no one would judge her. Edith was still unsure, so Tanya offered to introduce her to Night Club members one at a time. After seeing how weird and bizarre their dreamforms were–especially Mr. Neiros’ (It’s hard to beat his), Edith was won over to the idea of Night Club…if not necessarily the duty of Night Club. 

 

Night Club members keep to a strict schedule. They go to bed early and wake up early so that they can make time both for daytime classes at Martin’s and nighttime adventures within the unconscious Astral. This organization (and really, any kind of organization) didn’t agree with Edith at all.

 

She is by nature very unorganized. Her bedtime is when she feels like it and she’s often found napping in first period. Edith wasn’t sure she was going to be able to keep up with Night Club’s schedule. Tanya told her that Mr. Neiros understood that the schedule was a stumbling block for many prospective members and allowed members to join at a less-intensive probational level. Edith would be allowed to drop in and see how the club was like whenever she found herself asleep during Club hours. Edith thought this was a great deal. If she didn’t have to worry about a schedule, what was the harm in popping into the dreams of her friends just to see what they were doing?

 

Interestingly, it wasn’t an intentional visit with the Club that convinced Edith to properly join.

 

One night, she accidentally crossed paths with the Club in the dreamworld and found herself in the middle of a battle for a young man’s mind. 

 

The infamous supervillain the Dream Sultan had tried to cajole a catatonic telepath named Morgan McGraw into surrendering his dream. Morgan’s powers kept him in a coma and the Dream Sultan told him that if he surrendered his powers to him that he could finally wake up. Night Club and Edith managed to convince Morgan that it was worth keeping his dream, that he could learn to use it to do great good in the world, and together they defeated the Dream Sultan and trapped him within Morgan’s dream as an action figure.

 

After the adventure, Edith grew attached to Night Club. There’s nothing like defeating a supervillain and making a new friend in the same night to bind someone to a group. After a little more coaxing from Tanya, Edith officially joined the Night Club. 

 

She’s been a good member, though she sometimes has to be dragged to meetings by Tanya. Edith routinely falls into what Tanya calls the “newbie trap.” She goes to bed an hour or two before class starts and when she’s in the dreamworlds she thinks she has enough time to play before she has to show up. But it’s hard to tell time in the dreamworlds. A minute can seem like an hour and an hour can seem like a minute. Edith has to learn that though class starts at a certain time, she has to show up as soon as she passes into the dreamworlds even if that means showing up early.

 

Early to bed, early to rise, early to dream. That’s Night Club.

 

Moving on, Identity Balancing is a critical class for Edith. It’s usually taken by students who wish to take up a secret identity either because they have a personal reason to keep who they are at home separate from who they are at school as is the case for Songbird, or because they subscribe to Dr. Stone’s Princes of Dawn. But Identity Balancing is also taken by students without secret identities, students that have a difficult time just managing their typical day-to-day identity. This can apply to students like Amy Beck, who as a quasimorph struggles with intense and volatile emotions, but it can also apply to typical students. According to Erikson, adolescence is a battle between identity and role confusion. Even students that have no interest whatsoever in secret identities sometimes take Identity Balancing just to get their heads straight as they grow up.

 

Edith developed severe identity issues after how her parents reacted to her fusion with Fiadh. They had trouble dealing not only with the way she looked, but how different her personality was. They weren’t sure she was actually their daughter, and their hesitation hurt Edith like nothing else in her life. Identity Balancing with Dr. Colt helps Edith–and her parents–accept who she is. Dr. Colt also helps Edith with any difficulties that arise as she continues to develop her identity. Fidelity is the key to developing an identity and that’s something Edith struggles with. She has a human child’s curiosity boosted by an ancient dragon’s hunger for novelty. She tries everything, commits to nothing. Dr. Colt works to help Edith understand the difference between hobbies and work. It’s fine and good to try a lot of things, to cruise around the planet by day and comb through the dreamlands for treasures by night, but there comes a time when a person has to buckle down and just work.

 

Edith is starting to get it, and the evidence comes from how she (mostly) sticks with Night Club’s demanding schedule.

 

Form Mastery is last on Edith’s personalized curriculum. Form Mastery is often taken by shapeshifters like Amy Beck and Monster, and for these shapeshifters the goal of the class is to teach them how to change into as many forms as possible as efficiently as possible. Because of this, students have nicknamed the class “Form Cramming.” But Form Master Gora is, as expected of a master shapeshifter, very skilled in altering his teachings to fit the individual needs of students. For Edith, Form Master Gora focuses on the quality, not the quantity, of her transformations.

 

Physically, Edith isn’t as protean in her shapeshifting as Amy or Monster. She can grow a tail, wings, and horns–that’s about it. She cant’ turn into a cow or a pencil.

 

But it isn’t for her physical form that she takes Form Mastery, it’s for her dreamform.

 

Typically, one’s personal dreamform is highly protean. Dreamforms are affected not only by the will and thoughts of their dreamers, but by the will and thoughts of those around the dreamer. Dreamforms, like everything else of the unconscious Astral, reach for thoughts like flowers to the sun. Even the most disciplined dreamer can find their dreamform subtly expressing emotions buried deep in their heart.

 

The dreamforms of Dragons are different.

Dragons evolved long ago and far away within a noosphere teeming with thoughtforms. To avoid astral infection, Dragons evolved extremely sturdy, rigid dreamforms. It was difficult for their enemies to change their dreamforms, but by the same token Dragons had great difficulty making voluntary changes. A human novice of the unconscious Astral can flicker her dreamform through any number of forms. She can be a snowman, a bird, a statue, and a ball of light all with the same amount of telepathic effort that a Dragon would use just to grow an extra scale. 

 

But Edith’s human-half empowers her dragon-dominated dreamform just as her dragon-half empowers her human-dominated physical form. She has incredible flexibility in her dreamform, and Form Master Gora works with her to bring out that flexibility while sacrificing none of her draconic strength. So far, she hasn’t been able to do much beyond growing an extra head, but Form Master Gora is confident that by the time Edith finishes Form Mastery she will be a very powerful telepath.

 

Contact Education: 

 

The Red Cardinals of Mainline City, The Joyous Harbor Statesmen Center, TIMS

 

When Edith was asked what she was interested in pursuing as a career, she said “I’m not sure. I like flying, and I like nibbling on dreams. Can I just do that?” 

 

Her answer was a little disheartening, but only a little. Let’s be honest here, her answer as far from the most disheartening we’ve gotten–those would be all the “I don’t want to work/Can I join the BOL?” answers.

 

When we get a student that completely blanks and what they want to take for their contact education, we start helping them by taking stock of their interests and talents. Edith likes games, exploring, and novelty. She is a gifted telepath. She doesn’t like conflict or competition. She hates keeping dates.

 

When all these factors were considered, investigation and detective work came up as an option. 

 

Don’t laugh. Don’t even smirk. I’ve already seen Dr. Bell smirk over “Detective Edith.” Just listen to me, I promise it pans out.

 

Detective work is sort of like a game–detectives explore novel scenarios and scenes to find clues and solve a mystery, and Edith loves games. There’s little conflict or competition, detectives work with experts and specialists to thoroughly analyze any clues they find, and Edith hates competition. Their hours are flexible, the due date is “when the case is solved,” and Edith hates keeping schedules and dates. 

 

Edith’s telepathic skills gives her a foot in the door. Every detective these days has some degree of telepathic skill to help guide witnesses through their recollections and probe the Odylic Astral for clues–for instance, the gathering of violence-reactive thoughtforms around an alley could indicate that someone was mugged.

 

When detective work was pitched to Edith, she was ecstatic. “I can become a detective? Like a private eye?” She bought a fedora and cut holes in it for her horns, but ultimately decided that she didn’t like how it felt on her head (and Lucia nearly wept for the crime against fashion). She still has it somewhere beneath the many piles of miscellanea in her room. Clearly, she’s enthusiastic about learning detective work, so let’s encourage that enthusiasm. It’s rare for Edith to care about anything for long.

 

Telepathic detective work is a popular subject for fiction. Most people have heard of The Files of Detective Dark and John Silence, Psychic Detective. Because of these stories, the popular conception of telepathic detective work is equal parts romantic and lurid. People think of detectives diving into the nightmares of serial killers to find where they buried their latest victim, interrogating amnesic ghosts, and analyzing a herd of thoughtforms to find which way a killer ran. But the vast majority of telepathic detective work doesn’t involve anything like homicide. The vast majority involves walking witnesses of crimes far less serious than murder back through their memories. “Are you sure it was a red car that ran over your lawn gnome? Can I guide you back through yesterday to check?”

 

Edith isn’t going to dive into the minds of serial killers. She’s not going to interrogate freshly murdered ghosts. She’s a child, and her contacts are not going to place her anywhere near something that could traumatize her. If detective work turns out to be something she wants to make a career out of and she sticks with it past her graduation, then maybe one day she will dive into the mind of a serial killer. But while Martin’s is responsible for her wellbeing she’s going to be kept far from anything that would make an episode of The Files of Detective Dark.

 

Our strategy with Edith’s contact education is to present her with professions that use telepathic detectives in different ways. We want to show her that a telepathic detective can be more than what’s seen in movies and books, and for a girl as energetic as Edith it’s good to give her an excuse to fly from place to place. 

 

For traditional “investigate the scene of the crime, find the badguy” detective work, we’ve partnered Edith with the Red Cardinals of Mainline City, the same ones partnered with Gunnar Cropsey. The Red Cardinals are a long and prestigious legacy specializing in detective work and dark superheroes, but are used to having spunky, bright sidekicks. Plus, they use old theaters and playhouses as their bases–you know Edith is going to love that.

 

To give Edith a sense of more common, everyday applications of telepathic detective work, we’ve got her working at the local Statesmen center. Edith, like many people, was surprised to learn that the Statesmen employ almost as many telepaths as law enforcement and TIMS. 

 

The Statesmen resolve disputes and strengthen communities through telepathy. Two brawlers want to know who threw the first punch? Enter telepathy. An elderly woman swears up and down that Monster is her cat? Enter telepathy. There’s nothing like a neutral party that can walk everyone back through their memories to smooth over conflicts.

 

TIMS is Edith’s last contact. She was enrolled in TIMS (telepathic institutionalization and medical services) the day she fused with Fiadh, not only to make sure she was okay but because she needed to spend some time from her parents after their reaction to seeing her.

 

When she proved her symbiosis was mutually beneficial to both her halves, TIMS gave her a clean bill of health and dismissed her from institutionalization, but they kept a room for her until she was able to repair her relationship with her parents. She still has bimonthly checkups with TIMS to make sure everything is going okay. Between them and Martin’s psychiatrist Dr. Colt, she’s in good hands.

 

Hyperstasis: 

 

Vovin Dragon Hyperstatic Union

 

Fiadh the Dragon

 

Edith is a hyperstatic union of a shy, nervous girl named Edith Ogden and a lonely, thoughtful dragon named Fiadh. We’ll cover both components of the union, but as Fiadh is by far the oldest and the instigator of the union, let’s start with her.

 

Fiadh is a Vovin dragon. Do not confuse the type of dragon Fiadh is with the type of dragon that, so say, Monster is. I know there are a lot of dragons to keep track of–Vovin dragons, Tiandi dragons, Nazarth dragons, and perhaps it’s stereotypical to say this, but given how “sword and sorcery” the Kingdom seems to be I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it turned out they had dragons somewhere in their universe to–but don’t confuse them.

 

Vovin dragons are an old race. Earth first formed around 4.6 billion years ago, and their race was old then. The Lorian Angels call them “the great tyrants,” a title the Chromian Empire wishes belonged to them. The Chromians, by the way, call them “the dream thieves” and hold them with equal parts fear and disdain. They think of the Vovin dragons much in the way the British Empire of the 18th century thought of Black Beard–they’re not an existential threat to the Empire, but they a persistent nuisance that they can’t really do much about. The Barzeelians call them “old treasure boxes” and see them as equal parts dangerous and profitable. Dragons keep hordes known as limlal, and while their physical hordes may be no more than a collection of junk, their Astral limlals are made of memories, and memories are always valuable. Dragons are great to trade with, but sometimes they regret trading away their memories, and “no trade-backs” does nothing to assuage their wrath.

 

When the Vovin dragons were a young race, they mastered the telepathic arts and expanded far and fast into the Astral–too far and too fast. The Astral teems with life, and not all of it is benevolent. One has to look no further than Dr. Bell’s poltergeist Mad Mary or Donald’s “parents” for examples. Soon, the dragons faced extinction as their collective noosphere was infected by countless opportunistic thoughtforms. It was either adapt or die–and adapt the dragons did. 

 

Legend has it that the dragons were taught to adapt by one of their own named Vloh, whose name is universal Enochian for “he who ends sorrow.” Vloh was a mighty telepath, his very presence drove away thoughtforms. When the Tatan, a sort of mythologized version of the thoughtforms whose name is universal Enochian for “great sorrow,” attacked the entire Vovin dragon race at once, Vloh defended them using tactics familiar to any trickster deity. The first time the Tatan attacked, Vloh hid every Vovin dragon beneath his mighty wings and replaced them with air. The Tatan suffocated, and the dragons learned to make their thoughts elusive as air. The second time the Tatan attacked, Voh replaced the dragons with fire. The Tatan burned, and the dragons learned to make their thoughts as fierce as fire. The third time the Tatan attacked, Voh replaced the dragons with water. The Tatan drowned, and the dragon learned to make their thoughts as protean as water.

 

Then after teaching dragons that their souls were made of air, fire, and water, Vloh took the dragons beneath his wings one last time and made them and their progeny the first limlal. Vloh entered a deep sleep to combat the Tatan and left the lesser thoughtforms for his dragons. 

 

“Follow my example, as best as you can.” he said, and the Vovin dragons did. 

 

The Vovin dragons became a race with long periods of sleep balanced by shorter periods of waking. They would sleep for a thousand years, wake for a month, sleep for twelve thousand years, wake for a year. These alternating periods allowed the Vovin dragons to fight back against their thoughtform infestation. While they were asleep, all their energy was focused on telepathic combat with the thoughtforms. Awake dragons took care of the sleeping, who would on occasion rise in fleeting half-awake stupors to recover from any psychic damage. 

 

The long waking periods also served a purpose in fighting thoughtforms. While awake, dragons took the energy used to project their thoughts across the Astral and directed it inwards to cut themselves off entirely from the Astral. Thoughtforms that had fought with them for thousands of years and had grown used to the struggle would try and attack them only to run up against a wall as other sleeping dragons seized upon them and tore them apart.

 

It has been theorized that Vloh might have been more than legendary. The exiled First Baltim, cursed to reincarnate across the universe, may have been Vloh, and his pattern of reincarnating through long periods of slumber in the Creche of Hausus may have inspired the dragons’ sleep patterns, but this is only a theory. It is commonly accepted by modern Vovin dragons that Vloh is a mythological figure, a King Arthur for dragons, and that he is simply a metaphor for the birth of dragon culture under the thoughtform infestation. They deny that any dragon ever believed in the factuality of Vloh as it would imply errors in the memories of their venerable elders.

 

By human standards, the dragons warred with their thoughtforms for incalculable aeons, but for the dragons, it ended quickly, in the span of a few dreams, and their race emerged from the war transformed. They were telepathic titans. Their thoughts encompassed the universe, and distant stars quaked. 

 

Their standing in the universe wasn’t all that changed. Their culture was irrevocably altered by their slumbering. Their culture became centered on limlals. While awake, dragons enjoyed a physical existence that would all too soon be denied to them. Ten years or a thousand years awake, it mattered not, leaving physical existence for a state of dormancy always had its sting. It’s a universal fact that, for all the hardships of life, living things want to live, and the ultimate answer to the question of life is “more.” 

 

Dragons would collect objects of sentimental value upon which they could memenoically imprint their memories. A human might touch a doll and remember a moment from her girlhood, but a dragon that touches a doll will remember everything connected to the doll–absolutely everything. The dragon will remember who made it, who held it, where it was–and it all will be recollected with crystal clarity. While dragons are awake, they work frantically to acquire as many memories as possible. They knew that, essentially, when they close their many eyes to sleep the world as they know it will perish, and when they awake they will be in a world completely alien to the one they knew. While asleep, their memories not only keep them company through their many battles, but give them strength to draw upon, extra walls within their minds to protect their souls from thoughtforms. 

 

During their half-awake stupors, they peruse their limlals and take account of each and every object. They strengthen their memories, and any that unwove from forgetfulness while they slept are knitted tightly back to fidelity. Some also venture forth into the strange present to create new memories in the limited time they have before falling back to sleep. Though this is often difficult for dragons, it is of immense benefit in fighting thoughtforms. It confuses thoughtforms to suddenly be confronted with fresh memories after fighting the same memories for thousands of years.

 

If a half-away dragon finds anything within their limlal disturbed, they fly into a mythological rage. Anyone that disturbs a dragon’s limlal forfeits their life. To violate the sacred trust sleeping dragons have for waking dragons is the ultimate sin.

 

Following their victory over their thoughtform infestation, the Vovin dragons expanded across the universe, and their interactions with the other races of the universe were far from ideal. They encountered young races that rose and fell within the span of a single sleep. These races, and their thoughts, were extremely precious to the dragons–think diamonds if diamonds lasted as long as mayflies and were as fragile as snowflakes. Many dragons, particularly those who subscribed to a philosophy that stated their memories were more real and substantial than the physical reality they represented, decided to add elements from these races to their limlals–elements such as things, places, and people.

 

This is why the Lorian Angels came to call them the great tyrants. With their strength, they were the unquestionable masters of whatever planet they visited. But they weren’t interested in conquering or ruling. They were only interested in preserving. What they loved, they took, and they considered it the ultimate expression of love to free something from the impermanence of life and lock it frozen in their memories. They would come from the sky and seize objects, buildings, people, entire countries, and spirit them up beyond the stars to some icy rock lightyears away where they would exist forever away from the light of their native sun with only the beating of a dragon’s many hearts to keep the time. Or they would come from out of dreams, a strange multi-eyed face intruding into fantasies, a face somehow incongruous and out-of-tune no matter how surreal the dreamworld was, and upon waking the dreamer would remember only the face and a feeling that they had forgotten something, but in the light of day that feeling to was quickly forgotten.

 

Some dragons became protectors of worlds without any native superpowered defenders, but they were protectors with a cost attached. When they felt the stirrings of slumber, they would take what they loved most deep into the heart of their adoptive planet where their ruins and corpses would keep the slumbering dragon company. The dragons would make entire underworlds their limlals. Their loved ones, so frail in their mortality, would say goodbye as they fell asleep and would greet them upon waking with their corpses honored behind crystal glass and their progeny waiting to see their master speak for the first time–in their eyes, a dragon could see the flickering of lives long extinguished.

 

The Vovin were tyrants to their worlds, but were also fiercely protective of them. Even the most daring space raiders and galactic conquerors avoided planets with dragons sleeping beneath their soil. One unfortunate pirate lord, whose name was scrubbed from history by the fires of extreme vengeance, made the mistake of attacking a dragon planet. The dragon destroyed him, his race, his planet, his solar system, and spent aeons wiping all traces of the pirate and his culture from the universe.

 

The wrath of a dragon is a terrible thing indeed.

 

Around 2.5 billion years ago, the Vovin dragons came to Earth. 

 

The planet in those days was dominated by the proterozoic Dyeus. The Dyeus were the successors to the God Sculptors and Storm Choir and were formed from the same malpirgi process. The Dyeus consisted of the Undine, born of water that teemed with unicellular life, the Gnomes, born of the rock of Vaalbara, the first continent, the Salamanders, born of pockets of magma bleeding between reefs of churning minerals, and the Sylphs, born of skies a near-eternal blue.

 

The Dyeus ruled over a purple Earth. Green chlorophyll had not yet evolved. Upon purple Vaalbara they constructed their legacy–the wonder-material gaeite, named by human archaeologists aeons later because it was found deep underground across strata–proof that it was artificially made. Gaeite was a material that cut across the Odic divide between physical reality and the Astral. Through gaeite, the Dyeus were able to communicate with their own souls. If knowing oneself is the root of knowledge as Socrates and the Oracle of Delphi believed, then the Proterozoic Dyeus were wise. They built towers of gaeite, yellow-orange constructs that towered over the purple flowers of Vaalbara, and within these towers they consulted their hearts, interrogated their demons, and knew themselves.

 

The Proterozoic Dyeus believed in two things–the development of their individual souls and the stewardship of their collective home. They were a peaceful culture.

 

But countless stars away, the Vovin dragons felt the gaeite towers tickle the backs of their minds and flew out to investigate.

 

Conflict was inevitable. The Vovin dragons wanted gaeite, and the Dyeus didn’t want to give them gaeite. The Vovin dragons wanted gaeite to build the perfect limlals, limlals that would not only bridge the waking world with the world of sleep, but provide dragons with the ability to remember themselves. Such a thought was revolutionary. Until they had learned of gaeite, they defined themselves by objects, by memories and the representations of those memories. To make themselves into an object within their limlal, to horde their soul, that was something that stirred the fire of possibilities in their immortal hearts. And possibilities, to immortals used to aeons of repetition, are intoxicating.

 

The Vovin dragons asked for gaeite with as much politeness as any dragon can show. They asked once.

 

The Dyeus answered no. Gaeite was as sacred to them as limlals were to dragons. They would not part with it simply because they were asked to.

 

Perhaps, if the Vovin dragons believed in negotiation, they could have struck a compromise with the Dyeus, but they were known as the great tyrants for a reason. What they loved, they took, and they loved gaeitie very, very much.

 

The war left cracks on Vaalbara that appear today as scars in the geologic record, strata markings that indicate where the planet was cut from crust to core. So destructive was the war that the Storm Choir, who held as much love for the Dyeus as they did anything outside the walled skies of their home, were forced to join with the Dyeus against the dragons. 

 

It was Baltim, incarnated as the gnome Perkun, who gave Earth a weapon that allowed her to triumph over the dragons–perkunite, a refinement of gaeite. With perkunite, the Storm Choir and Dyeus were able to force the dragons to parlay–something that had never before occurred in the history of the universe.

 

Unable to acquire gaeite, save for perkunite shards sticking between their scales, the dragons either left the planet or negotiated with the Dyeus. Those that negotiated built limlals in subterranea below the surface but above the world of the Storm Choir and slept. They would be allowed to exist on Earth in exchange for their help against any invaders, especially thoughtforms. 

 

The dragons thought this was an excellent deal, in light of circumstances. After a few thousand years of sleep, perhaps they could renegotiate? Aeons of telepathy and dreamwalking would give them a better understanding of the Dyeus, and at any rate the Dyeus they knew would change after an aeon or two. Maybe they would reject the gaeite communion and willingly part with their gaeite? Maybe they would kill themselves off? Maybe they would see reason and worship the dragons for what they were–the ones that held within themselves the true reality of perfect memories?

 

There are two things dragons have more of than all other races in the universe–wrath and patience.

 

Down through the aeons the Vovin dragons slept in subterranea, and the Dyeus civilization above them did change just as the Earth changed. The Dyeus of Proterozoic Vaalbara, believing that a biological race “of the Earth” would be better protectors of the life that began to bloom in complexity around 530 million years ago, created a biological race from the simple cellular life around them to carry on their culture. The Cambrian Dyeus inherited the world and gaeite from the Proterozoic Dyeus, and the Gnomes, Salamanders, Sylphs, and Undine took to the stars on a voyage of discovery and to share gaeite with those they found worthy.

 

The Cambrian Dyeus would be far less stable as a culture than the Proterozoic Dyeus. They had wars, and divisions, and competing visions of the world. As Vaalbara shattered and reconfigured into Ur, and Kenorland, and Gondwana, and Pangea, so to did the Cambrian Dyeus divide into competing subcultures, each of which came to dominate and be dominated in turn. Some believed the planet was theirs to do with as they pleased. Nature didn’t deserve to have the chance to produce intelligent life. The Dyeus would cover the globe, and turn its resources toward their expansion. Others believed there was no point in waiting for nature to produce the intelligent life the God Sculptors prophesized would one day come. There was life. Why not take the reins and accelerate its development? Did not the wise Proterozoic Dyeus, their forefathers, create them from the simple life around them? Were they not entitled to be creators themselves? Still others believed firmly in the mission of the God Sculptors.

 

These factions and more argued, and fought, and struck compromises down through the aeons.

 

But there was one thing they always agreed on–that the dragons should never have gaeite.

 

They considered dragons to be beings of fire. Fire, when kept at a careful distance, could warm a person. But it would destroy anyone careless enough to get close to it. And one should never, ever, give fire fuel.

 

For hundreds of millions of years, the Cambrian Dyeus interacted with the dragons, sometimes as friends and sometimes as foes. Sometimes the dragons would attack them, sometimes the dragons would rescue them from an alien threat, and sometimes the dragons simply talked and exchanged knowledge and memories.

 

When the dragons spoke to the Cambrian Dyeus through dreams, sometimes they were met with open minds, and sometimes they were met with telepathic assaults that rattled their souls.

 

When the dragons awoke, sometimes they would be led around the planet by kindly faces interested in helping them build their limlals. Sometimes they would be met with perkunite weapons.

 

Hundreds of millions of years is enough time to exhaust every possible political situation between two cultures.

 

But they never gave the dragons gaeite.

 

They knew better.

 

Dragons are patient, and can hold to a plan longer than a star can burn, but gradually, some dragons began to wonder if gaeite really was the goal they believed it to be.

 

It is hard for dragons to look into themselves, but little by little, that’s just what some did

 

Fiadh was one such dragon.

 

Fiadh thought to herself, “The point of acquiring gaeitie is to preserve myself, to place all that I am within my memory, to make of myself a limlal…but once I do that, then what? Will I dream of myself? I do that already, and I am unsatisfied. Will I not be unsatisfied with gaeite? Is there no more to dream of than memories?”

 

Fiadh and other dragons began to experiment with their memories. They allowed inaccuracies to enter into their memories. They allowed for things to play out differently in their memories than they did in reality. They asked what if this happened, or what if that happened.

 

Essentially, they became the first fiction writers of dragon kind. They were known by their own kind by the disparaging name “the forgetfuls,” but the Dyeus called them “the creative ones,” and little by little, they allowed them to have gaeite, for the creative ones had a purpose for it besides the replication of their own thoughts.

 

Fiadh found it strange. Gaeite was like a broken mirror. It reflected back an image of herself that was slightly different. What it did…was what she did already with her thoughts. Perhaps that was why the Dyeus allowed her to have gaeite? Regardless, Fiadh and the other creative dragons used gaeite to commune with their souls and were glad for the contact, because soon they would no longer have the dreams of the Dyeus to converse with.

 

During the Pleistocene, the Cambrian Dyeus saw that certain animals were displaying signs of sapience and debated whether they should be treated as animals or as intelligent life. They weren’t able to come to a decision on what the hominids were exactly–animal or sapient– let alone what should be done about them, and the result was a war that nearly destroyed the planet.

 

Seeing what they had nearly done, the Dyeus were shamed. No longing believing themselves worthy to watch over the Earth, they took to the stars as their Proterozoic forefathers did, their gaeite cities rising into the sky. The dragons that kept to the old ways followed, waiting like predators near a herd of prey for the opportunity to either bargain for gaeite or take it by force. Even if there was no gaeite, they would have fled the planet now that it’s noosphere was quiet. The noosphere of the underground Storm Choir was walled and guarded, and the noosphere of the hominids barely existent.

 

The Earth was left to the Storm Choir, who long ago stopped caring for the surface, to the creative dragons who slept and dreamed and imagined, and to the wise apes that stumbled upon what the Dyeus left behind in secret on the continent of Mu–caches of buried gaeite hidden from the dragons– to rise to a power that outstripped their wisdom.

 

The noosphere of the wise apes was too young and too weak to communicate with, but Fiadh and the other creative ones watched with eager anticipation as it slowly grew.

 

Pictorial scribbles on cave walls. Grunts encoded with meaning. Abstract concepts barely grasped like wind between fingers. These were the building blocks to what would become the human noosphere, and all the eyes of the dragons were upon them, a tiny collective of light shining in telepathic darkness like one lone star against the entire night sky.

 

The dragons waited a long time, but extreme patience was ever in their nature.

 

Fiadh Meets Humans

 

During the 13th century, Fiadh rose to the surface during a temporary half-awake stupor. She confronted with her eyes what her mind could not probe–mankind.

 

Hidden behind clouds and starless nights, perched on mountain tops, she watched humanity and listened to them.

 

They did so much with so little.

 

Without gaeite, without limlals, without perfect memories, they crafted legends and made them live with nothing but their voices and instruments made of wood and twine.

 

They didn’t take dreams, they made them.

 

In little stone dwellings they called castles, they sang stories of kingdoms that never were, of battles that were never fought, and of romances that never began.

 

She watched, listened, and here and there added things to her limlal–a lute, a hat, a sword, a stone–and if she was seen, sometimes they would think her a demon, and other times an angel.

 

And as Fiadh shut her eyes to return to aeons of slumber, she had a thought in her mind, a thought that only a dragon as iconoclastic as a creative one–

 

What if she were a human?

 

What if she was as creative as a human? What if she could take from a little knowledge–and grow an entire mythology?

 

It was a thought that echoed in her mind down the centuries as she slept.

 

Edith the Girl

 

As a child, Edith Ogden was acutely withdrawn. She played alone. She liked nothing better than to sit and stare at pictures. Her favorite book was a book of illustrations showing what archeologists thought the world was like before the evolution of man called Pangea and Before. She would lose herself for hours in those pictures watching the Thule swimming in their liquid ringwoodite oceans, the God Sculptors hammering the night sky to fracture darkness into points of light, and the Vovin dragons sleeping beneath the Earth as the civilizations of the Dyeus rose and fell above them like trees blooming in the Spring and dying in the Fall.

 

As Edith got older, she demonstrated severe difficulties in socialization. She rarely made eye contact. The presence of others made her uncomfortable. When she talked, she talked on and on about trivialities that mattered only to her. 

 

At the age of eleven, she was diagnosed with autism.

 

Edith didn’t like being diagnosed. It meant something was wrong with her. She had never felt wrong before, not in her entire life, but now she knew that something was wrong with her even though her parents assured her that she was fine and perfect. 

 

She could hear them talking when they thought she couldn’t hear. 

 

They talked about special schools and special teachers and special treatments. Sometimes they sounded angry. Sometimes they yelled. Sometimes they yelled about costs and difficulties and how emotionally drained they felt.

 

Edith didn’t want to yell about how emotionally drained she felt. She just wanted to go inside herself where all the yelling became nothing but shrill, meaningless echoes.

Edith liked sleeping. It was easy to do and tuned out the world like nothing else. It was while dreaming that she came upon a dragon. She knew it was a dragon because it looked just like the dragons in Pangea and Before–many eyes, many teeth. The dragon was in its hoard. Memories floated near its impossibly gigantic form. They glowed like stars against the infinite darkness of its being which stretched across the dreamworld like the night sky. In each memory she saw wonders–gaeite towers with torch-lit summits upon which floating, misty ghosts held court with the living who in their spectral light seemed like statues carved of shadow, sunken bells chimed silently in sunless waters while a lost race basked in the vibrations, and human castles–castles, not ruins–whose windows were lit by firelight and whose walls echoed with the sounds of laughter, dance, and citole.

 

Edith felt the dragon place its attention upon her like a warm breeze touching her shoulder. Gently, she was led into these memories–and Edith was the stoic ghost-queen of a civilization that never heard of humans, a happy creature that was as comfortable in the deep, cold darkness of the Atlantic ocean as a flower in the naked rays of the sun, and the lady love of a courageous knight who expressed his affections through furtive glances and subtle gestures–all in one night.

 

The dragon spoke to her. It said her name was Fiadh. Fiadh said she wanted to be Edith’s friend.

 

Edith had never had a friend. That was why she, at first, thought Fiadh was a figment of her own imagination. Out of all the fantastic, impossible things Fiadh showed her, her wanting to be her friend seemed the most fantastic and impossible. But when she saw Fiadh the second night, she knew that she was real–and that she had her first friend.

 

She didn’t dare tell her parents about Fiadh. She knew they would yell about it. They yelled about her, and they promised her everything about her was okay and fine. She told them nothing. When they asked her why she was so ready to go to bed after dinner, she told them that she was just tired. They, of course, yelled about it. They said she was growing depressed and blamed the school, blamed each other, blamed everything, and Edith wanted to do nothing but smother their voices in the deepness of sleep.

 

One night, Fiadh offered Edith a deal.

 

Edith was a girl with an imaginative but withdrawn spirit. Fiadh was a dragon with a mighty, powerful spirit but with an imagination limited by what was in her limlal. Fiadh saw how Edith moved through her memories. Edith lived in the memories while Fiadh by comparison was a mere observer. She became people Fiadh could not be and did things Fiadh could not do. She changed the songs of the troubadours. She conversed with the ghosts and asked them questions that only Fiadh’s deepest memories could answer. She explored the cavernous city of a lost race, feeling her way through the dark. 

 

Edith was a creative girl, but Fiadh knew how she was when she was awake–lonely, withdrawn, and helpless–the heart of a dragon would fix that.

 

They would combine. They would cover for each other’s weaknesses. They would both become who they wanted to be. They would become a single idealization made real.

 

Edith accepted the deal, and in a flash as bright in the Astral as it was on Earth, dream and flesh fused.

 

Edith the Dragongirl

 

What immediately disturbed Edith’s parents was her appearance. Her black hair was now bright red, she had wings, she had a tail, and her eyes flashed with the strength of a spirit older than humanity. But it was her personality that really distrubed them. Their Edith was a quiet, withdrawn girl, and now here was this creature hopping through the air, making eye contact, grinning with razor-tipped teeth…this was not their girl.

 

And they told Edith she was not their girl.

 

Edith was taken in by TIMS, and gradually the Ogdens began to accept her as their girl.

 

In terms of her self-perception, Edith has no doubts who she is. She sees her union as enhancing what is Fiadh and what is Edith, not diminishing either of them and not replacing the two beings with a third. She is, at once, Fiadh and Edith. She is a culmination, not an attenuation, of her two components.

 

Edith is very comfortable being who she is. She likes being who she is. Her problems come with interaction with other people, which isn’t much of a surprise, neither Edith Ogden nor Fiadh really socialized with anyone but themselves. She’s hyperactive, childish, and has difficulty focusing on the task at hand. She is aware of her flaws, and what is more, she is aware that others treat her differently because of her flaws. She knows she’s seen as “the kid” by her peers and dislikes it. She wants to be seen as an asset, not a burden, especially after the Glass incident where she felt responsible for her personality being the ideal cover for Glass’ infiltration of Martin’s School.

 

As a dragon, Edith has the instinct to build a limlal. Edith lives in a dormitory at Martin’s and fills it…pretty much with anything she can get her hands on. She throws very little away. She has several collections of dolls, funny hats, soda cans, odd rocks, etc. There is no floor in her room. The floor is simply a low shelf. She can only reach her bed by flying to it. Through a worldsplinter in the form of a mirror, she can access Fiadh’s subterranean limlal, a quartz cavern filled with artifacts of the prehuman Earth and a gaeite crystal. Edith uses this crystal to commune with her two selves–her pure human self and her dragon self–and usually does so after she’s had a bad day. Her Astral limlal is made from the “flipped” nightmares of Joyous Harbor citizens. At night, before and after her meetings with Night Club, Edith gathers the free-floating nightmares of Joyous Harbor’s dreamscape, alters them, releases them as dreams, though she does keep a few for herself. This is where her creative, human side exerts its influence. “Nightmare flipping” is something no dragon would think of. To take something into one’s limlal…and then let it go? By dragon standards, that’s insanity.

 

Edith’s human creativity also manifests in her writing. She keeps notebooks full of scribbled ideas and half-finished poems. One day, she swears she’s going to write a book, but every time she sits down to do it, her mind wanders until the narrative chain falls apart. 

 

She’s been offered enrollment in Martin’s creative writing class, but she keeps turning it down. She’s not sure if she has the discipline to do a class that’s nothing but writing assignments when she struggles to turn in papers for the classes she already has. Maybe one day she’ll develop the necessary discipline to hammer out a novella. We’re all anxiously waiting to see what she writes. From what little of her miscellaneous writings she’s shared with her teachers, it seems she does have a talent with words. Here’s something Old Adam caught on the back of a manesology essay:

 

Flash the light of my being

 

Dance the light of a spark

 

Move quickly

 

In step with the eternal partner

 

Flash briefly

 

Against the ageless dark

 

And burn the brighter for it

 

Edith’s Powers and Abilities

 

Fiadh knew what she was doing when she combined herself with Edith. Edith’s hyperstatic union uses the strengths of her two halves to cover for their weaknesses. Her physical form has the strength of a Vovin dragon concentrated down to the size of a human. She’s got quite a punch–when she actually feels like making a fist. Her dreamform has the durability of a dragon and the flexibility of a human. She’s somewhat awkward transforming it, but Form Master Gora says that once she gets the hang of it she’ll be a very gifted telepath with the power of a dragon and the skill of a human.

 

Edith’s most striking physical ability is her entropic breath. Vovin dragons have survived for aeons as powerhouses in the cosmic hierarchy, and you don’t stay in that position for long unless you have a few cards up your sleeve–this is the Vovin dragons’ ace.

 

Basically, Edith can project waves from her mouth that decrease the total available energy of an area. Though it’s called entropic breath, Edith likens it more to “something like raising my voice while vomiting at the same time.” The exact mechanics of her entropic breath are under Edith’s control and are variable. In Ms. Cryptic’s chemistry class, Edith sometimes uses a “squeak” to increase the entropy of a chemical reaction. You’ve probably seen Edith use her “fire breath,” she likes to use it whenever it’s her turn to help the MS’s in the cafeteria kitchen. She pulls this off by increasing the entropy of an area so that surrounding energy floods into the vacuum creating a localized implosion of energy. Her “ice breath” works similarly, except surrounding energy is kept out of an area so that the temperature plummets.

Edith’s breathe can either increase entropy by nullifying the energy in an area or by releasing it. Either way increases entropy, but the former is far less destructive than the later. Machinery turns off with the former but explodes with the latter. Superhuman muscles feel weak and heavy with the former but release all their energy in a burst with the latter. Ammunition goes inert with the former but detonates with the later.

 

The most powerful manifestation of Edith’s entropic breath is a nullification wave that eliminates any energy-based organizational structure. Matter and energy simply stop existing. Ancient Vovin dragons can use this nullification wave to snuff out entire galaxy filaments like blowing out birthday candles. Edith is far from being that powerful, her largest exhalation was a cone that covered about 500,000 square miles, but one day she will be.

 

Edith doesn’t need to breathe, Vovin dragons are completely fine in a vacuum, though she far prefers breathing to not breathing. She still has the human urge to breathe. She can also survive thousands of years without food, though she far, far, far prefers eating to not eating. Edith eats an awful lot (just watch her the next time you’re in the cafeteria. Her plate is always stacked) because she has the human desire to eat food, but none of it really fills her. Dragons require greater fuel sources than hamburgers–think heavy metals and magma. Ancient dragons can eat entire stars as a snack. Their entropic breath evolved to help them convert matter to forms of energy they can digest. This way, Edith can eat just about anything, but prefers energized photite. If you look carefully at her cafeteria plate, you might see a glowing photite “cookie” next to the food.

 

Behavior: 

 

Fair

 

ADHD diagnoses are handed out like candy these days, but there are cases where it’s hard to argue against it. Edith is one such case. She has a hard time paying attention and exhibits hyperactivity–her behavior fits the bill. She has to be reminded not to fly out of her seat during class, she daydreams and remembers nothing about her lessons, and she has trouble keeping her hands to herself. Everyone remembers what happened when she picked up Dr. Bell’s snowglobe paperweight, the one with the little model of the House of Ghosts inside. 

 

Her inability to focus has had a detrimental impact on her grades. She’s lazy even by the standards of teenagers. She doesn’t study, she doesn’t turn in assignments on time, and her lack of self-discipline is keeping her from achieving anywhere close to her potential. She’s a bright girl. She’s fused with a being that has three brains. She should be doing a lot better than she is.

 

In the past, Edith would have been treated by a combination of medication and telepathic therapy. She would have struggled to find a behavioral balance between complacency and zombification and we as educators would have struggled with her. But fortunately, we live in more enlightened times. Edith is treated with behavioral guidance and instructional modification. Her teachers have worked out a system of hand signals and gestures with Edith to tell her when to stop talking, when to calm down, and when to get her feet back on the floor without embarrassing her or disrupting the class. Edith doesn’t take well to traditional instruction, so she’s given as many opportunities to move around and be hands-on as possible. She’s often in CRS (controlled reality simulations) with Thespian. A lecture on the battle of Hoshi Island goes in one ear and out the other, but Edith’s energy works in her favor when she’s presented with a simulation of the battle. When she can fly around the island, she naturally wants to know everything about what she sees–the weapons, the soldiers, the men, the technology, everything.

 

Edith has responded well to these instructional changes and her teachers expect her grades to rise sharply by the end of her freshman year.

 

Appearance: 

 

Edith is very particular about how she dresses. She can’t stand clothes that are too tight or too loose and hates shoes. Maybe it’s her dragon nature that makes her feel this way–dragons hate having things touch their scales. Maybe it’s just plain ADHD. Maybe it’s a little of both.

 

Edith dresses in jumpsuits that leave room for her wings and tail in the back. She can control how “dragon” she looks just like how her classmate Martina Morelli can control how “demon” she looks. She typically has her wings out, because she loves to fly and hates standing still, and her tail out because she thinks it’s cute, her horns out because she thinks they’re cool, and her fangs out as it makes it easy for her to gulp down food. Her table manners could use a little work. She gobbles her meals down in a few bites.

 

Her eyes are bright red and have a slight shine to them. In the dark, her eyes glow like a cat’s. Her hair is long, messy, and almost as red as her eyes. Her idea of doing her hair in the morning is to run her fingers through it a few times–and sometimes she doesn’t even do that.

 

While her human half dominates her physical appearance, her dragon half dominates her astral appearance. In the dreamworlds, Edith appears as a massive dragon with a huge mouth with multiple rows of teeth like a shark and a long skull with several eyes. It’s rather fearsome, and people that want to meet Edith in her dreamform should be forewarned to avoid reactions that might hurt Edith’s feelings. Just as Edith’s physical form has elements from her dragon half, so does her dreamform have elements from her human half, though from a glimpse no one would think Edith’s dreamform was anything but all-dragon. She has a set of human teeth behind the second row of fangs and one of her pairs of eyes has human irises.

Lucia Regio, the school’s fashionista, has tried several times without success to give Edith a makeover. Edith just won’t have it. Lucia’s intentions are good, but Edith hates makeup. She can’t stand it touching her face. And as for piercing her ears–forget it. You’d sooner convince Edith to let you stab her in the heart than convince her to let you stab her earlobe.