This crossover has been eating away at the back of my mind for years.
What you need to know: No prior knowledge of DragonFable is necessary. Lore and its... lore can be learned alongside Eragon. While we primarily start in IC territory, we should branch off into the DF plot so that the two remain entwined.
DragonFable is a long-running online RPG. A certain dragon kicks off the main story plot and remains important to the player character throughout. The first book has a great cheesy charm that develops some great characters and plots as the game grows. Some of the story lines in Book 3 are some of the most compelling I've ever seen in a video game. I've played off and on for eight years and it always keeps me coming back. DF can be hilarious one moment and gut-wrenching the second. Some of that tone should hopefully come through because... come on, both of these franchises are delightfully corny when you get down to it. But also the blood and drama and everything else, of course ;)
Continuity: DF has several sister games and a lore that's... complicated. I'll be sticking to DF canon but reserve the right to alter or expand backstory in certain places. The same goes for IC.
Pairings: Some hinted or implied but it's not the focus here.
Darkness was all it had ever known.
It was not one of the ancient ones, who had existed before the dawn of creation and remembered a pure blackness untainted by younger elements. Yet it had also avoided straying from its native plane, rendering itself hideously vulnerable to light or else binding itself to a lesser object to escape the worst of exposure.
Its hesitance from leaving the nurturing shadow of its world did not stop it from seeking out those that had. Many spirits, greater and lesser, had left their plane behind to serve a summoner or assert themselves in another realm. It heard how cruelly light burned from those who still carried the scars. It also heard how to feast on fear and things of sustenance not naturally found in the Dark.
It listened to the words of its elders. It learned. And it hungered.
But it bide its time, for it did not wished to be used as a tool or driven back into the Darkness in disgrace. It dwelt in anonymity, for its name carried no dread in the lesser realms. No necromancer had ever chained its power to their own. None had ever summoned this scrap of a spirit as servant or to pledge themselves in its service, to offer blood and life and soul.
Until, at last, it heard the call.
And what the call it was. It knew the essence of those outsiders who aligned themselves with the Dark, those who tepidly walked at its edges or eagerly immersed themselves in the depths. This call, though it burned with vengeance and fury and the all-consuming need to kill, was not truly Dark. The hand behind it was blind, reaching only for a nameless power strong enough to carry out its wrath.
It was simply the first to follow, slipping into the tiny tear that had been ripped into its realm and into another entirely.
The first thing it knew outside of the Dark was vulnerability. Naked without the shadows, and so cut off from the place of its birth, it blindly lashed out the strange spirits suddenly surrounding it.
These spirits were not kindred Dark ones. They were not searing light. Nor were they burning Fire or freezing Ice or any other element it intrinsically knew. These spirits were no true elementals at all, for they drew strength from no one great power. They were wisps, pale and ephemeral, and shrunk away from its touch.
It devoured them all and hungered for more.
The summoner was as rootless as the lesser spirits he had summoned. His resistance died in a heartbeat, for though he had the power to call on the Dark he had not the will to wield it.
Firstly it devoured the soul. Secondly it devoured the memories of the human boy named Carsaib so that it might learn more about this world.
Alagaesia was an alien name to even a spirit that had so patiently learned of so many realms others had entered. This sorcerer, for this was indeed what Carsaib had been, was not just inept for his kind. Even his master, Haeg, had summoned lesser spirits and knew only of half-formed magics with no true affinities.
Not about to dwell in such a hostile realm unprotected, it first shaped a proper vessel. Carsaib's body brimmed with magical potential. It was a body with agency of its own, so unlike an impotent weapon. The spirit named Durza claimed it as his own.
His. Yes. In this world it was reserved for objects and animals, things without power of their own. Durza was as male as his new body.
A part of him yearned to eat away at what was left of his body's vitality. Durza stomped down the urge. He had heard too many tales of liches that had eagerly offered up their lives for greater power and always rotted away into nothing. Death was stagnation. A semblance of life would keep him vital. It would allow the body to grow until he deigned it not to, for Carsaib had been a slip of a boy.
Durza idly brushed away blood-red hair that had been mundane brown mere minutes ago. Alagaesia was so empty. It was a blank slate for him to make his mark on.
Alagaesia could know Darkness and only Darkness. Durza could rule it all as the great force mortals knew by a multitude of names did the plane of his birth.
Durza forced his new lips into a rigid smile. It seemed only poetic to start with the human killers Carsaib had summoned him to devour in the first place.
Every experienced Rider knew not to stray too far west and lose sight of Vroengard on the horizon. Out on the open ocean colossal sea serpents and sudden storms could down even an elder dragon. They had been but mere students disobeying their masters, seeking the forbidden lands in the west. Their foolish minds had believed legendary Alalea no more than a few hours' flight from Doru Arabae.
Six had flown out that morning, three young humans who had banded together during training and three stir-crazy yearling dragons.
Then the horizon had turned dark and ominous, as if night had descended hours early. The sea had churned with an oncoming storm, furiously pounding Vroengard's rocky shores. Oromis had been among their elders debating a plan of action when the storm had suddenly guttered out so far from them.
Only three survivors had returned. One, a Rider unconscious in the saddle. The second, the delirious dragon that had carried them to safety before collapsing. The third had, best as Oromis could determine from the poor dragon's fractured memories, fallen from the storm itself.
He had considered it miraculous that the mysterious survivor had landed on dragon-back rather than into the merciless sea. Then he and Glaedr had laid eyes upon the man themselves.
When the man at last succumbed, Glaedr only rumbled somberly. Drowning would have been the gentler death.
Standing before the body now, Oromis privately concurred. The futile battle the healers had waged for his life had only prolonged his suffering. Not even their strongest spells could revitalize necrotic flesh, black and dead. Their magic had only worsened the corruption from the... other injuries, causing further agony and deformation.
Now Oromis gazed down upon the aftermath. Eir had draped the body with a clean white sheet but dark stains oozed through. Concealing the body did not conceal its shape was not quite human. He had long ago deadened his sense of smell so as not to endure the stench of rot and things too terrible to name.
Eir sighed. "We could do nothing. Not even numb his pain." Her gaze flicked to the doorway. They were alone, her attendants shooed from the ward and the other patients relocated closer to where the injured dragons roosted. "If anything, we only hastened the damage. His armor was helping to keep his shape."
Oromis glanced over at the armor, undamaged but pieces carelessly strewn about their floor from the vain struggle to see the extent of its owner's injuries. When he had first glimpsed the stranger, moaning beneath his curdling flesh, his armor had been black like a magpie's wing, shimmering with glints of green and violet. Now their color had leeched out, leaving dull gray metal behind.
"Did you learn anything about him in his last moments?" he asked softly. "A name, a loved one?"
Eir scowled at him, carving deeper into frown lines formed through the centuries. "You can peek beneath the covers to see what became of his jawbone at the end. Speech was beyond him. And his mind..." Her shoulders slumped. "We're still keeping Deyna unconscious after how she reacted to that one little glimpse into his surface memories. Gods know I'm moving from this nightmare into another. With luck we'll remove all this from her mind entirely."
Wish we could do the same, Glaedr grumbled privately. The newest members to the Council of Elders, the matter had been theirs to investigate. Now there was the mess to clean up. What happened to him, beside the obvious of meddling with the forbidden?
In the last several centuries they had helped dispatched Shades and necromancers, the byproducts of those twisting the limits of magic or seeking to defy death itself. None had ever managed to inflict such a gruesome end upon themselves. It was a demise Oromis could not wish upon his worst foe. The matter of how he had seemingly fallen out of the sky over open ocean was another headache entirely.
"What did he carry?"
"His armor and underclothes." Eir gestured dismissively to the pieces. "There's the former. We burned what was left of the latter for very good reason."
Oromis turned his full attention to the armor. Despite the dullness the metal was expertly forged. He picked up a gauntlet and flexed it, impressed by its lightness how easily it turned. Oromis did not delight in war but he marveled at the pragmatic design. The only feature that gave him pause were the interlocked metal plates that broke up the smoothness of the back plate. To him they added nothing to defense or to the design. Even with magic human smiths were hard-pressed to match such quality. Thoughtfully he bent down and picked up a helm shaped like the head of a snarling dragon. Everything, from the inlays etched like scales down to sabatons like talons, evoked dragons.
After all, no man or elf could fly on their own power.
A dragon. His heart sunk at the possibility. He lost his dragon in that storm.
Glaedr mulled a likely scenario over. The Order had exiled its fair share of outcasts before, usually those that butted heads one too many times with the Council or Riders that had lost their dragon and furiously believed a second egg their gods-given right. Some, loners or rebels, slipped away on their own desire. Usually the rogues that posed a real danger were sentenced and executed before they were ever let loose upon Alagaesia.
If they were ever one of us... Well, it's no matter now. His body is beyond recognition. If he had a dragon, it is lost like those poor yearlings, sunk to the deep. We'll be fortunate for either of their Riders to ever wash up. Grant him his peace, Oromis. Considering how his life ended, he certainly deserves it now.
"I'll have a pyre readied," he agreed.
Vroengard's rocky soil was poor for burial and very few Riders died upon the isle, instead meeting their ends through battle or misfortune. Like the wild dragons cremation was often the preferred ritual for Rider and dragon. If this man had indeed ever been a Dragon Rider, they were granting him his proper rite.
If that were not the truth, Oromis doubted his fellow elders would ever agree to an alternative of disposing that body. He already heard their gripes about that corruption leaching into the soil.
"Without alteration his armor will no longer fit if you mean to burn it with him," Eir cautioned.
Oromis promised to attend to matters. In truth the armor and its former owner, now ashes scattered to the wind, were a passing fancy to the council. They scarcely had time to ponder over the man's origins before rumors in the west spoke of a new Shade.
Shades were abominations almost pitiable in their status as multiple spirits bound to a single body. They were mad things, raving for their own destruction or lashing blindly out at the world. Despite the trail of bodies left in its wake, this Shade eluded all methods of tracking, a monster guided by higher reasoning and single-minded intent. It was a threat to be quickly disposed of.
She had been born in the Dark. Growing up its shadows had nurtured her. Now, as utter wrongness and the tried to rend her asunder, the shadows shielded her.
They had not saved her heart. He had been ripped from her. The Dark that instinctively cradled her like an egg against the Void's crushing presence had not spared him. Now her soul gushed from the gaping wound left behind. She was blind to all else, her heaving stomach and flashing vision, all else but the hole in her heart.
She screamed for him, her precious one, but he did not answer. He could not answer, for he had been stolen from her.
Grief hardened into resolve. What death had stolen could be returned. She would reclaim her precious one, life for life and life and li-
"No."
Like an ember, something small and warm glowed in her grasp. She cradled it close. She knew that faint touch against her soul better than she knew her own.
"I'm with you. I'll always be with you."
"...And now back with us, it seems."
Hissing, she cracked her eyes open. Coolness surged in the back of her mind as she prepared to call upon her shadows. A stranger loomed above her, seemingly human but with long white hair and the unwrinkled face of someone either very old or outright immortal. Big. Why was he so damn big? Unless he was a giant or she was...
Puny human fingers experimentally flexed against the Amulet she held in a death grip. Her lip curled.
"Blame me. We needed you smaller and easier to handle. You were half-conscious and went along with me."
That voice. Avatars, she knew that voice, now matter how faint and distant it sounded now.
"Rephaim," she croaked, tilting her head to gaze upon him.
He was as she knew him best, dark hair cropped back and hazel eyes bright. His face, always pale from lack of sunlight and now even paler, was drawn into a wan smile. Her heart sank. Even his armor, once the same deep color as her scales, was transparent enough for her to see the stack of scrolls behind him.
"In the flesh," he joked. "Metaphorically, that is."
She was well-used to human form for better wrangling books and experiments, but she still grunted with the effort of sitting up. She reached for his hand. Her fingers passed through cool mist.
"For now," she vowed with a growl. "We'll reunite you with it soon enough."
"I felt any tie to my body burn away with it," Rephaim said plainly. "Which was for the best. Necromancy is neither of our strong points."
It was not the Dark that had drawn them together. A lifetime ago they had stumbled upon each other, a foolish human scholar hungering for recognition for his peers and a dragon dabbling in what even her kind considered forbidden. She had merely been born to the Dark. Through their bond Rephaim had developed his own affinity. The shadows had merely been their shield and gateway into the Void where even Darkness faltered.
"Even if it had not, I doubt even one of your bloodline could raise a true lich here."
Her eyebrows rose as she realized they were all speaking the deep, rumbling tones of Draconic. To her it came so naturally she had not registered it. It was a tongue no human could handle without magical aid or years of practice. She cocked her head and reconsidered the stranger she had taken for human.
His body lacked wings or horns, any obvious signs a form chosen for convenience was not the form one had hatched into. Beyond the blatant she searched for signs of his element. His hair was long and pure white, skin pale and plain. His robe was dull, neutral gray. She stared into his eyes, searching for the pale blue of ice or light's brilliance.
His eyes were clear as glass. Not pale or light, but lacking color completely.
"Creatioux," she breathed.
The stranger dipped his head. "It has been centuries since I was called that."
Her breath caught. Beside her Rephaim's placid aura flared dark and cold before he calmed. They had glimpsed the mad, twisted abominations the Void could make of dragons from a distance. This dragon's sanity seemed more or less intact.
"Why not?" Rephaim dared ask for them both as he was now the one with no life to risk. "Did we get spit up on the wrong side of Lore?"
The Creatioux bared his teeth in what could not be called a smile. "More along the lines of the wrong world. Alagaesia, this land is named. Its people know me as Tenga. You are the one true dark dragon within it, child." His colorless eyes flicked to Rephaim. "You, little dragonlord, are the one shade on this plane strong enough to maintain a tether here after the body's demise."
"My daddy called me Vesna," she offered guilelessly.
Her sire had been the Great Darkness Dragon, the embodiment of their element for many long and terrible centuries. She had hatched late in his life, one daughter among dozens. Like all his lesser children, she had been expected to be a good little sewer of dread and death, laying human towns to waste so that he might raise the victims for his hordes.
In the beginning Rephaim couldn't have even hoped to pronounce the true version of her name. Rather than settle for the human approximation he had instead saddled her with a charmingly mundane name that roughly translated to the same meaning. It was a bestowal of trust this 'Tenga' had not yet earned.
"And what a messenger you were," Tenga said ruefully. "The first fissure since my arrival, and it lasts just long enough to drop your unconscious form practically on my doorstep."
"It hurled me out miles away from here. I felt the distance from you even worse than..." Rephaim trailed off to try running a hand through the curly mess of hair that followed in her in this form no matter how she altered it. Their souls were bound. The distance between them meant nothing when her lord had no longer been anchored by mortality. "I came for you as soon as I could. I regret nothing."
"Curiousity get the best of you too?" she asked wryly.
"My companions and I sought the mysteries that eluded even our kind and strayed too deep into the heart of the Void." Tenga's eyes gazed at nothing. "Our kind are not bound to the elements, but even we depend upon some semblance of order. We sought chaos, to pry at the pinnings of the world and see what lay beneath. What we found... I was the only one blessed to wake up here, in a realm with next to no true magic."
She and Rephaim exchanged an intrigued glance. "How so?"
"For those drawn to Darkness... The strongest necromancer Alagaesia can muster could only ever raise a fresh corpse, before rot dissolves the central nervouse system. Forget higher reasoning, let alone any binding or manipulation of the soul itself. At best they can only ever raise a handful of shambling foot soldiers capable of following one word orders."
They listened in morbid fascination as Tenga described Alagaesia, a world where the sentient races could be counted on less than two hands. Plain elves with fondness for the forest but no true affinity. Werecats, but no vampires or even weres of any other sort. Humans of one sprawling kingdom with little regard for magic. Erkals and razzak and other silly names. Dwarves that were... really similar to the dwarves back home. Dragons that breathed fire but were not fire, that had no tongue of their own but spoke with mind and soul.
Tenga pulled out the map for a reference point. Her dutiful list on peoples and sites to avoid soon blossomed into a detailed itinerary.
And a to-do list once Rephaim figured out how to levitate the quill. Learning the local language was pretty important, if only so she could be sufficiently witty. So was blending in, she guessed.
"The Dragon Riders are quite smug in their place in the world," Tenga advised grimly. "Makers forbid you raise their ire and threaten my privacy along with it. Proper company is always welcome, but keep any blasted messes you make out there away from me."
"Sure," she said.
Then she snatched the pen out of Rephaim's floating grasp to jot down a note about studying the local wildlife to compare against what they knew from their counterparts of Lore. The destitute human hall Tenga had claimed was built on the edge of a sprawling swamp. Might as well start with the amphibians.
Of the characters here only one is an OC. Others are simply... re-imagined ;)
Next chapter: In which a hatching attempt involving an adorable eldritch abomination goes horribly wrong and an egg explodes onto the wrong hero's doorstep.