ralph_dnd | the dragon of Agondre

February 7 (Saturday), mid-day

Last night was the strangest combination of frightening, informative, and invigorating that I've ever experieenced. Some things about the world are now clearer; some things about me are now more confusing.

Last night we found ourselves in a strange place with no idea how we had gotten there. We were deep beneath the earth, in a passage that only went one direction. Everything was lit by a reddish glow, and we felt the throb of an enormous heartbeat. We went the only way we could, and found ourselves in a huge cavern -- that contained a massive, writhing dragon in a pool of slime. We could only see the top half of the dragon, and the ooze was clearly causing it pain, but it didn't move out of the pool for some reason. It had wings; why didn't it fly out? Or walk out? Maybe it was in too much pain.

It was clawing and biting at itself, and breathing great blasts of flame down its body that burned everything in the room, including us. And then creatures -- hideous, unnatural creatures of every sort -- began to emerge from the pool and attack us. And Hrolf took off as soon as we entered the cavern, refusing to answer me when I called out to him, and I was worried that he was being possessed or something and would get killed. I could only hope that he was way too small to be noticed by the dragon.

Soon we were being swarmed by monsters. One seemed to drain a lot of life-force from Kyle, who with great concentration managed to stay alive but was clearly weakened. One of them managed to confuse a bunch of us, which allowed even more to emerge. I lobbed fireballs at things coming out of the pool, and at the pool itself, but I couldn't keep up with what was coming out. And the dragon kept sending forth blasts of flame. I tried to tell the dragon -- which surely must be the dragon of Agondre! -- that we were here to help, but it ignored me. I could see no way to heal it, no way to lure it out of the pool, and no way to stop the attack on it. I thought that perhaps fire could heal it -- it was breathing fire on its own body, after all -- and threw a ball of fire at it, but it had no apparent effect. As I learned from Anarion later, if fire could fix the problem, Agondre wouldn't be in its current state.

Sometime during all of this, the doorway to the cavern disappeared. Whatever was happening, we were trapped here. I found myself hoping that this was a bad dream but knowing that it was too realistic for that to be the case. We were being clobbered by monsters and there didn't seem to be anything we could do about it. It made no sense. What was our purpose here?

While flying near the dragon trying to talk to it I spotted Hrolf, who was flying up near the ceiling, and headed after him to find out what he was doing. He led me triumphantly to the hilt of a sword that was sticking out of the wall. The floor of the cavern was covered in treasure of all sorts, but high on a wall seemed an unusual place for something. Hrolf told me "take it!" and I grabbed hold, and a magnificant sword made mostly of sunlight emerged without effort. It felt absolutely right in my hands.

The message was clear: it was time to smack some monsters. So I did, and found that I had much better instincts about how to use a sword than I thought I had. When I hit an undead something-or-other the sword flashed very brightly; sword = sun = Pelor = anti-undead, so that makes sense I suppose. This sword was clearly meant for me somehow, and I need to grill Hrolf on how he knew that. Later.

But even with all our skills, both physical and magical, we couldn't handle what the pool was throwing at us. I saw Liandra fall amid a swarm of flying abominations, and I last saw Prolix under attack by a huge flying lizard, and something huge took a bite out of Turok while smacking Kyle with its tail, knocking them both down. I was, meanwhile, being attacked by huge bats and insects. I felt the life force slipping away but could do nothing to stop it. Then things went black.

And then I woke up, as did everyone else, in the room that Anarion had given us to stay in. Anarion was there, looking very worried. Ha! He didn't just get killed by unspeakable monsters; what was he worried about? But soon it became apparent what was going on, when he apologized for doing that to us but told us we needed to see what was happening. So I was right -- that was the dragon of Agondre, and it is under attack by some sort of disease or evil agent, and that's related to the foulness we have seen in the land. I would guess that the dragon is real and is living beneath Cardior, but clearly we must both find it and find out how to rescue it. We asked Anarion what had happened last time, particularly with Elys' and Therion; he said they had bought some time for a ritual that brought temporary relief, but a permanent solution is needed. We don't know what that solution is, though.

And the dream wasn't entirely a dream; I woke up clutching the sword. What a puzzle! It still feels right in my hands; not only that, but it smells extremely clean, the opposite of the way the pools smell, and no one else in our group can detect it. It's quite remarkable.

And Kotara-nar is also somewhat improved; Turok had held it in the dragon's mouth while it breathed fire, thinking this was the gorge of fire, and the sword glowed brighter. And still does. If that's what a dream gorge of fire can do, I wonder what the real one will do. Turok pointed out that the dragon was missing a tooth, and Seamus' lore about Kotara-nar called it "dragon tooth".

None of us were really coherent when we woke up, but neither did we want to go back to sleep immediately. Anarion said we would discuss this again later and left. After a while others tried to go to sleep, but I couldn't. Eventually I decided to just wait for dawn, and went outside with my new sword. I just sat there, silently staring at it, until sometime after the first rays of the morning sun fell across the blade, making it glow even brighter.

I asked Anarion if we could talk, but he said I should get some rest first. So I'll try to do that.