Bones of time

There weren’t always dragons in The Valley. Some would argue there still aren’t, but this could be argued. Our village had to travel to one of the greater city’s for trade one day. On our journey we took notice of some large structures that hadn’t existed there before. It was always just flat land surrounded by looming mountains.

Seemingly overnight the bones of what could only be identified as dragons appeared. How they got there no one knows and just yesterday some of our people passed here. The land lay barren for as long as our elders can remember. The chief took note of the mystery and sent our best trackers to check for any sign as to how these large bones got here. They found nothing. It was almost as if time reversed and they formed from the dust itself.

We all descended to investigate. Upon closer inspection the bones appeared old and covered in cobwebs, as if there for countless ages even though we had no record of them. The stark white ivory standing out like stars in the night compared to the mud the bones where settled in.

Linda brushed her hand over the bones in curiosity, the second she made contact it’s like a switch was flipped. In the blink of an eye the skeleton yard and beyond our field of view had changed. Tar like Ichor was oozing everywhere and clinging to our feet in a sticky mess. The sky, dark, as if filled with shadows rather then fluffy clouds. Monsters of unseen nightmares filling every inch of sky and land with dark gleaming eyes- Teeth gnashing in our direction. The grass withers as if time ripped away it’s life in seconds! The very sky being ripped apart by sound, a cacophony of screams from tortured souls. The noise alone was enough to have our brains feel like they where melting out of our ears, but it was just the feeling of blood pouring down the sides of our heads from burst ear drums.

Linda pulls her hand away and it feels like the world was tilted back to its rightful place. Everyone looks around stunned. It’s as if nothing changed, our ears free of warm blood spewing from our skulls. One of the younger kids sees the same black liquid fall from a spiderweb and panics. It wasn’t a mass hallucination then. He turns and slips in the fresh unmarked mud, using the old mysterious rib beams to support and steady himself and in doing so sends us back into darkness. Even after he hastily removed his hand, the world remains in the corruption. Both reality’s pulled into one as if two universes are colliding. Our twisted screams add to that of the existing sound. The air feels full of static and sounds of screeching metal as our hope and will collapses. It’s painful in every sense.

Now, having longer then a second to take in this nightmare, the wasteland is filled will corpses of countless dragons long dead. We scatter in panic and confusion. The young boy that got us stuck here gets tangled in the very cobwebs he tried to escape. He struggles to release his gangly limbs from his trap. No one can move, too shocked, to help him as a beast rips him away with a mind numbing screech. We try running from the demented writhing winged forms above us as they claw at us in desperation. Hungry for vengeance. Linda attempts to take cover in a forgotten decayed dragon. Stumbling in through a tear in its skin hide, muttering under her breath in both disgust and sadness for what once was so great a creature. She places her hand back on the cold surface of the skeleton in an attempt to change life back as it should be. Instead, the white mineral becomes brittle and turns to powder, floating away in the wind as if turned to ash. She’s left hopeless and exposed, spirit completely crushed. We don’t even know how we got here and we have no known way of escaping this death world. She’s snatched by the maw of a hungry beast. We lose many with no way to defend ourselves. We are all left wondering the same… Is this the end?