Fanfic #58 Marked by Potato Nose [Eberron/Worm]

This fanfic is an alt power Taylor with powers from Eberron. It's a really good fanfic that not only explores the world of worm, but also Eberron.

Synopsis: When Taylor is maimed by a vicious school prank gone wrong, she unwittingly falls face first into the Draconic Prophecy. Now, adorned with a dragonmark at the act of an ancient dragon, she struggles to balance her powers with her freedom, identity, and the temptations of a strange world that is intruding both magic and dragons into her life.

Rated: M

words: 160k

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/marked-eberron-worm.844115/reader/

Here's the fist chapter:

The Shadow Marches were little more than swamplands, dank and fetid. Among the marshes and reeds and scrub, scattered tribes of orcs lived pastoral lives, often dismissed as insignificant primitives in muck and squalor. Ruins of earlier times scattered about the marshlands, along with isolated fields of egg shaped, translucent pink crystals known as Eberron Dragonshards.

Yet between these scatterings of interest, in the poorer regions of the Shadow Marches, were places even the orcs shunned. Areas where there was nothing of value to anyone. These were pockets of land nobody wanted, not even the firstcomers, choked with bitter, brittle stalked weeds, stagnant pools, stinking bog rot, and the sorts of vermin that weren't considered edible except in the direst need.

Within one such valley bog, however, there was a secret; a lair. Surrounding this lair was a painstakingly crafted dweomer that was woven into the land, nurtured for thousands of years, and the hereditary property of a particular lineage of creatures almost never seen in Khorvaire: a dragon.

The current inhabitant was called Androgalmaryxes by the few who knew of his existence at all. One might reasonably wonder why a dragon, of all things, lived in this squalid mire, on Khorvaire, rather than Argonessen, but that secret was a task: the further completion of knowledge of the Prophecy, a labor that extended down a hundred twenty generations of black dragons. It was a birthright, a hereditary treasure not of gold or gems or magical arms, but rather imprinted dragonshards containing records of the portents of the progenitors' plan.

Androgalmaryxes was an ancient; nearing the age of senescence, massive, powerful, but feeling the creep and subtle intrusion of time in ways that sometimes robbed him of seconds or even minutes of short term memory at unpredictable intervals. Most of the time he could put it out of his mind as something that could be dealt with at another time, but in the moments before sleep or after waking he knew in his bones that even dragons died of old age, and though they lived very long lives, he was nearing the end of his.

Right now, though, the inevitability of decline and death was far from his thoughts. He was much too busy to concern himself with that. Androgalmaryxes uttered a breath of draconic, his talons weaving the whispers into an intricate pattern. Before him, his collection of dragonmarks took shape, dragonmarks his agents and minions had painstakingly recorded and memorized. Their diaphanous glow cast his water filled cavern in a wan light through the murk, blues and greens and purples in curves and swoops while malefic tones ranging from blood red to browns and blacks stood by in slashes, jags, and spines. Another alphabet among many, taken together with the ring of Syberis, the weather, the motions of the stars, and many others which dragonkind studied, but by far, dragonmarks were Androgalmaryxes' favorite.

The mortal races, he decided, had no appreciation for the splendor that had been bestowed on them by Khyber, Syberis, and Eberron. If mortals understood but a glimpse of the meaning and purpose of these blessings they would praise the progenitors unceasingly for the privilege of being the same race as those chosen to carry the marks of the Prophecy. Instead, the flighty, silly things bartered and wheedled their powers to make bagatelles and trinkets. Absurd creatures, thinking their Houses of mere thousands of years in age were something to be impressed by, to command respect.

But then, Androgalmaryxes mused, their actions with those blessings and how they nurtured them, were themselves nuances of the words of the Prophecy. Perhaps the medium of the project was intended as a subtle humor by the progenitors of creation? Like scribing a manifesto about dignity in a child's finger painting.

He'd barely settled into his perusal when he felt something intruding into his territory, something ugly, something defiled. The malice of its aura was palpable, a greasy, venomous sheen over pitted and corroded brass. Androgalmaryxes surged to his feet and swam out of the cavern mouth.

The sparse clouds overhead were dark, rimmed with silver, mostly obscuring the morning sun and promising rain later in the afternoon. It wasn't as though the rain would really change the environment much, though, as his valley was a warm, marshy place, sourced from a river up north that spread out from thirty feet wide to about five hundred in the span of a mile, breaking its force on ancient boulders and shallowing out into bog. Even now, in the winter, it didn't get particularly cold this far south, making it an ideal location for a black dragon, and much coveted by smaller ones looking for prime territory. But dragons weren't a concern this far from Argonessen.

There was a little time, yet. Time enough for Androgalmaryxes to learn for certain what was entering his home turf, and to formulate a plan of action to deal with said intruder. The deepest parts of him urged him to destroy the invader, to maul and tear until an example had been set, but he pushed aside that impulse. Black dragons had a reputation for cruelty, a reputation that nettled him more than a little when applied to him undeservedly. He took pains to follow a code of ethics despite his instinct to violence and cruelty; he refused to allow his blood to dictate his actions. Self control, careful judgment, these things had gained him supremacy in his region as well as an appreciation for peaceful interactions, however unlikely that seemed at the moment.

Especially as he reached his target: a still, crystal clear pool of water, sheltered by greenery from wind and sun, protected from contamination by charms and enchantments. He focused on the pool, gazing into it, bringing to the forefront of his mind the sensation of the unwelcome presence crossing his borders. Lingered on the foul taste of its presence. His talons waved, curled, spread. An image appeared in the surface of the water, of a twisted, wounded thing, rent flesh of grey and brown streaked with ash white. A demon. A least rakshasa of some unfamiliar kind, feeble and barely worthy of the title, sloshing along on the riverbank through water that seemed to evade its touch as much as possible.

He bunched his legs and wings, preparing for flight, and as he did, inhaled, deep and deep and deep, feeling the acid gather, potent and heavy in his crop. But a glimmer of something stayed his execution of the wretched thing: a mark seared into the face of the approaching creature. An elbow of the mark ran across and destroyed the left eye of the limping biped. But he recognized that mark. It was crudely rendered yet strikingly similar to a particular mark in his collection that Androgalmaryxes had taken a liking to.

Irritation and distaste faded as curiosity grew at the daring of this least rakshasa befouling his doorstep alone. He settled his wings and relaxed into his haunches. Within a minute, the battered thing was sloshing up to the mouth of the valley, where it halted. Well outside the range of an antimagic sphere, Androgalmaryxes noted. The creature stopped, and took a deep breath.

"Andrimalgaryxes!" it cried out. "I have come with a message!"

The attrocious butchering of his name almost prompted him to return to his original impulse. He quashed the urge yet again, although frankly he now had double the reasons to render this foulkith a dissolved stain soaking into the loam. He gathered himself and turned from the sheltered pool, crouched down on his haunches, and leaped into the wind, his massive wings unfurling and catching the air. Two powerful wingbeats enabled him to wingover and fly towards the mouth of the valley where the demon thing stood, and he took a moment to wheel overhead for a few seconds as he dropped altitude. Several more powerful wingbeats arrested his momentum and he landed heavily, the weight of him sinking his hindlegs into the soft earth almost to his knees. "Speak, vermin," he replied in a sonorous rumble. "And if you value your life you will not linger after you have delivered your words."

"My master Ixibalzegub sends his greetings and regards, o ancient-" the creature began, but Androgalmaryxes cut it off.

"Spare me your honeyed noises and deliver your message." He punctuated it with an inhalation that had nothing to do with words. The threat was clear.

"I have been instructed to say: 'Your knowledge regarding the Prophecy is incomplete. The words of Khyber were unheeded: Annihilation awaits all at the outsider's grief when his anguish must finally give way to rage'."

Androgalmaryxes would have snorted derisively had the gesture not been so utterly beneath him. "And I surmise that you are here to instruct me, as though I were a mortal or a wet hatchling." He gestured with a wingtip. "You have delivered your empty message; begone ere I-"

The creature before him bared claws. Androgalmaryxes was so utterly baffled by the absurdity of the gesture that he made no move to defend himself. But there was no need to; the repulsive thing opened its own belly with them.

A geas. Whatever compelled the demonling was stronger than its own urge to survive, and as its ichors soaked into the loam the dragon could see the interlocking traceries of aberrant marks that had been scribed in painstaking detail across the thing's guts. Loops and coils of intestine, their purples and sickly greens marred by the jagged, spiny sigils over every surface. The spilled blood foamed and blackened, searing itself into a wispy, greasy smoke, and it was clear that this creature was something that would not long last after its expiration.

THIS was the message, then. A collection of aberrant marks, of the words of Prophecy Corrupted. Of shadows and absences and twisted purpose.

"Why did the Three begin their work as one?" the foul thing gurgled spitefully. "I was built for this message. I was made for this moment. Open your eyes and read the work in its completion..."

The ancient growled softly. It seemed Ixibalzegub, whoever it was, knew him better than he would have liked. It was a message calculated to infuriate him, disgust him. And despite it, to tempt him. A cruel and vicious ploy intended to coax him to gutting this living thing, to read its record while it bled onto the earth, to scramble for the knowledge it contained. To pull it apart while living to learn every secret it contained, to KEEP it alive while studying because if it died, it would rapidly turn to smoke, dust, and ashes.

Left to its own devices, the thing would likely have no choice but to continue mutilating itself until he examined it, or it died. With this in mind, and its suffering ensured regardless, Androgalmaryxes first cast a handful of protective spells on himself, then got to work.

---

The actions he took in adding the newly acquired knowledge to his own collection had troubled his conscience not at all, a fact that bothered him a bit in its own right. He knew what he was, and what he sought, and he would not needlessly prolong something's suffering regardless of the unwelcome enjoyment he took in its agonized squirming. The marks had not been merely scribed without its guts but within them, on the inside of its skin, on the surface of its bones. In the end, he'd had to peel the thing apart almost entirely.

Ixibalzegub, the dragon decided, was a significant more influential and knowledgeable creature than Androgalmaryxes liked to consider. By its methods, it was almost certainly a Rakshasa Lord. All of the Rakshasa Lords were imprisoned in the depths of Eberron, and had been for a hundred thousand years by the final sacrifice of the Couatls, but they still had traces left of their influence and power, and some few still plotted their escape with loyal fragments of their Courts.

Androgalmaryxes labored. The illusions were imprinted onto dragonshard, hour by hour and day by day. Obnoxious and intrusive pangs of hunger occasionally distracted him; those were less troublesome than the occasional fugue which left him in senile stupor-- occasions which were, he admitted to himself, becoming less uncommon.

Time could not be defeated, only delayed. But while he lived, the Work remained.

Finally, one day, he looked on the small mound of scribed dragonshards, the transcription of all the markings on the foul thing that had invaded his demesne... was it really two years already? He knew it had taken much longer than it should, especially the last few months. The mental lapses had increased greatly.

A fuller picture was now within his talons, more than ever before. Free of the need to simply transcribe, he could now read.

He activated all of the stones, spreading their knowledge about himself. He overlaid the new marks over his original hoard, over the record of the Stars, the flow of the rings of Syberis. Bit by bit, he began to sift. It was weeks more, as he cross referenced and checked and pored over minutiae in the angles of single whorls and splines.

Taken together, this was not mere Prophecy. This was more. The angles of the space between, to distant analogues of Eberron itself, across the blind eternities and past the Shell of Ether which bound it, to places where Mana did not collect and where a predator lurked from the beyond. A predator crippled by loss. And a single mortal among a multitude among a myriad worlds.

"Annihilation awaits all at the outsider's grief when his anguish must finally give way to rage," he muttered to himself, "and the sword that may destroy him is here."

The knowledge was here. The outsider's reach was limitless across the blind eternities so long as his presence in one plane had an equivalent elsewhere. If he woke and struck, Eberron would die, and everything on it would die with it. Even the Rakshasa Lords would not survive it.

Small wonder then that one would part with the knowledge. And an imprisoned Rakshasa would not have the strength necessary to forge the Sword. The only such creature that could... Was a dragon at the height of its power. And the only such dragon in reach was Androgalmaryxes.

The message was clear. The Prophecy was unambiguous. And, he reflected with a bitter humor, the messenger had already shown the way.

He composed a spell, notifying his eldest surviving offspring, a female of perhaps eight hundred years who was quite the imposing specimen herself. He waited for her reply; it did not take long, a short message of acceptance of his territory and hoarded knowledge. As a hundred twenty one dragons before her, she would bring her own collection of knowledge about the Prophecy, and add it to what was already here.

All that remained was the final task. And really, Androgalmaryxes was grateful. No dragon wished to wither away from age in the Twilight. Better to die doing something, to die for something.

Around him, the projections of dragonmarks spun as he began to etch runes in his own blood.

---

In a hospital in Brockton Bay, a small mark took shape on the bare scalp of a teenage girl.