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The World Dragon is terrible and yet beautiful to behold.
Its scales glitter like black metal, and its claws are thick
and razor sharp. It is all but indestructible, its maw as
wide as some mountain ranges and its tail stretching from
horizon to horizon. Its eyes were a glowing pool of red, its
pupils slit horizontal, and its wings were leathery and long,
blotting out the sun at times.
When the World Dragon hatched, shards of its egg hit Elanthia
and caused massive changes. Some civilizations died, cities
were crushed, when one hit an ocean it caused a massive tidal
wave that drowned the entire western side of the continent
upon which The Crossing resides and killed many of its inhabitants.
Since the waters there have now receded, much of that area
as yet still remains wild and untamed, although the ruins
of that shattered land are rumored to still exist.
The Dragon's first attack was upon Elanthia itself, which
it was drawn to because of its inner fire. The creature landed
upon Truffenyi's domain and began to drink the fire from its
depths. In terror -- for Truffenyi was certain that his world
would die if the World Dragon continued -- the god of Elanthia
called upon the others to aid him. He was ignored mostly,
until he pointed out that if the Dragon drained his world,
it would move onto the next closest source of fire -- the
sun.
A great battle ensued between the Immortals and the World
Dragon as it, in turn, spat its own fires across the world,
scorching some of the lands. One of the moons set on fire
as it blew its flames across the sky. Eluned quenched it with
her waters, but the moon would be black forever after.
As the great war continued, the Immortals despaired, for the
Dragon seemed unbeatable. Truffenyi rallied all the Immortals
for a final, great battle against the World Dragon. The battle
was so awful, that the sun hid itself for seven days behind
a veil of clouds, and mountains trembled before the wrath of
the Immortals.
When the battle ended, the World Dragon was weakened, but
not dead. It was then that Phelim decided that it could not
be destroyed, and so waited until it had slunk away and ambushed
it, casting his sands of sleep in its face. The Dragon, feeble
from the struggle, succumbed to the sleep and fell into a
slumber as deep as Urrem'tier's void.
Truffenyi, now free to think of something else, realized
that his world was dying because the World Dragon had all
but drained it of its marrow. It was Peri'el who stepped forward
and, in her soft and sibilant voice, put forth the idea of
housing the Dragon in the place it had desired the most --
the inner earth of Elanthia. Many of the Immortals thought
this idea was disastrous, but then Peri'el -- who was one
of the greatest of the Immortal warriors -- pointed out that
the Dragon's very skin was certainly hot enough to heat all
of Elanthia, and, so long as she watched it and sang to it,
it would remain sleeping.
Peri'el had been crippled during the combat with the Dragon.
Her right leg was lame and her left eye had been torn out;
as the Dragon was undefeatable, so were the wounds it had
dealt unhealable. Peri'el had been wounded the most and was
nearly useless now as a warrior, but her voice was still clear
and beautiful -- and very lulling, even for vain Idon. With
the Dragon and a full sack of Phelim's sands on her hip, she
descended into Elanthia's inner earth, where she remains with
the Dragon in its lair, playing her gold-stringed harp and
singing in her soft, reptilian voice that the Dragon -- reptilian
itself -- apparently finds very lulling.
It was during this war that the Immortals learned how much
they needed Elanthia. While all the gods have their own worlds,
only Elanthia is inhabited with the creatures they find the
most amusing and inspiring: mortals.
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