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The Tale of Anok, Part 1: The StormWinds

The Tale of Anok Dragodd


Anok Dragodd would have certainly lived a very ordinary life had destiny not blown its way in, carried by dark wings.

He and his father had moved up from Ryav to an unassuming and lonesome woodmans shack that rested in a small grove that hugged the river Souliya, and lay in the shadow of the mighty Linunfell mountains.

They had a fair life, his father had been a miller who had retired to the cabin he had built over the years with his own hands, and they had income from hauling lumber into town from time to time, and food from their small Qualapa pasture.

The father and son shared a similar proclivity for the quiet peace isolation brought, and were very resigned to keep things much as they are.

But then fate came, aloft on dark wings.

A terrible storm had begun to blow in, not unusual for the windy Ryavi Pass valley, but this storm had seemed to almost take a young Anok off his feet as he cleaved firewood from a felled tree.


Eventually, even as he attempted to ignore the storm and focus on his work, he was snapped out of the dutiful dedication to the task assigned, and turned in horror towards the tremendous sound of splintering wood and breaking glass in this distance.

He began to sprint back towards the cabin, worrying the house had blown over in the gale, and his concern was validated as he came upon the crumpled sight of his father's years of hard work, their cabin in ruins.

But something began to plant the seed of a somehow even deeper dread, for out of the dark and shattered form of the house began to emerge a form.

Anok quickly dove into the brush, taking cover under the trunk of a fallen tree, and out she came.

Her scales glistened an almost silvery white, her mane a pale blue, her eyes as piercingly yellow as a polished amber.

Anok would have been transfixed by the creature's beauty if perhaps he didn’t catch a stray glimpse at what was clasped in its claws.


His father, broken and bloodied, still struggling to hold his woodman's Axe, as he had clearly tried to fend the colossal creature off, much in vain it seemed.

The colossal creature casually tossed him back into the deformed skeleton of the cabin he had fought all his life to build, and tears welled up in Anok’s eyes as he had to muffle a scream, and gripped down on his own Axe so tightly it burned.

Even knowing he would meet the same fate as his father he contemplated rushing the beast, but terror kept him set like a stone within his hollow trunk.

The White Wyvern strode over to what had clearly been his real prize all along, the Qualapa.

They let out a dull cry of pain as the beast gripped two of the Qualapa with its mighty talons, and then just like that it shook off the splinters of wood that dusted it and was aloft, temporarily bringing the stormwinds back until once again the grove was silent.


This event would redirect the current of a young Anoks path, he went from an unassuming son of a miller with no ambitions of his own to a man driven by revenge, revenge on the seemingly spectral dragon that had taken everything from him in an instant.

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Author
Centinuus
Read time
3 min read
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