Why? Like no really, why?

And why would... well, why would she choose to go back, that was the real question. Their world didn't lack any of the technology or flavor of these others, in fact it appeared that they matched most of it pace for pace. They had computers and television and cruise ships and even knew about space worthy craft. Let alone their powers? Apparently not every species had some 'extra' thing they could do - but Zeddians had what someone nearby was talking about as 'Vortal powers' that were 'still in their infancy, but worth looking in to'.

Well of course they were! Well, worth looking into! In as much as she could, Ksh'uush casually sidled around behind the man and woman talking about these things, one of them was familiar to her: the leader of the Caledrus, the ship that had been summoned to Zedd to bring folks interested offworld. And she was probably at least half-Zeddian by her four arms. Too colorful in skin and hair to be truly pureblooded though, Woodie was chatting it up with a tall man who then looked up to the balconies above the dance floor, and bowed out of their discussion. "I must attend to the Empress, I will be in touch," his voice was spooky, his demeanor polite but also very, very businessman. He teleported.

Right there, he just teleported up to the balcony and then poofed a whole group of people away? Wild!

Oh - oh so that's... what he meant. Zeddians were only a fraction of what he knew as powerful, but still, Ksh'uush considered, there were humanoids over here and over there that didn't do any of that!

Over the course of the evening, though, a bunch of wildly varied dragon hatchlings were brought out from their nesting areas. Right around that same time, when that odd man took 'the Empress' off somewhere else, these sturdy, dramatic looking dragons were on show. They certainly caught the eye, and there had been a lot of noteworthy dragons already!

One of them, however, paced slowly and carefully around the area, gently sniffing at people, bowing politely with its black-armored face showing that movement easily against its brilliant white body. Until... Until he spotted Ksh'uush. He straightened up, his long long wings betraying a sudden excitement - body language was easy to read for a lot of Zeddians, Ksh'uush had gotten used to the reactions of people that she did 'readings' for (please provide something that won't break... oh, darn, too late). It translated well across the ballroom floor.

The dragon walked to her, now not even pretending to be polite to those that he walked in front of or between to reach her.

I have found you, his voice was clear and bright, powerful, and it was in her mind. The stars on his wingsails, not-quite-reversed from brightness on dark, seemed to burst in time with his heart and mind. They actually did - they moved, just a bit, growing brighter and dimmer. Will we find a place where you come from? Or will we go elsewhere with those others on their ship? I would like to see many places. All the places, my one.

"... All of them?" Ksh'uush said, somewhat taken aback. "Well that will be quite the undertaking won't it?"

He looked proud of himself, yes it will. We have time. You can break all the dishes everywhere you go, if you want, maybe we'll only ever see them once!

Name: Jioth (as 'gee, moth'; those who are biped shifters or who want to carry the name ahlHadaa may do so, meaning 'family lacking colors'; each given name has a meaning; jio is 'intricate' with the Pernese -TH ending)
Gender: Female; Queen's Bishop; evufad-6f
Size/Shoulder/Length: 8' s / 36' l / 60' ws
Colors: graphite fur with soft white intricate jagged markings basically everywhere but under belly and tail, or under limbs; soft white wingsails, visible only underside, the backs mirror the dark and marked fur; mane and tail light grey and high black stripes; horns and claws light; eyes faceted green
Features: Perneseish/Zekiran/Zebra-kin, slightly furry hide; 3+thumb / claw paws, +wrist finger wings; mane and tail tuft hair; back pointing straight horns - slight Pernese influence no knobs though; horse-like face; no external ears but hears fine; pupiled or faceted eyes; bonding not required but enjoyed, sponsorships likely, multibond unlikely but possible, non-human bond preferred
Stats: strength 6, speed 1, endurance 4, agility 5, health 6, intelligence 3
Powers: 6 Verbal Speech, a chatter box as much as her new friend is silent, while she doesn't use the Big Words she more than makes up for it with lots and lots of small ones, mostly in English, but also quite a bit of Zekiran and Vortigese, though where she picked those up who even knows. Maybe she spent a lot more time around the Ball's venue than expected? and 5 Telepathy, her mind is active and always seeking to connect, be it with Vujix or another dragon around. She has a very powerful mind, a lot like a chainsaw or a ... no, a chainsaw, that's about right - only she doesn't harm with it until she does get angry. And that's not often, but watch out because she definitely can combine this with her telekinetic fire.
5 Winged Flight, with extreme strength and very impressive agility, Jioth cuts a path through the air like a fighter jet... well, going at reasonably slow speed. Okay so she could fly circles around stunt biplanes? Write nasty words using smoke?
5 immortality, Jioth is effectively immortal and will age only as much as she feels like; also she's very, very hard to hurt
4 nexus teleport, though she's much better with this power than with localized teleport (2), can still do on-site ports if needed. With very little lead time or even knowing exact coordinates, she seems able to land exactly where, when, and on what dimension she wants to, and can take Vujix with her (okay, and anything they're carrying too), with only a few minutes needed to catch her breath after. Anywhere she's seen before, she knows like the stripes on her paws!
3 shapeshift patterns only... Oh. Wait. Well maybe that's why she's so good at nexus portals, she can't help but not reach the same-same place unless concentrating? Her jagged patterns move and occasionally grow darker or brighter in value at will, but also with stress or high emotional states, and can even show those states in very amusing ways (if she is suddenly disappointed, they'll all 'fall down' to her feet like a tumbling house of cards, or if she's angry they will almost vibrate)
3 Telekinetics and Pyrokinetics, at close range, Jioth is able to lift weights up to half her own (don't comment about that weight, don't you do it) and with quite a bit of precision can riddle things with holes, pepper an area with rocks, and if she's pissed off, those rocks or anything else for that matter will also be burning hot. She heard once there's a lady that takes paper airplanes and accelerates them to burning, and she can do that with 50 gallon drums she's flattened out... Play frizbee with her, I dare you. She can douse fires as well as simply manipulate existing ones, more easily than starting them.
Parentage: Evugith and Fadhila
Bond: Vujix, voluntary companionship
Origin: Checkerboard Ball 2021

Who are you calling a trainwreck? What even IS a train?

"It's a method that humanoids use to move across land," one of the passing dragons muttered.

Then they should fly.

"Then you'd be a plane wreck," that same dragon muttered below his breath but even Vujix laughed at that. He moved around the Ball carefully, at least as carefully as he could, though he was hardly the biggest or even the scariest of the visiting nonhumanoids. Heck he wasn't as scary as some of the humanoids. But who cared about that. There was hunting and flirting and sparring to be done!

He definitely enjoyed all of those things. Though he didn't hook up at the Speed Date event, he kept a careful eye on a few of those smaller ladies. Avoided the hydra-dragons, they were much more trouble than they were worth to him. This went on for several hours, with demonstrations of magic and colors, stuff that was well beyond his own abilities. The sparring was quite entertaining though, because he surprised his opponent with teleportation tricks that the others asked about later.

Could he teach them that? His reply was 'git good'. Perhaps next time this event started up he'd come back and see if they learned.

Perhaps next time he came here, it would be accompanied. Because around about an hour before Midnight, while he was resting up and enjoying a cleanup by some of the attendant healers and fixer-uppers, a group of furred dragonets appeared from their magically-protected archway. Most of them trotted around for a few minutes and sniffed at everything and everyone that they found interesting, and then went over to the biped side of the venue.

It was likely that was for the best. The groups over here didn't interest most of the dragonets but a few lingered with those very scary very pointy 'death court' dragons. Even Vujix didn't want to hang with them.

"Why not?"

He looked around, confused for a moment.

"Why not want to hang around them? They're pointy, you're pointy." That voice was quite high and airy, but it was because its owner was still small and young. Not 'fresh out of an egg' young, only a few of the hatchlings at this event had actually hatched during the event. She looked at him with sparkling, faceted green eyes. "I will be pointy too, but not like you." She lowered her head, shaking it, and giving off a little whinnying giggle. "I will have horns! My other mom has horns!"

Vujix squinted again. She didn't even have to ask and he didn't even have to speak, to ask huh?

"My dad is my other mom right now. I have a bunch of sister-brothers and some of them can even walk like other-mom can, two legs."

They're shapeshifters?

"I can too! I can too, look!" And this little dragon with the dark fur marked with light slashes... suddenly looked almost exactly like him for those markings. Even the backs of her wings turned dark, like his. It looked like it wore her out though, but that was mainly because she was new at it, and not because it was so hard to do. Clearly she was going to be expert with it!

She looked very proud of herself on catching that thought. So now, Vujix, normally a rough-and-tumble sort, had a little companion to escort around the Ball. She would grow up to be just about the same size as he was. They already 'cut a path' through the crowd to the hunting lodge, Vujix looking proud and little Jioth flickering her markings around with each sniff and judgement about what she wanted for dinner.

At first he wasn't sure whether going there was the right thing to do. After all, The Stage seemed rather needy - he could sense it being affected by him as much as he was drawn to it, and could sense the many disasters that might happen if he just let it absorb him ... or if he somehow let himself take it. But with the Den and the Labs together, the Stage managed to manifest something amazing: a small, quiet, well lit room. Just one room. With a presense in it that seemed both ghostly and monstrous, fleeting and eternal, mechanical and magical at one time. Familiar, because he'd seen this thing in different dimensions. One where it was just a person with a small device and a room similar to this one only with raucous music playing in the background. Another where a set of skilled fingers used sharp tools and hand-ground ink. Another where the Vortessence around actually just imprinted itself on whatever was near.

A tattoo appeared slowly on him, but it was still done by hands (were they humanoid? draconic? probably both), using a device (it hummed and vibrated in time with his own flux, somehow), with magical ink (made from what materials? seemed like the Void and the Outside, a sharp and static light and darkness came from that ink), and a strong sense that this was the start of something much more. When it was done, it was the shape of a chess Rook at a glance, but it was also patterned with a microcosm of fractal dots, each of them perhaps a place that they could visit some day, because they form the basis for the Paradise that Adovi sprang from. How long he was in this room is anyone's guess, even Edgar doesn't really know, but Adovi was with him when he left it. Edgar might have been the only participant at the Ball who could tell just exactly what was happening with this tattoo; others knew they were getting one, considered it might be part of the show... But only he felt the dragon within it begin to form more tangibly.

It might have been hours, days, months, centuries, before the dragon in that magical space known as Edgar Blankenship fully manifested. It was, in effect, "midnight" at the ball, when the dragonet emerged as a youthful looking but not hatchling-aged creature standing on the real floor next to his real bond. That bond was markedly strong, Adovi looked at her power source, her one, with shining white and iridescent graphite coloration just like her tattoo said she would be. She nudged her dished nose against his hand, and he made to scritch the space between her eyes, surprisingly able to do so. It was hard to focus, but this time it was because Edgar's vision swam with happy tears.

And he was very slightly more in focus - he shook his grandfather's hand for the very first time directly after, solidly, present in one spot, happy.

Though his family had once been respected, even holding high office in Matmata, some generations ago the Fey crept into his line. Through his grandmother who posed as a courtesan but wound up murdering clients, this Taint had lingered. Exiled shortly after his birth, the family has had a variety of homes, but remained in none of them longer than a few years at a time. Baishin would love to settle down... but the Fey influence in him is very strong indeed, and he has made a profession out of the dark skills he has flowing through him.

One evening he was relaxing at a seedy club with a reputation for high-class 'hidden' visitors, and among the performers was an incredibly talented dancer. Black furred, a jackal or similar canine Wyldkin, doing a sabre dance with veils and blades in equal number. Captivated, she took note of him staring at her from behind the candles on his table, big eyes unblinking and the same color as the flames.

Her name was Sivoney and he was... for the first time, emotionally invested. He needed to find out more about her. And when he did... it was with the first pure emotion he'd ever truly felt: astonishment. Because she was a dragon rider. And not the local dragons, no. Oh no, goodness not them. Those beastly things. No, her dragon was very different from them in so many ways. Considerably smaller at her adult size, that was certain. More than that though, able to do things that even the great wise dragons here on Dragondeep could: teleport. From this world to another, or even more than one other world.

Baishin's education served him well enough to know that 'worlds' were what was reached through the Portals and Gates here on Dragondeep. So this dragon Odoruth could move through dimensions like those portals? Fascinating. But Sivoney was also quite intriguing herself. She'd been through different... incarnations? Lives? Perhaps just a hidden shapeshifter? Because she claimed she'd been 'furless' and been on worlds that were incredibly varied before reaching this one.

She had an 'in' to a thing, an event, and she wanted him to come with her to it. She'd be performing, and there would be dragons there. Many of them. So he'd be... doing what exactly? He wasn't sure. But when they got there this thing was amazing. Dazzling.

So filled with people, who didn't know him. Who didn't understand what 'fey taint' could even be. Plenty of them who were ... shall we say, less than up and up anyway? In one of the few parts of the venue where you could see the 'dragon side' of things, he stared long and hard at some of those he could glimpse. There truly were a staggering array of 'different' types of these things... People. Creatures. Dragon was such a blanket term.

Am I a blanket? I don't think I look like a blanket.

Baishin looked around suddenly, distracted from watching the Stage show and all the flying flitters or whatever they were. Something had entered his space - no, not space, his mind?

Yes! It is me, just me. Lerrth'Alkar, yours. You are the right one for me. But... am I a blanket though?

From his table near one wall, shared - grudgingly - with a couple other single people whenever they felt like resting from their energetic dancing nearby, Baishin slowly rose to his feet. One of the dancers almost got up with him, thinking he was about to head to the ball floor. But no, she chuckled to herself and sat back down. This grey cat was about to meet a blindingly white cat-like dragonet...

His eyes were as large as they'd ever been, wide with surprise. "You are Lerrth'Alkar," he pronounced it flawlessly the first time. The dragonet nodded. Baishin knelt, this little hatchling was quite small, and would never be a big dragon if the parents, now framing the entry to the dragon-side, were any indication.

"As for your question," Baishin said with a purr and a smile, "only a blanket of snow, I think."