Illogical Field Kindness and Cruelty

The desert was not Shrayla's usual hunting ground. It reminded her too much of the Anauroch, of sand-tunnels filled with scorpion-people, of being turned to stone by a gorgon's petrifying gaze. Undrentide, the flying city of Netheril, resurrected from its long slumber for a short flight and another long fall.

The desert was full of unhappy memories.

Speaking of unhappy...

I smell wounded dragon. Very wounded dragon. Too much ichor for it to be something minor. Nathyrra's soft voice broke into Shrayla's dark musings. SEHANINE!

In mere minutes werewolf and hellhound were overshadowed by gryphon wings, and Sehanine landed near to them. She was a regal thing, Sehanine, although Shrayla had never figured out if the red crosses on her wings were dyed there or natural. They never seemed to need maintenance, but they did tend to signify to people that Sehanine was a healer, first and foremost.

You summoned me, Nathyrra?

It smells of wounded dragon here, and I thought of you. We may need a healer above and beyond Shrayla's ranger charms.

Shrayla could smell the dragon, herself, but there was a cold edge to the ichor that wasn't quite...right. Still, someone might need help, and nothing got Shrayla moving like someone else needing help.

"C'mon then," the werewolf told her companions. "This way."

Across the dunes, around a few large rock formations, dodging a giant rolling cheese wheel that screamed like a thousand dying rats and smelled like burning sage. Eventually, the trio happened across a shouting man and...

Oh.

It looked like Sehanine wasn't going to be able to help this dragon. Wing-sails cut out, tail forks lopped off, cut to bits, and clearly dead, the great bronze looked like he'd simply been dropped from the sky in this state.

This is not what I expected to find, Nathyrra admitted, regretfully.

Shrayla laid her wolf ears back and growled at the charging battle wher, Kemashi's Hound stirring at the threat. With effort, the werewolf pulled the beast back under the surface, teeth receding, claws shortening. This was not the time to snarl and bite. Selune's grace, it was not.

Please have patience, Shrayla has trouble being threatened, Nathyrra offered softly while the werewolf ranger got herself under control.

"Yeah. S'not your fault, sorry." Shrayla shook herself. "If that's really what you want, I've two dragons of m'own that could do it. Anaeth, Tiombeth. But somehow I don't think that's what y'want."

Shrayla possesses the means to resurrect this dragon, given access to his fresh remains, Sehanine explained gently, having put together that the sobbing-shouting-furious-grieving mess of a man they'd come upon...was probably the Impressed rider of the dead dragon at hand. Gryphons as a general rule weren't stupid and Sehanine in particular was a perceptive cookie. What she means is that an honorable burial can be arranged easily, quite so, but in the face of a return to full life, you will probably select resurrection instead.

"That, yeah. I'd have gotten t'the Rods of Resurrection at some point."

"Gimme a bit," Shrayla told Takin, and hauled her knapsack around her shoulder and started digging through it. First she had to dig through various bags of holding until she found the one with HEALING STUFF stitched into the hem. She hauled it out of her pack, and then stuck her arm into it. It was a small sack, but the entire length of her arm disappeared into it, apparently without adding any mass to the interior of the bag.

Again, you'll have to be patient. Shrayla has maybe nine Rods of Resurrection, but finding them in a timely manner is always a challenge.

Now Shrayla had the bag on the ground and had both hands reaching into its infinite space, and was about to disappear her *head* too, as if she could look in and see what she was searching for, and still, this did not disturb the proportions of the bag.

Envision what you want to find, Shrayla, and it will come to your hand, Sehanine advised.

"I damn well know how a bag o'holding works!" Shrayla grumped. "Or should work. Used t'work. Gotta sort through everything now. Selune's Tears!"

Shrayla sat down and started dumping the bag out, and out of the improbably empty bag started tumbling potion after potion after bandage kit after bandage kit after potion after...

"You won't need t'burn anything," Shrayla muttered, dumping ever more potions and healing kits and antidotes and crap out and finally, finally, she was rewarded with a bundle of silvery wands, each one decorated with a spiral of pristine white wood around the rod and capped with a crest at both ends. "AHA! Found 'em."

She swept the mountain of unneeded supplies back into the bag, where they disappeared. It took a minute to get everything stowed away, but eventually Shrayla managed to vanish all the healing supplies she'd unearthed. The bag still looked completely empty, and in fact crumpled like it was when she crammed it back into her pack.

The werewolf carefully peeled a specific rod out of the bundle, pulling it out of whatever held them together, and set the bundle aside. She stood up and dusted sand off herself, shaking it out of her tail.

"Y'might wanna stand clear," she warned. "Once he gets up, he's gonna start movin', and y'don't wanna be in his way."

For all the fuss and fanfare leading up to it, using a Rod of Resurrection really was disappointingly simple.

Then again, it was meant to be idiot-proof.

Shrayla pointed the wand at the dead dragon and spoke the command word. A small burst of light emerged from the tip of the wand and floated to Brixath's corpse. And for a moment that was it. For a moment it looked like it wouldn't work. But Shrayla figured the Rod needed a moment to collect itself working with a target the size of a sodding dragon. And she was right.

After that quiet moment of nothing happening, reality coughed, and Brixath moved. His flesh melted back on, wings filling back out to full, tail regrowing both tips, everything that had been carved away by his killers regenerating in a matter of blinks, leaving a whole and healthy, living, breathing dragon stunned and confused about the whole being alive thing when the last memory he had was of dying violently.

Sehanine and Nathyrra wisely scampered back as a wing experimentally stretched in their direction, numbly, could have smashed them without knowing they were even there.

"I dunno as y'need to pay me, just...be good," Shrayla replied, watching the reunion between rider and dragon and thinking of the time her companion Kytos had been returned to her. A part of her soul, long since murdered, brought back to life by the Illogical Field. This was like that with an extra step in the middle. "Don't be one of the bronzeriders I have t'punch and we'll be even."

Shrayla has something of a reputation for punching bronzeriders. Nathyrra padded over to Shrayla. I suppose it goes without saying that the Weyrwoman would rather you stopped punching bronzeriders and let the Weyr handle discipline from now on.

"I did m'duties and apologized for hitting P'dan!" Shrayla argued. "But J'rek got a handful o'something he shouldn't've and that was a step too far."

Fair enough.

On a sudden thought, to make up for the distraction from the dragon's renewal, Shrayla dug through her bags again. The second bag of holding was easier to dig through because it had far less in it to dig through in the first place, and it wasn't long before Shrayla produced a bottle of wine.

"Rosemblar Blush, hear it's a good vintage. To, uh, celebrate. I know what it's like to get your soul back at random after losing it, but I can't drink wine, so you should. This is a happy occasion."