Elara's voice echoed around the room when she chuckled at his obvious statement of what the creature was, giving him a slow steady nod as she stepped back when he lit a handful of fire in his palm and started to gaze closer at the bones of the beast. "Indeed it is... this has been here for as long as I can remember, Cyne. And when your little show in my bath included a creature of legend and myth, I thought you might enjoy seeing that the creatures did indeed, at one point, exist." She ran a hand over one of the dragon's long-fleshless claws almost affectionately. "I don't know this majestic creature's name, when her clutch was laid, but I have been told that she died long long after the Sundering. Dragons, it seems, moreso than other creatures, need magic to exist. Many things I've read allude to them actually being magic themselves."<br/><br/>The vampire ran her hand over the side of her face as she pushed a few stray tendrils of inky hair behind her ear and beckoned the prince to come closer, running a gentle fingertip over one of the oval objects, eggs as she had been told. They were about the volume of a child's play-ball and intricate whorls and designs covered each and every petrified one. Her blue eyes flicked up at Cyne when he asked if she had a lesson lined up for him, as if this was a great scheme to teach him something, and something tugged at her... just a little, to make her smile, even in the face of such a sad ending. "I had not planned on being the teacher today... but I suppose I should entertain you, since you're being a well-behaved student..." She indulged gently, standing up from the squat she had lowered herself to in order to touch the eggs under the creature's claws.<br/><br/>She brushed her hands over the legs of her trousers and walked around the room, slowly making a circuit of the dragon skeleton, tilting her head to the side. "What I've read, and heard, all seem to agree that these creatures were the epitome of wisdom and power perfectly balanced in this realm, long before mages became greedy for power, to cheat death. They freely traveled realms of their own, which is quite possibly how the legends in your world came to be... and sometimes they brought back those they deemed worthy, not to eat, but to... shall we say, populate this realm with beings who were willing?" She had mentioned dragons could shapeshift into a human form, but their primary role in taking mortals from Cyne's world had been for expanding their world. "You see, from what I understand, not every egg in a clutch would hatch, and not every dragonet would make it from hatchling to full-grown dragons. So they understandably wanted to introduce an outside gene into their bloodlines, to see if these hardy creatures from another realm would give their offspring a better chance. And it worked for awhile... mingling human and dragon offspring resulted in the first human mages... and so magic was introduced into your world as the offspring were allowed to traverse realms back and forth from our world, and yours."<br/><br/>Elara's head tilted back as she gazed up at the long-dead creature and sighed a little, almost as if disappointed. "But, like many cultures, a ruler came forth, his name long lost to our annuls, emboldened by his magic, and put a stop to the crossing of realms in that long forgotten age. Dragons faded to myth and legend in your world, while their offspring populated it with magic as they in turn married and mated and produced more magically inclined people. After that ruler's decree, the world suffered from stagnation as the dragons were limited to their now very small gene pool to keep their race alive, and magic burbled heavily in the veins of mages, which as we know, resulted in the Sundering." Her eyes were sad as she backed away from the dragon's skeleton. "This city was once called Highwyrd, a city for dreamers, for scholars, for those with an eye on the future. And Highwyrd was the place where the Sundering was enacted."