A/N: Thank you (no, really, I'm serious) Aina Aizen for pointing out that the original first chapter of this made no sense. It was honestly just filler to get the word count up. This was my Camp NaNo 2015 project. Hopefully this newly redone chapter actually makes sense. I've updated it with the current dragons in my actual lair and the proper plot it was supposed to have. Please comment with ideas, questions, and criticisms you may have. This will update every two weeks.

Chapter 1

Lixian looked out over the clan from the den he shared with Sunara. His clan was preparing for the feasts and parties that would be happening. Every month from January to November one of the gods would hold their own holy festival, followed up with a special holiday for Nocturne dragons in December. It would be their first time experiencing the Windsinger's festival.

"Darling, are you alright?" Sunara put her paw over her mate's. She had never seen him quite so worked up before in her life. He was shaking and looking around with wild eyes. She could only hope that he wasn't coming down with anything. "Do you need me to get Cynran or Noreni? I'm sure they would be able to give you something to help settle your nerves."

"No. You really mustn't disturb her. She is still looking after her young. The hatchlings have just reached a few days old. I don't want to pull her away from her own children right before the festival starts. I just can't believe that I'm going to be participating in the Mistral Jamboree this year with Elder Taloni."

"It's okay to be excited. I know you must be. Kesite was during the Trickmuck Circus last month." Sunara could hardly wait to share in the Jamboree with the Nifari Clan's leader. She knew he would absolutely love the festivities that went on. There would be parades, activities and feasts through the entire week.

"I remember. She got six Shimmering Pinecones during the festivities." He turned his yellow-green gaze to her. "I'm excited and nervous at the same time."

"Come, walk the lair with me. Let's see what the others are doing. It will help you calm down and gather yourself. The festival begins tomorrow."

Lixian nodded and they went down the path that led to the Beastkeeper's den. One or two of the young were due to pass the first stage of adulthood soon. They would be brought down to get their first Familiar when they were old enough. He could see a newer creature tethered near the den. They had been looking at getting more Familiars for the clan to better suit the wider range of dragons that were coming in.

"Good morning, Critio."

"Mornin' sir...ma'am..." The Imperial moved around one of the new Familiars the clan had found. It had white fur and big frozen spines sticking out of its back. Lixian had to admit he had never actually seen one of them before in his life. It was the most interesting one he'd seen yet, barring the accidental discovery of a few of the previous year's Festival Familiars.

"What have you got there?"

"This is a stow away we found in one of the chests." The Imperial checked the Bestiary Guide laid out in front of him on a stone. "According to the Bestiary, this is a Hoarfrost Mauler. Should make a fine Familiar for Nietha. We also found a second Carmine Serthis, and Infestation Hound and a Frostbite Hummingbird to name a few. I've already sent Adrama down to the market place with the Serthis."

"That actually sounds like a brilliant idea." Lixian grinned at him. "Did you get anything new in recently? Besides the ones you already mentioned, I mean. I realize you already said quite a few."

Critio went to the pen, "Yep. I got a Poultrygeist and a Cardinal Hippogriff in yesterday. Day before that we got a Marbled Jester. We didn't really think of any dragon that she would be a good match for, but we figured that we could at least give her a new home until then.….hey, who's that?"

"Who's who?" Lixian turned, just in time to see an Imperial collapse beside the entrance to their lair. She made a low sound of discomfort and passed out beside the cairn marking their clan's boundary. "Quickly! Someone get Cynran or Noreni! This Imperial is hurt and needs their attention."

Cynran rushed over to her as quickly as he could. He had left Noreni in charge of their hatchlings back in the nesting area. The long Spiral waved a vial of salts beneath the Imperial's snout and waited to see if it would rouse her. He folded his forest wings and waited. He wondered what had caused her to be so exhausted that she would just drop right as she landed. Cynran would have to take her back to the medical den to have a good look at her to be sure that she was alright.

"Nnn….." She lifted her head and looked around. "Is...is this where the Star is?"

"Hush now. You need to rest. There will be plenty of time to talk about the Star after you've woken up." Cynran asked. They looked around at each other, no one knowing what the star that she was talking about was. They brought her inside to the den near Cynran's and lay her on a bed of soft grasses. "I think that for now, it's best if you leave her to rest. She needs to let her body relax and build back its energy after what I can only assume was a long trip, judging from the color of her eyes."

They all left quietly, for the most part. A few of the dragons mumbled to themselves as they were shooed out of the den. They went back to their normal duties around the clan.

"Could you tell me your name?"

"I am Cahaya. I came from the Sunbeam Ruins in search of a stone." Her eyelids fluttered for a second. "I...I need..."

"Take a deep breath to calm yourself. What you need the most right now is just sleep. I'll get you a cup of tea to help you relax." He didn't wait for her answer, instead sending in Noreni's little apprentice, Gooden, with a steaming cup of tea. It was one of his many almost perfected blends. He had tentatively titled this one Deep Sleep because it had a terrible habit of knocking out even the sturdiest of Guardian dragons. Fae were out for days. He had no idea what it would do for this foreign Imperial, so he gave her a quarter dose blended with water. He could still remember the day he had not warned Bullis before he'd tried it and he slept for nearly a week.

Cahaya had barely sipped it and felt her eyes already closing. Her body was warm and content. She curled up in the nest and let herself be lulled to sleep by the tea. She couldn't stop thinking about her duty. To find the Dragon Star. The jewel that once belonged to her own clan's leader. She drifted into a peaceful dreamless sleep. It was the first time she'd ever slept that soundly since she'd departed from her home clan.

Cynran followed the grassy path to the main den where Sunara held her meetings. It was an interesting development to say the least. So many dragons coming and going from the clan the week of the festival was surely a sign of things to come. He dipped his head in greeting to the leader of their lair.

"I come bearing some news that may or may not be useful to the clan."

"Oh?"

"The Imperial. She says her name is Cahaya and that she is from the Sunbeam Ruins. She's here looking for some sort of stone." He absently scratched an old scar on his foreleg. He had no idea either what sort of stone she was looking for. "I can only assume that it's a very important artifact if she is so desperate to have it back."

The Elders had gathered in one of the larger communal dens. They had to figure out what it was she was talking about. They had been asking the other dragons who lived and worked in the clan if they had ever heard of such an item. No one had any idea what it was. The closest they could come up with was that it was a relic of the Light Flight.

"What are we going to do? I mean, she's welcome to stay here with us until she finds whatever it is she's looking for. Do we even have it?" Eritti said. She represented the Arcane Flight within the Eleven Elders. She worried that they did have the Star, and just didn't know about it. "Do we even know which one of the gods the Star would have come from?"

"Considering she was from the Sunbeam Ruins, I would hazard a guess to say that the stone originated from the Lightweaver." Kalayo, the representative from the Fire Flight replied, the feathers along his neck shifting with his speech.

"That is the best assumption, but she could also be talking about something that another dragon brought to their clan. Stars are many colors of course." Kierna said, her own frill rising a little.

"I've heard stories about a stone from the Sunbeam Ruins." Xinpei looked in the books that Tairee had dropped off for them. There were no records that she could find in the Icewarden's history about the stone. She picked up the one for the Lightweaver and flipped to the index, hopeful that there would be something there about it. "Do you know anything about it, Inseza?"

"No, nothing. The Lightweaver has never told me anything even remotely mentioning a dragon star. Can you tell us what you know? If you at least share the information you have, we will have something better to work with." Inseza sighed and looked around at her brethren. There must have been something they could use.

"I can tell you the story as I was told it by my mother when I was only a hatchling." She closed the book and folded her paws over its cover. Xinpei took a deep breath and looked out at them. "Long ago, many eons before any of us were even born, when the Third Age was still young, the dragons of the Sunbeam Ruins revered a priestess. She was the most beautiful among their kind. An Imperial dragon with an ability to commune with the Lightweaver that none before her had ever possessed.

"No one knows why, but one day she fled the Ruins and went up to Cloudsong. She kept climbing higher and higher until she just vanished. The only piece of her that remained for dragons to know that she had even existed among them was a stone. Not long after she vanished, a bright golden yellow star was seen in the sky. When they held up the stone, it glowed, so it was given the name the Dragon Star–"

"Are you sure?" Arrazi opened one of his deep purple eyes and looked at them. He'd started dozing off during the tale. "I mean, why would a Light dragon come all the way to this silly Plateau before ascending? Why didn't she go to Dragonhome, where the World Pillar is?"

"Maybe she didn't know how to get there and this was the best thing she could manage?" Taloni tilted her head. She let the slight toward the Wind flight go. He was only living up to his nature as a Shadow dragon by poking fun at them. "Do you know how to get to the Temple of the Icewarden in the Southern Icefields?"

"No….I've never been there. How would I know how to get to it?"

"Exactly."

"That's still no excuse for coming to the Plateau to go up to the sky."

"Aren't we all getting off track here?" Girami looked around. She studied of each of the ten other faces. "Is not the point of this clan meeting to talk about why she thinks the stone could be here in the Nifari Clan? None of us have this stone she was looking for. I say as soon as she's healed up enough to leave our clan, we should direct her to another."

"Do you think that wise? I don't think we should send her off without at least giving her a chance to explain what she wants. We can't just send her off if we can help her find the stone thing she is looking for. If it even is a stone in the first place. What if she's actually looking for the dragon?"

Girami snorted, "That's impossible you wind-brained fool. If that dragon was alive when the Second Age ended and the Third began, do you have any idea how old she would even be? Far older than some of the GODS. She is long since dead by now."

"That's assuming that she isn't the Lightweaver herself. I mean, she is a female Goddess, is she not?" Kaluna chimed in, turning her head toward Inseza. "All we know is that she disappeared to the North. We don't actually know what happened to any of the gods. They all just left the Pillar of the World and never returned."

"Her Ladyship the Plaguebringer is at the Wyrmwound in the heart of the Scarred Wasteland. Stirring the great pot of pestilence. Everyone knows that. At least every single Plague-born does." Girami growled low. She would not stand for anyone just assuming that her deity was gone. No one would tell her otherwise.

"That's what we were told through the stories written by the Windsinger. We don't actually know what happened to most of these dragons. I'm not saying that you're not right, I'm just saying, we can't rule out that Cahaya might be looking for a piece of the Lightweaver."

"That would make more sense than her trying to find a tear or scale from a dragon that lived and died hundreds of years ago." Taloni sighed. This talk was getting them nowhere. They were only going to talk themselves in circles until they were more angry than when they arrived in the den. "Look, I say we do a blind vote. There are eleven of us, so we will not need to worry about a stalemate. I have black and white stones. We will put them into two separate dishes and then a large clay pot in the middle. Each of the Elders will come into the room and cast their vote separately. The white stones will represent keeping her here in our clan and the black stones will represent sending her away without helping. Are we understood?"

"Yes." The others filed out of the room. They were going to go alphabetically.

Taloni set up the dishes on the table and then called in the first of the Eleven, "Arrazi, you may go. Remember you cannot tell anybody which stone you cast. We need this to be as blind as possible."

They filtered back in, one at a time, casting their votes. Zahrin going last. When the Nature Wildclaw came out again, Taloni allowed them all to go in. In front of the entire council, she dumped the clay pot. Seven white stones and four black.

"By the casting of the stones, the Nifari Clan hereby decides that Cahaya of the Sunbeam Ruins will stay with us until she finds whatever it is she seeks." She smiled and went to inform Lixian of their decision. Taloni had hoped that the stones would sway in the Imperial's favor. She felt that it was right for Cahaya to stay. Windsinger had been whispering to her the entire time they were voting that it would be her best favor to remain. He did not explain why, only saying that her life would be in peril if she were to go beyond the cairn.

"I think we should let Xinpei finish the tale she was weaving before we adjourn for the day," Kierna spoke up again. She was one of the quietest dragons of the Elders. "Who knows what sort of information he could have for us that would be beneficial to helping her find this stone of legend that she seeks?"

"Agreed." All but Arrazi responded. He had fallen back to sleep laying on the stone bench carved with the Shadow sigil. They looked to the Tundra to pick up the tale where she had left off, their attention completely focused on her.

Xinpei cleared her throat, "Yes, where was I? That's right...the stone was called the Dragon Star because it glowed as brightly as any star in the night sky. They say it is a stone of hope, bringing peace to the heart of any dragon who comes into contact with it. The last known location of the Star was in a sanctuary in the Mirrorlight Promenade. After that, it disappeared from the records. No one has any idea what sort of stone it was, or where it eventually ended up."

The Elders all looked around at each other as they left the den. No one could be certain that they had the Dragon Star in their clan. Then again, no one could be certain that they didn't have it either. It was hard to know based on what information was available. They knew that hundreds of years ago, it was in the Sunbeam Ruins. By now it could be anywhere.