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.
Credit it to the ink, perhaps, or the incessant, swift
scratching on the walls of the dragon's stomach. Whatever
it was, the fishermen skirting the coast of Endaf, the good
folk of Ergoth who drew me sputtering from the water, said
that they had never seen the likes of it on sea or land.
They said that the caverns of Finn of the Dark Hand had
exploded, the rubble toppling down the cliff face and
pouring into the circling waters of the cape, that they thought
for certain it was an earthquake or some dwarven enchanter
gone mad in the depths of the rock until they saw the black
wings surge from the central cavern, bunched and muscled
and webbed like the wings of a bat. And they told me how a
huge creature pivoted gracefully, high above the coastal
waters, plunged for the sea, and inelegantly disgorged above
the Cape of Caergoth.
It seemed a clear, sweet grace to me, lying on the deck of
their boat as they poured hot mulled wine down me and
wrapped me in blankets, their little boat turning west toward
the Ergoth shore and the safety of Eastport, a haven in that
ravaged and forbidding land.
The fishermen's attentions seemed strange, though - as
if, in some odd, indescribable way, I was one of their
fellows. It was not until we reached the port itself and I
looked into a barrel of still water that I noticed my scars had
vanished.
But the memory of the burning returns, dull and heavy in
my hands, especially at night, here in this lighthouse room
overlooking the bay of Eastport
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