Dragon Shrines

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The shrines that mark the roads and pathways through the mountains of Areeott are unmistakable. Even the smallest among them bear the unmistakable weight of centuries, their weathered forms carved from stone and shaped into draconic visages. These are not places of worship. No prayers are whispered here in reverence, no offerings left to honor some lost or fallen creature. These shrines are monuments of hatred, symbols of defiance against an enemy that once threatened to undo the world itself.   To an outsider, the contradiction might be difficult to grasp. A land that despises dragons should not scatter its roads with their images. A people who pride themselves on their vigilance should not immortalize the very thing they seek to destroy. But for the Arin, these shrines are not tributes. They are warnings.   The custom is simple, almost second nature to those who have walked these roads their entire lives. A traveler, upon passing a dragon shrine, is expected to acknowledge it. Some do this in silence, a glance and a nod to the stone sentinel before them. Others follow tradition more openly, reaching for a loose stone and hurling it at the effigy. The statues, though made of sturdy rock, bear the marks of centuries of such treatment—cracks and chips, noses worn away, eyes smoothed to nothing. Even in death, in stillness, a dragon should know it is unwelcome.   Not every shrine is met with violence. Some, particularly those near villages and mountain passes, are tended to with a different sort of ritual. Here, travelers leave small offerings: sprigs of bitter herbs, bundles of flowers, carved charms of bone or wood. Not as gifts, not as bribes, but as weapons. These are things believed to weaken dragons, to drive them away, to make the land inhospitable to their kind. Whether or not these offerings hold any real power is irrelevant. The act itself is what matters. To leave nothing at all is seen as foolish, an invitation for ill fortune.   The origins of the shrines stretch back beyond written history, their earliest records appearing in the time of the Dragon Insurrection. Some say they were first erected as training tools—targets for soldiers and spellcasters to practice their strikes upon, stone stand-ins for the monsters they would one day face. Others claim they were raised by the first Arin settlers to stand as wards against the beasts that lurked beyond Stormwatch Pass. Whatever their purpose at the time, their role has never changed. They exist to remind.   Even now, in the age of quiet vigilance, the shrines remain. In the cities, they are often built into the very bones of the land, hidden in plain sight. A gargoyle-like carving on the arch of a bridge, a dragon’s face half-buried in the stone of a public square, its features worn smooth by centuries of wind and rain. In the countryside, they stand alone, nameless and unmoving, guardians not of the people, but of the memory that sustains them.   To an outsider, it is easy to misunderstand. To mistake them for relics of some forgotten reverence, to see them as harmless traditions with no true weight. But to the Arin, they are far more than that. They are a statement, a vow. A promise carved in stone.   And a warning to all who might forget.