Failed attempts to experiment with magic often result in transforming dragons into these hellish creatures. They are extremely dangerous, and will mindlessly kill any living creature without regard to friend or foe.

Dragons are highly-intelligent reptilian creatures that—from a human perspective, at least—appear to live forever. Many different varieties of dragon exist, each with their own unique qualities, habitats, and behavior. Adolescence in dragons is usually marked by the growth of a hatchling’s wings, although not all breeds of dragons grow wings and some breeds have other traits that indicate the beginning of maturation. In Galsreim, dragons and humans coexist peacefully.

Pygmy dragons are the smallest category of dragons, being on the same scale as domesticated animals. They are often found around concentrated populations of dragons, relying on their larger brethren to ward away potential predators and leave scraps. As such, the majority of a pygmy’s diet is scavenged. Due to their tiny size, pygmies do not breed with larger varieties of dragons.

All the hatchlings in the Weyr of Small Spaces know the stories about Lael. 'Lael' alone is a nonsense word that comes from the back-of-the-throat murmur hatchlings make when they're learning to roar.

But if the Pygmy hatchlings whisper to each other in the night to look out for Lael, they are not referencing that cut-off warble, the tremble of a hatchling fresh from the nest. No, no. They're telling each other stories of the One Who Came Back, a monstrous nightmare of a Pygmy who eats any hatchling he can catch and drinks tea made of the shells of broken eggs. He's a cautionary dragon tale, a warning to mind one's parent or be caught by the fiend that trails always just a day or two behind the Weyr of Small Spaces. Like he's hunting them. He's the ghost of some long-ago War, a curse, a collection of the Weyr's nightmares and sins.

If he could think, Lael himself might find all those tales very dramatic. All he knows, is that he follows the Weyr of Small Spaces.

Wherever they may go.