Special Talents (Clan Adeptica) (Story)

===The Chronicles of Clan Adeptica===
====Chapter 10: Special Talents====
As Devon and the three Lia sisters continued to improve their martial skills, they began to talk of starting a training program for those wishing to serve the Arcanist. With Adeptica's encouragement, and Shadowspell and Magatama's assistance with spreading the word, they began to build Clan Adeptica's reputation as a training center, in addition to its growing reputation as an academic community and an exporter of crystals of all sizes and uses. Naturally, the new trainees would need places to stay, so Devon, Mustardseed, and any others who had the physical strength needed for the task had their claws full digging out new caves for them. Each new cave yielded new troves of crystals as well as new living space, allowing the clan to continue to prosper.
With all this activity taking place at once, Clan Adeptica began to grow steadily, attracting new members looking for a place to live their lives and pursue arcane knowledge. Two of the new members who joined were Snowblossom and Diamondshine - both Skydancers, one from the Sunbeam Ruins, the other from the Shifting Expanse. Snowblossom came to study and research, while Diamondshine came to take his inventing and tinkering in a new direction, one touched by magic. Snowblossom also happened to be a talented chef, a skill she was happy to share with the whole clan.
The two hit it off not long after their arrival, and decided to celebrate their new partnership by traveling to the shore of the Sea of a Thousand Currents for their honeymoon. They returned with two blue-eyed hatchlings, Crestwave and Rarity. The new parents were so enthused with their little ones that they encouraged anyone and everyone who would listen to have more hatchlings. Some of their clanmates listened, but not all of them. After all, the clan could only mine and excavate the mountain to make room for more living quarters at a certain speed, and some members of the clan understood that this was a limiting factor. Two of those who did listen were AspenBud and Amethyst, a pair of Pearlcatchers who had a nest of three hatchlings, all light purple with green wings, just like they were.
Snowblossom and Diamondshine were extraordinarily devoted parents. Although Jareth's role in teaching and socializing the hatchlings of the clan was well established now, he found it hard to convince the Skydancer pair to entrust their hatchlings to his supervision. He did not spend as much time with them as he had with other clutches in their clan, but it was long enough to teach them the story of how their clan had been founded, as well as the Law for the Mirrors. They listened well and seemed to understand.
One day during one of young Rarity’s growth spurts, she idly scratched at the arrangement of three large, sky-blue gembond gems that had recently come in on her right hip. Though they were a genetic trait she had inherited from her father and were benign, they could still be itchy and irritating sometimes, especially for young dragons who were still growing to their full size. Then she noticed that this gem cluster was glowing.
She stared at the gems, wondering what this meant. Was it normal for them to do that? She’d never seen her father’s gems glow like this. Should she tell someone?
Gradually, it dawned on her that the glow was accompanied by a sense of something pulling at the back of her mind. It was different from sensing how another dragon was feeling- this was a summons meant only for her. It was calling her down into the depths of the caverns that her clan had dug… toward the ocean.
“Tidelord?” she whispered. She didn’t know for sure if he was truly the source of the pull she felt, but it seemed safe and trustworthy. She had to know where it was coming from.
She walked to the front entrance of the clan’s lair and began carefully making her way down the side of the pink-chalcedony spire they lived in, climbing most of the way, flying on occasion when she was feeling confident (she was, after all, still learning to fly). As she got closer to the water, the three gembond gems at her hip glowed more brightly, and the pull at the back of her mind felt stronger. She followed it to a small cave just above the water, where she found a rock bigger than she was. Unlike the pure pink crystal walls surrounding it, this rock still had a few streaks of gray granite near the bottom. Rarity could tell that this was where she had been led.
“I don’t understand,” she murmured. She approached slowly, reaching out to touch the rock with her claws, then with her antennae. The energy coming from within it resonated with her own internal magic, and both she and the rock seemed to hum.
Suddenly, a huge wave of seawater burst through the mouth of the cave! Rarity clung to the rock with all four claws; Water dragons couldn’t drown, of course, but the wave had startled her, and remaining in the cave seemed better than being swept out to sea. The full force of the wave hit her and the rock, and they both vibrated even harder. As the water receded, Rarity stepped away from the rock- and it cracked open!
The two halves of the rock fell away to either side, revealing that it was filled with crystals and gemstones of many kinds: all the colors of quartz, agates, jade, lapis lazuli, and even some moonstones and rhodochrosite crystals. Rarity gasped, delighted. She knew she had been meant to find this treasure trove. The glow of her gembond gemstones and the pull at the back of her mind flared up once more, then faded away.
Now, how to get all these gemstones back up to the lair? Rarity wasn’t doing any more flying until her feathers dried, she needed all her claws to climb back up their crystal spire, and she hadn’t brought any bags or satchels with her. There was nothing for it but to climb back home and ask her parents, Crestwave, and maybe some of the others like Shadowspell and Magatama for their help.
When Rarity got back home, she told her parents all about her adventure and what she had found, and they were delighted to hear it. They got Shadowspell and Magatama to come down to the cave and help them harvest the crystals. As the adult dragons worked, they talked about how useful and valuable the gemstones could be. The quartz crystals, in particular, were very useful to Diamondshine in his tinkering. Rarity asked him if he would show her how he used them to build his gadgets, and he agreed.
“I think you might have a special talent for finding gemstone caches like these,” Diamondshine said. “Let me know if it happens again, okay?”
“I will!” said Rarity. “I think you’re right. I did feel like I was meant to find this cache. I do get to keep some of these gems for myself, right?”
“Of course!” said Diamondshine. “Whichever ones you like.”
Rarity smiled as she picked up several of the smoothest, roundest moonstones and the clearest quartz crystals. Her mind’s eye was already filled with designs for the bracelets, necklaces, and tail baubles she would work them into. She couldn’t wait to get back to her father’s workshop and get started on them.
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