It had been months since I'd logged into my FR account. Real life stuff was going on, you know? Work, and stuff at home. Taking care of pixel dragons just didn't seem as important.
Finally, one night I had some downtime. I opened a new tab in my browser, and the little square on my Google page appeared. It had fallen a few notches down, but I'd spent enough time on the site for it still to register as one of my most-visited. I clicked the red and yellow icon.
My clan health was bottomed out, I'd expected that. What I didn't expect was the hungry look in my avatar's eyes. It's just a drawing, how can she look so hungry? Maybe it's just my own guilt. As I clicked over into my lair to feed the poor, starving things, my eyes wandered to the banner. The red wings of the logo looked faded, one had a huge chunk missing from the side and they were both scarred heavily. The page reloaded, though, and I was sure my eyes were just playing tricks. I scrolled down, ready to reacquaint myself with my clan.
Instead of my dragons, I saw the image for the Sand item. I smiled a bit - the weird glitches still hadn't been fixed, I saw. I clicked on the pile of sand named Tideclaw, my clan leader. Instead of the blue Imperial, though, the next page showed a larger image of sand, huge dunes and piles of it. What? I scrolled down to the bio box. Instead of the carefully written bio I'd given him, and the formatting I'd slaved over, it only said one thing.
"Lost to the Sandwastes"
I began clicking frantically through my lair. Instead of dragons, I had piles and piles of sand. The only exception was Cleverclaw, my avatar dragon, the one who shared my birthday and represented me in my clan. The Spiral was clad in rags instead of her silks, a huge scar took up a large portion of her torso, and her wings were battered. I hovered over the images in the apparel box. Each item there said 'Survival Gear'. Frustrated, I opened another tab and went into the announcements forum, hoping for an explanation.
There was a thread, all right, announcing the Survival Gear apparel. But there was no clever wordplay, no announcement of new familiars or anything. Just little squares denoting the ratty clothing. As I scrolled through, I noticed that all of the dragons in avatar pictures were wearing the rags. Those that weren't piles of sand, at least. Something was definitely wrong, avatar images were never items. The date on the thread was two months prior, but no comments had been made. I flipped into the regular forums. The last updated thread was about two months ago.
I began clicking on links at random. Nesting grounds resulted in cracked eggshells buried in the sand. The marketplace was filled with the Survival Gear items, but nothing else. The only thing in my hoard was stacks and stacks of sand. The auction house was completely empty. Tomo had abandoned her post, leaving her chisel on her stone table. There was sand everywhere.
Finally, I ended up on the coliseum page. Instead of the regular venues, only one was listed - Sandwastes. I clicked it.
The background was an endless desert. No monsters appeared, and when my team was supposed to slide in, the only dragon that appeared was my avatar. Cleverclaw wasn't even a coli dragon, what was going on? I clicked the Scratch button, and the Spiral lunged forward, but nothing was there for her to attack. I tried to click the 'Flee' button, but it was grayed out. Frantically I began to pummel the Scratch button, the only attack my poor level one knew. She kept attacking, but nothing happened.
Finally, a blank spot appeared in the battle queue - where an enemy would usually be. Whatever it was appeared to strike, because the page seemed to vibrate like an attack. The Spiral stopped bobbing up and down. Her face turned and seemed to stare directly at me before crumbling into a pile of sand.
The banner scrolled across the top of the window.
"Cleverclaw has been lost to the Sandwastes"
I slammed my laptop lid shut and pushed it away from me, shaking slightly. Something seemed to shift underneath me, and I reached down, expecting a blanket or something. Instead, I came back with a handful of sand.
