Be Careful What You Search For

Michael walked south in the Barrens, roughly parallelling a stream stained the color of tea. Pine needles attached to his tweed jacket like nettles. From time to time, he would brush them off, but he paid them little mind overall. As the day shifted to afternoon, the sun glistened upon a body of water ahead. He quietly cast a full cantation while his fingers stroked the surface of the startlingly blue water. An image tingled in his mind and he continued walking. As he reached another body of water, this one the typical tannic brown, he started another cantation, his hands turned with the palms towards his face, arms outstretched. As his mouth recited a thick, ancient language the water started rippling in large deep troughs from the center outward. As his cantation turned into a song, reality slipped and a dun-colored wyrm flew from the water. It turned upon itself in a writhing Gordian knot before hovering inches from Michael's face.

“Find the Leed's Devil. I wish to speak to it.” He spoke in Draconic.

The air serpent blinked at him a couple of times before flying away to search. Michael sat by the pool to wait. He became aware of a small group of young children looking at him. They looked to be Pineys and were certainly not coming forward to talk to him. He looked away and paid them no mind. Just another story to be added to the folklore. The state was a fertile ground for such tales.

Several off-world 'wormholes' ended in Jersey's remote areas. Coincidence, maybe, or groups of explorers may have followed others to the same approximate point, leaving stable portals behind. Their existence created flares of paranormal activity and anywhere from seven to ten thousand nonhuman humanoids lived between Delaware, Philly, and NYC, often interbreeding with the local population. If he really stopped to think about it, he might've tried to cover his actions today, but after centuries of oddities, summoning dragonborn in the Pine Barrens seemed no more unusual that the occasional monster that wandered here on its own. There were other 'hellmouth' nexi on Earth, in remote areas, but in few places was the veil as thin for interdimensional planeswalking as here.

Michael patiently waited until the sky grew dark. This much, he had expected. His target was nocturnal. Unfortunately, his scrying arcana worked best in bright day light or highly controlled conditions. An inhuman screech filled the air, as if a bird the size of jetliner was heading his way.

The wyrm drove to the ground what could best be described as a furry, three-foot-tall chicken with the head of a horse. Its duty met, the large serpent plunged into the pond and disappeared back to its native plane. Michael stared puzzledly at the 'devil.' It was an odd beast, but hardly seemed devilish. It regarded him in a manner befitting an ostrich. He took a step toward it and it scrambled away, still considering him. He tried singing to see if it attuned to any of it, but no intelligent response came. Michael had to conclude it was merely a very odd animal. If it had any vicious forebears, none of it had passed down to this individual. That left some other gigantic beast to feed some of the legends. His curiousity sated for the time being, Michael started a cantation to go home.

Without warning, the creature suddenly took on mythical proportions. Michael fought to keep his voice steady. The creature went to bite him and his spell shattered like glass as he ducked away. It quickly became one of those times Michael philosophically questioned his aversion to boredom.