Legend of the Hive

The Legend of the Hive is an ancient story that was introduced in Darkness of Dragons. It originated within the LeafWing tribe, and has been passed down from generation to generation among both Pantalan and Pyrrhian tribes. Its source material is about the founding of Pantala and the breath of evil.

History

The Jade Mountain Prophecy

Darkness of Dragons

The story was briefly mentioned by Hope in the Rainforest Kingdom during the epilogue. She stated that Moonwatcher and Qibli should read it to gain a better understanding of Luna.

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The Lost Continent Prophecy

The Poison Jungle

The legend was told by Sequoia to Belladonna, Sundew, Willow, Hazel, Bumblebee, Swordtail, Cricket, Tsunami, Turtle, and Io after they asked for the backstory of the breath of evil.

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Field Guides

A Guide to the Dragon World

The Legend of the Hive was featured in the HiveWing chapter of the guide.

Story

Thousands of years ago, the first dragons arrived on the shores of the continent of Pantala. They were bedraggled and forlorn, weary and terrified. They came from many different tribes, including BeetleWings, LeafWings, RainWings, and SeaWings, and they had banded together to seek safety as far from the Distant Kingdoms as they could get. They fled from a terrible danger... but little did they know they were flying into something possibly even worse.

Their first night in this strange land, they collapsed to sleep on the beach, relieved beyond measure that they had reached a safe harbor at last. But as they slept, the earth below them began to seethe with motion. Tiny legs crawled across their scales 一 and then more 一 and then more of them. The dragons awoke suddenly from their dreams into a true nightmare. They were covered in fire ants.

Their shrieks rose up to the three moons and they ran to the ocean, but even as they ran, more colonies of ants boiled up out of the ground and attacked. They marched up the dragons' legs and burrowed between their scales and dug their mandibles into their skin. The ants didn't let go as the dragons plunged into the sea; they didn't try to save themselves. They held on like grim death, until at last the ants drowned.

But that was only the beginning.

The next morning, as the dragons were limping back to their campsite, they heard buzzing in the air, getting closer and closer. When they looked up, the sky was dark with bees. So many bees that they blotted out the sun. The bees descended and attacked, all at once, just as the ants had done. And again, the dragons were forced to flee into the bay and hide below the water.

Many of them would have drowned that day, were it not for their flamesilks, who burned the bees out of the sky.

The swarms of insects kept coming. The next wave was an army of venomous centipedes, followed soon after by a swarm of bombardier beetles, and after that by battalions of tsetse flies.

The insects killed dragon after dragon with single-minded, unwavering ferocity. Some of the dragons vanished in the night, never to be seen again. Others went down right in front of their friends, suddenly covered in assassin bugs.

Of course, the dragons fought back. They'd come too far to run away, and they could never return to the Distant Kingdoms.

So they fought to stay, but it seemed that whenever they struck down one group of attackers, another would instantly appear in its place. The insects were followed by hordes of snakes, a vast pride of lions, murders of crows.

These were not ordinary attacks. The animals moved like a single organism. If a scorpion was struck on one end of the battlefield, the scorpions at the far end somehow knew instantly. The crocodiles attacked simultaneously, targeting their victims with coordinated precision.

Was there someone mind-controlling all the creatures at once? So the dragon leaders believed, but if it was a dragon, they never showed themselves. Even after the newcomers spread across the whole continent, they found no evidence that any dragons had been there before them.

All they found was a plant with a sharp, unpleasant, omnipresent scent 一 a vine that seemed to wind around every tree, through every meadow, in every marsh. Pay attention: this is the breath of evil.

The stem of the breath of evil is dark red with veins of bright green.

The leaves of the breath of evil are bright green with veins of red like streams of blood. Each leaf is the size of a dragon talon; the edges are jagged and hard to the touch.

The flowers of the breath of evil are tiny and white and grow in clusters, nestled between the leaves.

The seed of the breath of evil hides in the heart of each flower, and it glistens a dark, dark red.

And this plant covered the entire continent of Pantala.

At first, the dragons were just clearing territory and making open space to sleep where they could set guard. They pulled up the vines to get rid of the smell. And that is how they discovered: as they destroyed the breath of evil, the attacks grew fewer and further between.

In areas where the vines were completely cleared, soon the attacks stopped altogether. The animals began to behave like normal animals, so long as they lived within the perimeter where there was no breath of evil.

And so the dragons set out to uproot the plant from every corner of the continent, and that is how finally, after much suffering, the Hive was defeated, and Pantala became safe for dragons forever.