Thaveraiik Vallouioux Karthreil dreams of his hoard. The shining, towering, and lustrous pile of precious metals, masterworked objects, and delicate arts near a magma heated hot springs. An untold amount of wealth just sitting there, unused but quite well taken care of. Years of his life have gone into polishing tarnish off of the gold and silver pieces. The extremely delicate work of wax coating the pieces so they retain their luster long into the future. Not a single piece out of place unless an outside force intervenes, after which months of work to get it all right again.
This dream is interrupted by a dull thud against his snout, nearly inside of the left nostril even. His eyes slowly open, expecting it to be a piece of debris from a minor earthquake, when right in front of his face, a snow white unicorn with a blue curved horn is recovering it's footing from what had to have been an almighty buck. The unicorn opens his mouth to speak when Thaveraiik fires a white hot jet of flames out of his nostrils to incinerate the gnat that dared to set hoof in his hoard.
The dragon ponders what just happened as the only pony that was brazen enough to even walk up to him in all his life was the Solar Alicorn herself and even then it was only after applying so many enchantments onto her peytral and regalia that it would have been the utmost centerpiece of any drakes hoard.
He shook his head slowly, utterly confused as to why this pony decided this would be a reasonable course of action and laid his head back down on his arms. Eager to get back to his nap again and not to terribly bothered by this intrusion, he closes his eyes once again and returns to his dream the golden mountains of wealth residing in his not so humble cave.
It seemed like not even a minute passed before he was struck by that same feeling of a dull thud against his snout, he wakes much more quickly this time and his eye lock onto that same unicorn. “Must just be some sort of premonition or some such thing because I can’t have simply dreamed it up” the dragon thinks to himself. As he breathes slightly in to fulfil the strange phenomena that occurred the unicorn actually has the gall to hop onto his snout before the flame can be released and speaks.
Glacial Shift’s Perspective
The Lich, Glacial Shift, dreams of his heart. The painstakingly etched and tirelessly enchanted core that holds his soul, comparable to only the most intricate of arcane works and priceless in both value and sentimentality...It had been so long since he had to make use of the penultimate ability of the Phylactery, resurrection, until Celestia let loose the sun on his humble fortress of solitude in the north. “Damn alicorn always did like to be showy, wonder how long it will take to regenerate my form this time.” Glacial thinks to himself as he awaits the unmistakable feeling of movement as his soul is projected into the avatar.
After what feels much too short of a timeframe, he experiences the nausea inducing feeling of the soul projection. He blinks his brand new eyes and feels oppressive heat on his fur, this instantly sets off warning bells in his mind. His new eyes finally adjust to the gloom of the location and his jaw drops as he takes in the mountain of gold, silver, and jewels before him. Atop it all was the centerpiece…no doubt the owner of the wealth, the massive elder dragon, it's scales glittering ruby red in the dim glow of the enchanted items surrounding them.
For minutes he just stood there, unable to completely wrap his mind around the fact that he was here. He couldn’t be dreaming, he’d lost that ability when he had ripped his soul out of his body and placed it into his Phylactery. He couldn’t be hallucinating, his avatar had only existed for minutes. He certainly couldn’t be under an illusion, his wards would have detected that the moment the avatar had materialized. This circumstance was a certainty and in order to figure out how, he would have to speak to the dragon.
If there’s one thing that Glacial is good at, it’s taking his time. The unicorn does this now, as he makes his way to the sleeping behemoth, to not put it in a bad mood by disturbing their horde. One step at a time until he is right in front of their face.
“Hello!” The unicorn calls out. “Mister or Missus dragon? I urgently need to talk to you about something of mine you have.” But he has no luck in rousing the sleeping dragon.
Sighing and shaking his head he walks closer and taps on the scales of its snout, calling out again but still getting no answer. Starting to get frustrated he turns and bucks the dragon on the nose but still gets to response. Angry now, Glacial Shift bucks for all his worth, cracking his new hoof in the process. He stumbles forward, barely catching himself before turning around and seeing the dragon awake. He opens his mouth to speak to the dragon and suddenly only sees white, no pain as his flesh melts away and the avatar disintegrates back into the magic from whence it came.
“Well damn...that sucked.” He thinks, once again waiting for another avatar...which comes quite quickly as it turns out. That feeling of being sucked through a straw and spawned onto a completely different part of the hoard.
Taking a much less careful route this time, he repeats the previous methods for waking the sleeping giant but this time, before being incinerated by the dragon a second time, he hops onto the dragons broad ruby scaled snout.
"Hey listen!" He shouts, trying to get a word in. "I need to talk to you before you try to destroy me again."
"At the very least, the dragon seems confused enough to talk before eating me. Now...how to convince a dragon to let me dig through their hoard to find my heart."