"TwilightSaint" J. Wells
This is a short gamebook (of 100 sections) where you'll need two dice and the willingness to be the hero and choose your own path through the story.
If you've already played it, you can view the author's notes. Otherwise, you can see how it starts:
An excerpt
1
You live in the desert inside a petrified dragon's bones: the gaping jaws your front door, the arches of the ribcage your living room, the empty left eye socket your window. Cloth wrapped over the skeleton shields you from sun and sandstorms, while scorpions and rattlesnakes know better than to venture near. A desert nomad tribe sometimes wanders onto your lands, and you trade food and stories.
It is a proper home for a dragon-mage, when there are no more dragons.
After you rode your last wind, you forsook the Janari court and its lord—your twin brother—to seek the peace of the black sands and desolate sky. Oddly, the bones are a comfort as well: a reminder that there truly once were dragons, that you did not weave them from the threads of your imagination and vanity as the creature you could command. You helped your brother carve out an empire with your powers; surely there's no more he can ask of you.
So it is a surprise when the messenger comes to your home to evict you.
You wake that morning to the thunder of many hooves. You rouse and stand between two of the dragon's teeth to see a phalanx of donkeys. Their handlers are already arranging them into a rig, intending to carry away something large and heavy.
The messenger rides at their forefront, a solemn-faced woman. Her horse refuses to come closer, so she dismounts and approaches to hail you. The sigil of Janari—a dragon, of course—is embroidered over her shoulder. It ripples as she closes her palm over her fist and bows to you. “Great mage, the lord of the Janari and ruler of the western reaches has a request of you.”
“I can help him no more with his conquests of other lands.” Your tone is sharp; she should know better. Your brother should know better.
“Not conquest. Defense.”
“Janari has been invaded?”
She nods.
You had subjugated the mages of all the neighboring realms, or so you had thought. “Who dares?”
“The basilisk-mage of Karo.”
There is no creature greater than a dragon, but a basilisk would be a worthy opponent indeed. You remember Karo as a distant isle, better-known for its pearl-divers than any magic or military domination. But a basilisk-mage could have easily changed that, challenging the sigil-beasts of other courts and forcing them to surrender.
“What is my brother's request?” you ask.
“He wants the dragon's bones to represent his sigil. His engineers think there are ways to assemble them and give them movement, and of course the basilisk's gaze would pose no harm—”
You narrow your eyes. “A dragon is not a marionette.”
“What else can we do?”
The despair in her voice must be shared by everyone in the Janari court. How helpless your brother must have felt, faced with a sigil-challenge and no sigil-beast to answer it with.
“There may be a way,” you say slowly, remembering how one of the nomads once spoke of how a dragon might one day fly again. “I will bring the dragon to the Janari court myself.”
Her expression holds a fragile hope. It changes her face and makes her seem almost familiar—but she is too young for you to have known her from before. She must be related to someone at court. You had both friends and foes there, but they are distant memories now. Test your Perception. If you succeed, turn to 14. If you fail, you can either offer her food and water in traditional guest-welcome (turn to 30) or tell her you need to make preparations, as time is of the essence (turn to 51).