Cryptocrystalline Shrikes

Dragon. Or dragons? She looks like one, but with striking bilateral variance. Much of her is feathery, and if you look closely, the feathers often move more independently than they really ought to. Apparently this creature is mostly based on a flockmind of drackels… but if you've seen them before, there's definitely been some evolution and growth recently.

The whole is about the size of a large horse, plus at least two meters of wingspan from side to side. Most of the body plan is pretty ordinary for a quad dragon, with four claws underneath that look like a cross between anisodactyl bird talons (yes, on all four) and broader dragon paws, with feathers padding the centers for when they splay out. Above is the rolling, sinuously fluid curvature of her back, constantly adjusting itself to the situation, and underneath is a subtle swell, as though some control points had been pushed outward to mark out some geometrorganic gravidity.

As one looks to either side, though, differences become more apparent. On her left side (from her perspective), it's almost all flock-structure, with visible surfaces made of very, very black feathers, though with a variable luster depending on how she's feeling, and occasional disheveled sticking-out bits. On her right, the feathered parts are mostly off-white, but the overall surfaces are mottled and veined with fine metallic scales, dominantly in burnished, gleaming bronze, but with those underneath being broader and paler. In the middle, where they meet, is a short dithered gradient where the quasicrystal-like tiling structure is easier to see due to the contrast, with more constituents from a single side getting tessellated in as one scans in either direction—enough gradient to not have a completely sharp edge, while leaving the sides quite distinct overall.

Toward the front, the shape of the head and face interpolates smoothly from a sharper, simpler cone-like curvature on the left to the angular and elegant right side. Atop the left side is a twitchy feathery ear behind (sometimes in front of) a wiry-curved horn, whereas the right side bears a pair of Bezier-y horns matching its style, the smaller back horn also capable of functioning as an ear.

Looking more closely at the face, both of the ‘lateral’ eyes to the sides are actually radially compound eyes. The right eye is tinted a medium brown with a clearer ring of beaklike formations surrounding it, while the left reflects so strongly in green it looks almost like it's glowing—but also, a slim sector of each, pointed toward the middle and slightly down, instead has the color of its partner. Between the two but further up is also a third, ‘forward’ or ‘dynamic’ compound eye with more of a swirl to it and a darker, muted purplish sheen. Further down, each pointed tooth from the two rows of them can peck at things by itself; those seem to be shared, or at least harder to distinguish.

The neck and tail seem to be the trickiest parts to handle. They're formed of braided birds, but with most of the white ones either holding large bronze scutes like shields or having them adhered to their sides; it's hard to tell. There's more restless motion in those places, when the whole is settled, as constituents rearrange themselves; it's harder to handle the differences in tighter confines like that, perhaps. And this especially means that the tail not only has a more-literal-than-usual mind of its own, but a fairly chaotic one, jittering around tapping and brushing at things if the main intelligence isn't paying enough attention to keep it under control.

Dangling awkwardly around the base of her neck is a circular metal name tag on a chain, reading ‘Quartzwing’ down its left side (her right), and ‘Metiagon’ down its right side (her left).