When the long dark settled over Ynys Môn, the broken ground of Parys Mountain answered differently from the stones elsewhere. The copper slopes and old workings had always held a restless power. Under the weight of the night that power did not sink. It rose.
Draig was formed from it on the high ridgelines above the Great Opencast. He took shape already knowing the leap. The first time he jumped he cleared the mist that had begun to pool in the hollows below the summit, and for a moment the copper hill was lit from above by the light he carried. He landed, gathered himself, and jumped again — higher — because the dark had already started to close the ground he had just left.
He learned quickly that height was the only way to reach the places the night believed it had claimed. From the top of his leap he could see the long dark lying across the lower land like still water. He dropped threads of pure light into the blackened hollows and the old mine scars, then rose again before the dark could take hold of him. Each jump carried him farther. Each landing left a little more brightness on the mountain than had been there before.
He is made of that light and nothing else. There is no hunger in him for the heights themselves, only for what the heights allow him to restore. He exists to lift brightness above the reach of the long dark and to set it back onto Ynys Môn where it can spread. On Parys Mountain he is strongest. The copper ground remembers the power that formed him, and from its ridges he can jump higher than anywhere else on the island. The mountain lends him its broken sky, and he uses it.
There were nights when the dark pressed so heavily that even the summit stones grew dim. On those nights Draig did not stay on the ground. He leapt until the air itself felt thin, carrying the light past the point where the night could follow, and only descended when he had found a place still willing to hold what he brought. The mountain kept the memory of those leaps. Later walkers would sometimes find patches of ground on the high slopes that caught the light differently, as if something bright had once landed there and refused to leave completely.
When he first saw the others, the light in his eye burned suddenly brighter. He understood in that moment that the jump, however high, was only one part of what the stones had intended. The long dark covered more than the mountain. The others had been raised from different ground for different kinds of reaching, and together they were meant to be the single answer Ynys Môn had shaped against the night.
Draig in The Long Dark
In our free game The Long Dark you can play as Draig himself. Just as in the story, his leap is the highest of the five beasts — the gift the copper hill gave him — and his curling dragonfire sets brightness back onto ground the dark has claimed. Choose him at the start of a run and the journey leads towards Parys Mountain, where the copper ground remembers him and his jump reaches further than anywhere else on the island.
Read his full legend on the Draig lore page, send someone a Draig e-card with this artwork, or climb the copper hill yourself on the Draig walk, part of our free Anglesey walking trails.