Maevy

Statement of plague wildclaw Maevy, regarding a plague of plants

Statement Begins:

Look. I’ve seen a lot of things. Especially dangerous, horrifying, downright unnatural things. I’m a warrior. My job is to deal with the things that go bump in the night. And I was born in the Boneyard. Plague’s reputation isn’t always the most accurate, but it exists for a reason. You never know what you’re gonna have to survive, and even if you do live, it's a part of you forever. Makes you stronger. But what outsiders don’t get is that surviving isn’t just about being strong, or fit, or even particularly smart. It’s about leaving no one behind, finding ways to make life livable, working as a clan to protect each other from whatever’s out there.
That’s why I’m here today, protecting others. Because someone helped me. And now I’m gonna tell you what happened so that you can find a way to beat it.
First off, it wasn’t a plague. Or at least not something Plaguebringer cooked up. I dunno how to explain it to an outsider, but the things she makes help us. This thing—this thing was evil.
It started with a plant. For a long time I thought the Gladekeeper was responsible, but I’ve travelled around and I’ve learned to respect her ways too. Nature thrives in the face of death, it spreads, it competes, it grows. It’s all the same thing in the end. But this plant—it wasn’t life. Life ends. Leaves wither just as much infections clear. This thing wouldn’t die.
When Myra found it, she pulled it out of the ground. Roots and all, making sure it wouldn’t grow back. We didn’t know what sort of plant it was—better safe than sorry. Could be Plaguebringer’s, could be Gladekeeper’s, either way not something to keep around. We burned it and left it at that.
It was back the next day. I respect a survivor, but for some reason it made me uneasy. This time we were extra careful to make sure we got the whole of it, trying to dig it out completely. The thing was growing up out of a skull—nothing particularly abnormal about that. We took the skull to the incinerator too, made sure it was blitzed to ash.
I’m sure you know what comes next, but we at least were surprised when we saw it again the next day. Bigger too, more leaves. There was something menacing about that bright green plant sticking up out of the torn up dirt, even though it hadn’t yet harmed us. We couldn’t just leave it, though. Ignore a strange spot and you’re dead in a week.
We dug it up, burned it, salted the soil with enough chemicals to sanitize the Wyrmwound. And it seemed to work, that. No plant the next day—after about a week we were sure it was gone for good. That was when dragons started coughing up seeds.
It wasn’t anyone who had dealt with the thing. Not me, not Myra, not anyone near the incinerator. But suddenly half the clan was hacking up these little white puffs, all dry enough to catch the breeze and float away. Those we didn’t manage to burn, at least.
We immediately set up a quarantine. Everyone who was sick in one underground cave, so that the seeds couldn’t float out. Everyone who had been near the sick in another, me and Myra included. We had been so so careful when we dealt with the thing. But the only explanation for the spread was that we’d carried it to the clan somehow. It only made sense.
But the plague didn’t. Nothing grew where the seeds fell, no magically hardy plants. Maybe we got them all when we deep cleaned the entire lair, but I doubt it. Somewhere in the earth those things were growing. The seeds, or spores, or whatever—we all sensed them splitting, germinating nearby. And the dragons who were coughing them up—well the seeds kept on coming. The doctors couldn’t clean the cave fast enough. White fluff everywhere, piling and tangling around the sick. All of them just hacking away. No other symptoms, but the sick couldn’t eat, so constant was their retching. They didn’t starve though. None of them lived long enough to do that. Despite our best efforts they all eventually choked. No tracheotomy can bring you air when your lungs are full of fluff.
But that wasn’t the worst thing. The worst thing was the spread. It made no sense. None of the doctors, none of us in quarantine got sick. But cases kept popping up, seemingly at random. Clearly the seeds had spread—that was the only possibility. We worked tirelessly to find them, destroy them, prevent their spread. All of us digging, cleaning, burning. Trying every possible cure. But the sick kept dying and the healthy kept getting sick.
That’s when we fell apart. As I said, our strength lies in working together. Trying our hardest to keep everyone alive. But we were scared. I won’t lie to you, I voted yes as well. It’s my greatest regret. At least I followed through with it. If you’re going to agree to something, you better be willing to do it yourself.
We filled the sick cave with every poison we had. Alcohol, bleach, salt, acid, and then on top of that metal and stone and everything we could use to block it off. I like to think it was a nicer death than choking. But I don’t know if I believe it.
No one slept that night. And when morning came we saw with horror a single plant growing where we had filled the cave.
Some of us fled. It’s not the plague way, we were all exposed, and fleeing only would spread it somewhere else. But we had all already betrayed the Plaguebringer’s teachings. Our clan—most clans, have a rule. We never persecute the sick. Quarantine, treatment, yes, but never death. Never cleansing. Never fire. Because when you harm the sick the sick begin to lie, and the plague continues to spread.
We all knew we had reached that point. We knew it so well that none of us dared get close enough to the plant to remove it—none of us save Myra. She knew it was a suicide mission when she climbed that hill. She wouldn’t even have time to get sick before she was killed. But still she walked up that terrible burial mound. She walked to the top and ripped the plant up with her bare claws, and then she turned, and with the same purposeful steps, she carried it to the incinerator. And then she jumped into it herself.
The plant didn’t come back. And no one else fell sick. In the end we all just went our separate ways—the clan was dead. We had killed it as surely as we had killed each other. I never saw any of them again—save for one. Many months later I came across his body in the Boneyard. He had the characteristic boils of the common pox, an illness easily managed when one is in a clan, but deadly on one’s own. At least, I think it was the pox. I didn’t get close enough to check. Because the first thing I saw was a single plant, growing from the top of his skull.”

Statement Ends