Gizelle

The Herbalist

Gizelle should not have screamed. But she hadn’t been able to help it; she had watched the cultists throw the Snapper child into the Wyrmwound, and that was when the nightmare had begun.

The cultists hoped that their sacrifice would mutate into a greater beast, a sure sign (so they said) of the Plaguebringer’s favor. Instead, the little dragon sank, thrashing and squealing, into the fetid goo. Gizelle thought they had not heard her, but they had; they captured the traveling herbalist and dragged her to the cauldron to share the pitiful hatchling’s fate. “He was unworthy,” they droned, deaf to her pleas for mercy, “but perhaps our Mother shall smile upon you.”

And they flung her into the goo. It didn’t melt through Gizelle’s scales, but it sucked her down. It then burned its way through her nose and throat, muffling her cries.

Mercifully, she lost consciousness. When she came to, she was once again lying on the hard-packed earth and the cultists had gathered around her. Their attitude this time was decidedly different: they bowed to Gizelle; they lifted their paws and cheered. “Mother is pleased with her!” they cried, their red eyes shining with ecstasy. “Mother has granted Her blessing to this most fortunate child!”

Gizelle stirred, trying to speak. Immediately they bent toward her in attitudes of eager deference. “State your name!” their leader bellowed. He shook his staff of skulls at her. “We wish to know the name of Mother’s favorite child!”

Gizelle attempted to say her name. Instead, she breathed out a cloud of putrid gas. It wafted over the leader’s grinning face, and then his smile broke. He dropped his staff and screamed, clawing at his skin. It was burning, burning, he cried, and they watched in horror as scales peeled off him in chunks.

And before the others could react, the gas had wafted over them. Panic erupted in the cultists’ ranks as their eyes bubbled and their skin began to crack. They fled, still calling out “Mother...Mother!” The disease spread through their ranks, and soon the vile cult had been expunged from the Scarred Wasteland.

Their final victim remained alive – but in the days to come, she would wish, over and over again, that she had died.

The cultists left Gizelle where she lay. She dragged herself away, towards the camp they had abandoned. Her things were still there. Her paws, as she scooped them up, left trails of slime and blood.

She spent the night in that campsite. None of the cultists came back. From time to time she would hear their distant screams, cries of “Mother!” as they wrestled with the disease Gizelle had brought down on them. The Coatl, meanwhile, struggled to treat her wounds. Her body was blotched by open sores, and they were beginning to fester. She lost consciousness many times that night as pain and weariness overtook her. The sun rose. Another day passed. Then another night descended. By then, there were no more cultists left to scream.

Gizelle still felt terrible, but she was now strong enough to walk. She needed to get away, to go home. But in case she didn’t make it, she would need to send a message....

She took out pens and parchment and slowly, painstakingly, wrote down a message.

~ ~ ~
Gizelle soon encountered other dragons. She reached out to them, pleading for aid, but they took one look at her and fled, shrieking in panic. She tried to fly after them but flopped down onto the ground instead. She lay there for a long time, crushed by despair.

If she accidentally breathed her poisonous gas onto innocent dragons, she would kill them, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to bear that. She wrote another message, a large sign begging other dragons for help. They only needed to take her letter to her clan; she had carefully wrapped it so that it wouldn’t get coated by slime.

She soon found a messenger: a Spiral, absently sketching the landscape, who leaped away from her in fear and then smashed into a rock. Gizelle caught up to her, weeping piteously, pleading with the other dragon to take her message to her clanmates. She unfolded her sign for the Spiral to read, and the artist took pity on her. She dropped her paints and canvas, pinched the message between two claws, and fluttered away.

Gizelle remained by the rock, afraid that nobody would return. She carefully packed up the artist’s drawing materials and was shocked when her touch made some of the paints start to smoke. She flung them away, and then she thought better of it and buried them.

The Spiral didn’t return, but something else did: a creeping tangle of pus and bones flowing swiftly over the red rocks. It reached Gizelle and then coalesced into the shape of a Deadland Disciple. In its hands, it held a message and medicines from the Hidden Haven Clan.

Gizelle read the message and then began to cry again, but in relief this time. She would not be alone. Her clan had not abandoned her; they would continue helping her even now.

She named the Deadland Disciple “Carrius”. It nodded silently to her and then held out its hands. Gizelle leaned against it as she staggered away, determined to cure herself so she could return to her clan.

~ ~ ~
Gizelle spent several days gathering ingredients from the Abiding Boneyard. She brewed new medicines and used them with the ones she’d received from her clan. Nothing worked.

She would have given up long ago if not for the letters her clan sent regularly. The Deadland Disciple became her messenger. It was immune to her touch and could not transmit any diseases to the Hidden Haven Clan.

Gizelle wondered about this. Did the Disciple have a way to control its virulent energies? If it could keep other creatures from catching its diseases, perhaps she could, too....

She had set up camp near the Tangled Wood and had noticed that the plants there withered at her touch. One day, she crept a bit closer. When she saw that the grass at her feet was dying, she concentrated, imagining the disease as a red light that crept back into her toes. It might have been her imagination, but it looked as though the grass wasn’t withering as quickly as before.

Still, she wasn’t convinced. “Perhaps I need to become stronger,” she thought to herself.

She continued to gather ingredients. There were many ways to combine them, many medicines that might help and that she hadn’t tried yet. On one of her gathering runs, she heard shrill braying and the thud of hooves. She peered over a hummock and saw two creatures fighting: a Carrioncorn and a Nightmare.

There were no other beasts around. Possibly they had been abandoned by their herds, encountered each other, and then started fighting. When they caught sight of Gizelle, they ceased fighting with each other and charged her down instead. But then they stopped a few meters away from her, their nostrils flaring. Evidently they could smell the Plaguebringer’s “blessing” on her.

Gizelle knew that the beasts had nothing to fear. As creatures of the Wasteland, they were immune to diseases, even the horrendous one she carried. The Coatl beckoned to them with one hand. In her other hand, she offered some of the plants she had gathered.

It took some time for the beasts to accept her. But then, they had nowhere else to go. They might also have recognized the Plaguebringer’s mark – within a couple of days, they were eating out of Gizelle’s paws and nibbling affectionately at the few feathers left on her head.

It was a far cry from the way other dragons had reacted. Gizelle recalled with pain those first few days when she had been desperate for help. Until she’d encountered that Spiral, all the other dragons had fled from her. They had called her a monster, an abomination....When a Plague dragon called another dragon an “abomination”, it was really something.

Gizelle’s eyes fell on the box of letters she kept. When it was all too much to handle, she would look at these letters and remember them. She would remember that she still had a clan that cared for her and wanted her to recover – in mind, if not in body.

She needed Carrius to stay and help her with her medicines, and so she started training the Nightmare and Carrioncorn as messengers. She named them Dijo and Sakli, respectively. They proved to be willing, intelligent creatures, and soon they were taking messages between her and the Hidden Haven Clan. Meanwhile, Gizelle and Carrius continued working together, experimenting with the ingredients they’d gathered. It was not long before they made a breakthrough: an ointment that could suppress Gizelle’s rotting touch. It only worked for a few hours at most before it wore thin and burned away, but it was better than nothing.

And it gave Gizelle confidence. She continued with her other chain of experiments: she attempted to use her willpower to control the plagues she carried. And this time, she was more successful.

She could revive not just the plants that withered but also the sick animals that had wandered too near the Wasteland. While she couldn’t heal physical injuries or poison, she could now draw out any pestilences or infections that had set in.

She released her latest patient, a Duskrat. She watched as it burrowed into the soil. After a moment, she followed it, and then she bent down to inspect the ground.

She soon determined that, with careful digging, it would be possible to make a tunnel here. The Hidden Haven Clan wasn’t that far off....Perhaps they could create an underground passageway for her, and she could come and go without endangering anyone else. The thought of seeing her clan again excited her. She quickly dashed off a message outlining her discovery.

The Hidden Haven Clan soon responded. Their well-wishes were once again a great source of comfort to Gizelle, particularly since she was preparing to approach a settlement again. In the past weeks, travelers had come near her camp, and they had shouted news and conversations at each other. Many travelers had recently come from the south. They had informed Gizelle, with voices made unsteady by fear, that a new strain of pox had emerged. It inflicted bloody sores upon a sufferer’s skin; the open wounds became gateways to infections and other diseases, quickly bringing down a patient. Gizelle had shivered when she’d heard this. She could still recall the old cultist leader and how his scales had peeled off his face.

The old dragon had done some terrible deeds, but Gizelle thought he hadn’t deserved to die that way. And perhaps, she could ensure that no other dragon met a similar fate....

She spread the suppressing ointment on her skin and then dressed carefully, wrapping her sickly body in bandages and a cloak. Her Deadland Disciple helped wind linen wraps around her tattered wings. By the time they were finished, Gizelle was muffled in yards of cloth, and only her face was visible. She still looked awful, but at least other dragons would be shielded from her touch. They loaded Gizelle’s supplies onto Dijo and Sakli and then set out for the lair where the pox had manifested.

The lair had begun to empty as dragons fled their homes. Here and there, a cave or structure had been bricked up, splashed with a bright red X to show that the Plaguebringer had set herself against that home. Most of the dragons in this clan had been born in the Wasteland, but the clan had attracted members from other Flights, and it was these outsiders who were in the gravest danger.

When Gizelle entered the lair, there was suspicion from all the other dragons. Who was this mysterious cloaked stranger who strode into their midst like a queen? – For Gizelle was sure that she could stop this pox, and the thought gave her great confidence and strength. She looked around steadily and then asked to speak to the leader.

When the clan leader drew near, Gizelle introduced herself as a wandering herbalist. She had studied many diseases and had acquired a special ability that could help combat this one. “It is the Plaguebringer’s blessing,” she declared, lowering her hood. The clan leader shivered and averted his gaze from her skeletal visage—but he also agreed to let her try treating his clan.

It was a measure of the Plaguelings’ trust and desperation that the first patient they asked Gizelle to treat was a hatchling. A little Skydancer, his feathers beginning to fall out, his green eyes glazed as he whimpered in pain. His iridescent blue skin ran with ugly red sores. Gizelle remembered the baby Snapper flailing in the Wyrmwound, and she closed her eyes as she extended a paw. She pulled off her glove.

As before, she imagined the disease as a red light that flowed from the child, up her arm, and into her body. She could actually feel it happening now, and she heard the other dragons gasp. She opened her eyes.

Red light...Yes, there it was! A lurid, angry-looking red light, like the kind that blazed in the back of the eyelids. It oozed up her arm and sank into her skin. It was almost painful to look at, but Gizelle had never seen a prettier sight – it told her that the hatchling would heal.

And sure enough, the bleeding stopped. The sores began to pucker as they dried out and shrank. The hatchling opened his eyes and mewled, and his older clanmates crowded around him, laughing in relief and joy.

“There are others,” the clan leader choked out. He was weak with relief, and the suspicion had left him completely now. “Can you help us? Will you help us?”

Gizelle promised that she would.

And she did. Together with the clan, she determined that moles, burrowing into the soil and compost of the lair, were the ones spreading the disease. The healthy dragons equipped themselves and exterminated these pests while Gizelle drew the pox out of each patient. The potions she and Carrius mixed helped speed up the recovery process. After about a week, there were no more pests and no more afflicted dragons. The pox had lost its grip on the clan.

The dragons were overjoyed. Their leader thanked Gizelle effusively and offered her a place among them. “We’re Plaguelings, and your appearance doesn’t bother us – not anymore.” He ducked his head in brief embarrassment. “You would have a place of respect in our clan, and your beasts would be welcome, too.”

“Thank you...but I already have a clan.” Gizelle smiled with genuine warmth. It felt so good to be working with other dragons again, to be learning and living alongside them, to respect and be respected in return. The leader bowed to her again, more deeply this time, and declared, “You are a great credit to the clan you hail from. Please carry our thanks and good wishes to them – and if ever they need allies in the Scarred Wasteland, we would be very glad to join forces with them.”

Gizelle was in high spirits when she returned to her camp. For the rest of her week, her mood remained bright: she received another message from the Hidden Haven Clan telling her that Nia had commenced digging. They were en route to Gizelle’s camp and would probably see her by next week. Gizelle read this news with a big grin – the first true smile she’d had in many days.

~ ~ ~
It was too dangerous for Gizelle to actually set foot in the Hidden Haven, but that didn’t matter much. Her clan members could still come and visit her and interact with her from a distance. Her three familiars were by then more than just couriers – they were her friends as well. When Gizelle found herself lacking visitors, she sat down and talked to Carrius, Dijo, and Sakli. They listened patiently and were always on hand to help when she needed something.

Gizelle sometimes had nightmares – about the hatchling she couldn’t save, about being devoured by the Wyrmwound, about the cultists whom she had slain with her fatal touch. But the nightmares never troubled her when she woke up. She remembered the dragons and animals she’d saved, and she smiled at this – the Plaguebringer had indeed favored Gizelle above many of her other children. She had scooped Gizelle out of the Wyrmwound and made her stronger in magic, body, and mind. Like many dragon mothers, the Plaguebringer would punish her children if she had to – but she could be merciful, too.

Gizelle was packing her things. She had received a call for help from another settlement. She would head over and see what she could do. The dragons there would be expecting her, and they would welcome her arrival. “Mother’s Blessing”, they called her. Not the Plaguebringer’s Strength, not the Plaguebringer’s Favor, but something gentler. Something kinder. The Plaguebringer’s Mercy.

~ written by Disillusionist (254672)

Embodiment of plague
And bringer of ills
With demeanor reflecting
These festering hills.

Sores crawling up
Neck and tail
Boils erupt
Into ooze
And frightening ails.

Eyes streaked red
Mouth of foamy yellow
Feathers limp and dead,
And a dry, smoky bellow.

Toxic to touch,
A poisonous glare
To avoid her gaze,
It would be quite fair.
made by WiIIow