Godsend

He was born a great prince, a single hatchling from a king and queen who had not been able to produce any before. His nest was made of trees with the most fragrant of leaves, their boughs dipped in gold. His people had a celebration for twelve days after his birth. Dragons from other lands brought gifts of silk and magic and color to the king and queen. Centaurs came, as well, and longnecks, eyeing him with curiosity and leaving strange artifacts. He can still remember the piles of offerings sparkling at him, calling them to him.

He was the perfect hatching. He never wept or fussed. There was smile on his face for everyone.

It was around the time when a dragon learns to fly that the sickness began. The fever started, a slow burn that made him vomit, his head a pulsing beacon of pain. His parents fraught when it lasted for more than a week. A week turned to two, then a month. Then a year.

Every healer, alchemist, and doctor was called. They gave him potions that made his vision blur, his stomach churn, and his muscles twitch. They cut him to bleed the sickness out. They conjured spells that made his room frost with ice. Still his fever did not die. But neither did he.

His family hatched another nest. A lovely princess tumbled from her egg into the gilded nest that once belonged to him. She was kept from him, off in a tower of the castle, so as to keep her safe from the ailing prince.

When she spread her wings to fly, the sky welcomed her. He saw her soar past his window. She was laughing. The sickness did not touch her.

He wept then. He'd been brave before, and even during the night, when the pain twisted up his guts, when his head pulsed so hard he could feel his heart beat in the sockets of his eyes, he did not weep. The tears came, now, and the pain lessened. He thought of his sister seeing the kingdom, of visiting the longnecks and centaurs who had come to celebrate his birth, and he wept harder. It felt good to cry.

It was a messy affair. He did not have much experience with crying himself. He'd seen his parents do it plenty of times, weeping at his beside, apologizing for not finding a cure. The doctors would weep, too, for the sweet prince and his sickness, for themselves for not being the ones to fix it. They wiped at their faces, shielded them with their claws, dabbed at their tears with delicate handkerchiefs bordered with the finest lace.

He pressed the blankets of his bed to his face, to mimic this dignified gesture. He was horrified to find the sheets stained black. He kicked them away and stood. His legs shook, unused to standing. He'd stayed in his bed more than out of it, leaving only to look out his window. The stain on the bed trailed after him. He blinked through the tears that still flowed from his eyes. His claws were stained black, too. It was from him that this black came. He pressed the heels of his claws to his face and pulled them back. The black was coming from him.

The black came from his eyes.

He screamed. That was a first for him, too. Weeping was new, and so was screaming. And when he screamed, it ripped him apart. The long and narrow middle of his body split open. There were crystals where his organs should be. They glittered a deep, black violet. He screamed again, terrified. There was no pain, and that was terrifying, too. He clawed at these jewels and they cut his palms. He felt blood well up and drip down his wrists as he scratched. And he screamed when his blood was as black as his tears.

The king found him first, bursting into the room with his guards.

"Father," he cried, "Father, help me."

He reached for him. Dripping black, spreading the darkness. His father shrunk back.

And then his mother was there. She dropped to the ground. She curled her sinuous body in a coil. Her face was so twisted he barely recognized her.

"Mother," he wept, "Mama, please."

The king pushed her from his room and the guards moved between. Their talons and fangs shone.

He'd never seen the guards so fiercesome before. He wanted them gone, to make them leave his parents and him alone so the king and queen could soothe him and wipe the blackness from his eyes, to get the healers to scrape the crystals out from inside him and stitch him back together.

"Stay back," an Imperial guard warned him. The prince did not. He touched him with his open claw. The blood was there, the black blood. It opened, like a flower uncurling its petals. The blood curled out from his claws, from his tears, and enveloped the guard. His voice was swallowed as the blackness choked him.

The tendrils leapt for the other guards, grasping them. He felt a great tugging inside himself, and the blackness pulled the guards to him. He tried backing away, but they came quickly, flying at him as they struggled against the blackness. The black pushed them against the prince, to his long chest and belly. When the bodies touched the crystals, a burst of violet light flashed. There were no more guards.

"What is this?" the king asked, "What magic have you toyed with?"

"Nothing, Father," the prince wept. "I am good. I was so good for you. As a hatchling, I did not cry or shout. When I fell ill, I stayed quietly in my bed when I could have begged for relief. I am sick, that is all. They were trying to hurt me. I need a healer. I need medicine, Father."

The princess was in the hall, her voice a bell.

"Mother, what is all that noise?"

The prince felt a great pulling inside him again. The blackness rushed out in a curtain of darkness. It pulled his sister into the room. He saw her eyes, a lovely shade of purple, as the blackness brought her over and touched her to his crystals. She was gone in a flash.

The sound that came from his mother did not sound like a dragon. It was more animal than anything, like a boar being speared.

"Murderer," she spat, uncurling from the floor. "Monster."

She lunged for him. The blackness grabbed the queen from the air. There was a bright light. And she was gone.

The prince let an animal sound from his own chest. It rattled the crystals there.

The king approached him. He did not raise his ceremonial sword. He did not hook his talons to kill.

"You are not my son. You are the thing that killed him."

The prince felt the tears splash as they covered the room. His father was swallowed and fed to the crystals. More guards that showed up afterwards, too. Everyone in the castle. He went from room to room, taking them. The cooks, the soldiers, the squires, the seamstresses, and their spouses, and their children, all of them disappeared into the crystals.

He felt woozy, standing in the courtyard he hadn't seen since he was a hatchling. The sun was bright. It hurt his scales. He'd been indoors for so long. The tears did not stop, but they had subsided. They dripped slower from his eyes, thicker. In the sunlight, the crystals looked lighter, like a sky at twilight.

In his grief, he opened his wings. He beat them once, twice, feeling the air move over and around them. The muscles in his back did not burn. They were taunt, powerful, ready.

It was that day the prince flew. The day of his first cry and his first scream, the day his tears and blood became black, the day he murdered everyone in the castle, that was the day took to the sky.

The prince found a cave and slept. He slept for a week, then a month, then a year. The years became decades, piling on top of one another like bricks. They built two centuries while the prince slept.



A young Snapper found the cave, climbing high because she was brave. Time and weather had opened it. The Spiral was there, curled in a corner. She gasped at the still dragon. She had never seen a corpse before.

She pushed him with a leg, and the prince raised his head. The black tears were there streaming down his face. This time when she gasped, it was because she had never seen a necromancer's powers at work before.

"What do you want?" the prince asked.

The Snapper seemed to consider this. "Nothing, I just thought you were dead."

"I am," he said. The tears flowed in thick gobs down his face. They slipped from his scales and began pooling on the cave floor.

"No," the Snapper replied. "The dead don't speak."

He reared up then, exposing the crystals that ran from his tail to his throat. They shone in the darkness. It had been so long since they had fed.

"Oh, but the dead do speak. And they eat."

The darkness shifted from its pool and began to reach for her.

"You're him, aren't you?" she asked.

The black tendrils stopped short of touching her face.

"Who is it that you believe me to be?" he hissed.

"The one from the stories. The dragon who was touched by the Shadowbinder."

She searched his face and stepped closer.

"You're one who lost everything. You're Prince Godsend."

His ears cupped the sound of his name as if they were his claws catching the cooling rain on a hot day. The prince collapsed on himself. When he wept, it was genuine.

The Snapper reached for him. He felt her broad claw on his shoulder. He hadn't been touched by another creature in two hundred years.

"I'm sorry for what happened to you," she said.

The pain of memory made the blackness rise up. It circled her, hungry.

The prince pulled it back.

"Leave," he commanded. "Fly now, or you will die."

"I can't fly," she said boldly. Her chin was straight. She was afraid, but she was suppressing it well.

Snappers, yes, they were bound to the land.

The blackness curled around her neck. The prince gnashed his teeth and pulled back the black as hard as he could. It released her.

He saw the open mouth of the cave. He rushed for it, weak with sleep, and dove into the daylight.

She called after him and he beat his wings harder. He would not kill again if he could help it. Not the innocent.

This was how the prince had come to find himself in the Plaguelands. He is lurking in the most vile of corners looking for those infected and evil, to bring them to himself, to feed the monster he has become.

The Snapper who had found him is looking for him, still. Avalyn has made it her life's work to find the demon prince, the dragon of crystal and pain.

He is hidden well enough in this dangerous place where dragons do not last long to begin with. His feeding has not called too much attention to himself. Legends are beginning to grow, however.

Note: 1 of 2 dragons in the game with rose/copper/ivory. 12/16/18