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The Fey Folk, the Other Folk...None of them belong to this world. Perhaps that is why, whenever they manifest here, they always look a little wrong. Ugliness so grotesque it prompts shivers in even the most stalwart dragons, or beauty so blinding it makes them feel small. And always, in those otherworldly eyes—a strange detachment, overlaying the humor, the curiosity, the malice. They are simply visitors. They do not belong here.

It must have given the fairies quite a turn to look into the hatchling’s eyes and see that alien gaze looking back at them. As far as they knew, he had been born within their court, and yet something about him seemed...off. Though they would never admit it, they saw within him the oddness that mortals saw within changelings. A whisper of unease rippled through the assembled gathering.

“He is a demon,” they whispered, “poisoned by that Cathedral’s vile magic.”

“Nay,” others breathed, “it is because mortal blood runs through his veins.”

Manes shimmered and jewels glimmered as they nodded or shook their heads. “Corruption...Mortal frailty...” The whispers went on and on.

He had no place in their court. They found another one for him in the mortal world, the earthly, insignificant world. He remembered the sleeping hatchling, shining like a star. And then there was a rush of cold air and he tumbled onto the bed. The other hatchling was gone. The place where they had earlier lain was still warm. But all too quickly the warmth faded beneath his skin.

He awoke again in the morning, coughing weakly all the while. His throat and lungs ached. The dragoness who thought she was his mother scooped him up, murmuring reassurances.

“You’ve caught a cold! I told you not to play past sundown yesterday....Oh, you’re shivering...”

He had wrapped a blanket around himself. As he trembled, the dragoness rubbed his back, hoping to soothe him. The fabric slipped oddly across his skin....There were strange bumps underneath.

She frowned and peeled away the blanket—and gasped, forcing back a scream.

Mushrooms: they spread in a thin mat across the child’s shoulders. In the morning light, they shone wan and blue—but they pulsed softly, horribly, in time with his breathing.

“My child...Something’s happened to my child!”

~ ~ ~
The mushrooms grew out of his skin. The dragons who examined him said that they were rooted in his flesh, their rhizomes reaching deep into his thorax. Wrapped around his lungs, or perhaps his heart... “Just give him more food. And he will grow strong, in time...” Their voices trailed off uncertainly.

“But you have to remove them! You must!” the mother protested frantically.

He would have grown to adulthood in that clan, might have even gotten better as the doctors had said. He might have been able to carve a life for himself in the world of the mortals.

He might have been able to do all that and more, if only the crone hadn’t arrived.

He remembered the day she came. It was dusk, and she crested the hill, moving slowly and ponderously, her wings and spines outlined against the setting sun. She was dreadfully old, and her eyes gleamed in her face, green as bamboo—but as cold and merciless as the Icewarden’s fortress.

“Grandmother,” the mother Skydancer greeted her. The crone’s eyes softened for a moment—only a moment. She looked at the hatchling, and this time it was with cold scrutiny.

Her eyes were always on him from then on. Her suspicion covered him like a blanket, and he was more conscious of it than he was of the steady stream of physicians and mages who poked and prodded him day after day. The voice with which she spoke seemed to come from the bottom of a great crevasse, and it was not to be ignored. The dragons leaped to follow her every command.

They used their own instruments at first, stainless steel or bone or wood. They chanted over him with myriad spells, sprinkled him with whatever powders or potions they’d concocted. Their faces were always a little discouraged whenever nothing happened, but the crone’s grew colder and flintier.

On her direction, one of them took an iron wand and touched it to the child’s forearm. He only stared curiously at it. Puzzlement flickered in the old Ridgeback’s eyes, but only for a moment...a moment.

The dragoness who had called herself his mother had gone. She was gone more and more often these days. Sometimes she babbled of strangers dancing beneath the moonlight or laughter drifting on the air.

Then came the day his power manifested. An old Coatl was humming over him, weaving a spell of sunshine and flowers. The stink of it tickled his nose, and he sneezed.

The rings of light broke apart. For a moment, a cloud of dust hung in the air between them, glowing blue like the mushrooms. He had expelled it from his nose and mouth.

It settled onto the Coatl, burrowing visibly beneath his skin. And then he changed.

The humming continued even as he began to thrash, shrieking in terror. And then the others realized that the hum was that of the fungus as it changed him, growing so quickly and violently that they heard it. Feathers cascaded from his wings; a paw held out in supplication burst into bloom like a branch, mushrooms exploding at the ends of his fingers. His eyes disappeared, swallowed by that blue luminosity. Pulsing like distant stars.

And then, as the other dragons scattered, the crone’s paw came down. She extinguished the transformed Coatl and the magic that writhed around her talons burned any infection away. In the background, mages and physicians trembled. She lowered her head and stared at the hatchling with one infernal green eye.

“Changeling,” she hissed, and the gathering picked up the word, whispering it from one dragon to another.

Changeling...changeling...CHANGELING!

The scream that rang out next came from the mother Skydancer. The word was more than just two syllables; it told her that her child had been stolen, that they were bound to the Fey now, that this sick, twisted hatchling was an imposter.

She was incoherent, screaming and crying. She grasped at one of the mage’s robes, pleading with him to do something, anything, to get her true child back. He could only gibber out an answer. But the crone remained steady, and now the eyes with which she glared at the changeling smoldered with deep hatred. There would be no sympathy from this brutal ancestress.

She flicked a wicked talon at him, and at arms’ length he was borne away.

~ ~ ~
“How much am I offered for this strange hatchling?”

“Strange, hah. I’ve seen ‘strange’ before,” Garrett snarled. He shook the auctioneer’s claws away, and the milling crowd laughed—at his words as much as at the foolishness of the auctioneer, who hadn’t noticed Garrett’s own deformities.

The greedy Spiral hissed and twisted away. He craned his neck around, looking for other buyers—but he had captured Garrett’s attention. Or more precisely, the hatchling had.

The iron cage pressed in on the child. It didn’t burn him as it did other fairies, but it might as well have had, for he seemed to be in despair. The old Ridgeback hadn’t decreed that he be sold, but she hadn’t cared what would happen to him either. None of them had. Sometimes, when he shut his eyes for sleep, he still saw the crone’s accusatory glare piercing deep into his soul.

He’d been dumped at a requisitioner’s door. Requisitioners took all dragons for exalt training, but even they hadn’t known what to make of this feeble, malformed child. His coughing had alerted them, and they had cast protective spells before taking him in for assessment.

He didn’t know if they’d ordered it or if he’d been abducted by a more unscrupulous employee. Perhaps it didn’t matter—that night, he had been shut into a crate, upon a cart that had jostled and bounced its way across the terrain. He had smelled the stink of it, the roughness and the apathy. Not even the gods could be so callous—wherever he was headed, it was not towards a god.

And so he had ended up in an auction house, gawked at and prodded by passing dragons. His seller extolled his oddness— “A lovely lad if not for these lumps on his back! He’s a prime candidate for research, wouldn’t you say?” —and tried to strike deals with passers-by. They all hurried away, repulsed...or uninterested. A sliver of hope trembled inside his heart. If they weren’t interested, then perhaps he wasn’t as strange as he’d thought? Perhaps there were others like him?

“How much d’you want for the pup?”

“Thirty-five thousand gold pieces,” and the Spiral spat, “if it takes getting you out of here.” His gaze slid over Garrett’s tail with undisguised revulsion.

The Mirror slammed down the treasure. As the auctioneer coiled greedily around the coins, he opened the cage and bent towards the hatchling. “Look lively, boy,” he growled. “We’re getting out of this cesspool.”

~ ~ ~
The clan lived deep within the Tangled Wood, among winding waters and twisted trees. And Garrett was one of its leaders. His fellows gave him and the newcomer a respectful berth; the hatchling saw glittering eyes staring at him, heard the rustles of scales and the clatter of bones.

“Can you help this pup? He’s sick, maybe some sort of respiratory disease. I reckon it’s got to do with the things growing outta his back.”

The hatchling was presented to what seemed to be a towering mass of feathers. As he stared, the mass swiveled around. Light gleamed off the lenses of a long-beaked mask.

“There is nothing wrong with him.” The voice was a whisper, as soft and dry as rustling feathers. Wings extended, one by one, to stroke him. Wings, so many wings...but no legs or arms. The coat flowed loosely; there was nothing beneath it either.

Garrett frowned. “Nothing? He was coughing fit to hack his lungs out earlier. You’re serious?”

“Nothing, nothing...The fungi are a part of him. They’ve melded to his flesh.” The Doctor released a long, slow sigh. “But he is weak....An auctioneers’ den is no place for hatchlings. He will grow strong, in time.”

Unlike the physicians in the Southern Icefield, he spoke with confidence, and so the hatchling was left in his care. It was so different from the coldness and curiosity he’d encountered before. There was no poking, no prodding. He was instead given a soft bed of his own, with curtains drawn around it for privacy. He received regular meals. Slowly, strength returned to him. The Doctor plied him with milk and honey cakes, crooning, “Grow strong, grow strong.”

Recuperation is a boring affair, however. The hatchling was given toys and books to while the hours away. He couldn’t read yet, but he enjoyed looking at the pictures. One book in particular captured his fancy. The illustrations showed a vast desert, expanses of starry sky...A rose bloomed scarlet against the blackness of space and the shadows of encroaching baobabs.

He loved that book. Even before he learned to read it, he fell in love with the story it promised him, the characters beckoning from within. Toys rolled away, unnoticed, and the Doctor returned other books to the shelves, but that one book was the hatchling’s favorite, and so it became his name.

“Your snack, Little Prince,” the Doctor said one day as he offered a bowl of honey cakes. Little Prince...The hatchling’s face lit up. Here at last was a name, and it fit him like a glove tailored to a hand.

~ ~ ~
Around other dragons, Elijah was rambunctious, but he had learned to be gentle with the Little Prince. The Skydancer—a hatchling no more—had grown stronger in the clan’s care. But he was still frailer than other dragons, prone to sudden bouts of coughing. The mushrooms still flourished upon his back, pulsing gently...among other things.

“Yes, Elijah, I know,” the Prince sighed. “Don’t stay out past sundown.” Something about those words tickled his mind; they seemed familiar....He didn’t know why he’d said them. He was allowed to stay out past sundown, wasn’t he?

Regardless, he did have to go back inside; Elijah was barking to remind him of his regular visit to the Doctor. The Prince slowly closed the book. He no longer needed to read it, for he knew the story by heart. But it gave him deep pleasure to look at the familiar pictures, to feel the softness of those well-turned pages.

Inside the lair, Elijah pranced and bounced happily. He scurried around the Doctor, who let out wheezes of exasperation. “Down, boy, down...You’re stressing out the rest of us.”

Elijah sat down obediently, his tongue lolling out in a canine laugh. The snake on the end of his furiously wagging tail, in contrast, looked greener and dizzier than usual.

“How are the arms, Little Prince?”

“They are well, Doctor,” the Prince replied. It was not his limbs that the Doctor meant, no....

The mushrooms upon his back were now wreathed in phantom arms. They sprouted from the same place and shone with the same eerie light. As translucent as smoke, they writhed gently, gesturing and waving seemingly of their own accord.

No expression was visible on the Doctor’s mask, but he seemed puzzled as he queried, “There are no changes at all?”

“No, I didn’t notice any new ones today.”

“It is strange,” the Doctor admitted, “but I believe they aren’t a cause for alarm. At times dragons do manifest phantom appendages. Rare, to be sure, but if your health is stable, then they are probably not inimical.”

It took the Prince a while to sort out the words. Then he queried, “You’re saying there’s nothing wrong with me?”

“Correct. Strange, as I said, but not wrong. There never was. You never were.”

As the Doctor went back to his work, the Prince contemplated his words. They were lovely words, to be certain, but he couldn’t help feeling that he’d heard something else a very, very long time ago. Words that spoke of vile magic. Mortal blood. And changes, something about...

A lick from Elijah brought him back to reality. The Prince looked down into his bright, warm eyes. “Might be better to go play instead,” he muttered, but he was really talking to himself.

Elijah barked in agreement. Vile magic, mortal blood, changes...the darker words slipped away. And as the Little Prince stared into the distance, a ghostly arm twisted around, holding a hand in front of his face, and gave him a thumbs-up.

~ written by Disillusionist (254672)
all edits by other users

(art by: squeakthecricket)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHAriSc3oqk


All-Seeing Shroom:
A disgusting, writhing mushroom, covered in veins and tumors.

Fungalhoof Qiriq
These creatures leave a trail of vibrant fungi in their wake. Tracking a Fungalhoof Qiriq is easy; surviving an encounter with one is less so.

Parasitic Fungus
Parasitic Fungus releases spores into the air that control the creatures they root in. The chances for a spore successfully blooming are small.

Twilight Colony
A smattering of fusty smoke-colored mushrooms that have somehow sustained a colony on a passerby dragon. Parasite? Symbiote? Fashion statement?