Gunk

Arago paced through the clearing. His snout crinkled in disgust as damp earth and leaves stuck to his normally immaculate claws. The Pearlcatcher was acutely aware of how he stuck out, soft iridescent scales gleaming in the cold dark of the Tangled Wood. The trees were packed together, their branches overlapping into an intricate maze further obscured by the chilly mist that hung in the air. Enemies could be hiding behind every tree, concealed in every shadow, and Arago’s Plague eyes could never hope to pierce the darkness.

Soft footsteps. He whirled around, the delicate white gossamer of his cloak seeming to float around him. His claws tensed, and he felt a few tendrils of plant life wither underneath them.

“Arago!” He was on the ground before he knew what was happening. Muck seeped into his back, surely ruining his outfit, which was honestly more upsetting than being attacked. Arago flailed his legs to try to defend himself. “Don’t worry, it’s me!”

The boisterous voice belonged to a Mirror. He was unusually large for his kind, with a wide, stocky chest and powerful legs. The fog endemic to the region seemed to slough off of him, giving his skin a glossy, slick sheen. His wings were heavy, and something seemed to drip off of them, making them useless for flying. A single trail of drool sneaked past his crooked fangs.

Arago hastily righted himself, brushing feebly at the mud caked in his long mane. It would take him hours to wash all this filth off him, much less brush his hair. “And you are?”

“Gunk!” The dragon declared proudly. He sat down, curling his tail neatly around his awkward body. He didn’t seem to notice how wet and terrible everything was here. “I’m a hunter in the pack! I’ve seen you around, what do you do?”

Arago huffed. He needed to stay calm, throw off the scent. “What don’t I do? Our den truly wouldn’t be able to run without me.” He tossed his head, but instead of elegantly flowing with the movement, Arago’s mane trailed through the mud. Ugh.

“Oh,” Gunk said, buying it unquestioningly. It was almost too easy to outsmart these feral Mirrors. They just let anyone into the clan these days. “Well, then what are you doing all the way out here?”

“What?”

“If they need you in the den, It’s not running because you’re not there.” Gunk’s wet, drippy eyes blinked expectantly. They were unsettlingly purple.

“Well, I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” Arago answered quickly. He knew that Mirrors could sense heat, but he wasn’t sure if Gunk could see his pulse, how quickly it was fluttering in his delicate chest. “I’m on a very important mission. You can’t tell anyone you saw me here.”

“Someone’s coming!” The Mirror pounced, pinning Arago underneath his considerable weight. He used his wings to cover them, pressing both bodies down into earth that felt like used coffee grounds. This was truly the worst day of Arago’s life.

After a few moments had passed, Gunk lifted his wings. Arago recoiled in disgust at the slimy trail it had left on him. “Get off of me!”

“Okay, I don’t see anyone.” Gunk, without care for grace or appearance, flopped off of Arago onto his side. He rolled over, coating the other half of him in mud, and Arago contemplated if it was intentional. How horrifying. “You have to be careful, though. It’s dangerous out here for Plague dragons. There’s like a war, or something? I don’t know.”

“Oh, you don’t say,” Arago replied dryly.

“Yeah. I’m not too worried about hunting here since I can see through the mists, but Plague hunters are supposed to pair up so they can fight their way out if they get caught by a patrol. You don’t want to get caught poaching, do you?” Gunk sat up suddenly, staring at Arago with pupil-less eyes that could be looking in any direction.

“I’m fine, really,” Arago insisted, slowly backing away from him. “Please, just go home, and don’t tell anyone you saw me here.”

“I see what’s going on…” Gunk said softly. Arago’s wings stiffened, and he felt the direction of the wind change.

“Whatever you think, it's not like that!” The Mirror wasn’t as stupid as Arago first thought. He had been careful on the journey here, he didn’t think he had been followed. Was it truly a coincidence that a clanmate happened to catch him across the border? Even if Gunk didn’t figure out what was going on, if he told another clan member who did…

“You’re here to confess to someone, aren’t you.” Gunk grinned. More drool dribbled out of his mouth.
Arago was too dazed to figure out a lie, or if he even needed to. Despite the pounding in his chest, clearly there wasn’t enough oxygen getting to his brain.

“I… don’t know why you would think that.”

Gunk gestured to Arago’s hip, where his pearl pocket was. A piece of paper peeked out treacherously. The note. The evidence. This was it. Arago would need to skip town and start a new life for the 5th time. Probably no one would miss him. They didn’t notice when he was gone for large chunks of the day, why would they.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed about your feelings. Leave the love letter, and I’ll take you home. Here.” He trotted a small distance, inspecting a few rocks clustered around a twisted willow. After nodding to himself, he lifted one up. “Stick it under this rock. Is it a poem? Or no, gotta be a riddle. Shadow dragons love riddles.”

Gunk absolutely COULD NOT be allowed to see the contents of the letter. The fact that it had slipped Arago’s mind was unacceptable. But he had a way out, and he knew he needed to take it. He gritted his teeth. “Okay. You’re right. But please don’t tell anyone.”

“I promise.” Gunk winked, in that weird, Mirror-y way where one eye on each side closes.

After stowing the note under the rock, Arago turned to follow his annoying clanmate. He was just glad to be leaving the woods at this point, even if the whole operation was a disaster. “Okay, let’s go.”

Gunk bounded off into the forest, not checking to see if Arago was following. The Pearlcatcher awkwardly trotted to keep up, his flowy clothing getting under his feet and making it difficult to keep pace. He didn’t risk flying for fear of hidden branches smacking him in the face, but he spread his wings to help keep his balance in the uncertain terrain. “Slow down!”

The scenery began to change as they neared the border. Between the Wasteland and the Tangled Wood, chaotic magic surged. Long fingers of contagion wrapped around trees and poked into the earth, and the musty smell of dead leaves hung heavy on the misty air. It was still cold and wet, but the impenetrable darkness that hung over shadow territory seemed to ebb and flow like a tide. Some days you could see a little further into the forest than others.

Arago could tell they were getting closer by how he sunk further into the ground, saturated by water. The fen they had stumbled into was dying. The groundwater that fed it was growing too acidic from contamination, and parasitic Plague algaes thrived, feeding off of the native plants.

When he caught up to Gunk, the Mirror was gnawing on something, a rat tail trailing out of his mouth like a spaghetti noodle. “You’re slow.”

“I’m elegant,” Arago hissed, wiping his claws off on his already ruined garment.

“Your mane is too long, there’s sooooo many leaves in it. Do you have to cut it?” Gunk tilted his head, lifting one crest in curiosity.

“Not every Pearlcatcher can grow as long a mane as my family,” Arago boasted. “The ancient Glisten line has always been beautiful, with coats the color of pearls. If I cut it, I think my mother would disown me.”

“Why did you leave your family?” Gunk asked, before clamping his jaws on a dead log. Arago watched him curiously as he dragged it across the ground.

“Why are you so curious about my life?” Arago deflected. “You’re the Shadow dragon who turned traitor to join a Plague clan that’s actively killing this forest.”

Arago didn’t feel bad about his statement until he realized Gunk was making a bridge for him across the fen, so he wouldn’t be up to his chest in muck. Gunk didn’t need it, deftly hopping on hidden rocks to cross. “I didn’t betray them,” he said. “I just… didn’t want to live here. I like plague.”

“You like it?” Arago’s voice rang with disbelief. “You like the wastelands full of blinding dust, where the only food to be found is growing on the bones of the last hunter to try? Where something is always hunting you in turn? Where the water isn’t safe for you to drink?”

Gunk climbed partway up a tree to launch himself onto the next rock, leaving deep gouges in the bark. “I like our clan. Our friends. I just… I don’t like riddles. I didn’t like when my brothers played pranks on me, but no one cared that I didn’t like it. I know…” he sighed. “I know I’m not smart, or tricky. I can’t play chess, or the shadow games of cards and pieces with boards as wide as the forest. I’m not subtle. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t cover my tracks behind me. I always felt like I wasn’t built for this place.” He paused, waiting for Arago to catch up.

Arago stayed silent, his manicured claws scrambling to get purchase as he followed Gunk’s lead. The tree was more slippery than usual. It was covered in a thin film of moss that Arago knew would eventually overtake the tree. Like all things in Plague, it was fast spreading and suffocating. A few Shadow lichens valiantly stabbed through, and Arago was eventually able to use them as a foothold and climb up.
Gunk urged Arago to jump. He took a deep breath and leaped, wings flapping, but his feet slipped on the edge of the rock he was aiming for. Gunk grabbed him behind the neck, where a hatchling’s scruff would be, and hoisted him up.

“When I came to the wasteland, it was so much more alive. To me. I guess that doesn’t make sense.” Gunk ducked his head. As they neared their side of the border, Arago could feel it. That subtle pulse under your feet, the rhythm of Plaguebringer’s heart pumping through the contagion. “Nobody cared that I was big and slow. They taught me how to use the body I have. Do you want to see?”

Without waiting for an answer he surged forward, sprinting to cover the ground between them. It must be solid now. Arago didn’t have time to react before Gunk’s jaws clamped down on his leg, knocking him over. He squirmed fruitlessly, but Gunk’s powerful upper body made it impossible to escape.

“See? I don’t need to be sneaky. I can just… be me. And I’m living, in the hardest place there is to live. Now that I come to the tangled wood to hunt, I know that they were wrong. I don’t need to be built for the forest. We will reshape it to fit us.” He offered a hand to help Arago to his feet. Arago was too flustered to take it, tired of being knocked over constantly today.

“And you don’t mind fighting your own kind?”

Gunk shrugged, looking out at the decaying forest around them. “I don’t know that it will happen. A war. I think we’ll just live like this, in between.”

For a moment, Arago wanted to believe it. “That can’t last forever,” he insisted.

“Maybe.” Gunk turned to look at him. “So? Why did you leave?”

Arago felt himself reaching for his pearl before he knew why. Maybe some part of him trusted Gunk when he said he could keep a secret. Well, that couldn’t be true, Arago didn’t trust anyone, but… He pulled the pearl out of his pouch anyway, the weight of it in his arms making him tremble.

The most striking part of it was the ugly, discolored section of the pearl, a dull gray void. Scar-like fractures veined out from it, ruining the rest of the pearl. No matter which way he turned it, there was no angle where the pearl looked whole, unmarred.

“Thanks to that perfect bloodline I was talking about. This was my punishment for…” He ran his claws over the surface, but it brought little comfort. “Well, it’s a long story. I can never fully fix it.”

“Oh… I’m sorry,” Gunk said. It didn’t matter. It was impossible for another breed to understand a shattered pearl, a shattered soul. “But look at it this way, now you get to add new, good memories. Fill in the hole with your weird spit. Layer the pearl with memories of your new family.” Gunk smiled his goofy grin, some of his own weird spit dripping out.

Of course, he had no idea what he was talking about. The sentiment was kind, but it filled Arago with a sense of dread and foreboding. He stowed his pearl inside its pouch, far from view, and nodded his head towards the approaching wasteland. “Let’s go home.”




Arago paced through the clearing, his mind racing. Shadow fog roiled and crashed against him, and he shivered in the blinding cold. Everywhere, purple eyes flashed and gleamed in the branches around him. The delegation were not particularly patient.

“What do you mean you lost it?” barked a
Wildclaw. She was past her nesting years, bedecked in gleaming armor with battle trophies welded onto the surface.

“I mean I was here, at the meeting place, when I said I would be here,” Arago hissed in annoyance. “But someone saw me, so I left the note under that rock right there, and now it’s gone. But whoever was supposed to meet me wasn’t here, so it’s not my fault is it?”

“So his intel is worthless.” The speaker, a Spiral, cackled like this was a standup comedy routine and not a deathly serious situation. They winded around the branches of a tree, their bioluminescent patterns making his form confusing and difficult to track in the dark.

“It’s not! It’s not. I’m sure another Shadow dragon found it, or maybe it was a different rock…” Arago felt his stomach sinking. How had he managed to mess everything up?

A soft spoken Skydancer quieted them, his voice obscured further by the mask he wore over his face. “Allies, be still. One missed meeting does not make a failed war. We must continue planning for the worst.”

The Wildclaw stomped one foot in challenge. “And I should trust a Plagueling’s judgment while my forest withers?”

“You will trust it, or you will not win.” The Skydancer bowed his head in deference. “Don’t forget we have a mutual enemy.”

She growled, fluffing out her feathers, but it was mere display.

“So…” Arago trailed off meekly, glancing out into the forest. “Do you want my intel, or not?”

“I smell an intruder.” The large, glassy eyes of the spiral bore through the woods, making something of the misty shapes within. They grinned, body snapping forward like a snake.

A large, lumbering shape barreled forward from between the trees, trying to throw the Spiral off. Gunk skidded to a stop in front of the delegation, looking around wildly, his eyes uncomprehending. A note drenched in spit peeked out between his teeth.

“Arago!” he spit it out, trying to run to his clanmate, but was stopped by a tangle of brambles magically winding around his legs. The Spiral, content with their work, scooped up the missing note. “I’m here to save you!”

Oh. Oh no. Arago looked to his co-conspirators helplessly, unsure what to do.

“You know this dragon?” The Wildclaw paced around him, unimpressed.

Arago looked down, away from the piercing gazes of the delegation, and the forlorn look on Gunk’s face. “He’s nobody.”

Gunk struggled against the brambles, which only twisted tighter around him. “It’s not your fault. They’re forcing you to do this. We can fight, I’ll get you out of here! I won’t leave you behind.”

“No,” Arago said, looking into his eyes with resignation. “Gunk, you barely know me. Do I look like a hostage?”

Gunk thrashed his head, yanking one of the thorny vines off him with his teeth. “Why would you betray them?” he demanded, a bit of blood staining his drool pink. “They took you in when you had no one.”

Maybe Arago could still talk the Mirror out of this. “What our clan is doing is wrong, Gunk.” Even his name was wrong for a Shadow dragon. It was thick and heavy and ugly, a Plague name. “You can’t stop me.”

“Should we kill him?” The Wildclaw asked.

It was not his turn to speak, but Arago cut in coldly. “He’s too stupid to be a threat,” he said. “Who is our clan going to believe? The word of a Shadow dragon, or a Plagueling? He won’t be able to mess up our plans, just let him go.”

As soon as the brambles shifted Gunk was tearing them off. He paused for a moment to stare at Arago, before turning tail and slipping into the dense trees he had been born under.

For the first time in Arago’s long, duplicitous life, he felt something stirring in his chest. As he watched Gunk bound away into the woods, leaving heavy, wet footprints behind him, he realized the ache might be regret.

Credits: This guide to know basic coding This guide to find assets Here for bio template osiem for dividers and icons Vertigris for flight items/sidebars Art by Qomble