Tasmin

“Well,” Tasmin said to herself, “you’ve finally done it.”

The Ooze Spire had once been the center of the clangrounds. It was a great oak, was, was formerly a great oak, one of the many consequences of the First Seed. In her duty to the Plaguebringer Tasmin had conquered it, defeated it, enslaved it, brought it to standards. A hollow tower of rot, whose putrid sap had been sculpted, hardened, into platforms, into nests.

Once, the dragons of the clan roosted in these boughs of amber-muck. Now Tasmin had driven them all out. Driven them all away. She was alone, alone with herself in the Ooze Spire.

“Poor Berandus, I think, the most,” Tasmin said to herself. “You were his charge. Oh that is not a light thing for a Guardian, and even changed into Fae the impulse surely remains. You were his charge.”

“Yes,” Tasmin agreed with herself, pacing the edge of the sap-roost. Below, below the great drop to the distant, gently-roiling earth threatened death in misstep. A delightful risk. “Yes, it must be painful for him. So painful. Imagine how strong he’ll grow! A broken heart knows to be wary. Knows how to defend itself. How generous I am! I have given him a great gift.”

“Poor Deleterious,” Tasmin then said to herself. “He came to keep an eye on you, and caught your eye, instead. Did you not love him?”

“Of course,” Tasmin answered herself. “The distance pains me all the more as well! I will grow stronger for it. Pity those who find comfort and routine. They will stagnate and die. Their bones will emerge, the death waiting within, to claim them.”

“This clan was once united,” Tasmin said, still said, still argued with herself. “Now it has splintered. Your daughters each run off-shoots of their own. Petrichor, sweet innocent Petrichor, her paranoia about you is finally to be rewarded. Their Quarantine Zone, what terrors will they imagine you get up to here, alone?”

“The truth, certainly, I have no intention of hiding it,” Tasmin answered herself. “I love her as well, in my own way. She is truly a worthy enemy. How excited I am! We shall have such conflict! How we will excel the other with our war!”

“Do you remember,” Tasmin asked herself, “when you were but a simple, innocent Fae? A hundred more feet and we would have been born in the Arcane. Do you ever regret the life you could have had?”

“Always,” Tasmin said. “I collect my regrets like scars. My skin I’ve sloughed into slime and sludge. My bones I’ve exposed living and indomitable. Arms I’ve extended in their hundreds from my back. Things I have encouraged to grow on me. I have changed. I have put myself through it! I suffer with every breath. And I live. I live. My body melts and I live. What an example to the clan I will be.”

“A clan now apart. Splintered, divided, in conflict with itself,” Tasmin warned.

“Yes,” Tasmin agreed. “And us, alone, here, on the Ooze Spire.”

“Alone?” Tasmin asked. “No, that simply isn’t possible. I don’t think We can ever be alone again.”

Tasmin smiled at herself, and Tasmin smiled back. The Ooze Spire was empty now, but for Tasmin, and Tasmin, and Tasmin, and Tasmin, and Tasmin, and Tasmin, and Tasmin. She had long ago hit the wall of creativity in disease-craft. Melt the skin? She’d done it, and to herself at that. Warp it, grow it, infest it? Easy. Simple. No. Unimaginative.

Once she had sought to create a coterie of fae of each element, and wield them, united, as if she had 10 extra limbs. A dragon of every element she would become! But no. She couldn't be 10 dragons at once. It had not worked like that. She couldn't be more than one dragon.

Could she?

Yes.

A disease set out to replicate itself. A disease was life. And so she had made of Herself a disease. The ultimate infection. Tasmin. Not a fever, not a sore throat, a cough. Herself. Here in the Ooze Spire she would collect and refine Herself into purer strains. Here she would break the true limitation she had found on herself.

She could be more than one dragon. Heck, she could be every dragon, if she really tried. Did a disease not desire to spread? Was she herself not the most robust disease Sornieth would ever see?

She would infect Sornieth with Herself. Dragons, their lineages, identities, devoured, reduced into Tasmin. Should they resist, survive, how strong they would be! Should they falter, then it would be her, Tasmin, who would emerge, the superior, singular survivor, the ultimate and last dragon. A World of Tasmin. The greatest exemplar of Plague flight.

“What exciting work we have ahead of us,” Tasmin said to her many, many Selves.

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