Pandemic

Pandemic

____________

Time is forgotten between cracks of stone, only the decaying earth counting each second before it can truly die. Across vast stretches of once beautiful lands, lies only a maze of molds and mildew, blood-red mosses and brackish water all mushed together into clumps of goo. Rivers were long-bent into oxbows and dried up, and the carvings they once left behind were one of the few places not covered in muck and sludge. These old canyons, likely around for longer than some draconic species - much less the modern era - often had names used by the locals, just to distinguish what crawled and slithered around where.

Another important note about those locals - tensions run high for different reasons every day of the week. Couriers go missing and nobody can find who’s responsible, dangerous creatures are chased from one territory to another and end up getting someone hurt, someone’s dabbling in magic or getting just a bit too aggressive when others need to pass through, the like and all that. In such a dangerous environment, who could blame them? Who could blame the weary and wary when the Fiendscape canyons, another maze of red moss clinging to bone white stone, suddenly had a new and dangerous denzin that couldn’t be reasoned with?

They didn’t have a name, so they called her Pandemic. They didn’t have a name, but they had the claw marks on a traveler to tend to that festered beyond any normal infection. They didn’t have a name for the decaying effect that eventually claimed the dragon’s limb, leaving a scarred amputated survivor, and they never got a name from the hissing and feral freak inside those cracks, the one that slithered throughout and took no mercy on any living soul in her domain. No matter how small. No matter how large.

With her toxic claws? Nothing was ever too big to take on, even as a tiny little spiral. Her striations let her blend into the mossy walls and ambush whatever she deemed fit, her skeletal markings a camouflage to the walls. Something interesting, though, was how she seemed to appear from nowhere… She’d tell a different story, if she was ever inclined to speak to someone. She could, after all. She wasn't feral, she just… let the others believe it, as it would be a better deterrent than the complicated politics from upgrading her social status beyond recluse.

Her parents lived in the same canyon. And the parents before them, and the parents before them. The reason she was the first one of the lineage to be seen was the same reason she came to be feared; her toxic claws and ability to kill with them. Her family camouflaged to the rock and lived as hidden bug catchers, just living off of the quiet security and various beetles the moss grew.

Her hunger, her savagery, started when as a hatchling, a dead mouse fell from above. Maybe some hawk had lost its grip. Maybe she scared it with her hungry yapping as an infant. But the alien morsel was dropped to taunt her, and the temptation was taken along with the hopes of her being a normal child. She got the taste for real food, not just bugs, not just the crunchy scraps. The real deal. The one she learned to take using the family trait nobody before her ever tried to experiment with; their powerful venom. No matter where it came from, she’d get her way with food and gluttony using those claws.

Eventually her aggression became too much of an issue, and her family turned on her. She could have finished them all off, she had the skills far beyond the mere bug catchers; she could have had the whole canyon to herself, but dedicated one scrap of mercy to let them stay in their deeper, huddled cave and take the outer rim of the canyons for herself after threatening them into submission before a fight broke out. What did she have to prove? A superiority over her family, to settle within herself that she was better, despite being an odd one out in a thriving colony of spirals? Perhaps. Perhaps that’s why she hunted even when it never fulfilled her. Something was missing from the action.

Little did she know, a certain guardian was hired to fix the problem of the spiral’s violence. Pandemic could never have known that her slinking was spotted by the keen eyes of a warrior, and allowed to get her close enough to be tempted into the dim clouded light of a rotting sky, fully exposed. She never knew. She dove for the front leg, slithering like the snake she was, and immediately a clawed foot slammed down onto her neck and pinned her to the ground, another hind foot hopping over onto her body and keeping all feet firmly pressed into the ground, exciting a hiss from the plague-born and a chuckle from the massive warrior.

“A feisty one, huh? Wouldn’t want to know what those claws would do… I’m Crystal. What were you even thinking?”

Not only did this “Crystal” have the audacity to fight back, but to win, but to dominate Pandemic for the first time in her life?! This would be an insult to a prideful dragon, a crime to one who cared for their image. Pandemic held no such qualms, for she’d found her life’s unicorn - someone to look up to. Someone who was actually better, and proved it without the crying and fuss she so hated. Her voice was cracked and dry from disuse, but she was still able to squeak out from her grapple,

“H-Have your way then - you c-caught me, yes yes?”

“Do you believe I want to kill you, Pandemic?”

“What… What call me?”

“Your name. And I won’t be killing you, not if you’re willing to-”

“A name?? I have, name? YES. Willing! I live? I go with Crystal, the strong? I fight again, I go-”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, little spiral, though I’m surprised you are so close to the truth. You see, I founded a group called the Warriors of Aegis…”

Interesting. To “Protect” was a new concept to the spiral, but sounded… rather ideal? As if that might be the piece she'd been missing... The reason to take up claw and fang she always lacked.

Lore by ViolentViolet77

Bio Template by TrickyLai

Art by Conviction