Stigma

"That is the nice thing about committing a crime as sacrilegious as necromancy - Everything else pales in comparison."

“You’ll survive out there, Stigma,” the young Imperial’s clan told him the day he was due to leave them. “Even in strange places, you’ll survive. You will always find a way.”

Another land, another life...Did the laws of the Plaguelands still apply?

Stigma had shown great aptitude in magic as a child, and so the elders had separated him from his family and friends. He’d been pushed to study in the clan’s library, the better to hone his skills. Eventually, he’d learned all he could from his clan. He’d thought he would be allowed to return to his carefree life, but the elders had had other plans.

They had secured a place for him in an Arcane lair. Stigma was to learn all he could about magic till his teachers pronounced him competent or he was called home. He’d hoped he would at least have a companion from his clan, but the elders did not believe in sending him anything besides the bare necessities. He would be alone.

And so, when Stigma reached his new lair, he felt quite desolate. Stigma could only fidget uneasily as new clanmates ambled past his doorway, chattering loudly. He briefly entertained the notion of hiding behind the door—

“Ohh, hallo. Are you new here?”

A confident, self-assured greeting—all the more startling because the speaker wasn’t much bigger than one of Stigma’s toenails. The Imperial blinked as the other dragon fluttered in front of his nose. He stared, cross-eyed, at the Fae.

The Fae gasped. “You’re from the Scarred Wasteland! That is so cool. Hey, are we gonna be roommates? I’m Kangaxx; what’s your name?”

“I’m Stigma,” the Imperial answered. Despite that, he had to admit he was feeling a bit less stigmatized now.

~ ~ ~


Art by TiggerPup91

~ ~ ~

Stigma and Kangaxx made an unlikely pair. While Stigma remained shy and diffident, Kangaxx was the exact opposite. It was as if his tiny frame couldn’t contain his boundless enthusiasm: he was forever zipping back and forth and dreaming up madcap schemes. Once the Fae caught hold of an idea, he couldn’t let it go—and with his jovial words and cheery smile, it was all too easy for him to wiggle out of the scrapes he’d gotten into in the first place. The impulsive, enthusiastic Kangaxx and Stigma, the voice of reason—other friends came and went, but the two of them remained inseparable as they grew up.

Years passed and little else changed. The discipline drilled into Stigma by his elders never left him, and he flourished, taking to different magic and experiments with ease. He was in fact a great help to Kangaxx, and without his assistance, the Fae would have gotten into worse scrapes.

Although sometimes...

“I want those boundaries marked off first,” the head geologist said with a scowl. As her assistants marked safe zones with lines of glowing liquid, the researchers, including Kangaxx and Stigma, fidgeted in their eagerness to explore. They were studying the Crystal Pools, which had been no-dragon’s land for as long as they could remember, but recently the Arcanist had decreed that the land be surveyed so that dragons could harvest the magical crystals for their own use. Still, the going was slow and fraught with danger: the Pools brimmed with magical energy, and a careless spell or action could have disastrous consequences.

Still, the thrill of anticipation outweighed the threat of disaster. As the safe zones expanded, the students started drifting farther and farther out. “Buddy system!” roared the geologist. “No one goes off alone! This means you, Kangaxx!”

“I’ll take care of him, ma’am,” Stigma sighed. He lifted his head. “Hey, Kangaxx, I can carry you if you’d like.”

The Fae settled comfortably between his antlers. “Thanks, Stig. You know, I can’t figure out why they’re still so antsy. I mean, you and I, we’re journeymen now.”

“We have to follow the rules, Kangaxx. And the buddy system is the most important rule of any expedition.”

“I thought it was ‘Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.’”

“Kangaxx, that’s just a platitude.”

The Fae chortled at this. It seemed he was forever finding something to laugh about. As the Imperial gave him a cross-eyed look, he pointed ahead of them. “Hey, look....There’s something weird. Stig, can you go closer? Just a quick look....I really wanna see what it is....”

~ ~ ~
The memories welled up in Stigma’s mind....There was no stopping them. But of course—even though it had been years ago, he was in the Crystal Pools now. The place brought back so many terrible memories.

“The air looks funny....Lemme take a closer look.” And Kangaxx fluttered away. Stigma let out a strangled protest, which went ignored.

“It looks like a tornado of dust—crystal dust! But there’s no wind....Is this a living thing, like an Aer Phantom?”

“Kangaxx, wait, we don’t know what it is.”

He should have tried harder. He had always been diffident and meek; Kangaxx had been the bolder half of the duo. Why couldn’t Stigma have been the bolder one for once? He should have been sterner...but no, he had just blindly gone along with Kangaxx’s ideas. As always.

Kangaxx fluttered closer. “It’s most peculiar....I’ve got it! See how it’s surrounded by all these different-colored crystals, Stig?”

“Kangaxx, don’t touch them—”

“I’m not gonna do that, Stig; even I’m not that stupid.” The Fae laughed quietly. “These crystals’ energies are probably interfering with each other, like the magnets used in the Shifting Expanse. Let me fire up a little magic to make sure....”

A crescent moon rose over the landscape, and Stigma raised his head. The glow of the crystals now looked wan, sickly. It was as if what had happened here before had tainted the place. Given the peculiar nature of the crystals, it was entirely possible.

What had happened before...

Kangaxx cast his spell. The shimmering tornado started to whirl more slowly, the dust coalescing into glimmering shards. The Fae exhaled. “Ah, so it wasn’t alive to begin with. Just bits and pieces from the bigger rocks.” With a wave of his claws, he dismissed the spell.

It should have dissipated harmlessly. Instead, the surrounding crystals started to shiver and hum. The noise became a shrill whine, until even the other researchers heard it. Stigma started to run back to them, but paused when he realized Kangaxx hadn’t budged. He looked back at his friend. “Kangaxx...!”

Kangaxx wasn’t alarmed at all. “Hey, Stig, that’s so weird! It’s—”

The crystals around him suddenly flared. A fire was ignited deep within them—and they exploded. Razor-sharp shards sprayed everywhere and fell in a deadly rain.

Stigma, on the edge of the radius, received only a few injuries. But Kangaxx was not so lucky. The shards plunged into him like swords. His delicate skin and wings were shredded, and he fell to the ground.

And that was it. It happened so fast; first there was a blast of power, and then crystal shards tinkled as they dropped from the air or bounced off unexploded stones. The rest of the group was now running over and shouting questions, but Stigma could barely hear them over his panicked breathing.

“K...Kangaxx?” Inside, he was thinking, “This has got to be another of his jokes. It has to be!” But it wasn’t, and now the other researchers’ questions were turning into wails and screams.

They had kept assuring him it wasn’t his fault. They’d told him that they’d seen and heard him trying to call Kangaxx back to safety and how the Fae had ignored him. They’d never blamed him—but it might have been better if they had.

“It was an accident,” the clan elder said for the nth time. She never tired of saying it, for she knew neither Kangaxx nor Stigma ought to be blamed. She was an old dragon with a compassionate heart and did not want Stigma to carry the guilt.

But she was too late, for the guilt had already ingrained itself in him too deeply. “I could have prevented it,” he mumbled to himself later on. “I knew it would happen to Kangaxx; Kangaxx always gets into trouble; he would have listened to me, but I didn’t try; it wasn’t an accident...”

That was the darkness that drove Stigma: the thought that he had somehow been responsible for his friend’s death. That it hadn’t been an accident, but a sin. Sins had to be atoned for—and he believed he’d found a way....

~ ~ ~
After Kangaxx’s death, other teams had surveyed the Crystal Pools and declared certain sections of them safe to explore. The clans of Sornieth did their harvesting and combat training here—but the place where Kangaxx had died had remained unexplored. No dragons came here now except Stigma, and here he’d made the preparations for his atonement.

Stigma was no longer the soft-spoken dragon who was always eager to help out. His mind was now riveted to a single purpose: his atonement. In the past years, he’d grimly searched for a way to reverse his friend’s death. Time travel was not something he could perform with surety—he’d accepted this with despair after many weary hours of research and failed experiments. But then he’d found another way: the path of necromancy.

It was a dark art, much reviled, for those who were resurrected became slaves of the necromancer and could be compelled to do even the most heinous deeds. It was the ultimate form of disrespect against the dead, sacrilege against the gods. But Stigma thought his friend would understand, and the gods? —Not even the Arcanist had spared a thought for his child, killed on his own territory by the magic he’d urged them to study. No...If the gods hadn’t cared to prevent the death in the first place, they wouldn’t care about it being undone.

Among the crystal pillars, Stigma had made a lair. It housed his magical and alchemical paraphernalia. And there was something more besides, the most important part of the ritual: Kangaxx’s remains. Hard-won after breaking into the graveyard where they’d been buried, and now embedded in a replica of his friend, which Stigma had assembled from various bits and pieces, the origins of which he did not care to remember....No, he couldn’t think about how he’d gotten them. What was important was what they would become.

As moonlight shone down, the crystals absorbed it, and they themselves began to glow. Stigma had already harvested shards of them. They pulsed with eerie green light, and he watched the moon cross the sky. One hour, two hours...

Midnight. The anniversary of Kangaxx’s death. On this day, his spirit was likelier to return to the earth, particularly the place where he had died. Stigma began intoning the words that would call the soul into the vessel he’d prepared. It was a complicated formula, interspersed with tales of times he and Kangaxx had shared together, the better to entice his spirit back. A less-devoted necromancer would have had to read them. Stigma knew all of them by heart.

The shards continued glowing as Stigma chanted over them. And slowly, they rose of their own accord, levitating in the moonlight. Stigma knew that what would come next would hurt, but he could endure it for his friend’s sake.

The shards pressed against his hide. Gently at first—and then they burrowed under his scales and into his flesh. This was where most necromancers surrendered, but Stigma’s only sign of discomfort was the quiver in his voice. His chanting did not falter, and soon the ensorcelled crystals had bonded with his flesh. Their glow did not fade, for now they were powered by Stigma’s life-force. And by their light—a shape! Tattered and filmy, but unmistakably a Fae. Kangaxx...He was here.

The rest of the shards drifted to the simulacrum of Kangaxx. Soon the gems and soul would meld with it, and it would have life....

A faint sound reached Stigma’s ears.

He’d heard that before. He’d thought he’d secured the surrounding crystals, but apparently not; they would rupture again! Forgetting himself, he burst out, “NO!” just as the crystals surrounding Kangaxx exploded.

It wasn’t as violent as the blast that’d killed Kangaxx. Nonetheless, there was damage: the crystals that should’ve melded with Kangaxx disintegrated, and though his soul had now infused the simulacrum, there was nothing to power it. Stigma looked frantically at the crystals on his scales. They still pulsed with his life force. They were supposed to sap his strength and beam it to the crystals on Kangaxx so that he and Stigma would share Stigma’s energy.The Imperial almost wept. He’d come so far, and he no longer had enough life force to share with his friend....

Or did he?

He felt it—power flowing through his muscles, his veins. His heart thundered till he thought his chest would burst with the vigor of it. As he looked around, he saw some exploded crystals lodged in the vegetation clinging to the ground. Others had speared fish in the pools; they flopped weakly, gasping as they died. Life...It was all around him...and the crystals were doing their job, pulling it out and pumping it into Stigma. Life flowed to and from him....

But his friend’s simulacrum remained cold and dead.

“Not for long!” Stigma thought grimly. He stripped the largest gem from his flesh, leaving behind a great hole. It burned like acid, but he didn’t care; he simply thrust the gem into the simulacrum’s chest, felt it driving into the heart beneath. It quivered beneath his hand.

And the heart began to beat....

The simulacrum twitched. It lifted its head. Its eyes were dim and cloudy, like blood in water, and new wounds striated its skin, fresh from the recent explosion.

But it—he—was moving and alive. Alive despite the wounds, despite Stigma’s near failure.

Stigma gasped in relief. His friend was before him once more! Just like old times, Stigma was standing with his friend, smiling at him....

But this time, Kangaxx did not smile back.

~ ~ ~
Stigma had only himself to blame. He had known it would happen. It had been said before: Necromancy makes slaves of those it resurrects. It is the ultimate disrespect against the dead, sacrilege against the gods…

But then he looked at Kangaxx, moving and walking, and triumph rose within him again. Triumph —and not a bit of pride. He had done it! He’d done what none of their colleagues had dared attempt, and he’d resurrected his friend!

Still, he wasn’t stupid enough to bring Kangaxx back to their clan. Instead, he took Kangaxx with him and sought shelter with a different clan. Though they were wary of the newcomers, Stigma constructed a plausible lie: he was a physician and Kangaxx was his ailing patient. The dragons took pity on them and let them stay.

Stigma monitored Kangaxx carefully. It wasn’t entirely an act: His friend was no longer the sprightly, active Fae he’d known. He was perpetually silent, and even his frills gave no hint of his emotions. In a marked reversal of their previous roles, he always did exactly as Stigma ordered him to now. When Stigma commanded him to “act normal and build your den,” he disappeared for long periods of time. Their clanmates frequently caught brief, disquieting glimpses of him carrying items which they didn’t care to examine too closely.

Things came to a head when the night sentry caught him. When the normally-unflappable Wildclaw saw what Kangaxx clutched in his talons, he let out a scream of revulsion.

Bones—the Fae had been collecting bones, some of which looked freshly dug-up. "Grave-robber!" the dragons roared in disgust and outrage. They dragged Stigma out of his den and threw him to the ground beside the silent, impassive Kangaxx.

"He's sick," Stigma protested, desperately clinging to his lie. But the clan pressed in closer, threatening rather than fearful now. "That he is—sick in the head!" one of them spat.

Some of them actually believed Stigma at first. They soothed him, saying that they'd have their own healers take a look at Kangaxx. It didn't take long for them to discover his true nature, and when they did, Kangaxx's fate was sealed. He was to be exterminated—“You can’t execute him!” Stigma protested. “How dare you pass such judgment!”

The clan leaders looked steadily at him. One of them rose to his feet. “It is not execution,” he stated gravely, “but euthanasia. A being as wretched as that...Do you think it longs to stay in this world?”

Stigma closed his ears to those words. The clan would no longer believe him; he couldn’t allow them to take Kangaxx away again! He would have to escape with his friend, find some other place. It was no longer safe in the Starfall Isles, and Stigma didn’t dare return to his birth clan. He’d have to go...elsewhere....

~ ~ ~


~ ~ ~
Another land, another life. Even in strange places, you’ll survive. You will always find a way....

The Clawrift Clan was in need of an alchemist. They found few interested applicants, for Clawrift was dominated by the Crimson Claw Mercenaries, and one did not do business lightly with them.

Carmin, the clan leader, was in charge of the selection process. She turned many applicants away, for they were too curious, too likely to pry at things they didn’t understand. But one of the applicants, an ominous Imperial with blank red eyes, made her pause. Despite his solid stance, there was an air of furtiveness around him. She studied his assistant, an equally blank-looking Fae, and decided he wasn’t a threat.

And that was how Stigma came to the Clawrift Clan. Although he had been appointed by the leader herself, he was not well-received by the other dragons. His occasional doom-laden pronouncements did not endear him to them. Still, his company was preferable to Kangaxx’s. The silent Fae was listless most of the time. But occasionally he would disappear and then return after dark, cradling certain irregular items in his claws. The Spymaster always shivered and made the sign against evil when Kangaxx passed him. At times he whispered how the Fae was building a nest of bones. Nobody really believed him, for Kangaxx was quite capable of assisting Stigma in his experiments, even the more complicated ones; he was hardly the feral animal the Spymaster professed him to be. But they didn’t stop feeling uneasy, either.

Carmin was no fool. Suspicious dragons were dangerous dragons. She could speak to the older members in time, but for now...

“I would like to apologize for how some of the others are treating you and Kangaxx, Stigma,” Carmin said to the alchemist one night. It was just the two of them, and their talk was private.

Stigma nodded. “Your Leadership is most kind,” he answered perfunctorily.

“Indeed—considering that their fears of you are not entirely unfounded.”

Stigma stared at her. Did they...know? It wasn’t just his resurrection of Kangaxx, but also...

“Kangaxx, they’re going to execute you,” Stigma hissed as he unlocked the door. He’d stolen the keys from the guard he’d murdered, and they had to leave quickly. Soon the body would be discovered, or else someone would come by to check....

The Fae automatically scooted into Stigma’s waiting paws. The Imperial lifted him up. “Hold on tight. I’ll carry you....”

Just like before.

“They’ve killed him!” The screams were beginning to sound out of the darkness. As Stigma lumbered towards the door, he heard them getting closer...closer...

“Murderers, abominations!”

The gems on Stigma’s body flared. As they did, he felt a little bit of his life fall away.

It was a great boon, a side effect of the botched ritual. The exploded crystals had sapped the life and magic from the environs, transferred it into him. Stigma was nearly indestructible—for now.

It wasn’t perfect. He could be damaged, and eventually his life force would normalize, and so would his life span. Death would come to him, in time. But for now, he was quite happy to share his energy with Kangaxx—and he would use the added magic to protect them both if he had to. That was the nice thing about committing a crime as sacrilegious as necromancy. Everything else paled in comparison.

Seconds later, he was soaring into the darkness, the eldritch glow of his crystals eclipsed by a scudding cloud. But it took longer for the screams of his former clanmates to fade from his senses.

Carmin’s touch broke him from his reverie. The Fae was patting his paw. “You don’t want to talk about it? That’s fine—there are many things my clan doesn’t wish to talk about, either. We can respect your privacy—if you can respect ours as well.”

It took Stigma a few seconds to realize what she was saying. When next he spoke, he chose his words very carefully: “Then Kangaxx hasn’t giving you any...um, trouble?”

“Why, not at all. Well, a few dragons say he discomfits them,” and Carmin shrugged, “but then, so do ghosts and toads. I’ll talk to them. I will let them know you and Kangaxx are not to be bothered or harmed.” Her eyes sharpened as she spoke the last couple of words.

Stigma felt a bit light-headed as he left the room. Not with shock or anger, but with relief. They might have been found out—he couldn’t be sure how much Carmin knew, and he believed it would be imprudent to ask right now. But he and Kangaxx had at least cleared this great hurdle together: against all odds, they’d found a clan, or at least a leader, that didn’t shun them. Now, all they had to do was survive.

Stigma smiled grimly. He was a Plague dragon born and bred, and surviving was what he did best. The words of his birth clan’s elders rang in his ears....

“You’ll survive out there, Stigma. Even in strange places, you’ll survive. You will always find a way.”

~written by Disillusionist (254672)