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Oh three moons! Oh despicable fate, where have you lead me? The dark has sharpened my sense; I cannot ignore what lays beside me. It is warm, rotted, putrid, I can tell from the feeling of the ground beneath my claws, from the pulsating walls all around me, echoing into my ears. It is flesh, I say, and it has come to devour me, to avenge itself from my ignoble deed!
It is futile to move, to breathe : any place I flee, it flees with me, watching from afar, unseen and unforgiving. I can hear the hurried clacks of the claws of my brethren above my self constructed tomb; it is better if they do not find my body, sullied to their eyes by that horror that no dragon could have imagined.
It is a small comfort to know that my body will return to the soil it was hatched from, and that the horror will stop with my breath, the horrors burried alongside me. For this reason, if you ever find this note, buried by my side, cover me quickly! It is a place of no honor, and I deserve no peace.
It had started on a morning, bleak and gray, during the rain season. It had been ordered to fetch the rations prepared by a small decrepit village, located on the border of the jungle and the marshlands. It was ghastly day, rain pouring down on our back like the holler of the sergeants, deafening us drop by drop. I was wing to wing with my brother, Vernal, a massive dragon of the simplest tastes. We had always butted heads on the topic of the war : I found it necessary, he found it a waste of time, prefering to laze in the sun. It was no surprise then when he decided we should stay in that village to wait for the end of the downpour, putting his comfort above his duty.
I was tempted into following his lead when thunder started to rumble from above us : after all, a soldier struck down by lightning would have been a useless one. Soon enough, we were both down in the small hamlet, him leaving to the closest open door, pretexting it was his given as a soldier to have a bed to lay in, and me, who went to complete our mission.
It was hard to see through the veils of water, the forms of the townsfolk alarming me more than once, distorted by the light into grim specters. They were a strange bunch, silent and watchful, bowing their head as I approached. I wondered for a moment if I had walked into a realm of another kind, their face almost fey compared to mine, mudwing like, but with something of a missing piece. I payed no mind to it after the initial shock, shalking it up to a simple chimera of my tired mind.
But as the storm grew strong, whistling and whipping at my sides, I felt more and more uncomfortable about these vague forms observing me from their perchs and windows, like i was myself a strange beast. It seemed to me that I could catch wordless speeches from time to time, their mouths opening and closing like that of a fish. Once I had reached the point of the rendez vous, I felt an immense relief : under a tent made of cow skin, a completely average, if slightly rotund, mudwing was laying, impatiently tapping his clawtips to the floor. He had lifted his head when he heard me approached, and I remarked a swine like air to his features, one of a dragon who prefered the egoistic comfort of their own little world much more than the thrill of being part of a greater goal. I would have usually been displeased by such a dragon, but after my walk, I felt as if I witnessed my own bigwing lifting his wings to shield me from the elements.
I attempted to strike a friendly small talk, to which he responded with a hast that rubbed me counterscale. Frustrated, I brought up the rain, then the folk.
"You have to excuse them. With the war and all... Quicker you are gone, less likely we are of being struck from..." he gestured to the sky, mimicking a dragon swooping down at the village. "...The other side, you know?"
Before I could add anything else, I was ushered to the rations. The broad dragon repeated that it would be preferrable for me to go, and walked off into the veil of rain. To my surprise, I was unable to spot him at all, craning my neck through the downpour, he had simply disappeared.
I resolved myself to find my brother, and leave this odd village as soon as I was able to, following the comment of the mudwing. Before I had made half my way toward where I had first landed, a profound dismay shook me to the core. The serpentine streets seemed changed, and I was very much lost, my claw prints having been erased by constant battering of the storm. Worse : the figures in the humid mist seemed more monstrous than before, stretched, strained. I may have to admit that, as my sight started to weaken due to the encroaching night, I have screamed in fear at their sight quite a few times, running like a mad hare stalked by the shadow of a hawk.
Oh if I had only turned talon and flew to my dear siblings, waiting in the city of Cragbait! If only I had listen to the swine mudwing, grim omen of my demise! I flew right into their spiteful web, each step bringing me closer to my slef imposed mausoleum.
Perhaps you will take me for a madman, gone awry from the horrors of the war, but the most appalling, most daunting sight I have ever laid my eyes upon laid in this wretched village. My brother, back turned to me, waiting in the downpour. There was a smell in the air, most fetid, like something had polluted the water, some ancient god turned decay, raining his gore upon us. The streets had turned a muddy carmine from the iron soil, I thought, but I am not so sure anymore.
When my brother -oh my poor Vernal! What had I done?- turned his head, it was replaced with ghastly sight, him, but mirrored, perverted, defiled! Distorted through the rain, his features same as the queer townsfolk, now in all my sight! Oh three moons be graced, had I died on the spot, I would have been pleased.
What took the form of my brother, his skin on a foreign body, talked. It was like a viper, or a jungle demon, hissing and spiting, baring long fangs at me through that face I had loved so much. I was shacking cold from the rain, and could not summon an ounce of flame from my body, but it would have been extinguished from that damned storm had I even succeeded. There was nothing else to do.
I seized his neck, and as it looked at me with these eyes that had been his, I tore through it, his loathsome blood mixing with the mud. Then i fled, damned be the rations and this odious village. Be it burned in the war!
I lied when I was approached by the sergeant, and -Moons forgive me- by my siblings. My brother had been taken down by a skywing swipe, and I had to turn back to avoid being killed. I was questioned, but my disarray was strong enough for them to stop, afraid they would break me further.
They left me to roam, simply asking me to visit the medecine drake, a wrinkled old mudwing named Egret. It was on the way to his den that this spreading feeling took hold of my brain, a sick sort of deja vu. I could almost feel the rain pouring on me again, heavy and draining. Again, I felt observed, made a mockery off, in the distorting rain of the obscene jungle village, only here, no water fell from the sky. The ground beneath my feet felt odd, soft, moist, while my vision only showed a dry sandy ground.
I felt I was going mad. For a moment, I wondered if I had ever left the village, if it was simply an hallucination from the exhaustion. The face of Vernal came back to my sight, and I simply knew that he was there, watching me, stalking me with the wicked rolling eyes the townsfolk had, slithering with the downpour. No one else could see the downpour, but it would come, following my trace. I was not meant to leave.
When I started to dig, I could feel the water pooling at my feet, warm like blood just gushed from the vein, sticking to my scales and making each movement a chore. Vernal's breath was on my neck, watching each moves with anticipation, I could just feel my not-brother's form, behind me, stalking like an abhorrant crane, ready to inflict his final judgement. I was supposed to stay. I had abandonned my brother to the horrible hamlet. So it had come to make it right, and with him had brought the ghastly rain.
He is with me now, waiting for me to die as the water slowly fills the hole. I cannot fight it; i have placed a slab of stone on my grave, to be sure I do not rise and trouble my poor siblings. The rain is alive, and it has taken me, filling my brother in a ghoulish shadow. I will soon drown, devoured by that invisible predator. Do not disturb my grave, and do not approach the hamlet, in any promise. You will not find any salvation.