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Rotting, Camo was rotting. He didn't know he could do that. He stared at his shaking claws. He would have preferred not to find out that he could, either. It makes sense, with him being part plant, but he had never thought about it before.
He never had to think of what would happen if the plant part of him just... ceased to function.
The dragon hadn't thought anything of his legs being a bit more yellow, or his leaves just a bit more droopy than normal. He had just felt a little slower than usual, no big deal. It was winter, he was bound to slow down a little bit. Never mind the fact that this had never been the case before.
Then winter turned to spring, spring to summer, and he was only getting slower. He started loosing appetite, just a little bit at a time. This was when he finally noticed it, a sickly yellow-brown had crept up his legs, and was now taking over his leafy tail.
This is fine, he thought.
It will go away on it's own, he thought.
It didn't.
It got worse.
The rot was slow, like talons growing, not that his were doing that anymore. He continued to ignore it. A couple of weeks later his legs started to have holes. Another couple of weeks, and his horns, talons, and scales were brittle. At that point nothing would heal when hurt.
He started avoiding missions, partially to avoid getting hurt when he couldn't heal, and partially to avoid the other skylanders. They would no doubt be able to tell something was up. His body rotting from the inside out wasn't exactly subtle. He ran out of breath frequently, were his lungs falling apart? He couldn't keep food down at all anymore, healing or not. Everything he tried to get down, came right back out. It tasted faintly of mint, like chlorophyll, like his blood.
He spent more and more time on the floor, it was much more effort to get into his bed than it was worth. He ended up moving his bedding to the floor, cleanliness be damned. Did sleeping on the floor help at all? No, but he was a little too far beyond the point of caring now. If it saved energy then it was fine. Overall, he felt, and looked, like shit.
Of course all of this didn't go completely unnoticed, becoming a shut-in is kinda hard to miss. The other skylanders were busy, not stupid. Drobot kept giving him looks that the life skylander couldn't decipher, and sunburn just straight up asked him one day what was going on.
Camo doesn't get sick like other creatures do. As long as he has sunshine, water, and a little food he is good to go, well, before the rotting anyway. So when Sunburn asked about the sickly Rotting spots he had written it off as just being "a bit under the weather". Sunburn had dropped the topic, but Camo didn't know if the other hybrid had truly believed him. Now he'll never know.
Add it to the list of regrets at this point.
He'll never get to see Sunburn find the secrets of the phoenix; Camo knew he would but he wouldn't be there to see it. He wouldn't get to test out Drobot's latest inventions and laugh as they somehow exploded.
He left the skylanders base knowing he would not be coming back. He couldn’t make them watch the end of his slow decline. And maybe just a little selfishly, he doesn't want to see their reactions to his decline either.
He knew this was coming; he knew somewhere in the back of his mind that there was only one way this was going to end. Maybe it wasn't, maybe someone could have found some magic to save him but he hadn't thought of that until too late. Was it too late? Could he go home? He had set up on some abandoned, rainy, sky-island.
He wants to feel the rain, well as much as he can. Most of him is rotten and unfeeling now. Parts of him are so so far gone that they are practically falling off of him.
Some parts had fallen off. He lost his talons a week ago, about 3 months into this madness, while his tail rests a few feet away. Most of his teeth are in a box under his bed, like the worlds worst gift for his friends, if they look. He wasn't sure if he wanted them to look or not. He's not even sure why he kept them. He didn't question it too much.
Maybe he should have left a note too. He thinks of Sunburn and his never ending search, he flinches. He hopes that something of him is left behind here, if only so that Sunburn doesn't add him to his list of things he'll never find.
The point is, that he can't feel the rain very much. Every drop that he is able to feel is like a distant thing. Maybe it's his mental state, shut down a long time ago now, or maybe it's the rotting. It really doesn't matter, the end result is the same.
The plant hybrid rests his head down on the wet grass. It feels nice for a moment before a pang goes through his jaw, he hisses and jerks his head up. He looks down and isn't surprised when his jaw stays on the ground, not like he was using it anyway. The universe must have a cruel sense of irony to take his jaw after he decided to never talk about the rotting. As if it was telling him that if he wasn't going to use it then it was going to take it from him.
Which fine, it can have it. He glares up at the sky as if to scold the universe itself. It doesn't respond, it never does. He doesn't know why he expects it to.
His red eyes narrow and he kicks the jaw away from him, a petty act of anger. It doesn't solve anything, doesn't even really make him feel better, but he'd like to think he can be forgiven for emotional outbursts when he's slowly dying.
Camo lies on his side, and tucks what's left of his limbs close. Man, what a way to go out, not on a mission protecting someone, but slowly, fading away, unable to even save himself.
He lets out something between a cough and a bitter laugh, his lungs hurt, and gives up. Or maybe he'd given up a long time ago; when he choose to say nothing about the rot. Doesn't really matter now does it?