Ludwig

"Wha- no! What is happening to me? This cannot be!"

Ghastly, groaning howls filled the air with the great dragon's roar, a tumbling cacophony of sound as the swaying, mutilated heads attatched to his body tried to scream along with him, unaware of the distress wracking their host. The main head shook out his mane at the noise, groaning low in his throat- his mind was foggy, but not yet rotten enough for him to have forgotten. Not yet gone enough to submit to the warm, sleepy haze of being together again, a family whole once more. He could still remember the great libraries of the sunlight ruins, the grinning faces of what he thought might have been his children. He could not remember what had happened in the space in between when he had been one and when he had lost himself, but he could still remember one thing very clearly; that what he was now was a creature who should not be, a creature that was fabled to tear the heavens down and rock the gods from their seats. He was not Ludwig the Scholar and Holy Blade anymore; he was Ludwig the accursed, a monstrocity that shouldn't be allowed any chance of harming the others, or the very gods he had sworn his undying soul to.

With a deep groan of effort, he rose to his feet, the bulk of his lashing tails steadying him. His other heads swayed, rumbling with hunger, and he snapped at them as they nibbled playfully at his mane, disgusted by their slack, gaping grins. The sand underneath his feet was a bright, bloody red, tinted by the silt of the marshlands that he had wandered along before he came to, and he dug his claws in hard, flaring his nostrils at the scent of death and decay that greeted him. Somehow, he had walked all the way over to the Plaguelands, pursuing, perhaps, a final death there, or to be lost in the maze of the Abiding Boneyard, where he could do no harm. Had he still been alive, he would have been disgusted by the reek; now, he could feel nothing but relief. Perhaps, if he stayed here, the ravenous scavengers of the wastes and the mires would do as they should, and pick him slowly apart, putting him back to rest. It was good to be in the sunlight, basking in the radiance of his creator- but he did not want to shame her any longer, and he did not want to see himself wither away, to become a being driven by hunger. He would wander here, until the rot took his limbs, and he would be returned to the earth he rose from. It would be a kinder fate than what he deserved.