Consecrated

After moving from the Arcane lands to Plague, the dragon once known as Shinra heard the call of the Plaguebringer, and was plunged into the Wyrmwound. Dragons who had fallen before her attached to her side, Mako and Cetra. Together they created a new creature- an emperor.

This emperor, however, was able to think and control herself. To stay in control, she spent all her time worshipping the gods.

---

It started the very night they moved to the Scarred Wasteland. Just inher dreams, at first, filling them with strange visions of blood andbone and vast expanses of mutated flesh…but it wasn’t long beforeshe saw them constantly in the corner of her vision, until all she could see there was a pair of great red eyes set in an ancient yellowed skull of a face.

Come, the Plaguebringer’s fell voice called in her mind, showing her such clear images of a massive, gaping maw in the earth, full to the brim with disease and contagion. Come here.

And how was she supposed to resist a summons from a deity? This had to be a good omen…perhaps a sign of approval from the very goddess that so graciously allowed them a place to live in Her lands. So she had eagerly gone to the very place that the Plaguebringer had shown her, completely disregarding the attempts of a few lonely strangers to warn her about the danger ahead. What did they know? She was here because the very spirit of this land had asked for her; the concerns of others, even her own clan, were irrelevant.

She was needed. It didn’t matter for what.

It was the only thought in her head, as she swayed perilously on the edge of the Wyrmwound itself, staring at the bubbling, seething mass of reddened pus and gore, and other things best not contemplated, even in the presence of its god. And when she lifted her head to look through the choking, putrid haze of filth and disease, for just a moment…she could swear she saw a pair of great red eyes staring back at her.

Now the voice was significantly more physical, snarling out over the hissing and burbling of the virulent lake. “FALL.”

Shinra smiled, and her limbs went out from under her, sending her falling head-long into the warm mass below with a single sickening sound.

-

She never could remember precisely what happened between that and crawling back out, save for faint impressions of burning and warping into something entirely new, different. But she didn’t need to remember. She had obeyed their deity, and in return, she had been gifted with something new, unique, that no other dragon before her had been blessed with–

She was mad, utterly mad, did she not see what had just happened to them?! It was wrong! They weren’t something good but an abomination! They shouldn’t even exist–!

But she turned her head to the right and bumped the other disease-infested head there so sharply that the panicked flow of thought from it stopped. This was not wrong, and their deity would not (could not) err so badly. This was–

A unique experience, wasn’t it? Exactly what she had been looking for, when she threw herself into the Wyrmwound, out of pure scientific curiosity. What better way to learn about how it affected dragon-kind (without resorting to kidnapping, of course) than by inflicting it on herself? She held no innate terror of the tales of Emperors and Empresses; no, this new form that others regarded with such horror was a delight, and now it was time for her to–

But now it was the pus-covered left head’s turn for a head-bump from the center. No. This was not a gift to be played with like a toy, or examined like a particularly interesting insect. This was a blessing from the Plaguebringer, and it would be treated as such.

A blessing? She would call getting attacked by Beastclans and forced into the Wyrmwound a blessing?!

What a shame, that their dominant personality was so very un-curious.

But even a dragon as kind as Shinra could be stubborn on subjects dear to her, and dear to her this was. Uncoordinated masses of limbs clumsily pulled their massive body forward, still dripping with sickness and riddled with decay, and even with the left head’s grumbling and the right head’s weeping, her head lifted higher and higher, until she could look back and see two pinpricks of red through the yellowed haze.

She could have sworn she saw a skeletal smile beneath them, before they disappeared over the ridge and out of sight.

-

The Left had once been Mako, and she remembered exactly what she had been doing. She wanted this, and she gloried in exercising their new form, raising her head to the sky and laughing in joy. She had been made for this, to ascend beyond dragon and into something more.

But it was by the grace of the Plaguebringer, the little Shinra had been swift to remind her. They had been just as likely to die or turn into something mindless and monstrous in daring to enter the Wyrmwound unprotected; but instead, their deity had smiled upon them, and they had been granted something that would speak testaments to Her glory for as long as they all should live.

How did she know it wasn’t just chance?

How did the Left know that it wasn’t? And hadn’t she seen the eyes across the lake as surely as she herself had, before falling?

…Maybe she had. Maybe she hadn’t.

But she had seen it in memories that she knew were not her own. Even as a Lightning Imperial, a stranger to this world, the other had to have recognized them as not just another dragon’s, or some random monstrosity lurking near the Wyrmwound’s edge?

But what made her so sure that they were a god’s?

She had been called there by Her. And maybe…the Left had been, too, even if she didn’t know it. And what other power could make three into a single whole, with a working body and perfectly clear minds?

It still sounded foolish. But she could see the Center’s memories as easily as the Center could see her own, and the evidence was a little too convincing for her to stay easy calling it a lie. And hadn’t even Hezora, her stern Ridgeback mentor in all things science, told her that he had laid eyes on her homeland’s god before, in his great spire amongst the stormclouds? …There was little to say that the Plague goddess couldn’t exist in the same world, either.

She understood now, didn’t she? Was there any wrong in giving thanks to a deity that all the stories and accounts claimed to live at the Wyrmwound, and that had probably saved them from a gruesome end in its depths?

…Maybe not.

-

The Right, who had once been Cetra, just wanted to go home, even though she knew it would be nothing but ruin now. The young little Wind Imperial had fled until her wings ached, but they hadn’t stopped coming. She had even tried to lose them over the Scarred Wasteland, but they were relentless, and Talonok spears jammed into just the wrong spots had disabled a wing so thoroughly that she had fallen, fallen, fallen, the lake of gore and pestilence below swallowing her up like a great monster–

But was this really as monstrous as death itself? Shinra always asked, somewhere in the back of her mind.

…Anything had to be better than this.

They were alive? They could still breathe, think, feel, even if their body was no longer quite the same. They went through a process that usually created the worst of monsters, and survived–with their minds intact. She could think of plenty of worse fates.

But she wanted her home back. She wanted her family back.

But what she wanted…no longer existed.

She knew that! She couldn’t think about anything but that, and Shinra had to know that by now!

And she was sorry for that. She really was, even as she looked at this form and merging and considered it a blessing. No one deserved such things.

Endless “sorry"s didn’t change anything. She still had no clan, no family, no way to undo what had just been done. Was she still convinced that this life was so much better?

And Shinra had left her alone, for a while. But it wasn’t permanent; she had piped up again, and now she had another question for her, that she could answer or not answer. What could she accomplish by dying?

…She had no answer. All she had wanted was something different than this.

But was this so bad? It looked terrifying and terrible to most eyes, sure…but they moved and breathed and even flew all the same, though not for nearly as long or far as dragons–and they could walk all the same. And they felt no urge to kill, or to do harm to those around them, or any such atrocities. Could she still, in any sincerity, call themselves a monster in anything but appearance?

Again, she had no answer.

She felt so badly for a young dragon that had lost so much, but survival was a victory against those that had hurt her. She could survive…as a part of a whole that no Beast (and certainly no dragon) would ever dare stand against, when they were so marked with their Plaguebringer’s favor. No one would dare touch her ever again. No one would dare touch those that she cared about ever again, even though she had to start all over to do so.

…They wouldn’t lose everything again?

They wouldn’t. And her clan would gladly accept someone so marked with their deity’s blessings. And with the three of them so inextricably linked…she would never have to be alone again. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

Maybe it wouldn’t be.

-


They took a while to find their way back. The road home was unclear and full of uncertainties, and only one of them had the memory of where it was…not to mention their initial lack of coordination making even walking difficult, let alone flying. But they were one, they would learn as one, and eventually, they taught themselves to move as one. They were three parts, sure, but parts of a whole, and there was no turning back, now that their deity had gifted them with it–and make no mistake of it, now they were in agreement about how much of a gift this truly was. One of them seeking change, the other seeking refuge, and herself…she was called to lead them, and convince them that their Plaguebringer was the greatest of gods, deserving of the greatest of devotions.

And with that knowledge and the demonstrations of their sanity and grand power, her clan’s hasty cries of "monster” and “Emperor” rapidly turned to “blessed”…and “priestess”.

Priestess. That was what they were destined to be, in the end, teaching those around them (particularly the young) of the glorious Plaguebringer’s ways, and even extending their vast reach to the other lands to draw new followers to them like a beacon in the wilderness.

It was a fate they gladly accepted, thinking separately, but moving towards the same unified purpose.

After all, their goddess had performed this grand miracle, turning them Empress without a hint of madness and lust for destruction…What could be more worthy of praise and adoration than a deity willing to go so far for a few lonely strangers in the wilds? They owed Her their lives, and they would show Her the gratitude that She truly deserved in word and deed.