Split 13

I quickly put my shirt back on and went back to the canteen, giving the lame excuse of having spilled something else on my shirt some time back, and that the stain never quite came off. It wasn’t the most brilliant of excuses, but I hoped that it worked, given the weird look that everyone else was giving me. Someone at the table made a comment poking me about whether it was about that little ‘incident’ that happened to me, but I shook it off with a nervous laugh, citing that that was not the case.

The rest of the day suddenly seemed to go by a lot faster, and before I knew it, I was back home, in the bathroom, stripping my shirt off and placing myself in front of the mirror, where I took a good look at what had happened.

I was growing scales. In a small patch on my upper-left patch were a series of dark green scales, all of the firm and smooth to touch. I dragged a finger over my chest and felt the scales, engrossed in the alien sensation, before I realised that there was a bit of dead skin flaking off at the side of the patch. With a tug that I would soon regret, the dead skin gave way, tearing a huge streak of skin off my chest, coming clean off at the other side of my chest. I dropped the dead skin in both horror and disgust, as it gave way to more green scales, along with some larger, white-ish plate-like ones in the centre of my chest. I ran my finger over all of the exposed areas, feeling the scales for the first time; they felt exactly like how they should have in Vernia. I had to give it to the developers of Vernia, with whatever technique they had used to generate the sensations felt in the game, they were pretty damn good at it. However, given my current state of panic, it was understandable that I was quick to overlook that and instead panic at my fading humanity. It was going faster, and I had to find a way to fix this soon.

-o.=.o-

I awoke again the instant that I had gotten back into Vernia, in the light of the afternoon sun. Time was getting hard to keep track of now, given that Vernia seemed to be operating on its own time now, which I had no real sense of in comparison to the real world. Harold was already logged on, roasting something that he had caught over a fire, in preparation for lunch.

“Your food’s over there.” He said, nodding his head at a few deer carcasses that were heaped into a pile behind him.

I shrugged and ate quickly, helping to pack up what I could of the camp with my massive claws, before we saddled up once more and were off, back into the air.

It was another long, boring flight ahead for the both of us, with nothing more to do other than to watch the scenery go by.

“So... what do you do?” I asked, trying to break the silence.

“Huh?” Harold replied, confused.

“I mean, we’ve talked about stuff before, but I realise that I don’t know who you are.” I said.

“Well, I’m not more than an average nobody, I guess.”

“Whaddya mean, ‘average nobody’?”

“Well,” Harold said, seeming to look for words, “I’m just a regular guy.”

“Yeah, so what do you do for a living?” I replied nonchalantly.

“Ah, that.” He said, “I work as a gardener, I look after a few gardens for private estates, take care of a small on at home in my apartment. It’s hard work, and doesn’t pay too much, but it puts food on the table.”

“Ahhh...”

“Well, what about you?” Harold asked back.

“Me?”

“No, the sky.” He replied sarcastically, “Of course I mean you.”

“Well, I’m a student.” I said, “Not the most popular of students around, just or at least, was a quiet nobody in school.”

“I see.” He said, nodding.

The rest of the flight encompassed of nothing more than sparse conversation and small talk, mainly about our own lives out there in the real world, Harold sharing some of his more... interesting gardening experiences while I shared my fair share of tales from school and camps. Turned out that Harold had a pretty interesting job, despite it always seeming to be rather boring. From chasing garden pests out of someone’s place to mishaps about mowing the wrong lawn, there was an occasional burst of activity here and there that made his ordinarily dull job less dull. In turn, I shared my experiences with him and my desire to (hopefully) become a psychologist one day, to delve more into a series of questions that I could never quite find the answer to. There were many things I wanted to know about how the human mind worked, from how our thinking processes worked, to why we make certain choices in our life, to more trivial things, like why we had likes and dislikes.

It was a few more hours into the flight before we neared the town of Jerbanhaum, our next destination, but long before we reached it, there was a scent of trouble in the air. Thick, black plumes of smoke were rising from the city ominously, and from a distance, one could see fire ravaging the city through and through.

I squinted my eyes and looked, spotting multiple figures, no bigger than specks in the distance, fleeing from the inferno that would have been the village, and with an adjustment of my wings, we sped on towards the village. Nearing the village, I circled around the area a few times, and Harold pointed out a group of people crowding around the outskirts of the village, which we assumed to be refugees of the fire. I took the shortest route to them and landed with an audible ‘thump’ behind the group, startling the group. Harold jumped off immediately, an arrow in hand, while I, trying not to assume the worst, approached the group slowly. However, as I neared the group, it was apparent that it was not a group of villagers, but rather, a group of men surrounding the villagers.

There was a brief hustle as most of the bandits drew their weapons and rushed at me, while a handful of them grabbed women and children alike and attempted to make off with them, the grabbed victims screaming out in terror. Harold hardly had a chance to nock an arrow in his bow before I took a large swing at the approaching bandits with my claws, knocking most of them back and almost disembowelling those who had received the brunt of the attack. As those few lay dying in pools of their own blood and intestines, I roared and bore down on the rest of them, receiving a slash to one of my forepaws as a response. I hissed snapped at the closest bandit with my jaws, breaking the puny man into half in a messy fashion. In the corner of my eye, I could spot Harold running after the few who had run off with the villagers, leaving me to handle the rest on my own. However, he had not gone away without providing me with some form of assistance, which was made obvious by the few corpses around the group that had been victims of his arrows.

The remaining bandits were quick to position themselves among the women and children, holding them hostage and making the situation a much more delicate one. It was far too late for me to use my acid breath on the bandits now, since there were people I was trying not to hit, and neither could I attempt to slash at them without risking the villagers. Humans were rather frail things, both combatants and non-combatants alike, thus putting me at a sizable dilemma.

As I held my ground, pondering as to how I would be going about this matter without killing a villager, the bandits began to pelt me with both arrows and crossbow bolts from where they were, much to the terror of the women and children.

I hissed as the arrows bounced off me while the bolts put shallow puncture wounds in me, which stung, a lot.

Do something, you arsehat. I thought to myself, hissing and backing off slowly under the torrent of sharp projectiles. Suddenly, as if complying to my wishes, my body began to move under its own accord, backing off faster and much farther than I had been doing myself. In the process of it all, I was powerless to do anything, but a single word echoed off into my mind, like a voice in my head. Mine. was all I heard, a single, guttural version of my own voice sounding off. At once, I knew who it belonged to, but kept mum as I watched my virtual body move on its own accord.

In a rather unexpected move, I felt myself run forward, suddenly bursting through the treeline before I let out a glass-shattering roar, literally knocking everyone off their feet. Using the chance, I picked up some of the bandits and threw them into the raging inferno behind them, while the rest were now put in an equally difficult spot, for now, while they were in close proximity of the villagers, they were sharing that space with me, too.

I suddenly felt control of my virtual form being relinquished back to myself, nearly falling over in the process, before I realised that I was in a prime position to pick of the bandits without harming the villagers too much, for they were almost literally burying their heads into the ground now. That, and there was also a bandit hacking away at my forepaw with an axe right now.

I swung the annoyance out of the way, sending him flying in an undetermined direction, before using my tail to do the same to other bandits that were just beginning to recover from the roar. In no time, I had managed to sieve out the bandits, and with some added difficulty, get the villagers to huddle near my tail while I backed off to a slightly more advantageous position to defend both them and myself. However, the bandits, being the (wise) cowards that they were, decided that it would end badly if they were to face me head on now, and instead made off with what was left of their numbers.

The villagers, however, remained absolutely scared stiff, first at the bandits that were about to kill them, and now at the dragon that might eat them alive. Slowly, I released them from the confines of my tail, which I had encircled them with in a protecting fashion, before taking flight, in hopes of being able to put out some of the fires that were ravaging the village.

Prodding my way into the village, I weaved myself through the wreckages and corpses of burnt... things, spotting a still-burning house. A woman was outside crying, sobbing into her hands. I nudged her with my muzzle, thinking of it to be the only thing I could’ve done at that moment, in a questioning gesture.

“She-she’s still in there...” the woman sobbed, “Please, save her...”

Without further questioning, I looked up at the burning house in dismay, realising that while there was a chance that someone could still be alive in there, I was far too big to fit inside. Guess it’s time to test if I’m fireproof. I thought, and with that, pressed my forepaws against the burning wall, in an attempt to yank a wall open.

The fire seared my paws in an instant, proving that I was indeed not fireproof at all, causing me to withdraw my paws quickly in pain. I hissed, licking a forepaw tenderly, before trying again, steeling myself for the pain that I would feel while strengthened by the resolve to save a life. I didn’t know why I was risking myself to save a complete stranger, but something told me  that this person that I was going to save was more than just a faceless nobody, and with that, I grabbed the white-hot wooden wall, ripping it open and letting myself into the house. The heat was almost unbearable, flames licking at me as the roof of the house creaked, hinting that it would not last much longer under the given circumstances. My eyes darted around as quickly as they could in the clouds of thick, acrid smoke, trying desperately to locate the person in question. I strained my webbed ears in an attempted to hear something over the rage of the fire, and was rewarded with a faint cry in the room in front of me.

Pressing my paws down against the burning floor, I blinked out tears of pain and irritation as I navigated the burning house, cramped as it was, reaching the door to the room. Ripping that open, I saw an elderly woman, who looked to be in her eighties, laying on the floor. She looked to be unconscious, moaning out a little in the discomfort of the heat, covered in soot and sporting a rather nasty looking burn on her leg. As gently as I could I lifted her off the ground with a single forepaw, before slowly hobbling out of the build as best I could with three legs, gritting my teeth as I inhaled more of the acrid smoke the stung my eyes and overloaded my sense of smell, the flicking out of my tongue becoming useless in the navigation of the burning house. The entire building gave another ominous creak, and without further motivation, I legged it out of the house as best I could, inch by inch, every step taken as painful as the one before. I could see it now, the outside world, the cool, unburning land outside of this fiery inferno that was once a house.

In a few more pained steps, I managed to stumble out of the house, burnt but alive, the woman in my forepaws relatively unharmed. Carefully, I let her down onto the ground in front of the woman, before stumbling a short distance away from them and then tumbling to the floor, my paws unable to keep me up with the sheer amount of pain that I felt. I moaned out loudly and keened, my fleshier areas, such as my wing membranes and pawpads having been the most badly burnt. I lay there on the floor, coughing vigorously as I gulped down mawfuls of fresh air, trying to rid my lungs of all the smoke that I had inhaled. My throat felt dry and sour, and I hacked up a wad of phlegm, before flopping onto the ground again.

The evening sky never looked so beautiful before.

-o.=.o-

I laid there for a long time, through the night and into the dawn of the next morning, when the fires had subsided. The villagers had eventually come back some time, after a long while, picking through the remains of what was once their homes with a forlorn atmosphere. Something, or rather, someone poked me, prompting me to shift my head towards the direction of the poke. I saw Harold, bloodied and bruised from the fight, poking me with an equally bloodied arrow.

“Get up.” He said, “Someone is looking for you.”

I snorted, slowly bringing myself up to my feet and shaking my head to dispel the lightheaded sensation from having laid down for too long. “You look like shit, you know that?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Harold replied, “Did you pack any healing items, though? I feel like shit, and could use one. Fires raging the whole night, and after I managed to hunt down those idiots, I spent the entire time trying to help put it out while you were resting your burnt ass here on the floor.”

“Well excuuuuse me.” I retorted sarcastically, tossing Harold a bottle, “While you were busy playing tag with those bandits, I was out handling the rest of their friends. That, and I saved some lady from a burning house.”

“Explains the burns.” He said with a laugh, uncorking the bottle of light pink liquid.

“Eurgh,” I said, making a face as the scent of the potion caught my snout, “Smells like crap.”

“Well, that stuff does wonders...”

“Fair enough.” I said, opening a bottle for myself and applying it to my own wounds, “but, you know, considering that I do get bathed in this stuff quite often, the least I’d expect would be to used to the smell.”

After we had doused ourselves with generous amounts of healing salves, Harold led me through the village, which I took special note of to plod through carefully, lest I step on one of the few burnt corpses that littered the area. The streets of the village were covered in ash and the air smelt of smoke, and I couldn’t help but feel an air of gloom lingering upon the village.

I was led to a small, cleared-out area, barren of the common debris that littered that area, save a single, partially-burnt table where a few humans were staring over something. I cleared my throat a little, which was perfectly subtle in draconic terms, but moderately loud in humans terms. Amongst the few that turned around to see me was the woman, who had been sobbing last night outside the burning house, now regarding me with an unfamiliar air that reminded me of my mother, in those moments of my childhood where I had not been sure if I had done anything wrong or right.

“Thank you, dragon.” She suddenly said, “For... saving my mother.”

I nodded, cocking my head to one side in an inquisitive manner, waiting for her to go on.

“As a sign of appreciation, please, take this.” She said, “It’s something that my family’s kept for generations, a necklace, thought to be bestowed with the power of a dragon. It’s never worked for me, but hopefully, it’ll work for you.”

With a bow, I accepted the gift, crooning politely (if that was even possible) and pocketed it, making a note to wear it later.

“I apologise that we can’t offer you more than this, we simply... don’t have anything else to offer you. However, you have the gratitude of the townsfolk, and my mother, so thank you, both of you, for helping us.”

With that, there was nothing more to be said, and Harold and I left the village, leaving behind a few healing salves for the sick and wounded. Neither of us knew what they would do from here on out, be we hoped for the best of them. I took flight and left the area, and under the directions of Harold, made way for the next possible campsite that we could use for the night. Both of us were burnt and exhausted, not having slept the night before, and by the time I reached the next campsite, Harold was already fast asleep, his arms draped around my neck like it was a giant bolster.

Chuckling, I plucked him off my neck and lowered him onto the grass below us, before I ambled over to a nearby lake, which was glittering in the fading sunlight. Wading in a little, I let the cool water engulf me, a strong relief from both the heat from the fires as well as the pain from my burns. At best prediction, considering how bad my forepaws were, it wasn’t going to be a surprise that they might be the next parts that were to go.

As I was bathing, I looked over myself through the reflection in the water. For all the washing and scrubbing that I had done, I still remained fairly sooty and burnt from the whole incident, the scales that were not so badly burnt looking slightly glossier than normal. I took my time to work out the full extent of the damage done once more, sighing as I knew fully well what the injuries might encompass. The soles of my paws, especially my forepaws, were burnt pretty badly, though thankfully not starting to fill with pus or anything of the like, due to the healing slave that was applied. Still, they did hurt a lot, but there was nothing much that I could other than to grit my teeth and carry on. The rest of my body was fairly unhurt, thanks to the protective properties of my scales, though quite a few of them were black and burnt, ready to fall off at the slightest touch. I resisted the urge to scratch them off, in fear of worsening the injuries and decided to instead distract myself with the trinket that was given to me. I was a small necklace with a gem fashioned out of a rough, unpolished metal-like object, hanging gently off a delicate string made that suspiciously had the texture of rope, the kind that was used to tie down horses and the like.

I cradled the presumably delicate thing in my hands, inspecting it with an inquisitive trill, toying around with the metal object with a claw. As soon as I did that though, the whole metal piece lit up and started floating on its own accord, glowing and all the like right before my eyes. It hummed with what I could feel as an unfamiliar energy, pulsating and hovering right before my eyes. This was no family heirloom, this was something much, much more. The only question was, just what was it?

The answer to that question was quickly revealed to me as the metal piece seemed to reform into a two-dimensional head of a dragon, before pressing itself against my chest. The piece, even though my scales, felt like it was white-hot, causing me to roar in both surprise and pain as it made its mark on me. Then, as if nothing happened, it suddenly stopped glowing, turning back into its original shape before falling to the ground with a dull thud. Looking at my chest, there was a subtle mark burnt into one of the scutes on my chest, a small dragon head, simple in design, partially resembling me.

I picked up the necklace and felt...energy! I felt healthy and energetic, like I had never felt before in this game, like I was ready and rearing to go on the next part of our little adventure. I flexed my claws experimentally, feeling the rush of strength flowing through them.  On my HUD, the words ‘Vitality Increased, +10%’ and ‘Strength Increased, +7%’ flashed by, and in an instant, I now knew what it had done. The necklace, now in my less-burnt forepaw, again reformed itself into the shape of a dragon head, this time without all the fancy glowing from before. I tied it to my neck with some difficulty (forepaws can be difficult to work with, you know) and looked at it, admiring the glossy look that the little hunk of metal had taken. That’ll be handy. I thought. I was tempted to wake Harold and tell him that we were going to fly on tonight, but seeing that he was logged out, I decided to do so as well, heading off for the night and taking a break.

When I next surfaced back into the real world, the first thing that I felt was a building pressure in my hands, the place where my injuries had been most prominent from the night before. I looked at them hesitantly, wondering what that meant.

Without warning though, I felt my hands almost literally explode, thick, ivory claws bursting out of my fingertips before masses of green scales surfaced with the most curious of tingling sensations, engulfing my hands and advancing up my arms until the covered about a quarter of my lower arm. I stared at them with a stunned, awed silence, not quite sure on what I wanted to say anymore.

Needless to say, that was shortly followed by screaming, and lots of it. Considering that whatever that was going on with me right now was beginning to spiral into dangerous speeds, I began to panic, right before my mother called me downstairs for dinner.

Perrrrrrfect.