Two Weeks And A Day

Day 10

Prompt: Grian's missing, or so everyone thinks. Eventually, people find him, but he's slowly and painfully turning into a dragon. And there's no cure.

Grian didn't get any sleep. Probably because of the new wings meaning that he couldn't lie down properly. On top of that, his hands were itching in the way spots usually did before the scales would show up there. When the sun rose, he stood up, and smiled at himself in the mirror.

The scales had almost fully covered his face at this point, no difference since the evening, but then he noticed his eyes. Instead of their usual pale pink, they were a vibrant copper to match the scales. His pupils were slit, and there was a glimmer of deeper features within. He sighed, and stood up. He had to get some fresh air.

He went outside of the little cave, and felt the wind rustle though his hair. He sat down and wondered how he'd gotten to this point. He itched at his hands, looking up at the sky. He supposed it had started with that potion...

The sound of breaking glass, the feeling of potion soaking into one's skin, is always chilling, regardless of the context. It becomes a hundred times worse when you know you're being chased by witches.

So when the potion hit Grian, his instinct made him pause and gasp. But when he didn't feel as if he was poisoned, he kept running. He soon caught up with Cleo, and the two hid in a hole in the ground. They laughed at the stupidity of the situation, and Grian forgot about the potion.

Grian stopped scratching his hands, realising that he was just making things worse. He looked down at the back of his left palm. Sure enough, there was a bloodstained copper scale poking through the skin. He went inside to get some bandages. 

He chuckled as his mind wandered back to when the first scales had appeared. It had been a couple days after the incident with the witches, when he'd woken up in the middle of the night with an itch on his arm.

Grian pulled out a mirror to see if he could get a better look at what he presumed was a rash. He noticed little copper spikes, and ran his fingers over them gingerly. The spikes themselves seemed smooth, but overall they gave his skin a rough, armoured texture.

While he stayed up to make sure that the spikes didn't spread anywhere dangerous, he noticed the spikes seemed to be growing more and more, until they finally settled in an odd, scale-like pattern. How odd. At the time, he didn't connect the occurrence with anything, and went back to his book.

Grian finished bandaging up the back of his hand, and went back outside. He barely remembered to duck under the doorway. On the one hand, turning into a dragon was cool, on the other, it was moving at an uncomfortably slow pace. For goodness' sake, his wings had taken a full day to grow.

As he stepped outside, he didn't expect to see Mumbo. He stood still in surprise at the presence of the redstoner, who seemed equally shocked at his appearance. Mumbo tried to speak, and after a few tries, his voice found him.

"How you been?"

"In a bit of pain, but otherwise fine."

"Pain? Where?"

"Wherever the scales decided to grow today."

"That's... that's gotta be painful."

"It is. Why are you here?"

"It's just... the island isn't the same without you."

"You heard what X said."

"That's odd... there doesn't seem to be a cure."

"Surely there's got to be one!"

"I'm sorry, Grian, but... there isn't."

"I need to go."

Grian tried to throw on his elytra, and then remembered that he had actual wings now. He beat them down, and flew away. He could hear Mumbo, Cleo and X trying to get him to come back, but he just flew faster.

"I'm- I'm a freak."

"Grian! Don't say that! Sure, you may not be entirely human, but that doesn't mean you can't own it!"

"What do you mean?"

"Just... be yourself. Whether you're a dragon or a human doesn't matter."

With that, the duo went to sit by the lake, watching the sun traverse the sky. Sure, Grian wouldn't be the same, but that didn't matter to Mumbo. And if it didn't matter to Mumbo, then in that moment it didn't matter to Grian.

"I got Cleo's journal, wanna read it?"

"Nah, seems wrong. Let's do it."

Mixing up the writing style a bit, 'Cause why not? It's not like I'm allowed much other freedom in this challenge. For a challenge that I said had loose rules, it seems to be fairly strict, huh?

I guess that's why I'm a liar, huh?

OdalRune, signing off from the past!