Priceless

-end

All that you can smell is blood and death. The mountain has fallen silent, there are no more heavy beats of dragon's wings, no half-meant curses echo among the trees. A wolf creeps up the rocky mountainside, pausing at the stench.

It's disgusting to look at--the corpse, which has been sitting for at least a month, has already been picked apart by the scavenging predators, and now the carrion birds can have their turn.

Furs caked with dried blood have been spread haphazardly around the place, a few crows scattered here and there among them.

Faint footsteps can be heard in the distance, slowly drawing near. They're steady, deliberate--but you can tell when they spot the corpse, because they fall faster. Then they begin to run.

And suddenly, they skid to a halt, and you can hear someone choke, their breath catching harshly in their throat.

"K-Katsuki?" They whisper, and they move towards the disgusting, maggot-ridden corpse. A massive red-haired male staggers next to the corpe's--Katsuki's--face, and they don't seem to care about the bugs. They--or rather, he--holds Katsuki's head in his hands, seemingly in shock.

And then tears run down his cheeks, and he is silently crying, crying for this Katsuki. He stays like this for quite a while--it seems to be at least three days before he can properly stand again?--and with a face filled with grim determination, his body transforms, the face and limbs elongating, becoming a red-scaled snout and legs. The dragon turns, choosing a spot just inside the cave's entrance, and begins to dig.

He's at it for around half a day--and once he's done, he pushes everything that was once in the cave down into the hole, sparing only one pelt. He spreads it out gently, and tenderly picks up the near-unrecognizable carcass. He wraps it in the fur, and just as tenderly places the body on top of the pile of things.

Then, slowly, he starts go fill the hole back up, pausing halfway to toss in some acorns.

Once the hole is fully filled in, the dragon shifts back into a man's form, disappearing back into the cave. When he comes out, it is with two buckets of water, one of which he dumps on the newly made grave. The other he pours on the still-bloodied rocks, and he rubs at them with diamond-hard skin until the bloodstains come off.

By then, the sun has set. The redheaded man stands, sighing heavily.

He looks down at both of his wrists, where twin diamonds are tattooed, twisting out into a strange mandala. He knows the price for power--he had to pay it himself.

Though when he slowly walked away from that village, and the one he loved--the dragon-slayer--he'd had no idea that he was paying. Or that the cost would be this steep.

But he had been warned--

With great power comes an even greater cost.

X_X
heyo y'all!!!

so

tis the end

and ya boii just wished to say a bigass tHANK YE!!!!!! from the bottom of my depressed heart :)))

but anyway!!! thanks for picking up this mess, i fucking love y'all sO GODDAMN MUCHHHH T-T

insta's larry_the_demon666, if y'all wanna talk jes yell LARRY at ms real louc so i dont accidentally ignore ya -_-

but yea!!! see u again (potentially) next week, when i'll be postin a new mer story!!! love y'all!!!!