#my teeny weeny heart can't take it wahhhhhhh....

[gu6chan]

The Children's Patron Part Three - The Dragon's Blood (Click here for Part Two and here for Part One~ :3)

The blood of a dragon is a powerful thing. For even adults with the most fervent wills, the destruction of the mind, body and soul is only a matter of time. And for the effects of such a horrific curse placed on a child....

(Note: Nudity under cut)

Part One - Mayhem

The child was left at the edge of their life following the destruction of the Village of the Green Dragon. Paralysed from the waist down and left to bleed out on the ground, they managed to hold onto life just until the Union had turned their backs...

Having seen the destruction and madness brought by those afflicted with the dragon's blood was enough to reinvigorate the child to find a cure to such a curse, even in their broken state. With their burning desire, and no other options left to their wish to live and complete their goal, they took matters into their own hands — If they were correct, the dragon's blood could only be "controlled" — or rather, it's erosion of the self delayed — by the strength of one's soul... Their will. With this knowledge, the child was determined their drive towards science would prevail them long enough to find a cure. Or at the very least, even if it meant their life, they would be the one to see and document the effects of the dragon's curse for themselves. Crawling across the ruins of the village and taking the leftover devoured remains of the Green Dragon in hand, the child took only a small bite from the dragon's corpse. With it's blood consumed, they immediately began to vomit their stomach acid until falling unconscious.

......

As it had turned out, they had not been the only one left alive — other residents of the village, both those young and incapacitated, and older adults who had not been ascertained in their death, were left behind. Unable to move, and with no capable caretakers, the other survivours could only lay and wait as starvation slowly began to eat at them.

...However, the child could not help the others left behind. Their injuries had healed, but they had still found themselves paralysed from the blood now coursing through their veins — for days, they could only sit there, and each day, something new would leave their stomach and be regurgitated to the ground below... Her liver. The small intestine. A lung. But still, even as she looked upon the scattered mess of organs around her lap, she had found herself unable to die. Was it her will that caused it?

Part Two - The Elf

On the third day, the mutations had begun to take place. It began with a numbness of the extremities, and over time, she found her arms and legs began to grow stiffer. By the fifth day, an unbearable pain began to spread throughout her stiffened limbs... But, even while in complete and utter agony, the child still watched these changes with interest. If she was correct in believing the destruction of the mind and body both traced back to the soul as it's source, could it mean her soul was already being destroyed...? Furthermore, could the extent of these mutations be due to her susceptibility as a child? While she had a plan in mind on how to fix the growing issue at stake — the destruction of her soul which she suspected gave way to the destruction of herself — she still found herself unable to move.

In this time, a travelling elf who had roamed for weeks in search of the village, not yet aware of its destruction, had come across its ruins. While devastated, his attention was soon drawn to not just the few survivours left slowly perishing on the ground, but the horrifying visage of a girl with twisted limbs surrounded by what appeared to be an array of discarded entrails. Despite the horrifying visage, she appeared to be the only one still sociable — the girl warmly regarded the elf, who carried her to a bonfire he had started for warmth. After making some conversation and explaining the current state of the village, the child makes a request: To cut off her deformed limbs.

Seeing the elf's reluctance, the girl explains that while she had initially let them grow and mutate out of pure scientific curiosity, she grew concerned with the pace of the spread possibly overtaking the rest of her body before she could make any concrete conclusions with her research — thus compelling her to find a way to rid herself of any psychical attachments with hopes it would possibly at least be enough to slow the deterioration of her body.

The nauseating procedure was eventually carried through, and shortly after both arms and legs were removed, the child made one last request that he keep her limbs before falling unconscious.

The elf, as was the rest of only the handful of survivours in the village, was awaken to a horrifying scream. To both their shock, a new psychical mutation had occurred with the loss of her current limbs: A pair of human-like arms sprouting from her back. With knowledge her will and drive had once again exerted itself with her decision, the girl made a new hypothesis: That the "adaptation" formed in place of her missing arms and legs was a result of a reinvigorated will. While the role of her susceptibility as a child was certainly to take into account, could one find means of "controlling" the deterioration of the dragon's blood according to their needs?

With the theory pushed quickly to the back of her head, the child continued with the most important step of her plan at present - a first, and if it had went poorly, final test of her hypothesis on the soul. With her newfound limbs, the girl dragged her limbless body to the closest living body she could find...

"When you die, come back to me."

Part Three - Patron

One by one, the last handful of those who had survived were taken into the child's consciousness - but with each soul that merged within her, the child gradually began to lose more and more of themselves. The "being" that held these different souls, now wearing the voice and body of that little girl, became an amalgamation of memories, muddled perspective, and dreams. The fiery flood of the dragon's blood began to course through their veins once more, and before long, the objective of that young girl to cure and save the world from the potential destruction caused by the dragon's blood by growing to understand it's properties no longer existed.

What took that dream's place instead was a different goal: A goal to curve the onset curse and madness not for the sake of preventing destruction, but for the sake of harnessing it's power as means to further progress humanity.

The young girl's hypothesis, "If the soul can be believed to be the root of the body and mind, the longevity of one's soul can prevent - or slow - the destruction of both", hadn't accounted for the ramification's her method of "enlarging" one's soul had in tow. Not only had she completely lost her "self" in the process, having become a new being entirely, but the souls of the children that had chosen to become one with her in death had all burned with a passion for life.

They had transcended humanity, having become the incarnation of human will itself.

Epilogue

The scrap metal collected by the elf, with great effort, was eventually welded and transformed into fixtures the child would use to attach their amputated limbs back to their body. After gathering the necessary materials and regaining their strength, the two set off from the ruined village, their sights set towards the pursuit of the research that would save mankind...