#ty rainbow!! i may not always be able to answer your asks but they're always a delight :>

[drachenlance]

@aurouze asked: "... they itch, don't they?" She remembered what it was like to be a dozen summers old, her scale pattern beginning to grow alongside the rest of her body. They had appeared in dark, splotchy patches as the keratin began to push through the skin, the scale patches spreading and taking over. It had, in all likelihood, only happened a few times as she went through puberty, but the spurts of growth were agonizingly itchy. It was like a babe's milk teeth beginning to rupture through their gums, she had heard it compared once. Painful, fevery, with little to do for it all but be horrifically grouchy. The memories were not fond, but they were memories all the same. Her lips curled just so as she gazed upon him, before reaching for her medicine bag. "It will get worse," she lamented, "before it eases. And the first shed - ... is not comfortable." She dug through the pouches, feeling around blindly for a jar she had kept for nearly a decade. Finally, with a huff of triumph, she withdrew the palm-sized jar, full of a thick, fragrant balm. She held it out to him, tail swaying just so. "Take a hot bath," she encouraged. "As hot as you can stand. And then - put this on them. It's lanolin, and herbs. It should soothe the itch and any irritation." And then, belatedly, her healer voice turning back into her own: "... let me know if I can help. I'm happy to try a sleep spell, too - ... if it gets that bad."

'Twas the end of the Dragonsong War he'd planned for, not for what might have come after, and certainly not for the consequences that came with surviving his own recklessness.

Embracing relief too soon had been his mistake, and no sooner had his shoulders slackened than Nidhogg had wrested control in his weakness, transforming solace into terror. His consciousness had felt as if it'd crack under the weight of that terrible hatred, but he somehow clung to life even as he felt his soul rent in twain, as though the wyrm's own dread talons gouged into his being. He bore it until he felt a fracture in the hold, then clawed his way back into his own body even as agony crawled him, hot as magma.

"Kill me! It is the only way! Ending Nidhogg... will be my final duty!" He'd screamed, and then he'd felt as though he'd died... but then his vision returned, bleary and dim. The hells ought to have had more sulfur and screaming if he truly had passed, according to his beliefs; instead, there was only the clammy warmth of a heated room, the weight of a blanket over his body, and the relieved crying of Alphinaud over his ragged state.

So Estinien had survived after all. Mostly intact too, save for the blackened scarring that formed pits where the eyes once sat. He'd thought the deformities to be the end of it, but then he'd woken up one day with a terrible discomfort blooming from his shoulder and arm, and pulled back the fabric of his garb to reveal little shards of obsidian embedded in his flesh.

To think his combining with Nidhogg warped him so. At least the memories of the wyrm did no more than burden his mind; the itch of these new scales were intolerable and nowhere as easy to subdue. Even newly formed, they felt hard as armor, and his feeble nails could do nothing to penetrate to the prickling. He'd thought he might tear them out of his skin with the force of his clawing before Alta came to see him, an explanation on her lips and understanding in her eyes.

"The first shed," Estinien had echoed after her incredulously. The recovery process must have slowed his brain, for it was only then that reality clicked into place, and he hardly felt the weight of the jar deposited in his hand as he reeled with understanding. Nidhogg had hewn more than claw marks in his soul that day; he'd transformed his very aether into something draconic, branding the magicks he'd called forth from the eye into his being.

His appearance would soon become entwined with that of his mortal enemy's. His former self might have flayed the scales from his skin in defiance of the wyrm's claim, but now, he feels no such urges, instead closing his eyes in acceptance.

"Hmph. I only hope this torment ends sooner rather than later." He grouses. A hand runs over the tips digging outwards from his skin, something like pebbles under his touch, and though he fights the urge to scratch, something else purrs within him. To know that he'd soon feel jagged plate rather than skin here somehow feels familiar, feels right.

"Oh, and Alta? Thank you." A genuine smile touches his lips, though it quickly turns wry. "I was ready to gouge these scales from my flesh ere you came. Seems you may have done the chirugeons of Ishgard a great service by sparing them that sight."