Optional text prompt: The Rot is a powerful force not native to D’veen. It infects and transforms all it touches into a horrifying visage of entropy and decay.
An elf came stumbling through the wood,
With darkness in her eyes.
A dragon heard her broken cries,
Beneath the shattered skies.
“Stay back, the rot has found my mind.
I trust not what I say.
Before it takes the last of me,
Please end my life today.”
The dragon bowed his mighty head
To meet her blackened gaze.
“I’ve guarded life for many years.
I’ll guide you through this maze.”
“The thing consumes my conscious mind
And speaks with voices dead.”
“Then let it enter here.” he roared
“And answer me instead.”
He drew the darkness from her mind
And gave it room within.
It flooded through his ancient thoughts
And laughed beneath his skin.
WE ARE THE HUNGER WITHOUT END
Its echoed voices cry.
“Then you will starve when nothing’s left,
This truth you can’t deny.”
WE ARE THE END OF CONSCIOUS THOUGHT
It thundered through his frame.
“If thought must die to prove your truth,
Then truth consumes your name.”
WE CANNOT CEASE. WE CANNOT FALL.
The dragons wit, withstands.
“If hunger governs every act,
then which of you commands?”
For several years the contest held
Black ichor marked his jaw.
Each axiom the Rot declared,
He pointed out its flaw.
WE ARE BECAUSE WE ALWAYS WERE.
It claimed without a pause.
“Existence does not prove design,
nor appetite a cause.”
WE ARE THE ROT. WE ARE THE END
It forcefully replied.
“If you end all to quench your need
Then naught survives your pride.”
Free of the Rot the elf returned,
The dragon’s scales now black.
One lucid eye regarded her,
“Live on and don’t look back.”
“You mastered it?” she raised her brow.
He gave a darkened grin.
“I merely taught the thing to doubt.
Its logic was quite thin.”
By Heather Patton / Verdant Butterfly
Written for The Circus Dragon & Bradley Ramsey August Challenge
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By Heather Patton · Launched a year ago
A creative space with over 170 enchanting stories and poems. I write fantasy, folklore and genre bending prose that can step off the path into comedy, adventure or the unsettling at any moment.
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