Eight イート 🌌🔪🌙

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

“Whumpee! Here, girl/boy!” Whumper snaps their fingers, beckoning their loyal thrall over. The thing comes right away as they’re called, head down, gaze lowered. They look adorable as always and Whumper can’t help a small surge of affection as they look at them.

Whumpee gazes at them with those big, empty eyes. “Yes, master?”

“Be a dear and fetch me that arm I saved, will you? The blood’ll be a little stale but I can’t go out hunting until the town has calmed down from the last disappearance. Be quick about it and I’ll let you have a taste after I’m done.”

Whumpee scurries off to retrieve the arm, while Whumper settles back in their chair.

Their thrall is such a good one. Much better than all of their friends’ thralls. Their thralls are all either disobedient, snarky, or so heavily enchanted that they don’t retain much of a personality through it. Not Whumpee though. No, whumpee is just the sweetest little thing—obedient, submissive, and so pretty too, without the need for all those inhumane charms and spells. They don’t even need to have their blood drained to the point of delirium in order to keep them docile, no, they’re just wonderful on their own!

“I’m back, master,” Whumpee approaches again, severed arm in hand. They pass it off to Whumper, who smiles and thanks them.

“Thank you, pet,” they nod, waiting for Whumpee to step back (they’re squeamish) before sinking their fangs into the cold flesh.

Ah. It’s not great.

It’s stale.. but they already knew that, the arm is a week old after all.

..staleness wouldn’t cause that odd, faintly bitter taste though, would it—?

Suddenly Whumper’s limbs lock up. The arm falls from their grasp as a choked cry escapes their mouth.

They can’t move.

Only their eyes remain unaffected, and their pupils dart around in panic.

Through their hazy vision, they see someone approaching them from the front.

Whumpee.

A sly smile creeping onto their face.

Whumpee, you-? The words don’t leave Whumper’s mouth, but they rattle painfully through their mind as a surge of hurt washes over them.

Yes, technically Whumpee was a thrall, barely better than a slave—but they had a connection. Whumpee brushed out their hair and braided it. Whumpee slept in their bed. Whumpee cleaned the blood from the floors after they were too exhausted after a kill.

How could Whumpee do this?

Whumpee steps up to them, tracing a finger down their jaw. “Finally,” they murmur. “Do you know how long it took me to get that poison? Too long. You’re always near me in the night, and during the day, after what you did to me, going out in the sun was too painful..”

As if answering the silent question in Whumper’s expression, Whumpee laughs a little. “You didn’t see this coming at all, did you? After you took me away from my home, my family, made me into this—” they bare the bite scars on their neck “—made me your slave, and you never saw this coming? I guess I played the part of obedient thrall well, then.”

A dark smile starts across their face. “Well. Karma’s a bitch, isn’t she?~”

Whumper doesn’t have time to so much as think of a response before Whumpee is leaning forward, hands in their hair like they’ve been so many times before.. and sinking dull baby fangs into the side of their neck.

Thralls gain access to a little bit of vampiric abilities when they’re turned, but not much, unless they drink from the blood of their sire. As Whumpee drinks, Whumper can feel the life force draining from them and into Whumpee, evidenced by the subtle lengthening of Whumpee’s fangs..

Whumpee steps back, wiping a smear of blood from the corner of their mouth. “..I could kill you,” they murmur, fixing Whumper with that soft, doe-eyed stare they know so well. “..but I’m afraid I am not that merciful.”

A soft haze comes across Whumper’s mind.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

"..by the gods.. and will this be all, Miss?”

Varalda pretends not to notice the muttered comment preceding the question the shopkeeper asks her, as she digs around in her bag for her bag of coins. It’ll take everything she’s scraped together for the past two years, but hopefully, it’ll be worth it. “Yes, it will. Thank you.”

With that, she gathers up her large bundle and heads out the door.

As she turns in the direction of her house, a few mile walk, she runs through the plan in her head.

In her bundle, she has an assortment of ingredients, (some poison, hopefully she remembered gloves last week..) some gems, tools, and then back home she has the final piece, a very special piece of enchanted rock that she’d purchased a couple months back for.. way too much. We’ll just say that.

And when she gets home, she’s going to set everything up, and then wait very (im)patiently for the moon to rise.

Tonight is the night she brings back a dragon.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Back home—a circle of gray stones (all carefully selected from various creeks and rivers) in a circle. Her ingredients next to her. The mortar and pestle. Her collection of gems surrounding the mortar. And the ceremonial blade in front of it.

It’s dark, the only light coming from the candlelight glow all around her. It’s finally time to begin.

Without wasting any time, Varalda starts the careful (but slightly rushed) measuring of ingredients into her mortar. She focuses on the scrape of pestle against mortar as she starts to grind. Then, it’s time for the final step.

With shaking hands, she lifts her blade, in her left hand. Wait, no, goddamnit, right hand. The sacrifice has to come from her left.

Then she pauses. Anxiety builds in her chest, along with hope—that desperate, scared kind of hope, the kind that doesn’t know if it’s going to be crushed yet.

Is she really ready to do this?

Could it actually work?

..is she ready for it to work?

She shakes her head hard. She can’t hesitate any longer, can’t give herself any more time to overthink this.

She presses the blade to her palm. Then digs a slow, careful slit down, from her middle finger to her wrist.

Fuck, that hurts, but she completes it. Blood wells up in her palm, thick and red, and she winces a bit as she carefully tilts it over the bowl and lets her blood pour over the crushed ingredients.

Nothing happens.

Disappointment rises in her chest.

No. No, this has to work. It has to. Because if it doesn’t—well, if it doesn’t, she’s out of options.

But she only stews in her rising feelings of panic for a couple seconds longer, thankfully, before, so faintly she might’ve missed it, a red glow starts to emanate from the pool of her blood.

Her eyes widen. Her body goes cold, then hot.

She chalks it up to excitement at first. She’s done it! She’s going to be the one who brings back dragons!

But that excitement is short-lived, because the hot feeling spreading through her body is suddenly overwhelming.

She jerks back as she hears a sizzle, then looks down in panic to see a blister forming across her hand, in the path of the blood dripping from her still wet cut.

Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh god what’d she do?!

She scrambles to her feet—to do what, she’s not sure, maybe run? Maybe get help—but before she can move she suddenly finds herself collapsing to her knees, hunching over and hugging herself, a choking cry escaping her lips as burning pains radiates through her entire body.

She’s dying. She must be dying.

She forces her eyes open as she falls onto her side, trying desperately to see through a sudden blur, a sudden red tint. Her veins are starting to glow, a faint orangeish red that looks as hot as it feels. Then she watches in horror as her own blood starts to bubble through her skin.

She’s suddenly screaming without really choosing to make the sound. It rings in her ears, making her head ache, which is just really not a fun feeling when added to the searing AGONY radiating through her entire body. There’s something dripping out of her eyes, then her nose, and her ears.. it might be blood?..it’s definitely hot enough.

Her skin starts to bubble and melt away. She’s literally boiling from the inside out.

GOD, this hurts. It HURTS. IT HURTS, HOW DOES SHE MAKE IT STOP?!

Her vision blurs even more, making it so she can’t really tell if it’s her imagination or not as something dark, blueish, starts to form underneath her melting skin. Her screams—she’s still screaming, although the noise fades into the background—almost sound like they’re starting to lower in pitch, take on more of a snarling quality.

When she opens her eyes next, the trees look a lot smaller.

Then she blacks out.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

A sharp pain cuts through her head. A shout.

“Varalda? Varalda, where are you?!”

She calls back—but then a chill runs through her as her voice comes out in an incomprehensible, animalistic roar.

And she comes face to face—her vision suddenly very sharp and crisp—with her best friend. Who are a lot smaller than she remembers them.

Their face is pale, their eyes wide. They start to back up.

Then their gaze drops to the ruined ritual circle.. the blood.. the scraps of ruined clothes on the ground that Varalda suddenly registers.

“..Varalda..?” Their friend says. Softly. Gently. Too gently. “..that’s.. that’s you?”

She manages a tiny nod. Her head feels a lot clumsier, more hefty than it should.

Her for some reason very tiny friend carefully approaches, and very tentatively lays a hand on her.

“..Varalda, what happened?” They murmur.

She tries to answer, but again, only a growl escapes.

They rub her shoulder. “Shh.. it’s alright.” Their touch is more soothing than it’s ever been. “We’ll fix this.. I-I’m sure we can fix this. I’ll get a healer. M-maybe we’ll travel, to those healers in the East. They’re better versed in magic.

What HAPPENED?! Varalda screams in her head.

But the answer is no further than her own twisted body as she looks down.

And instead of seeing her familiar, pale flesh, her humanoid hands, she sees dark blue scales. Claws.

She’s a dragon.

The spell backfired so terribly.

Or maybe it didn’t backfire. Maybe it worked exactly as it was supposed to, and she shouldn’t have torn ‘dragon spell’ out of an old tome and attempted the spell all by herself, without even consulting anyone.