Scales of Blood

== Introduction ==
Welcome to scales of blood! This page was made by TheIceWingPopsicle (or just Popsicle for short)! This page contains mature content so if that triggers you, then please click off the page!! You can find out more about the content by scrolling down. Any character resemblance, exact same names, and similar color palettes are completely coincidental. These characters All belong to the author. Please do not edit the page without my permission or you will be frozen into an icicle and melt on Popsicle’s ceiling. Enjoy the fanfic!
P.S, constructive criticism is welcome! I highly appreciate it.
== CONTENT ==
I highly suggest you read this before continuing. 
This content is somewhat mature. There will be blood, violence, murder, emotional abuse, extreme anxiety and kidnappers.
The story consists of a dragon named Mauve dealing with an animus curse as she attempts to track down a cure.
If paralyzation, tight spaces, and terror make you uncomfortable, then I highly suggest you click off.
== Blurb ==
Where entire life, Mauve has lived cutting off all forbidden things—anxiety, bad thoughts, even her own father. She’s known nothing but living like a queen executing her own thoughts. When she can’t control her anxiousness, she freezes, stops moving, and can’t even talk. One day, Mauve meets dragons her age who can live normally. She attempts to hide her secret from them, but it’s too late.
== Prologue ==
Her daughter was a mistake.
The little dragonet was ignorant, got sad at too many things, was clumsy, and overall, the opposite of her entire family.
Overcloud picked up her hatchling and stared at the night sky. Any moment now, her husband (her awful, awful husband whom she only stuck with to stay alive and raise powerful dragonets,) would swoop down to inspect her burgundy-colored dragonet. She inspected the little scrap—her scales were less burgundy, now that she looked at them closely. They were more “mauve” colored. The dragonet had light blue colored under scales. If she had to describe them, she would say “frost”. Her eyes were a gorgeous brown, and her wings were dark blue.
”He doesn’t care about how you look though,” Overcloud told the dragonet. “I had and egg with a HiveWing SkyWing and IceWing hybrid, not to mention my RainWing genes, and I get you?”
This dragonet—Mauve, she decided to name her—had nothing. No RainWing fangs that could spit venom, no paralyzing toxins, no frostbreath or fire! What went wrong? Was it too many powers?
Overcloud had time to test all of these things over a course of the past few weeks, and she had tried enchanting her to grow a stinger. But no new animus spells meant no new stinger, or powers, or perfect dragonet. Because Shatter, her husband, had no intentions of raising a useless dragonet, he would throw her in the basement with any dragon he found useless. 
Wait. enchantments. Her mind flickered to something her great aunt had done 18 years ago… a spell on a stone she had. She would throw the stone at what she was hunting, and it would pick up the enchantment (which was to freeze when emotions like anxiety were getting too high, the animal would be paralyzed. It would freeze and then could be killed easily). She still had the stone…maybe if she could tweak it, somehow, her dragonet wouldn’t be useless.
Overcloud dug through her closet of junk, pulling out pictures scrolls, everything, until she found it. How will this give my daughter powers? She wondered. She stared at the stone longer and remembered how much Mauve would scream when a fox crept into a house, when a bird flitted towards her, when Overcloud walked into the room after being gone.
”Mauve,” She said, “I’m going to try to use this stone on you. My aunt enchanted it to work on anything, and maybe if I could try to work around and add another enchantment.” Overcloud took a deep breath. “I add an enchantment to this rock. To hide from Shatter forever, just as another enchantment did.” She then carefully covered one side of the rock with ink. Her aunt had made this ink enchanted to protect any side it was covered in from the rock’s touch. She picked up the rock and touched it to Mauve’s scales.
And then she waited for Shatter.
And she kept waiting and waiting, for hours, but he never came.
== Chapter 1 ==
It happened again—Mauve was drawing, minding her on business, when bam! She got anxious, her claws started shaking and her palms were sweating. She sat back and tried to calm herself down, but it was too late.
She couldn’t move, talk or call for help. 
Mauve had been paralyzed for 10 minutes while staring at her ceiling. She always felt it was easier to cam down that way, when she was trapped like this.
Sometimes she would be out of her shutdown in 4 minutes, but it could take up to over and hour at other times. 
It was kind of disturbing that her enchantment was formerly made to paralyze prey while hunting—this was all she knew. Her mother wouldn’t tell her much, all she Mauve could understand was that the curse was irreversible. So yeah, she was stuck like this. Yay.
“MAUUUUUVE.” Her mother called. “We have GUESTS coming over. Stop drawing and GET DOWN HERE.” 
Mauve sighed (or wanted to—she couldn’t force out long breathes). Her den was huge and on two floors, thanks to how rich her father was. A father who’s never met me, she thought, wanting to sigh again. She was kept secret from him, wiped from his memories, because of another enchantment. She had to hide every time she saw him.
But sometimes guests would come over, and they could see her, all of her, and she wouldn’t have to hide. The only thing she DID have to do was not panic, because if she did, she would freeze up again, and then they would know about her curse. 
“DID YOU HAVE ANOTHER ANXIETY ATTACK?” Her mother yelled, reminding her she was still there. 
Mauve looked at her talons and attempted to move and feel them. A claw twitched. She waited a few more seconds, and then she could move her tail, and lift her head, and the numbness left her body. She sat up and yawned, shouting back to her mother; “No, no! I was just distracted, I’m coming now!”
She stood up and wobbled towards the door, trying to balance. She always felt like she was plopped on one of the moons after her paralyzation. She looked down at her claws to try to tell them to work properly, when she stopped in her tracks. There was a red outline around her feet, and it seemed to be getting wider slowly. 
Mauve lifted up her talons to inspect them. All over her foot was red liquid, blood. She gasped, the blood wasn’t flowing from anywhere. She didn’t feel pain or remember getting cut. There was just blood, dripping from her palm, turning her scales to red as if she were a RainWing.
To make matters worse, the same thing had begun to happen to her other claws, but there was less blood than the other one. Mauve sat there, mortified, captivated with horror. She quickly rubbed the blood off on the floor, and she checked her hands again. They were stained with red, but they weren’t actively bleeding. She looked down at the floor. There were puddles of blood and trails of it, and red streaks were swiped across the floor. She sighed. Her mother rarely visited her room, but she’d have to clean it up anyway.
”Mauve! How slow can you be? Our guests are here!” Overcloud remarked from down below.
”Right, I’m coming, for real this time!” Mauve yelled. With that, she left her room and went to greet these new dragons.
== Chapter 2 ==
“Hello there, Overcloud! Oh, and you must be Mauve!” Said a SandWing with silver horn rings, earrings, and bracelets. 
Mauve dipped her head in greeting and very calmly said “Hello, Bronzelight.” Her mother had educated her on their guests names and practically drilled it into her brain, causing her to repeat it in her thoughts over and over and over again. Mauve secretly wanted to ask, in a very excited way, “My mother told me about you?” But held her tongue. She only spoke when necessary and chimed into conversations when she knew it was calm enough.
Bronzelight gestured to a smaller SandWing-SkyWing hybrid that was next to him. But Mauve couldn’t recall what this dragon’s name was or if she was even supposed to be here, but just waved in a friendly way.
Bronzelight dipped his head to whisper in the dragonet’s ear, “What do you say Ashling?” The dragonet made whimpering sound but reached out her grey-colored claws, beginning to smile at Mauve. Mauve slowly held out her own claws, and then shook her hand. Ashling, the dragonet, took an instant liking and began rubbing her palm around on Mauve’s own. 
“Eeee!” Ashling exclaimed. Mauve tried to pull away but the dragonet latched on, pulling her claws back, feeling it with one paw and gripping her wrist with the other. What a strange dragon, Mauve thought. She acts so different but she’s my age. Are all hybrids like this? I mean she does seem to be a mixture, but I’m not obsessed with other dragon’s paws like she is! 
Just then, Overcloud snapped her claws, gathering all their attention. “If everyone would please follow me to the—“ She was cut off by a whimpering sound, and they all looked over to see Ashling, covering her ears. Mauve waited for a moment and the dragonet seemed fine again.
Overcloud tried again; ”If everyone would—“ 
“AWWWHH!” Ashling cried, covering her ears. “No! Stop it!”
Mauve looked at Overcloud. The older dragon seemed to be on the edge of snapping, like she always was when Mauve didn’t finish doing dishes when she got back from hunting, or when she caught Mauve in a system lockdown. 
Bronzelight stared at Ashling and then put his tail around her. That’s when Mauve noticed something—His tail barb was covered in a soft kind of fabric. 
Ashling put her claws on the fabric and began rubbing it. After about 3 minutes, she looked up. “Sorry,” she said. Bronzelight stared at them too. “I’m sorry about Ashling. She doesn’t like certain dragons and always acts like—“
”A child.” Overcloud snapped. “Leave this den now and never come back.” Mauve stared at them. Ashling was staring coldly at Overcloud. 
Mauve felt horrible for the two. They just came over to talk with Overcloud and instead got yelled at for annoying her. She sighed, then whispered into Ashling’s ear, “why did you get so upset with Overcloud?” 
Ashling’s claws scratched the floor. “She’s too loud. She sets off all the bad things in my head.” 
Mauve tried not to grin. She always thought her mother was too loud too. And she had to try not to think of stabbing her all over with a human’s sword. She stared into Ashling’s eyes and said, “Let’s meet up at the marketplace tomorrow.” She said. Ashling shook her head. “It’s too loud there.” She said. “Let’s meet up in the cave. It’s near those big rocks.”
Mauve looked confused. “Mountains you mean?”
“I SAID LEAVE! Mauve, you need to go to your room for making them stay.” Overcloud yelled. Mauve looked at her mother and began to walk to her room. She glanced back to see Bronzelight and Ashling, but they were gone.
== Chapter 3 ==
Overcloud had told Mauve she’d be in the market buying food, and that she’d be gone for awhile. “Don’t panic while I’m gone. Don’t do anything with my stuff. Be calm. Oh, and don’t leave the house.” 
Mauve had agreed—or pretended to agree—to everything her mother said. In her mind, while pacing around, she made a plan to meet up with Ashling at some sort of cave in the mountain. Overcloud usually was gone for two hours while Mauve was alone. And the mountains seemed to be 30 minutes away. While she thought, all sorts of questions and feelings that she couldn’t tune out swirled around her mind: 
Why am I even meeting up with this sensitive dragonet? 
Why did I agree to this? 
How will I know which cave is right? 
What if Overcloud finds out? 
Mauve felt herself freeze. She stopped in her tracks and fell to the ground. Oh no, what if she was frozen for an hour? Would she even get to the cave? And what if Overcloud caught her? 
Shh…don’t think, Mauve. Just focus on what’s around you. 
Taking a deep breath, or maybe just wanting to, Mauve glanced around. There was a slight breeze coming from the wide open balcony, sunlight shone in and dust particles floated past her face. She looked around and focused on her breathing. It was a lot calmer. She tried to twitch her claw, but nothing happened. 
Guess I’m still paralyzed…keep paying attention. 
She heard wind chimes outside, and birds chirped. She looked across the room. It was long but thin. It felt like it stretched on farther than it actually did. 
Mauve tried to take a deep breath in. She exhaled and felt feeling return, from her head, down her spine, alone her wingspan and to the tip of her tail. She sat up, shaking, and leapt off the balcony and flew. 
“Alright, to the mountain.” 
*** 
The flying part of Mauve’s journey was pretty nerve racking. If she panicked or got anxious, she’d freeze up and fall, which made the “nerve-racking” part worse because she couldn’t even feel THAT. But eventually, she made it to the mountain, checked every area for a cave with a grey-red dragonet waiting inside, and found it. 
Ashling was waiting for her near the giant mouth of an even bigger cave. 
”Um, hello.” Mauve said. “Nice to see you… again?” 
Mauve cringed at how she said those words. The thing was, she usually met dragons or dragonets and never saw those dragons again. But this was different. She was seeing Ashling again, and Ashling was seeing her again. 
Ashling said nothing, but instead made a super happy smile. “Hi! You’ll love it in here.” Ashling said as she headed in. 
Mauve hesitated and looked into the giant cave. There were stalactites and stalagmites, threatening to fall on anyone and anything, and expanding into a black abyss at the back of the cave. 
“Dragon!” Ashling yelled. 
”Um…my name is Mauve, Bronzelight said that when we met up.” Mauve corrected her, stepping into the cave cautiously. 
She heard nothing, but the slight echo of her talon steps. They were going deeper and deeper, until it was too dark to see. “Ashling?” Mauve whispered, but the echo made it sound like she was talking in her normal voice. 
“Keep going,” the other dragonet whispered back. 
Mauve took a deep breath. She would get through. She wouldn’t panic. 
”I’m coming.” She said, walking forward. After a few more minutes, her eyes adjusted to the cave. She could see the vague shapes of stalagmites and stalactites, she could hear a sort of stillness that she couldn’t describe, and flecks of silver were within certain areas of the cave. It was beautiful here, and Mauve could safely say that this was what peace felt like. 
”Let’s stop walking,” Ashling said. “Sit down and say something as loud as you’d like.” 
”Why?” Asked Mauve, surprised at herself. She wasn’t supposed to question anyone. So she did as she was told by the dragonet and sat down. 
Ashling made a noise of excitement and sat down, and it took a few moments before she spoke; “Hello!” 
Hello. Hello. Hello. 
The echo bounced off the walls, sounding like a crowd of voices. Mauve had never heard an echo like this before. It felt like it was dripping from the stalactites, bouncing around on the walls, and slithering into her ear. “Wow,” Mauve said, and that too, echoed. 
”Come with me. I have more to show you.” Ashling said, sitting up. She made some more noises of excitement. 
Mauve tilted her head. “More?” But Ashling was already bounding away, and that’s when Mauve noticed the faint glow of something up ahead. 
== Chapter 4 ==
The two walked towards the white glow, Mauve making louder and louder talonsteps just to hear the echo. Eventually, Mauve and Ashling were standing there, amidst these glowing white things on the wall. They casted a light across certain patches of the cave. “Glow worms,” Ashling breathed. 
Amazed, Mauve got closer to examine one. “I’ve never seen anything like this before…” she said to Ashling. 
Ashling giggled. “Funny little things,“ she said as she took a glow worm off of the wall of the cave and placed it back. “So, Mmm…Miv? Moave? What was your name?” 
“Mauve.”
”Mauve, why did you come here?” She asked. “Why would you see some dragonet you’ve never known?” 
Mauve was…surprised. Nobody ever cared about her, asked what she was doing, asked how she felt—Mauve’s whole life, she had thought nobody cared, and was okay with that.
But Ashling did care, and so she’d explain. “Um…I just feel like a captive every day and I thought I’d come see what I haven’t seen before…yeah, that’s it.” 
Or she THOUGHT she would explain, but No! I can’t tell her. I can’t tell her my curse, or what’s wrong with me. Nobody can ever know about who I really am.
And then she felt something below her paws. She looked down. From the light of the glow worms, she could see red rims around her claws. She lifted up her palm and saw blood flowing from it. She wasn’t in a big area of glow worms, thank goodness, so she was sure Ashling couldn’t see her red scales.
”Ihavetogonowbye!” Mauve said quickly before dashing out of the cave and leaping off the edge.
“My mother will be home by now! I have to get back, everything depends on me being there.” She told herself, flying. Panic and anxiety rose up inside her, making her wings shake. She tried to shove all those feelings down where they came from, but they kept threatening to freeze her, making the situation worse. 
after some more time flying, she finally saw the marketplace, houses in small mountains, you name it, but it was too late.
She sailed over the market place when she saw her mother, flying out of the house, angry that her daughter wasn’t there. Mauve’s panic circled back and she teared up. No, this couldn’t be happening. She was too high up, she’d be punished she could freeze…
Her claws went numb, her tail drooped down, and her wing stopped working. Mauve only had a moment to see the ground as her ears began to ring, tears began to slip from her eyes, and—
Suddenly, everything went black.
== Chapter 5 ==
Where was she?
Mauve looked down at her claws. They were covered in glowing green vines, which trailed up to the rest of her body. Shouldn’t I be in a cast? Where’s my broken bones?
”Oh, you’re finally awake.” Said a voice that almost sounded like two dragons were talking at once.
Mauve jumped in fright, and felt herself go numb. She was frozen, again, but only for about 10 seconds. 
While those seconds passed by, she had noticed a dragon near a shelf of potions. So she asked. “Where am I? And who the heck are you?” 
The dragon just laughed. “I’m not saying.” 
Mauve tried to protest but found herself becoming light headed. She put her claws to her head, and asked, “no, seriously, where am I and how do I get back home?” After that she looked around. She was in a dark room made of wood that looked like cherry tree bark, some potions were glowing green, she was on a cottony bed and the dragon was pitch black, no light or color, except for its glowing blue eyes. 
The vines around Mauve untangled and slithered along the floor back to the dragon. The vines then withered away into ashes. 
”Just tell me, How do I head home?” Mauve asked. 
”Just go through that curtain,” the dragon pointed to a purple curtain. Mauve got up and walked towards it when she heard the dragon say, “you’ll enter your body very quickly, just go.” 
Mauve wanted to ask what they meant, but it was too late. She felt herself rushing out. She saw her body right there, on the ground. She grabbed her own claws, and suddenly, she felt feeling return. 
She gasped for breath. Everything was in pain. She was screaming. She didn’t know how to calm herself down this time, because she felt like she was dying. 
But, she found one thing quite interesting. 
She could scream. 
Mauve had never felt anxiety or pain—she had never feared for her life, because she would just freeze. Now, she could scream and yell and feel like she was dying and worry if she’d ever see the sun again without being stopped. 
And, it was so strange to feel joyful over pain. She felt strangely powerful—like now NOTHING could stop her from feeling. She didn’t need her stupid coping mechanism of breathing and watching. She could just…panic. 
”OWWW!” She screamed with immense pain and joy. “HELP! HELP OWW!” 
All the dragons in the market place stared. They screamed trying to figure out how to help her. It was loud, which Mauve hated, but…was this attention? Was this what it felt like to have dragons care? 
From the pain, Mauve passed out, but she also had immense feelings of joy she couldn’t explain. 
*** 
Mauve opened her eyes in her room. Her mother was there, shaking a rock up and down, talking to it and saying things like “Why did she panic? Are you not working? Come on, stupid enchantments…” 
”Mother?” 
”AH MAUVE!” Overcloud screamed. “Your finally awake. You saw the spirit, I assume?” 
WIP
Category:Fanfictions
Category:Fanfictions (Incomplete)
Category:Mature Content
Category:Genre (Adventure)