Lycan

From a prompt given by xXShadowwindXx: A dragon with a curse similar to lycanthropy (werewolves) tries and fails to find a cure to their disease, and ends up harming a loved one.
Written by DuskRose42, aka Rose.
== Lycan ==
=== Part 1- uncured ===
Sandstone woke up.
She was standing in a desert canyon; blood coated her claws, her underbelly, her mouth.
She stood over a limp figure. A dead SandWing and a total stranger. Her stomach had been ripped open, and bits of her flesh were still stuck in Sandstone’s teeth.
Sandstone let out a sob as her body shrunk back into its natural form. Again and again. When will I ever escape this torture?
The coldness of the night bit at her scales, yet the blood in her mouth and claws was still warm. This was a fresh kill.
She wasn’t even surprised when it happened anymore. At this point it was routine, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt to fall asleep and wake up to see your next victim sliced apart by your own claws. Sandstone felt an overwhelming emptiness. How can I live like this?
She looked up at the sky. It was pitch black except for the constellations. All three moons were in their new moon stage, or shrouded in cloud cover. They were obscured by shadow and appeared to be black discs that voided out the stars.
On the darkest night of every month, she became one with the shadows. A creature of the night, who hunted her own people. A Lycan.
=== Part 2- Contagion ===
(one year ago)
Sandstone was traveling alone in the desert when it first happened.
She felt someone pounce on her from behind, long claws sinking into her muscles sending arrows of burning pain throughout her body. She collapsed on the ground with a scream, and wriggled out from under the creature’s grip, the claws tearing through her flesh until her scales were reduced to ribbons.
When she stood to face it, she caught her first sight of the Lycan. Within the hour they would be brethren, tied together by the curse of darkest night.
His eyes were a piercing yellow, glowing in the shadows. Out of his scales grew tufts of grayish fur like that of a wolf, and his muscles bulged under his skin, swollen with unnatural strength. His claws and teeth had grown as well, and were already dripping with blood, more than could have bled out of Sandstone herself.
She wasn’t his first victim of the night.
Her first instinct was to run, but this creature was fast. No matter how hard she tried to outrun him, he would always be able to catch her.
It pounced on her again, mouth frothing with spittle that splashed in Sandstone’s eyes as the thing let out several low, guttural growls. 
She held her ground, struggling and wrestling with the creature. It was stronger than her, but she was smarter. It held her down into the sand, holding her down by the shoulders. It snapped its neck forward, biting a chunk out of the space where her wing met her foreleg. She screamed, and dug her talons into the Lycan’s eyes.
It reared back in confusion, blood streaming from its eyes. It let out a roar that sounded like the yowl of a wild cat. 
The entire time, the thing did not speak. It seemed that it was incapable of it, as though the dragon was no longer there, and the shadows of the night were the puppeteers, stringing along his body.
It stopped, sniffing the air and listening, blinded. Sandstone froze, every muscle in her body tensed so stiffly that she felt as if she had turned to stone.
The creature pawed the sand, tilting its head and licking the air.
Then it’s head shot in Sandstone’s direction. In one leap, she jumped into the air, but avoided flapping her wings for fear of the noise it would make. This thing could trail me halfway across the continent by my smell and sound alone.
She glided over the creature and down on the other side of him. Before he could react when hearing the soft tshh noise of her landing on the sand dune, she dug her talons into his neck and ripped out his jugular vein.
The Lycan turned around, blood streaming down his neck and mixing with the sand below to create bloody, sandy clumps.
It still had the energy to hiss and claw at Sandstone, biting whatever it could. It was going through its death throes.
“Why won’t you die!” Sandstone roared, kicking it in the chest so that it landed, winded, in the sand. She reached forward and snapped its neck.
The Lycan lay still.
Sandstone was covered in blood. A mix of her own, and the Lycan’s. She collapsed.
As she was fighting, she hadn’t noticed the hot, tingling sensation that had been spreading throughout her body during the fight.
She felt a heaviness in her eyelids, and her limbs felt like weights that she could barely lift any longer. She collapsed onto the sand, falling unconscious.
=== Part 3- Transformation ===
Sandstone was in a state of partial awareness, like the world around her was only visible through a red haze. All she felt was an overwhelming sense of hunger, her stomach ached like she hadn't eaten in weeks, and her mouth dripped with saliva that dribbled onto the ground below her claws.
Her memories of that night were like disjointed images, as though she was teleporting throughout the desert, terrorizing small oasis town after small oasis town.
When she finally came to, she was on her side in an oasis pool, slaughtered dragons in piles around her. Their blood turned the once crystal blue water a sickening red.
Torchlight illuminated the brutal state of the corpses, a sparkling sheen of slick blood, their insides poking out like polished rubies in the night.
Her stomach felt full to the point of bursting.
When she looked around and noticed the bite marks and torn pieces of flesh, clearly made from dragon jaws, she realized what had happened.
She had eaten these people.
Mothers, fathers, dragonets.
Sandstone put her head in her hands. She knew then that her life would never be the same again.
=== Part 3- Doing what needs to be done ===
(current day)
Lycan. The word held a meaning that sent a shiver through Sandstone’s wings. She trudged away from the corpse she had left in the night, and attempted to make it home.
She wasn’t a cruel dragon, and she wasn’t normally a killer. She had tried every possible manner of curing her disease. She even sought out animus power, but no one could help her. Not one healer or magic prince.
She had considered s*icide multiple times, just to stop the deaths that she was causing.
But I’m too much of a coward, Sandstone thought bitterly, I can’t even take my own life to save the lives of others. I’m weak.
She cleaned herself off the stream outside of the Scorpion Den, and when her pale yellow-grey scales were clean, she returned to the streets of her home. The Scorpion Den was strangely quiet, even for the middle of the night. She wound through streets and saw no lights on, no dragons milling around, not a single sound to break the silence of the desert breeze.
It wasn’t until she made it back to her house that she realized why no one was around.
Usually in her Lycan form, she prowled the desert, and preyed on any SandWings that were traveling alone. She usually never came back here.
Tonight was different.
Surrounding her small Scorpion Den hut were hundreds of corpses. Adults, dragonets, visitors from other tribes, she had killed indiscriminately. Sandstone’s heart sank. These were her neighbors, her friends. It was personal.
They’re all hiding from me. Everyone knows my secret now.
And then she came to another realization.
Sandstone darted inside her house, whipping open the door, only to find her greatest fears come true. Oryx, Sandstone’s wife, lay upon the floor in a bloody mess. She was almost unrecognizable, her limbs strewn apart, guts and viscera staining the stone floor.
Sandstone could only recognize her by her decapitated head, her jaw open in an expression of horror, a single tear which cut through the blood, dried on her face. Sandstone could imagine Oryx calling out her name, begging her to stop. 
Two small, humped over shapes lay in the corner. Sandstone couldn’t even look at them, couldn’t come to terms with the fact that she had slaughtered her own children, probably desecrated their bodies by consuming their flesh.
I’m not weak anymore. Sandstone realized, This is the last straw.
She left her home, and the Scorpion Den, feeling completely numb. She walked out into the desert, step after step, shuffling, as tears streamed down her face like slow, mournful waterfalls. She couldn’t scream, or sob anymore. There was nothing left.
Sandstone arrived at the desert canyon she had been eating her prey in earlier that night. She stood over the dead SandWing. With a swift slash of her claws, she removed the SandWing’s tail barb, and impaled it deep into her throat.
=== Part 4- Descendant ===
Coyote slowly opened his eyes. He was out in the desert, and the sun was beginning to rise. He felt his body shrinking, and the strange fur that had grown out of his scales overnight had disappeared again. His claws and teeth returned to their normal size, and his yellow eyes returned to the normal black colour that a SandWing’s eyes should be.
The last thing he remembered… My mom was cooking, I was in the kitchen with my sister, and then mama… Sandstone… entered the room… But she looked different, and then… By the moons! Coyote began to cry, he knew his sister and his mom, Oryx, were dead. He had no idea what had become of mama, just that she had become some terrifying creature.
He remembered bits and pieces of that night, he had survived but Sandstone had still bitten him, and eventually… He too transformed.
Sandstone had unwittingly passed on her curse of loneliness and bloodshed, to her one surviving child.
He watched the sun rising, as the rays of dawn sent shades of gold onto the scales of someone who was no longer a dragon. He was now a Lycan, like his mother before him.
Category:Fanfictions
Category:Fanfictions (Fanon)
Category:Content (DuskRose42)
Category:Fanfictions (Completed)
Category:Genre (Horror)
Category:Genre (Short Story)
Category:Genre (Tragedy)