Today was going to be the day
Story by farath on SoFurry
I suppose it'd be prudent to put some form of content warning here because some people might find some subject matter to be unpleasant, such as suicide, vore, and some bloody messiness. So if you find any of those things distasteful, this probably wouldn't be a good story for you, and if you don't mind that sort of thing, then enjoy.
I wanted to try writing something I'd never done before, and settled on this set of ideas to work with. I think they're a good set of tags to fit together, though they're obviously not everyone's cup of tea. I do want to get better at this sort of writing though, since I'm pretty fond of this sort of thing.
Today was going to be the day.
It was exciting, but also a bit relaxing. Like taking a week off between jobs. She'd been looking forward to this for the longest time, knowing that it was finally almost here filled her with some kind of giddy energy. It was almost impossible to sleep last night, because there was no possible outcome of today that was not preferable to yesterday, and even if she was wrong, and it didn't work, she still couldn't feel bad about it. First thing in the morning, she veritably lept out of bed, nearly toppling headfirst into the mirror leaned against the wall of the bedroom. Her clothes fell in a loose heap, quickly kicked off to join the rest of the pile in the corner, as she inspected the scars. In just a few short hours, this disgusting body would be dead.
They were how it started, the scars. It was innocent enough to begin with, relatively speaking. A few years ago, in the last year of her schooling, the stress became too much. During a particularly intense panic attack, heart beating out of her chest, vision tunneling down, a last ditch move to retain consciousness, she jabbed a thumbtack into her palm. This led her down the path that led to today. A few jabs in a palm led to a few pricks to draw blood from the fingertips led to real cutting in the usual places. It felt good. It hurt enough to take the mind off of the external pains, or to cut through the mental fog and feel SOMETHING, or to feel some control in life. It seemed like a cure all, as long as she never went too far and nobody ever found out and all sorts of other conditionals needed to rationalize the choice to a depressive mind.
At some point along the line, someone Did end up seeing them. A hash pattern of scars, hidden up on the inner thigh, normally out of sight but noticed during a chance intimate encounter. Not giving thought to the mental state implied by their presence, he remarked only that they "were like some sort of symbol" and continued his work. The next day, occasioned by his comment, she set out to look into runology magic. It was a stretch, but a valid wager. If she started scarring in the patterns, and it works, then great. If it doesn't work, then no foul and nothing lost. She came into possession of a particular book, and despite missing a few critical pages, was able to piece together a perfect ritual. If it worked the way she read it, the human sacrifice would be transformed into a greater form, as indicated in the rest of the markings.
Satisfied with the progress of her scar-runes, she smiled and reclothed herself. The thought of this hideous, frail body bleeding out as her true self took shape, she shuddered in pleasure, slicing her palm with a razor, wiped the blood on the mirror. She'd taken precautions. Nobody would look for her until it was too late, nobody would try to stop her. Putting in for two weeks vacation, and dieing three days into it, it would be at least ten days before anyone wondered why she was missing, and by then there'd be nothing left to find. She packed the book, along with the blade, in a string-drawn backpack, and went outside to start the car.
She'd prepared the site a few days ago. A lonesome stretch of road, miles away from home, with enough tree clearance to drive off the road far enough to get the car just out of sight, and then a ways farther into the woods from there, a small clearing. Halfway there, she stopped at a gas station, not so much to refresh the car as much as to calm herself down. Her heart rate and giddy excitement was making it hard to drive straight. The anticipation nearly lifted the heavy blanket of depression enough that she was practically openly flirting with the station clerk, out of pure, perhaps it could have been called happiness? At any rate, she made it to her little clearing, and disrobed again.
A final inspection of the scars, a slight touch-up on one pattern just below her left breast, and a brief re-read of the procedure. All that was left were the killing cuts. She took in a long, final breath of the warm summer air, grasping a razor in each hand, reciting aloud the words on the page.
"One to live. Two to live well. Three for power."
Hands shaking, she gulped and brought the razor to her left wrist. If it worked, everything would be better, right? But if it didn't work ... Well at least she wouldn't be around to feel bad about it. Taking a deep breath, she made the first cut. For a second, she had the immediate panic as her body's natural logic kicked in, but she steeled her resolve, the only way to survive now was to move forward.
The right wrist opened up next. As each hand lost integrity, she should have released her grip by now, if she could even still be alive if it were not for the glowing runes adorning the majority of her body.
The blade barely touched her neck before the full force of the spell took effect.
She fell to the ground, blood rushing from her wounds, arteries filling with frozen nothingness. It was so cold outside, here in the sun. She couldn't hear anything anymore, not her heartbeat, or breath, silence save for the slow drip of her life on the ground. After several minutes of stillness and quiet, she was still conscious. Her veins burned in delicious pain as though they were full of jagged ice crystals, tearing her entire body and flesh to bits from the inside. Her ears split at a piercing shriek, that after a few more moments, she realized had been her own, based on her vocal cords' rupture and dissipation. She was shivering, but could move again. So cold.
So empty.
She could feel her breast moving again, as if she was breathing, and held a bony, clawlike finger up to her face to verify, that air once again flowed through her lips. This couldn't be it, could it? Did she make a mistake? She stood up, only to immediately slump against a tree, trying to bathe her naked form in the sunlight she remembered from just a few minutes ago as pleasant and warm, but it was as if her skin were an impenetrable barrier.
"A vessel."
The words escaped her lips through no cognizance of her own, perhaps the spell itself attempting to remind her of the missing page's contents,
"Not the sacrifice."
She braced against the tree, feeling oddly stable given the pool of blood soaking into the dirt, and examined the scars on her wrists for changes. The identity marks remained the same, if drawn more intense by the emptiness of her flesh pulling the skin tight against the scar tissue. The process marks had shifted along her body, moving up and down the limbs and torso, glowing softly with a cold light. She did her best to wring the blood out of her jacket, and limped through the woods, mobile but unliving. She was just so cold, no matter how she tried to warm herself, there was no heat within to contain within the cloth. A dense fog slowed her thinking, only a few word fragments surfacing in her mind at a time, trying to think of what was the happen next, or what had just happened.
A new sensation woke her from the stupor. The nervous impulse was as sharp as she'd ever experienced, eyes opening wide, head snapping back, she drew into a lower, predatory stance, to follow this new feeling. It was a scent, intoxicating to her hunger, food. She shifted in her garments, only to hide the glow of the runes, as she slid through the undergrowth, approaching a lone pedestrian, taking a walk through the wooded route between the parts of the town. Like a bolt, she lept from the treeline, claws piercing his neck and wrapping around his head and torso. It only took a few seconds for the human to be reduced to warm meat, to be dragged off the sidewalk into the woods to be consumed. She stared at her kill, heart beating empty cavitation, drooling, just pressing her body against the residual warmth of the former person, before tearing into the flesh, stripping the bones clean in minutes.
'One to live.'
It made sense now, with one consumed, she'd survive. The ice in her veins melted and gave way to new flowing blood, muscles rebuilt with new power, bones snapping wonderfully and resetting moments later, only to repeat the process iteratively as the scars across her chest and legs flashed and gave way to sculpt her new body. But one was not enough to become her true self. She continued to feed, crushing the bones to eat the insides, savoring the last drops. Her favorite part was when her skin was rended in full, each patch lacerated by the growth of the muscle and bone below, and replaced with smooth, icey scales. The soft tissues changed first, expansion of muscle and organs pulverizing the frail bones, her skull fractured and reformed by the strong jaw muscles and horn growth, only for the fragments to be guided into place by the flowing flesh and blood, nurtured by her kill so that they could regrow into a fearsome, draconic visage. The horns continued to spread, rupturing down her spine, bursting through the skin, flecking tiny droplets of blood onto the flora. As her spine elongated, new vertebrae popping out, followed by muscle and scales moments later, she adopted a less upright position, crouched as a sort of tripod, two strong legs balanced by her new tail, her forarms hanging loosely or sometimes touching the uneven ground briefly as she strode through what was now her territory, following a new scent trail.
The gas station, yes, there was food there. The scent of the meat was slightly masked by the gasoline and oil and exhaust, but the new cortices of her enhanced brain were capable of sorting the aromas out and narrowing in on her prey. They did have a camera, though. Normally intended to deter theft, it posed an obstacle. She was not ready to be known to the greater world, not yet strong enough. Not perfect. Even after finishing the meal, and her explosive change had finished, the residual digestion still allowed a slower, but steady, regeneration. Sitting just out of sight, any observant person might have seen her, but there was no reason to gaze into the woods. She kneaded the dirt with her claws, plotting, feeling her vocal cords return, eardrums close their tears, eyes finally lost their fog to become clearer than before. The route to her next meal became clear in her mind's eye, she smiled as she slinked across the street to duck behind the building, still unseen.
It was a pretty boring work day for the clerk inside. Not many customers on this shift, those that did show up just got gas, didn't come inside. Not that it bothered him, really. He was re-arranging some candy bars on a shelf, bobbing his head in response to imagined music, when some real music floated in from outside. A quiet, but piercing hum, some feminine tune, drifted in, slipping into his ears, and seized control over his extremities. Hypnotized by the song, he dropped his work, and clumsily walked through the front door, nearly tripping over the threshold due to her inexperience at the control. The song was stronger without the protection of the glass doors and windows of the building, and it compelled him to disrobe as he walked around to the rear of the structure, to a semi-enclosed area, visually blocked from the street by a green-threaded fence. He was greeted by the sight of a crouched, reptilian figure, the song ceasing as it smiled toothily at him, licking its teeth. He briefly blacked out when his head hit the pavement, legs swept out from under him by a strong, whiplike tail.
A short time later, he awoke to a claw pressed down on his bare torso, frigid breath on his face through a slight gap between so many large, sharp teeth, a few inches from his face. She pressed down, compressing his chest, drawing a little bit of blood at the tips of her claw. What a frail, pathetic creature. Squirming, whimpering, crying. It was not too unlike the being her soul inhabited this morning. A brief moment of lucid hesitance crossed her brain, as she relieved the suffocating pressure on his sternum, backed her maw from his face to look at him. She pitied this prey, but hunger outweighed pity, and the promise of further power magnified the difference, but still, she could afford to comfort her meal, make its last moment less fearful. She began to hum her hypnotic song again, the melody echoing from her long throat, as she lifted her prey up from the ground and pressed its face to her chest briefly, as a final embrace, before her other claw slipped into the flesh near the groin, and ran up the torso, unzipping the body up to the neck, allowing its contents to spill out, innards and blood hot against her cool body.
"Two to live well."
She felt the body tense for the duration of its death, then go limp when the claw internally hooked up through the neckbone, swishing about the cavity, severing all the passageways inside. There was no sense in pitying dead meat. She began to tear off small chunks of flesh and tossed her head back. This transformation was less extreme than before, allowing her to take her time and think. She wondered if she consumed only the body, or also absorbed the attributes of her prey's souls, or perhaps that would require live consumption. She'd have to try it later. As her meal digested, her musculature filled out more, requiring her bones to strengthen to accommodate her power, her scales expanded as well, but could not match the rate of her muscle growth, leaving stretch marks that later filled in with darker colored stripes of scales along her powerful legs and forearms and tail. After crushing the skull in her jaw and gulping down his soft organs, her hipbones shattered and reformed to better accommodate the quadruped form she had now attained. Finishing her meal, licking the blood off her teeth, claws, and wherever else it had splattered, she felt almost as if she should sleep, but the thought was broken by a sharp pain along her back, especially behind the shoulder blades. She cried out, shuddering in pleasure at the pain as two thick bony limbs burst from her back, eyes rolling back in her head and toes curling as the wing membrane flowed across the gap and her chest inflated with new pectoral muscles to support the structures. Now, she felt as though her body finally reflected her soul, but the third line remained.
"Three for power."
She couldn't recognize her own voice, a deep growl that still remained feminine in its multi-layered tones. She was quite a bit larger now, having consumed two people's mass in addition to her own, but not enough to fully satisfy her desires and urges, if anything ever could. She bounded through her domain, effortlessly slipping between the trees, leaving not a trace of her movement, traveling down parallel to the road, seeking more prey. The closest was a small house, a family lived there, by the edge of the woods. It was still wooded enough that she could approach the back door undetected, and snapped the rear doorknob off the board, simply muscling through the barrier into the dwelling.
The lone inhabitant cowered in the corner, frozen in fear, unable to reach for a weapon or dial her phone for help. The gaze of the intruder froze her nervous system, locking her limbs in place, but the song of the creature almost relaxed her again, like it might not be that bad to die after all, all of her problems would go away and she'd never feel anything again save for whatever fragment of her consciousness remained as a part of her predator.
The dragon rumbled in disapproval upon learning the father and children were not home at the time, only a housewife. She'd been hoping for a larger meal. Still, meat is meat. She roughly turned the snack over with her claws, examining its pretty little body. By now, a normal human stood up to just above her shoulder level, each meal became progressively relatively smaller, she'd have to eat more and more every day. For now, this would do. She continued to hum, almost purring, as she roughly undressed her prey, sometimes flicking her tongue over the sensitive or private parts of the body, enjoying how it flinched, enjoying the power she held over another creature, to inflict as much pain, suffering, pleasure, fear, or whatever she wanted to as much an extent as she wanted. She held the woman's torso with both hands, squeezing her tight, and opened her jaw to begin to swallow her whole. At the touch of the roof of her mouth to the mother's head, the hypnotic fear spell snapped, and her food began to struggle and shout. She closed her mouth over the creature's head to stifle its cries, opening it again to force more of the body into her mouth. Sadly, she was not yet large enough to take in the whole shoulders of her prey. In reaction, she rolled her hands backward forcefully, ripping the tendons that held the woman's shoulders in place, shattering her bones, to dislocate the arms to such a position that she could begin to feed her meal into her gullet. Once the shoulders passed the ring of her throat, she lifted her prey up, and rolled onto her back, crushing furniture and sending belongings to scatter across the floor, and allowing gravity to assist in the slide down. She was still struggling, kicking, yelling, wasting her oxygen and energy. If her throat wasn't full of human, she'd laugh at the futility. As the woman continued to travel to her doom, her waist passed the dragon's lips, causing her to give a quick, taunting lick to the nethers. Before she even slurped down the legs, the struggling eventually stopped, her tight gullet asphyxiating her prey before it reached the stomach. What a shame, she'd looked forward to feeling the final struggles. Maybe next time she'd be able to swallow faster.
As the body began to fill her stomach, bulging against the scales for a short time before dissolving and being absorbed, the dragon reclined in her sort of den of crushed furniture, in a feeling of perfect joy as she felt the process begin again. Muscle tissue growing, breaking and resetting the bones, scales stretching, splitting, regrowing harder and stronger than before. As she rested her head against one wall of the cozy kitchen, she felt her feet bump across the other wall, her tail curled up to the ceiling. She contentedly rubbed her armored stomach as it flattened out, and, beyond what she expected, the hunger returned again. She looked down the hall, saw the other bedrooms, out the window, saw the schoolbus approaching, all the other families in the other houses, the whole rest of the town. With every growth it'd take more people to fill her stomach again, to sate her hunger. She licked her teeth in anticipation. There was never any reason to stop at three.