I, Tzeench, shall grant you each one wish, read the post. It was a typical sort of post, in this case made on boardChan in the traditional games section. The general logic went like this: a person would make a wish, and then Tzeench would corrupt it in some way, granting the letter of it, but massacring the intent in a humorously profound way. People were wishing for mundane things. I wish I had a sandwich. Granted, but you choke to death on it. They were also wishing for less mundane, but still not fantastical things. I wish I were a girl. Granted, but you're ugly as sin and will never have a romantic partner. Virginia wondered what would happen if she wished for something truly outlandish. Something fantastical.
I wish I were a shadowrun-style female dragon, she posted. There was a long wait for a response. Then it came. Granted, but you have adventurers coming to kill you now. It was as Virginia thought: by making such a big wish, she'd avoided any real downside at all. She posted in response, Thank you Tzeench, you've granted my wish and in return burdened me with nothing. You might as well have said that I will have trials that are typical for my species. If I can't overcome them, I don't deserve to live. In return Tzeench had replied, wow, you're really pushing into this! I'm kind of impressed! Well then, one last gift: the adventurers are all level 50.
It was still a nothing. Even if death was unavoidable, which the caveat hardly prescribed, there was still the possibility of choosing one's own death to make it most meaningful. Virginia laid down, a smile on her face, and imagined what that might entail. Dragons are massive creatures, both physically and in terms of the scope of their lives. It would be impossible to live as a dragon without unintentionally impacting the people around you. Why were the adventurers coming to kill her?
When she was a younger and more naive dragoness, she had decided to take a small kingdom under her wing. She won the affection of the people by assisting them in a war of self-defense, and gained a place on the ruling council. Using all her guile, she improved the life and economy of the kingdom, making the capital a shining city on a hill; but economic disparity caused a trade deficit, and thus famine in a neighboring kingdom. Hundreds of thousands died. A boy, deprived of his parents in the turmoil, swore revenge, not knowing against who. The grudge was remembered through generations, even as circumstances bettered, until at last those lived who could discern the cause of the famine as the dragon.
Thus, a young man, full of anger and life, gathers together his savings and his closest friend, hires a cleric, and heads off to cross the mountains and slay the dragon that was responsible for his family's suffering, his family's fall.
Oh, but a dragon has many eyes and ears, and how she uses them. In every tavern and in every inn she learns of the progress of the heroes. They are not as special as they think. Many before have tried to kill her and failed. Yet the most bizarre thing happens as she learns more and more about these people: she begins to respect them. With her long experience, she can see them plainly as archetypes as much as people, but the story of the young man in particular resonates with her. His anger reminds her of her own, in her more precocious youth. Part of her wants to help him, but she knows this is absurd.
The cleric is very pure of heart, a healer through and through. She believes in understanding, in forgiveness, and in the importance of letting go. She ought to be a good influence on the young man, but his warrior friend offsets her with his own equal enthusiasm for violence and bloodshed. The young man's heart compels him to listen to his friend and not the cleric. Bad things may become of him without intervention; things like being eaten by a dragon, certainly, but he will probably die before he even makes it that far. The mountains are a dangerous place.
He coerces the group into attempting a crossing in the dead of winter. A blizzard howls and screams, but his anger keeps him warm. His friend follows out of loyalty, and to avoid being thought a coward. The cleric follows out of desperation, to avoid being left alone in the wild. Both the friend and the cleric collapse in the snow, but the anger of the young man keeps him standing for just a moment longer, and then he too collapses. Then a great avalanche comes to bury the fallen heroes, lost like so many others who would have killed her. The cleric thinks she hears a beating of wings just before she loses consciousness.
They all come to in a snow cave. A roaring fire warms them, its tendrils of smoke escaping out of a long and small tunnel that winds through the back of the cavern. It is an oddly shaped cavern, but appears to be solid. Across the fire, an enormous but lean teutonic woman is sitting. She is wearing a wolf's skin, it's head coming up over her own. On her belt hangs a medicine gourd. She offers it to the young man. "Thank you", he responds. "What use is anger if it kills you?" she asks him. He's bewildered. "I don't understand," he says. "You were trying to cross unfamiliar mountains in the dead of winter. You didn't seek shelter during a blizzard. I see the hatred in you, eating away at your soul. If you let it have its way, there will be nothing left of you soon."
The young man was taken aback by the accosting, but his instincts told him this woman was a shaman, whose insights were not to be ignored. She had saved his life besides this, and the lives of his friends. In his exhaustion and gratitude, all of his normal barriers for sharing personal information were absent. "My family used to be very powerful nobility, many generations ago. Then a famine struck our land. It was not a normal famine. All of our crops were simply being sold to our rich neighbors. It wouldn't have been an issue, until our crops failed. Then we found that we'd sold our salvation as surplus, and couldn't afford to buy back any crops in sufficient quantity, as the prices had gone up in all neighboring kingdoms due to our wealthy neighbors."
"Our people starved. Then, they rebelled. My family were butchered, even as they tried to help. A single son survived and swore revenge, thinking it against god or goddess. Knowledge of economics was limited back then. But I am the first of my line to know the real culprit! The monstrous wyrm known as Mierwyr, who took over the Kocelian kingdom through backhanded manipulations and uses it as a syphon to acquire more gold and power. It was that creature who was responsible for the untold suffering of my people! I will honor our oath of revenge and slay the monster, on my family name!"
The teutonic woman in the wolfskin considered him with a look that spoke of weariness, sympathy, pity, and disdain in one mixture. "My child," she spoke, "it is well enough to honor an oath, but an oath made in ignorance is no binding thing." The young man balked. "If my ancestors had known, they would hardly have relented." The cleric spoke, "You must at least consider what is good, apart from what the anger in your heart would have you do." "He doesn't need to do any of that," the warrior said.
The teutonic woman breathed out heavily. "What will you do after this dragon is slain?" The young man considered. "I don't know," he said, "I suppose I would want to continue to do good." "Yes," the teutonic woman said, "but how?" The young man shrugged, "I guess I would just do whatever presented itself." The teutonic woman sighed in earnest now. "Very well, but your anger still corrupts you. If it weren't for the luck of my presence, you and your friends would be dead right now. You should listen more to your cleric friend." With that, she offered the medicine gourd to the others. When they had drunk from it, she bid them farewell and wandered out into the blizzard.
The next morning, the trio headed off. It was a clear and fairly warm day, just cold enough to prevent more avalanches. The young man contemplated the woman's words, but held them in contempt. She didn't know anything about him beyond what he'd told her, which didn't damn him; it justified him! The dragon would die, that much was certain.
They finished crossing the mountains at last, braving its dangers and slaying many monsters along the way. When they arrived at the great capital though, they found the teutonic woman waiting for them inside the first tavern. She approached them confidently and without expression. "My master wishes to speak with you." The cleric was comfortable with the woman after what she'd done for them, and seemed eager to go. The young man was suspicious. "Who is your master?" he demanded. "You will see in time," said the teutonic woman, "I suspect it will please you." Still hostile but intrigued, the young man and his friends accompanied the woman.
With increasing wonder they watched as they passed increasingly fine houses until they arrived at a great castle. They entered into the ground, and then into the castle itself, and then into a massive chamber that was completely empty. "Well?" the young man asked after a moment, "where are they?" The teutonic woman answered. "In front of you. Don't you know the one you seek?" The young man was shocked, but the deception, such as it was, was quickly understood and accepted.
He stood quivering. His eyes watered. Then, wholly expecting Mierwyr to take her true form, he drew his sword and charged. She stood perfectly still, and when he got to within a step of her, she smiled. "No!" screamed the cleric. Then the wyrm was struck down, all without ever raising a hand. She did not reassume her true form in death, which was unusual. The cleric shed tears; she had suspected somehow that the woman who had helped them was in truth the dragon.
"Why are you crying?" said the warrior, "the wyrm is dead. We should be celebrating." "She helped us," said the cleric, "she could have let us die." The young man was ecstatic, and in that tone he smugly replied, "Just another serpent's deception. Now come on, let's loot the place." As he said this, an old man in elaborate robes entered the chamber, carrying with him a large scroll. He approached the bewildered trio and handed the scroll to the young man, who took it and began to unroll it. The others stood in silence, waiting on him to speak. He shook his head, then took the scroll over to a nearby desk and laid it out, beginning to read.
"Young Dimitri. If you are reading this then you have killed me. Congratulations, and my deepest thanks. Over my long years I have grown jaded with my life. You may have trouble believing this, but I was once a human being like you. Wandering the wilderness, I came across a being named Tzeench, who offered me the granting of any wish which I could think of in my heart to ask for. I was cautious, suspecting a trap, but the allure was too great for me. I tried to think of a source of power, a way to improve the world, but one which had enough of its own built-in challenges so that any perversion of the wish would only bring about what was already in the normal course of things. I wished to be a dragon."
"The wish was granted, with the caveat that a group of adventurers would one day come to kill me. I thought I was the luckiest being in the world. Such a normal tribulation for a dragon, and perhaps not even a lethal one depending on interpretation. I immediately set about trying to do good, ending a war of aggression and helping a peaceful people to prosperity and enlightenment. I had yet to understand the true horror of my new life."
"Though I tried to do good, my actions had far reaching consequences that I couldn't have anticipated. The economic consequences of raising a single kingdom to such affluence so quickly brought ruin to several surrounding kingdoms. It brought about the famine which decimated your people and your family. I did the best I could to repair the damage, but it was too late. I had brought about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in my ignorance."
"This I have learned over the course of my 700 years: It is an easy thing to bring about change, and a hard thing to arrest it. A dragon does not exist at the same scale as a human being. Their actions will always ripple out, will always have implications that vastly exceed predictability. They are a force of nature. Consider the sun, which is a common object of worship. It brings warmth and light, helps plants to grow and reveals the time. In a desert, however, it scorches the earth, rendering it barren, and cooks the life out of man and beast. The sun cannot avoid doing this, it merely does. Men pray for rain as well, but rain can bring floods, and standing water can bring diseases."
"I have become as the sun and the rain when I was only ever meant to be a human. The cruel juxtaposition of my new form imbued me with all of the instincts of my new species and none of the cunning. My selfishness prevents me even from killing myself, even as I see what I have become from the consequences of my foolish wish. Others in the past have tried to kill me, of course. At first I crushed them. Then I grew more confident and began to toy with them, but they almost always died before they reached me, and if they did reach me I made short work of them. I thought of the prophecy then and how hilarious it had seemed. At that time, it still felt that way."
"You have freed me from a form I was never meant to inhabit. You have given me back some of my humanity. In exchange, I leave many gifts to you. To Radrak the warrior, I leave the only thing you are liable to value: gold. To Alimorel the cleric, I leave my vast stores of magical knowledge. May they help you in your quest to become a better healer. Lastly, to Dimitri the vengeful, I leave you with the knowledge that your true enemy was never me, but Tzeench, a demon god who corrupts all which he touches. It was his corruption of my wish that made your people's suffering possible. Enclosed are instructions on how to find him if you so choose, and I leave you sufficient gold to finance an army should you desire it."
"But Dimitri, dear young Dimitri. If you would listen to 700 years of experience, know that anger cannot bring true meaning into your life. I have left you the means to pursue your wishes as you have done me a great favor, but heed my warning: Tzeench is cruel and cunning and has all the powers of godhood. To attack him would be beyond suicidal. It would betray a fundamental hatred of self. Do not succumb to temptation either, like I did. There are many kinds of ruin, and my servant will be glad to show you some of the more horrendous and pathetic cases if you so wish, but yours as well will surely follow if you allow Tzeench to beguile you."
Along these lines Virginia fantasized, all inspired by three or four posts on an online message board. She was growing tired of the reality she lived in, and it was getting easier and easier to escape into fantasy. Maybe it was this weakening of her grasp on fact that lead to insanity for her. This fantasy had occurred well before her first psychotic break, shortly before she resolved to murder people. She would have many others like it, which will not be recounted here. It would have been well for her to avoid feeding her escapist tendencies at this point, but she was very much an addict in this respect.