It had cursed them before it died, slitted yellow eyes burning with hate until you crushed its head with a rock.
The carcass was large enough to feed an army, hide tough and ready for tanning, the meat gamey and tender on your tongue.
The symptoms started a few weeks after.
Duke Johansen was the first to complain, pains in his stomach, a wheezing in his throat, blood in his stool.
One by one, the dreaded lizard's slayers fell ill.
The first death came not a month later, a Dutchess who had been along for the kill suffocating in her sleep as fleshy tendrils burrowed ravenous into her lungs.
When they cut her open, they found a tumor coating her organs like mold, consuming her from within.
The rest followed quickly thereafter, foreign flesh devouring their own as they had devoured the lizard.
The Dutchess' grave was found disturbed, the body gone.
And one by one, the party sickened, coughing up blood as searching mycelium found tender throats, losing their appetites as alien organs swelled their stomachs. And one by one, the affliction claimed them, through suffocation or starvation or a hungry root finding their heart, until none were left that had consumed the monster's flesh.
And from each body, another beast was born, confused, angry, snapping it's teeth and cursing them in a foreign tongue.
All but the first were captured in crystal.