A Benevolent Evil Dragon

I genuinely do not know how much time has passed. I kind of fell into a rhythm and it’s hard to fall out of it. After my last meal my life has really just been made up of sleeping days in a row, waking up and getting tackled or cuddled by my clutch mates, listening to songs while stretching my body and after being awake for less than an hour, mother would come in with new food. It started normal with a bit more wolves (none as strange as the first), a few giant rabbits, and maybe another half a deer, but then things started getting weirder.

The mutants became more frequent, first another wolf that instead of having a large body and bones all over, had become even more slim, with very thin fur and an elongated body, then came in a boar that looked like a battering ram, or some kind of living tank, because of the spiked bone armor growing on its face and its sheer size. The worst creature though? A deer. It looked perfectly normal, until I got to its face. It had more teeth than me. It also had bloodshot eyes and seemed to ooze the scent of blood despite not having any open wounds. Its core showed that yeah, it was making a lot of blood mana gems, and its stomach, which was turned from the four-chambered one a grazing animal should have, to a single chamber, massive thing, was filled with half-digested parts of so many creatures that it made me shiver.

Still ate the nightmare fuel deer, but the point stands, thing was scary.

Right, mana gems, I decided that, since I cannot properly identify each crystal, and the fact that, for example, two red crystals that look almost identically draw in completely different mana types, I decided to just call all of them mana gems and be done with it. Will be more explicative like that anyways. Same thing with cores. Whatever that organ actually is, I do not know, but I know that it makes crystals inside living things and that those crystals draw in and hold mana. All of the animals had them, actually, but the more mutated ones had way more and bigger crystals, and even the organ itself was bigger, irrelevant of the size of the specimen.

And speaking of these things, I’ve been binge eating them recently. I may be a bit rude for doing it, but I made sure to dig into the chest of each animal mother brought us and eat the core. Again, it tastes the best and gives me a surge of power, meaning that it likely helps me more than just the meat. I think it might even help grow my own core since I am pretty sure there’s one in my chest too.

Where was I? Ah, I was awake, right, that… I have been pretty absentminded even when awake, but today? Today I feel like I actually opened my eyes for once. I also feel like the nap after this last meal was my longest yet. Looking down at my front legs, I see that they are much bigger than I remember. Absurdly big actually. One look around and I am sure, we hit a growth spurt. I mean, I am sitting in the nest together with Crown, who is still asleep, and we only barely fit. I look down and see that only Spots is awake, with Red Tail napping, on his back, at the base of the pile. He might have fallen there and never bothered getting back up.

Well, time to see what changed aside from my size. I stretch, noticing that my legs are actually very flexible now, I am finally able to actually reach behind my head. I even do that and tap against my horns. Those grew fast. At this point they’re still small, just like thicker spikes, but I’ve only been alive for a month or two, unless I lost track of time horribly, so I will soon need to be aware of them.

Rather than continue this blind I hop down, which is actually pretty easy now, and go over to the tower shield. I am a bit taken aback. I realized that I had changed fast, but this was a bit absurd. I mean, sure, more defined scales and bigger size, I understand that, but I am already starting to look different from my siblings. And while being a bit different makes sense, I literally am built different right now.

My siblings’ growth seems to be explained pretty easily: bigger, shinier. They literally just became like twice as big as before, from all points of view, then got a bit of a paintjob. Sure, like with RT who got red scales all the way to his hind legs now, their coloration changed a bit more than just being more defined, but it’s still all superficial. They’re still komodo crocs with undersized wings slapped on their back.

As for me? My shape changed. My legs are much longer by comparison, and instead of being angled slightly sideways, and being more round, they are positioned like more of a dog’s or cats and look slightly slimmer and certainly toned. I crouch down, and jump in place, seeing that I am still stronger than before, I don’t think the tradeoff was that big, if I even ended up trading anything for this agility.

My face is one thing that didn’t change too much. I mean, aside from all then new spines growing on top of my head, and the fact that my eyes look a lot more vibrant than before with oranges and yellows detailing my otherwise red irises, I do not see a big difference. It’s just bigger and better, and sometimes that’s enough. Ah, no, there it is, there is the thing that changed. I have lips. Why though? I mean, they’re not exactly lips, if I’m honest. It’s just that my upper side has a slightly longer muscle all around that can seal my mouth close, instead of keeping it basically open. That is a weird thing to just get for being a bit older.

Other changes include my much more vibrant and bigger blue scales, my wings growing out a bit and even starting to develop spikes on the bony parts, but my tail takes the cake. It’s split at the midway point now and while the base is like my siblings’, the two ends are much slimmer. What my tail now has going for it, compared to my siblings, is dexterity. My two tail ends are just so mobile that they behave more like mom’s tentacles, which makes me think that the balance purpose is just a nice secondary compared to being having an extra arm. Just to test I use my red tail to pick up a rock and it’s pretty effortless. The muscle groups that go into making this possible must be crazy…

Now, time to think. While my siblings grew like normal, just getting bigger, I went from a crocodile, to a galloping crocodile. No, it’s not just that. I went up to Crown, sleeping cutie that she is, and checked her mouth. No lips. But I got them. The only reason for it that I can imagine is my experience of drinking water. It was hard because of my lack of lips and my strange tongue, so I adapted to that? I’ve used my tail to pick up and move things, so it’s more of a hand than a tail for me now. Yea, I think my thoughts and behaviors related to my body are what caused this. And while I had these complex thoughts, my siblings were probably thinking stuff like “Biiiig” while looking at mother, thus growing fast but keeping the same shape.

It might also be because I’ve had a diet of cores for a while now. Those things felt like half the meal despite being just a tiny bit of the carcass.

Oh well, enough musing about appearance, time to see what this thing can do! Since my body is more capable now, I mimic what I remember lots of predators doing. For example I crouch low, stalking forward while keeping a steady body. This could make me pretty sneaky if I wasn’t a shiny blue lizard in an open cave… but hey, might be useful if I ever reach the outside. I even test out my jumping, climbing and running skills. RT, waking up and seeing me be so active, seemed to have decided to try and follow my lead. He, uh, failed. Badly. He managed to run very well, using a sway of his torso to speed himself up, like a lizard would, but that simply wasn’t enough to keep up with me. Fast lil guy, but not fast enough.

There’s another great thing about my much stronger legs. They’re not paws. Why’s that so great? Because, in truth, I have functional fingers, including one that is opposed to the others. And since I am still a tiny juvenile compared to my species, and unlike my siblings I have much slimmer limbs, a fact that extends to my fingers, I am now able to pick stuff up! I got hands! Ain’t that something? I reach down, pick up a coin, and then throw it forward. Yeah, I expected that being god damned pathetic. I think I managed to throw it like twenty centimeters? If that. But, I am a dragon, not a human. Throwing stuff probably isn’t my way to success. Or…

I pick up a coin with my tail again and this time try using it to throw. I move my hip, my tail swings like a whip, and when I let go of the coin, it flies pretty fast, but 90 degrees into the heavens. Binocular vision is cool and all, but I don’t have the rough throwing sense humans have, so it seems I’ll need to really work for any accuracy. A bit of a bother, but hey, I basically have a primitive slingshot built in, so that’s cool. And since I have two ends to my tail I can bunch up a few stones and with a twist of my hip I get the rock throwing equivalent of a shotgun.

I turn my head, and of course, two adorable idiots are staring at me with sparkly eyes. Scratch that, make it three. Crown woke up and was watching me throw stuff. Of course, immediately, Spots and RT try to do it too, but fail to even pick up a coin or rock. As I said, their tails are just tails so far, somewhat fat and stiff, I never expected them to be able and do anything like this in the first place. Still it’s cute to see them try! They’re absolutely adorable and I wish I could give them proper scratches…

Hmm, that attitude might be bad in the long run. I can’t think of them as my siblings, not really, but thinking of them as pets is bad. They’ll, at some point, become sapient critters that I can actually converse with, so I should not let myself think of them as “cute animals” even if that’s technically what they are.

Oh well, I decide to play with them a bit, since it seemed Spots was starting to get annoyed at failing to pick up the coin. I instead teach them to sweep their tail to toss the coins and rocks around. It’s fun, and since our bodies are much tougher than they have any right to be, we keep playing until we start getting sore.

After taking a bit of a break, burying my face in some gold to recover, I hear something strange. It’s hard to describe, but it sounds like it’s coming from RT. Like he suddenly has a cold and an inflamed throat, and he’s trying to sing opera. So I go over, as do Spots and Crown, and before we can approach, he exhales once more, but instead of a dying sound, he lets out smoke and sparks that jump on the stone floor before vanishing. It’s beautiful, seeing that light show so suddenly. My other siblings agree since they yip and jump around happily.

So, my sibling just learned firebreath. Well, sparkbreath, since he’s a baby. Still, that’s god damn dangerous, imagine if we were in a woo- nevermind, that’s why we’re in a cave, and not out in the forest. It’s probably why mother didn’t let the plants grow here, just to be sure that we don’t start a fire.

Red Tail seems very proud of himself, puffing up his chest, but I am more focused on the thing he’s almost sitting on. It’s a red mana gem, probably a fire one. After Crown and Spots show no signs of calming down, RT cranes his head, takes in a deep breath from near the crystal, then opens his mouth and almost throws the sparks with his whole body. Huh, back when I was sniffing crystals that didn’t happen. Weird. I try to reach for the gem, and to my surprise, RT puffs up his chest, opens his wings and stretches them to be visible, then lets out an actual roar, even if a high pitched one, which makes my body lock down.

“Mine!” says, no, imposes the infant dragon. He has made his claim, that one gem is now his hoard and he will fight me if I try to take it. Whenever he tried to attack me from behind, or challenge me, or really any playfighting he tried to have us do, he always lost. Despite that, he is affirming that he will fight me if I try to take the thing. It’s weird how effective that roar was, it made my whole body seize, my mind was split between roaring right back or turning tail and scampering away. My siblings seemed to have done the latter as they were peeking from behind a big rock. I on the other hand was still frozen.

What do I do? I don’t want to fight him, not for real, but it feels wrong to run from him. I feel my throat rumbling, my new lips raising to show fangs, but my heart’s not in it. Then, a thought comes, no, a memory from my past life. A memory of me thinking that very few things are ever split into only two sides, only two options. And this certainly isn’t it, despite how it feels. I don’t need to run or fight him, my instincts be damned, I can just huff. So I do that. I puff out some air from my nostrils, then just sit, calmly. I keep looking at him until he cranes his head lower, at which point I walk away.

I know that I can win, and I could maybe do that to make sure he understands it, but I don’t need to. I can just let him enjoy his thing and understand that I never planned on stealing his little hoard. Hope he gets the right message though.

Still, since testing it with his crystal’s a bust, I search through the pile and find a few red crystals, making sure they’re all fire, then get to work. So, my sibling just spewed sparks, how do I imitate that? I try to breathe in the fire mana, then exhale it out, and predictably nothing happened. If it did, just putting a few of these together would start a bonfire. So then RT did something else… What? Just for the hell of it I imagine the sparks as I breathe out again and nothing happened. Hmm.

I breathe in the fire mana once more, but this time I keep it in and just sit on the feeling of warmth in my chest. I can feel the mana in my lungs, with a bit of it spreading through my body, radiating through my blood. I take another breath, following the feeling even closer. The warmth expanded from one side of my lungs to the other, and more of it spread to my blood, but none of it is drawn to a particular part of me. I go back to breathing normally and ponder some more.

Alright, logic isn’t helping. So then what could? I shove my face into the crystals, and sit there, breathing in and out continuously, feeling the warmth spreading through me. Then I imagine fire. I’ve seen plenty of it in my life, and I’ve seen many iterations of a dragon’s firebreath, or a flamethrower of some kind. I try to apply that to me, imagining myself breathing out fire without care. I am a dragon, it is what I should be able to do, it’s in my blood, it’s in my body… But that is not enough still. I try to think, about fire, what it is, how it works, about what it could consume to burn. I think about myself, what I am, and what could turn the mere air that I breathe out into fearsome flames. Then, all of a sudden, it clicks. All that thinking, all that imagination and information made the feeling of warmth focus on the base of my throat, and something there is vibrating.

I once again take a deep breath, the image of fire flowing forth almost printed into my mind. I feel my eyes closing without closing. I have a third eyelid I didn’t know about, and it protects me as I spew out actual fire in front of me. It is not the stream that I wanted, it simply can’t be, but it is a small wall of expanding flames, like somebody set off a small explosive, and I created that from basically nothing!

I turn my head, and sure enough, Spots, Crown and even RT who is carrying his gem in his mouth came by and looked at me as I spewed fire. Then I see RT do his thing again, but this time instead of making sparks, he makes a small puff of fire.

Then Spots comes forward, reaches for a gem, and when I just look at him, he takes it and starts breathing in the fire mana, before letting out another, smaller, fire ball. Even Crown manages to do this, hers being the smallest yet, but still very much a flame.

They’re all so excited they start painting the brown floor black, and I can only feel fear.

I think I just turned my siblings into arsonists.