So the world is ending. Pretty cool. Been around for a few months and I already get to see the apocalypse… Ain’t that fun?

Jokes aside, I can only blankly stare at the smoldering comet passing above my head. Bright red lightning flashes ominously, powerful thunder shakes my body to the point where I can feel it in my soft tissues. It’s even worse than the impromptu concert from earlier. Moments later I am hit by a sudden shower and instinctively spread out my wings. Cool, birb instincts, exactly what I needed on top of my already cluttered mind.

After observing the light show once more I have to assert: that’s gotta be magic. Red lightning happens naturally, but not here, not so low, unless physics work in a very different manner, which they really don’t as far as I’ve noticed in my short life. Well, then again the fire literally cannot be natural in the first place, unless this is a meteor, which it probably isn’t or we’d all be dead.

I shake my head and look around. If this thing was shooting straight for mother, then there’s no way she’ll have time to come after me. I can feel my stomach burning however, and that’s problematic. The way my stomach works, at least as far as I can guess, is by turning anything I eat into energy that my body uses directly. I guessed it would be mana, which sounds like the peak of magical bioengineering, but if I had been right then I would not need to eat ever, at least while my magic capacity was lesser than the ambient mana.

However, reality is different. I am hungry. My body is packed tightly with every mana type possible, yet it’s not enough for my body. Something in my metabolism demands flesh and I cannot defy it.

There’s a powerful storm, an explosion in the distance, yet I cannot think. I feel my mind being grasped and pulled back. The future doesn’t matter. The past doesn’t matter. Study? Understanding? None of that matters. Higher functions are secondary to the primary directive of all living beings: Consume. The entirety of nature is a chain of consumption and I am at the very top, a greedy beast that needs to absorb organic matter and mana in order to survive another day.

My eyes shoot up. High above the treetops I see birds flying chaotically, some even hitting one another and falling into branches. My ears, despite tingling from the many thunders they have endured, notice trampling and growling, screams of many different beasts, even those I have yet to see. It’s a stampede. Mother has been flying over this forest often, but she is soft. Even when landing she doesn’t shake the ground as badly as she could. This thing is different. It might also be a dragon, I can scarcely imagine anything else coming down like a cataclysm.

This one isn’t soft however. It isn’t mindful of this place, maybe because it doesn’t own the place… Instincts tell me to not mess with another’s property, does this mean that the flaming dragon is an attacker? It might not care about messing with mother’s domain if its goal is to hurt her in the first place.

That might be bad… What if my siblings are around for the fight? What if they don’t understand that they must run?

I have half a mind to satiate my hunger with some grass and leaves and then try to run home, but that wouldn’t work. I don’t know how dragon fights work, but in nature most battles are swift. It’d take me hours to get back on foot.

I flap my wings, but the answer is still “no”. I either have yet to fully grasp the biomechanics of flying as a dragon, I need to grow my wings even larger, or the flight magic mother uses is a requirement to fly in the first place. Whatever might be the cause, I wouldn’t be able to get home in a timely manner… Unless… Argh, can’t think. My stomach doesn’t growl but it does burn, causing me to follow the sounds of stampede. I genuinely cannot focus while the engine demands food and I won’t be playing a cow in the middle of an apocalyptic storm.

I lower my body closer to the ground, which makes me at least a bit smaller than the average bush and abnormal grass, so I stalk forward like I learnt while hearing two mighty roars in the distance. Yep, dragon on dragon violence, not what I wanted after napping half a month.

It takes me about two minutes to see the first living creature around, and two seconds to see it get trampled by an absurdly fast not-deer. I felt a mental slap as I watched the bipedal deer stomp the bright blue squirrel into a red paste. To add insult to injury, the corpse isn’t even edible because the blood started bubbling and turned into flaming acid.

Alright, I’m close to the source of absurdity, the plants are weird by whatever animal made it this close are worse.

Nice.

I continue on, past the flaming acid, this time much more focused. I might need to stop something as it flees, after all. Ah, and that’s exactly what I’ll be doing it seems. I hear footsteps, quiet enough to not be hooves, coming towards me. Hunkering down I prepare to jump at the throat of whatever might attack me, but I realize that it’s not just one thing. A giant dark furred thing jumps over me before I can even register it. It’s so fast that I can’t even see it, but I know that it is running from something. I focus on what might something larger than myself and so swift be afraid of, and I am confused for half a second.

Skidding to a stop is a rat… sort of a rat… It has the body plan, it is also round yet had decent speed, and it is just a bit shorter than myself. It also has a metallic gray coat that shines like actual metal and its head is upside down for some strange reason. Its eyes are still on the upper part though, making it look like they’re embedded straight in the lower (upper?) jaw. It opens its mouth and deformed, oversized flat teeth are spread all over. It growls at me like a damn wolf, then swings its tail around, a tail that has sparse, large metallic spikes grown on it.

Metallic porcupine rat. Great. Also those teeth look sharp… Damn, no wonder the big ass thing ran away. Defensive offense… Not great for anyone.

Before I can decide on a course of action, the beast makes the choice for me by jumping into a roll and hitting down with its tail. I push myself back, but the spikes on its tail suddenly spread outwards, gaining enough length to scrape my head, leaving an open gash. Why? How? I should be able to block that… was I too focused on evading to repel it? I see it follow up with another tail attack, aiming at my side, and I respond by putting my mana into repelling.

It doesn’t work. Or rather it works, the explosion pushes it away with enough force to make it back off for a moment, but I am bleeding. It didn’t puncture deeply, but it punctured. How does that make sense? Goring attacks from charging boars did not make it through, and that was when we were much younger! But this thing can just hurt me despite by defense?

Hungry…

Is that it? No.. Why? Why am I asking? Because I might get surprised like this in the future. But I am fighting now. I need to win this before it punctures deeper, before I take a lethal wound. But how, I can’t bite this thing…

It runs at me, ready to do another spin attack… It’s metallic, it might be a conductive metal. I try to harness a lightning attack but it fails. I need to scoop the lightning out of the mix, but while that is an easy task out in the open and while peacefully training, I am not exactly in a situation close to that. I need to pull lightning from the mix in my lungs without having it bind right back into the chaos, and then I also need to make it into a rune. I don’t have time for that. I do however need to do something, so I pull on something I did before.

I, without any sort of glamor, spit out the contents of my stomach coupled with most of the mana in my lung, resulting in a cone of droplets, each one looking like sunlight reflected on gasoline, an off-rainbow of cold tints. The creature continues barrelling towards me for a moment longer, but its tail doesn’t strike. It falls off. The monster screeches in abject pain as the steel that once protected it melts away, letting its vulnerable skin feel the chemical burn.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

I know i don’t have a lot of time, I start eating it alive. Whatever made its metal armor so dangerous was nullified, the mana in the beast growing so chaotic it is doing all of nothing right now. It falls to my teeth without problem and I half eat, half slurp the pile of mushy rat.

Disgusting. It actually tastes bad. Must be the acid… It doesn’t seem to hurt me, but it is foul. Still I can feel my hunger going away and a trickle of metallic mana flowing around in my body. Its core was thankfully intact and I was able to learn what the deal was. This whole rat’s identity was piercing. It maxed out the offense of its spiky armor, making even the mightiest beast around vulnerable to its sting, even if only to a lesser degree.

No predator wants to get hurt, especially if healing might just misshape you badly, so I understand how it survived this long and this far into the forest.

Regardless of all that, I lived and can think, but I am still bleeding. Not good. I don’t know how to manipulate meat or blood yet, so I lick my wounds as best as I can, then blow softly on them. Once more, praised be the lips. It takes a bit, but the bleeding stops and I start moving. It might open again, but my body is hardy enough to handle it so long as I am not heavily hurt.

Problem is, what can be my next move? I run back to the pillar, the only safe-ish spot in the chaos, and draw as much air mana from it as I can, then climb up the tallest tree around.

I like this tree, it’s a very funny tree. While every other plant around looks like the typical temperate european forest, without any sort of conifers, this singular tree is both a fir, and an upside down one at that. It is a permanently green reverse cone, with the thinnest part of it at the base and the widest at the tip. I am not even talking about just the branches, its trunk is also thinner down low. It exists solely to spite reality and I love it for that.

Where was I? Right, roars in the distance, mother’s still fighting. I climb my way up, with ease and without swaying the tree somehow, and once up on the platform of branches, I look in the distance. They took to the sky. There’s a giant fire around where her lake should be, there’s a whole ass ashen scar probably from when the thing touched down, and I have no idea what to do from here.

I see the beast, the monster, I see the… dragon?

What the hell is that thing???

Alright, I understood, mother got some extra appendages to support her weight and to be more dexterous… but what the fuck did that thing do to turn out like that?

My eyes shouldn’t be able to properly see that far, but the damn thing is so big I can’t not see what makes it so unique. Firstly, only a pair of wings, but they’re double mother’s in length. The dragon is also many times longer than her, and at least at the upper part it is wider too. It looks like a hooded up cobra… no, a flatworm with a ringworm tail? I see it open its mouth and oh my fucking god the thing has arms for lips. Those are straight up large, muscular arms, but not the left/right kind of hand, but a sort of between? Has about 12 of those and each one has 6 fingers. Yes, they’re big enough that I can see the number of fingers, why is something like that allowed to exist?

The flat part seems to be its head… and maybe most of its body actually. Its mouth is as wide as it is, and opens like a whale shark’s. I think I see its horns… weird that it has them. They’re spirals pointed backwards, so not used for thrusting either. About 8 of those… Can’t see its number of eyes but I do not expect a normal count.

I see the golden yellows mix with bright reds and vivid oranges, patterns of flames and lightning running down its scales. Mother spews out a column of water which is flash boiled into steam by a massive cone of golden flames accompanied by flashes of red lightning.

Yeah, that thing is a monster that can only be called a dragon because my instincts demand me to call it as such. I see lightning gathering above while a clawed hand rises from below. The serpentine tail is grasped and dragged down low while lightning hits mother directly, causing her to flash like a third sun for a moment before revealing her untouched form.

Flames rise on the body of the titanic worm dragon, starting to scorch the wood away, but words that shake the forest cause the raindrops to stop a moment, then shoot straight for the flaming serpent the next. Its flames die down and it seems to struggle with boiling the prison, but it is being reduced.

I need to fly home. I can only hope mother was able to take my siblings back home, where they’d be safe from the battle of the titans… I need… I need to make sure they’re safe. The humans too. I doubt they’d survive if bits and pieces of debris fell into the cave and started to burn away all the plants.

I spread my wings and feel the winds of the dragon’s clash pushing against the organic sails. It feels freeing in a way… Free… Free like a bird. Free to fly somewhere else, away from this danger… But I am not a bird. I am a dragon. And I need to fly into danger for the sake of protecting that which I claimed as mine. Those are my siblings, and my humans. They might all be mother’s in truth, but they are mine to care for… and to care for…

I focus and let out the wind mana that I gathered, weaving first the rune of air, then adding in control. It must obey me, because I don’t need strong air, or a wide spread control of air, I need dexterity, and even though I may be in a dangerous, chaotic situation, I need utmost focus for this one goal. My wings are spread out, I beat them down, I feel my legs pushing against the branches, and I fly. I am used to this part, I’ve been gliding for a couple weeks before the nap, so I know how to control myself in the air, but the second I try another beat of the wings I fall. So I don’t beat them again.

I use the air rune to do most of the work. I need more pressure under my wing than I need above it, I need the force of the air to push me upwards to balance out my fall, so I focus on doing just that. My limbs are pressed tightly against my body, my tails are spread out straight, swaying every so often to steer one way or another, a sort of innate gyroscope keeping me in control despite this being my first flight.

I breathe continuously and use the air in bursts. If I continuously keep it up I won’t make it home… I won’t make it home…

I didn’t make it home. I died without making it home… But even if I made it home it was an empty thing.

I like my home, my new home, it is warm and cozy, it is lively and fun, despite lacking all those fun little things that made my past self waste time… this place feels more like home than that place ever did, despite being here for so little time. I don’t want to lose it…

My eyes drift to mother and I see her biting one of the dragon’s arms, pulling down and making both of them crash into the forest below.

“Please win.” I spoke, poorly, to no one in particular.

----------------------------------------

Once again I didn’t make it home. I ended up crash landing into some leafless trees, breaking off many branches and getting a couple new bruises, but I am close enough to home.

Turns out flying magically is absurdly fast. Sure it took me like 10 times the amount of time it took mother and I ended up not only using up all the mana in my lungs, but also a decent chunk of the mana in my wings to beat them faster than I normally should be able to. Still, it was damn worth it. I am close. Problem, mother and her enemy have been slowly approaching the nest in their tussle. At first they were going randomly, fighting on the ground and in the air, pulling each other low and using elements to eviscerate the beautiful forest. Hell, getting closer I was able to see that the flaming dragon is creating lava from dirt, so that’s going to absolutely wreck the ecosystem.

No matter, we’ll survive, right now I just need to make it home and I am damn close…

I know where I am, I know where I need to go, I know how fast I need to run, but damn if they’re not just a bit faster.

I burn mana, my limbs lighting up from its rapid use, rainbow, heatless flames and sparks being left in my wake.

I need to make it.

The forest is dry and dying as it is autumn, so the fire is fast.

I need to make it.

The two keep dragging each other to the ground, but they’re gaining distance.

I need to make it.

The heat has reached me, a few fires are starting ahead of me from smoldering debris.

I need to make it.

The serpent, an explosion pushing mother backwards. I see her large head through the burning branches, I see it fall just a bit away.

I see the serpent dragon, a hundred times more gruesome and terrifying up close than it was from a distance, as it slithers forward, its glowing form making visible the way it used those massive arms to pull itself forward.

I need to make it.

It reaches the entrance and raises its body. It opens its mouth.

I need to make it.

It roars like thunder.

I made it.