I walk into the somehow larger hallway, and find myself in awe. This entire place is just gorgeous. A different kind of light crystal must be used here compared to our cave, because this light feels warm. Looking at the nearest magic lamp I see that it is a compound work. There is the transparent crystal, but it is almost merged with a small red crystal, probably to give it the warmth, and a yellow crystal that I am not sure what it actually represents. My eyes, sadly, cannot see the magic formation that no doubt is directing the spell and shedding the light.

Looking at the rest of the hallway it is obvious why a different kind of light is needed, a more natural one: plants are absolutely infesting the place. I can’t actually tell if it is intentional or not, but it looks like the jungle claimed a building made thousands of years ago. It’s mostly greens and crawling vines, but I also see some flowers clumped together on a few specialized vines. And where there’s flowers, there’s fruits, because I can already see some bright, yellow, round-ish things up closer to the ceiling. I can’t reach them, sadly, but it is nice to see that underground planting is just something easily achieved in this world. That must help a lot with places that aren’t the best in terms of weather.

I would also have been curious how all this life can stay alive down here, but it is quite obvious if you look on the floor, right next to the walls. While plants cover it almost completely, I can see and hear a very small trail of water. I go and use my claws and snout to push the plants away, and there it is. Clear water, flowing inside a clearly artificially made bank with small dots of space made here and there so it flows into the ground. The plants take from the wet earth and straight from the source simultaneously. This does remind me of a natural spring I used to visit when I was young, best water I’ve ever had. In this life I have yet to drink even a drop of water, which may be concerning, but do I really want my first taste to be floor water?

Yes, yes I do. My first taste of food was a deer’s ass and its bones, I am way past worrying about diseases and hygiene in general. I press my snout in, just enough so I don’t start getting water in my nostrils, and then try to suck in water. And fail. Damnit, I hoped this wasn’t the case, but it seems that a tiny design flaw that many animals had back home appears here too. I don’t have lips. Or rather, the lips I do have aren’t able to seal properly, meaning I am sucking in mostly air, like a dumbass. So, can’t drink water unless I have a bigger source, or, if I use the painfully slow and inefficient method that those same animals used. My tongue. Meh, I just wanted a taste anyway. So I get to scooping up water in my mouth, which is hard since my tongue is mostly cylindrical and refuses to flatten. The result is both good and bad. Good because it feels like refreshing mineral water, bad because there’s dirt and sand and a lot of plant root taste in it.

Meh, not everything can be as good as meat on an empty stomach. Regardless, I think it’s time to address the elephant in the room, or rather, the painting of the elephant-sized dragon on the ceiling. It’s mother, obviously, but like, why? A closer look at the walls show bits and pieces of different artworks, none whole enough for me to understand what exactly was supposed to be shown in them, but mother’s portrait on the ceiling is perfectly safe from the growths. Really, it is actually accentuated by the circle of hanging vines that surround her image. And what an image that is, since the way it glints in the false sunlight makes me think that it is not only a painting, but it might even be a mural made with precious gems and metals for accents. Which is exactly the kind of spending I expect from a dragon. Well, I mean, she already spent plenty just for the hallway itself, since not only is it painted, probably by hand, by somebody, but I notice that it is filled with lines of gold plating. I think it is plating, at least, but that’s genuinely gold, my dragon senses tell me it is. And aside from forming patterns on the walls, it seems to be stretched from one side of the hallway to the other.

Pure opulence that would disgust me nine times out of ten, but I can see the beauty it brings in this case, as it contrasts the green vegetation and fits right in with the theme of nature taking back land from civilization. Well, at least I now know what an adult dragon thinks of as beautiful decor, and I am not against it. Now, if I was a giant, vain dragon, where would I be? I look to either side of the hallway and there’s really no telling. There’s a bit of a curve which means that after a point it just seems like it ends in a wall. Well, it’s not like I have nothing to use to guide myself, there’s still the trickle of water. It has a direction, after all. So, up or down? Up, might as well see where this water comes from, because it might either be the innermost spot, or the actual exit of this place. Time to walk some more.

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It takes me about five minutes to notice something strange. There’s movement on one of the vines. It’s noticeable because none of the others are even swaying currently, so I look at it, and after a bit I realize what is causing it. It’s a bug. A big bug. It’s a whole giant, like, Giant African Snail type creature. It’s a beetle of some kind, with rough carapace that seems to grow out spikes. It is eating one of the fruits I noticed before, just chomping through without a care and it does not seem to even notice me.

One thing to note, is that while I am very fascinated by insects, I do also have a massive phobia of them when they get too close, so I back my butt into a dense bit of foliage on the opposite wall and sit still like a rock, observing the creature. It doesn’t seem to have any special defenses aside from those back spikes, and even those seem half baked. It actually looks like it has a hard time with its right side, where its biggest spike juts out from. Is this a case like those crabs that have one claw so big that it is useless, but they keep growing those handicaps larger and larger because they are seen as attractive?

Either that, or this guy’s an unlucky mutant. Ah, there it is, it made a mistake. It tried to step a bit above, but instead put one leg on a fruit and while raising another leg to move up, the fruit fell and so did the bug. I am surprised to see it fall harmlessly on the floor, since it did sound like a nasty hit, but it gets back up and doesn’t seem to have even a small crack on its carapace. It doesn’t even seem to mind the fall as it just starts munching on the fruit that fell with it. Unlike the bug the fruit is just a pile of mush that smells appetizing. Now, back to the beetle, I see now that it did have a kind of defense aside from its lopsided carapace, namely, leg spikes. Might give a nasty wound since it is as big as my head. I should fear it, but instead I sit here savoring its insides.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

It’s filled to the brim with half-digested fruit juice making it very gooey, with only a few more meaty and crunchy parts, and unlike those larger animals it doesn’t seem to have much space to hold in waste, so I get to eat almost its entire body. Why does this taste so good? Why can’t I stop? Not only do I feel this ravenous hunger, but I also feel a small wave of strength overcoming me, like my first deep breath.

My body is weird. My mind is even more so. I am almost trying to force myself to be disgusted, but while I could feel physical pain because of my emotions, I cannot seem to retch despite my thoughts. I do not know how long I just sit here, in this large space, looking at this carapace, but I do. And suddenly I hear a heavy landing, followed by stomping steps. I tear my eyes from the dead bug and look up ahead. It seems I was right and the water is coming from the entrance. My ears are not as advanced as my sense of smell, but I figure I needed to walk another 10 minutes and I would be there. Something tells me mother won’t take me outside though.

A few seconds of wait time later and I see her, moving absurdly fast down the hall. I think for a moment that her legs help, but then remember that six legs aren’t much better at speed than four, just at holding more weight, so in fact it is just that a step for her is about a minute walk for me. I squeak and thrill at her, hoping one of those sounds makes sense to her (they literally do not mean anything to me), and see her expression shifting as she watches me from pretty far away. Once she is close enough to notice the tiny shell next to me, she seems to laugh, speak two or three words in her strange tongue, then she reaches down for me. Once again, she has food, and once again I am picked up with little effort by about two tendrils.

The walk back to the nest is absurdly fast, either because of just how swift mother is, or because I am focused on the scent of meat. She brought another carcass, maybe more than last time actually, for us. On one hand, I am famished, despite the bug. On the other, this means another long nap for me. I did somewhat enjoy the sleep, it’s just so relaxing and I can let myself catch up on my past life’s sleep debt, mentally if not physically, but that also means I get less time to adapt to being a dragon. My siblings had already figured out how to run and jump, while I have trouble walking a bit faster, so I need more time than them to adapt my human mind to this body.

And so, by the time I finish my musings I find myself placed on the floor, with my siblings piling together as mother places down a small horror. It is a full carcass this time, with the only wound being the ripped neck. And I don’t mean like something took a bite out of it, I mean something literally ripped the spine and the head is only hanging by some flesh. Now, what is this thing? A heavily mutated wolf is my best guess. It does look like one, somewhat, but it also looks like it took steroids from a guy who lives in the sewers.

I dig in, together with my siblings, while trying to focus on its appearance. It has tough skin and very long and curly fur that gets stuck in my teeth and makes it extremely hard to even pierce it. It’s almost like a puzzle in the way I need to use my front claws to reveal an area and then I have to scrape with my canines until I puncture the skin. I am faster than my siblings so there’s that. At least my problem solving skills are better than week old lizard babies.

Now, the rest of the creature… It has one whole leg bigger than the others, with massive claws that look more like bone knives. Now that I look at it, that same paw actually has bone spikes jutting out. That cannot be healthy. On the other end of the creature is the tail, which is actually naked and thick, looking more like an oversized possum tail. Finally, we have the weirdest part. It has a single massive eye and a horrifying mouth. Its singular eye is about five times the size of what I would have expected for this animal’s size, and its pupil seemed to be like two circles connected by a thin corridor. The mouth was only horrifying because it had like 3 times the teeth count it should have, and they didn’t seem to care that they were pushing others away when growing. I am starting to feel that mother killing it was a mercy.

I’ll leave the head to one of the others, and just focus on its decently thick chest muscles. Despite my meal being clearly a canine, I still enjoy it. It’s just tasty, which means it’s good food for this body of mine. Or at least, most of it is good. I do come across a few weird parts as I dig through its torso. First, tumors. At least a couple. So yeah, cancer is a thing here, and this guy had it bad. There’s a whole clump of clearly malformed flesh, bone and even what looks like half a tooth, and it is pushing against its left lung, must have caused quite a bit of pain. Second, a thing that at first I thought was also a tumor but instead realized is so much more, a sort of special kind of organ that it should not have. It grew next to the heart, apparently drowning itself in blood flow since I see a whole new aorta growing to connect only to it and back.

At first I don’t know what function it might have had, since it looked like a smooth sack of flesh, but after taking a bite out of it, it becomes clear. It’s making gemstones. I spit out the tiny rocks and look at them a bit. They’re very cloudy, rough and tiny, their main colors being dark red and an off white. I sniff them and I am confused a bit at first, since it just smells like the body I’ve been eating, but then realize that that was intentional. It’s blood, flesh and bone, and a mutant wolf was creating them inside of itself. So I guess that explains how people might get material for their magic, if animals can just grow them casually. Sure, these are not even ring-worthy gems, but gather enough of them and you might be able to do some kind of enchantment or gather a decent amount of mana.

At least this made it obvious for me that I would not survive out there as I am. I can barely even walk, yet there’s mutants roaming the world. Dragon or not, I am just a baby and for now I am safe here. Even if I wish I could see more, I will just have to wait for when I am considered old enough.

I am done, it seems. I ended up eating the organ despite the tiny rocks it had inside. It tasted the best out of any other part of the wolf and seemed to be just what I needed to feel full. My siblings are still tearing at the carcass but I let myself fall asleep, face buried into the corpse. Not my best sleeping spot, but it’s sufficient.

And so I am back, sitting in my library of memories. One book falls from the shelf it was placed on and I pick it up, and it takes me to a better time. I was alone, bored, so I went on a walk through the forest. It wasn't like the purposeful garden in the hallway, and it certainly was not that green, but it had its beauty, despite seeming like a bleak place to most. I remember following the dried out river, out into a clearing and finding the top half of a cow's skull, perfectly cleaned, just sitting there. I remember curiously examining it, as the sun beamed down as it does in summer.

Oh well, enough musings, time to go through my cycle of waking up for seconds at a time and then sleeping again. I can’t wait to start growing enough for mother to start taking us out… It’s been maybe weeks since I’ve last seen the sun and I bet the nature outside is much more exciting than what I am used to!