I thought I was dead. But now I notice strange faint noises, so muffled that I can’t make out what their origin is. My vision is still dark, but I can barely spot soft spots of faint light peeking through… something. I feel as if I’m surrounded by some sort of liquid, the pressure moving as I faintly try to move, the unmistakable feeling of something moving around me as I squirm.

Where am I? I begin to think, my mind racing. The last thing I remember-

Suddenly I feel pain, lots of it. Although I can’t feel my body much, I can recognize the feeling of a headache, although perhaps not at this level of pain. A migraine? No, it’s worse than that. Any senses I was focusing on before drifting away as I instinctively tried to move my arms to my head. As my arms move, I notice that something feels very wrong with my body, but that’s something to think about later, after this horrid pain is gone.

As my head slowly stops ringing and hurting, the noises I can faintly hear grow less muffled. I hear people… I think. Its sounds like talking, but it’s too far away or this liquid around me is stopping me from knowing what’s being said.

My mind, slowly recovering, starts churning out thoughts again. Am I in a coma? Are all these strange feelings what a coma feels like? I’ve never been in one before. Did I get into a car accident or something? I don’t remember what brought me to this place, where was I before-

My mind erupts in pain again, perhaps I need to stop thinking of before… whatever happened. I need to figure out what’s happening here and now. And where here is. And what’s around me. And… also who’s around me? I can hear voices somewhat.

I start trying to think of what to focus on. Why am I focused on memories when I’m surrounded by strange voices and yet I can’t hear anything? What is this wet liquid feeling around me? Why are my senses so dull? Am I dead? Is this hell?

I begin thrashing around as much as I can. My left arm hits a hard object. Feels like a rounded side, more specifically a concave side of whatever I’m touching. I feel resistance as I move the rest of my body, but I’m not sure what’s keeping me still. It feels like something is wrapped around me. But moving feels better than staying stationary, so I keep it up. My thrashing apparently gets someone’s attention, since I hear someone speaking near me. Less muffled, seems like they’re closer to me than whatever I heard before. I can’t tell what language they’re speaking… but somehow I understand what they’re saying? A strange experience.

“… have to break out…. bite...”

The muffled effect is still stopping me from hearing most of what they’re saying, but what I do understand is confusing.

Biting? Break out? What? Well, fuck it. What do I have to lose? I don’t know whats around me, nor whats happened to me. Not like following the directions of a disembodied voice will make things worse.

I try to force my head forward, slowly opening and closing my mouth. As soon as I try, I can immediately tell something is very wrong. My mouth does not feel like it should. Hell, as I move my body, I thought my arms felt wrong, now my entire head feels wrong. Small sensations over my entire body start to clue me in that this feeling of incorrect biology is more uniform that I first realized. I also feel as if I’m stuck in a fetal position or something similar. But I’ll have to focus on that in a second. Whatever muffled voice is yelling at me seems to have sped up their yelling. They sound panicked and the language is still barely understandable to me.

“…. Hurry, little… you…. We need to…”

What the hell is going on? I thrash around more, snapping my mouth around more. The more I move it, the more worried I get. It’s… very clearly inhuman. Although I still can’t see anything, I can feel that my head is an entirely different structure from what I’m used to. My mouth, which I’ve been snapping open and closed since I heard that unknown individual tell me to bite, is feeling further out from my face than I thought. My nose included. But my eyes seem normal, although my nose and eyes still seem to not be helping me much. I feel my attempted bites brush against something fleshy around me, if I had to guess it’s part of whatever my arm hit earlier.

I think back to what I looked like before. I know human physiology couldn’t have my mouth feeling this way, nor reach this far. Could my head be at a weird angle to allow me to hit something with my mouth in this manner? Maybe I’m drugged heavily and that’s why my mouth feels so disconnected? Maybe-

As I try to compare my feeling of my current face to the face I remember, the headache begins to return. I very quickly stop thinking about this comparison, and strangely enough the pain slowly subsides.

Well… I think I’ll have to admit something, Inhuman is the correct word when I used it earlier. Wherever I am, whatever I am right now. I don’t think it’s the same as anything I knew before. Even though every feeling is weak or dull and makes me unsure of my own senses, I can tell this isn’t a dream. Those moments of pure pain from the headaches make me sure of that. And my body feels very, very different from something… human. But I need to focus. All I know is that I need to know what the hell is going on or figure out whatever I am right now. Although I don’t even have a guess what’s going on, maybe this isn’t permanent? My flurry of thoughts try to make reason of these feelings and sensations. Slowly trying to piece the puzzle together of what the hell is happening.

I thrust my head forward, feeling slight pain in my neck as I force myself to move more than I have been. I feel my… snout? Is that the word for its current form? Wait, stop thinking about useless stuff. My mouth… snout… whatever it is, bites and finds something. I thrash my head around and feel the distinct feeling of whatever is in my mouth ripping from nearby material. The slow drag causes more ripples in whatever liquid is around me. The darkness surrounding me is diminished slightly as I rip something away in front of me, and I see a faint yellow view of light penetrating some sort of thin material. As light makes its way into whatever is around me, it’s now clear that I’m stuck in something.

I begin to worry. I have an idea, but I don’t really want to admit it. It holds implications I’m not really a fan of. That… this is much worse than a coma, or some strange dream.

I continue my biting, but this time at the small opening I made before. I don’t need to rip at the innards of what I’m in, I need to break out, like the voice said before. As I snap my mouth and teeth, which I’m now gaining a bit of feeling of and they’re a lot more numerous than human teeth, I feel a strange tooth that’s jutting out at a strange angle. My initial thought was that the tooth would be useless for chewing or eating, but a second later my body begins moving somewhat on its own, biting at an angle at the area around me. Instincts can take over, I guess, as suddenly I know this tooth is meant to help me get out.

Before whatever happened to me – and my head begins to hurt as I think of these memories – I always loved biology, and as I begin to use this extra tooth, is it possible it’s some sort of egg tooth?

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From the basic knowledge of many late night internet searches while bored, I entertained the idea. A special bit of beak or a special tooth solely purposed for the escape of an egg.

Oh, that headache is not a pleasant feeling, stop thinking of the past, just focus on the current situation. And the easiest way I can change my thoughts right now is to admit something. Well, I’m guessing the implication I thought of before was correct. I’m in an egg. I am not human right now. Now all I need to know is how the hell I came to be this… whatever I am.

This egg tooth jutted out at an angle that led out of my mouth - my snout I guess – and helps me catch the outside barrier at a strange angle. I take the chance and bite hard, watching as the barrier cracks the faintest amount as the tooth pierces through.

I begin throwing my head forward and biting more, trying to focus on aiming the assumed egg tooth at the same hole or at least near it. A few bites connect as more cracks appear and link together. Slowly but surely, the cracks form a small shape, and the next thrust of me trying to bite at the outside of the egg pushes the cracked area off as a shard breaks from the egg. The resulting hole erupts my small prison in light and fresh air. The air is frigid, but very quickly I get used to the feeling. My eyes close as I feel nearly blinded from the change in vision. I try to take a breath but find something else is blocking me from breathing. Fluids or materials of some sort.

I start pushing my head, feeling membranes and fleshy bits inside the egg disconnecting from my body as I attempt to push my head outside through the small hole I broke open. I hear the individual speaking again, but quieter, perhaps watching me crawl out of the egg? I hear more pops and cracks as I force my head against the opening… and then a loud snap and pop as an entire side of the egg breaks open. I fall out of the egg as it breaks, my chest smacking into the floor and driving me to breath heavily to catch my breath from the pain. A rush of liquids and small ripped apart flesh bits of what I assume was the eggs membrane flow out past where I’m laying on the ground. I slowly begin coughing and retching bits stuck in my throat from my bites.

I’m out.

My very first view of outside the egg was beautiful. It was a snow-covered landscape, an evergreen forest stretching for miles downwards, as it seems wherever my egg is, was higher up or perhaps on a mountain or cliffside of sorts? It’s painful to think of memories of before, but the view reminded me of Alaska or Canada or something. Trying to distract myself from literally painful memories of the past, I look around. I see small black particles floating in the air, which is weird, but I assume it’s just floaters or whatever those little dots that float in front of your eyes when you see bright light. I grab at my nostrils, pulling out small bits stuck within, likely from whatever process was creating this new me in the egg.

As I slowly pull bits off and out of my facial structure, I can finally take a deep breath as the frigid air fills my lungs. And as I did this, I did notice the horrible truth of whatever I’ve become. From the perspective of my eyes, a portion of my vision is now just a snout, which looked reptilian in nature. White scales glistening along it, likely wet from the fluids I was in. My arms felt mostly normal but ended in 4 clawed fingers. I accidentally poked myself with the sharp tips a few times as I cleaned myself. But the rest of my self-inspection would have to wait, as I pulled bits from my ears – which were just ear pits on either sides of my head, like you’d see on many common lizards – the world became much less muffled. And what I could hear were short screams of pain and the crackling of flames.

Panicked by this change, I turn to look at the egg I fell out of and the person who was talking to me near it. The beautiful view had me hopeful that whatever happened to me, whatever I became, couldn’t be that bad. But the sudden introduction of violent noises around me had me on guard, trying to figure out the situation. Your instinct of self-preservation is a strong one, and even though I’m in an unfamiliar body I’m still against bringing myself to any harm or danger.

I turn to look back at my egg, and sure it’s a large cracked and liquid dripping egg, but I also spot the creature next to my egg. A humanoid lizard… thing. Like the new me. White scales, same white as the snowy landscape around us. Small horns atop the head, growing along the edges of the top of the head. Two arms ending in 4 fingered hands, the fingers ending as claws. The legs were digitigrade in form, ending with 4 toes total also ended in claws. Mine are probably the same. From where I’m lying on the ground, I can spot a tail behind it. The individual wore clothing that just looked to be small amounts of furs wrapped around its body.

It’s not an animal I know of, nor does it look comparable to any lizard I could remember without blasting my head with more pain. But the more glaring issue was the crimson blood dropping from an arrow sticking from its chest.

As I turn my vision from the likely dead individual to look past my egg, I see an entire small village before me. At any other time, it was probably a small or cute village, primitive in design. The walls were only cloth in some portions, but most huts in the area were made of crude wooden planks. The walls seemed thin for such a cold area. And currently… a good majority of the huts were on fire. And some suprising individuals seemed to be the cause.

I could see some humanoid individuals in armor jabbing swords at lizard creatures like me where they lay on the ground.

They’re making sure members of my species are dead, I realize suddenly, connecting them as a danger to myself. Where I’m laying down, I’m sure they can’t easily see me, so perhaps I can crawl somewhere safe. I don’t seem to feel the cold that much, even though the ecosystem seems to be a taiga and snow is everywhere. Perhaps I can crawl into a snowdrift and use my small size to my advantage. I still can’t feel my legs much, I’ll have to make do with a risky attempt at sneaking somewhere safe.

One was in equipment I can recognize as full plate armor, looking like the stereotypical knight in shining armor, aside from him murdering everyone that looked to be whatever my new species is. There were a few others as well, in leather armor and furs, likely for the cold weather. All clearly human. So, there are humans! Why aren’t I human then? Why do I have to be this weird lizard thing? Why am I here again- wait no don’t think of such things. My thoughts stop as the headache returns the moment I try to recall anything.

One was shooting a bow from outside the village. Another was running around with a spear doing the same as the plate armored individual. One last one, a human woman, was dressed the lightest - no armor as far as I could see and just furs, and was holding her hands together while speaking something I couldn’t understand. Not sure what she was doing. Another thing I noticed is the sad fact that now that I was outside the egg, I could hear them, and yet I couldn’t understand them. The language was rough sounding to my ears. I recall how I understood the words of my fellow species earlier, and I’m not sure what to make of that.

So, I’ve made it out of an egg. I’m now a small lizard person thing. If I compare my species members to the humans attacking, it’s obvious to me that we are quite small… Something was trying to drag up old memories as I looked at the situation. I couldn’t put my finger to it, and my head began to hurt horribly as I did so, but I felt like I nearly had an answer to something. All the same, the situation quickly changes, and the thought is forgotten.

A moment later, I see a fellow lizard creature dive out of a hut’s cloth covered window, revealing scorching flames spreading within the hut. They look around towards the egg pile I came from, and seem to spot… me?

Oh god no. There goes my stealth idea I think as the individual sprints at me, drawing the attention of the 4 humans nearby as he runs to me. An arrow flies through the air, a faint whistling noise as it effortlessly flies and pierces the back of this lizard running to me. He, or she as I have no clue, grunts in pain as the arrow sticks out of the back of their body. They reach me, and speaks one word quietly –

“Escape.”

I start to think about how I’m able to understand our species’ language, and he shoves something into my hands where I lay. He picks me up, and while I’m thinking he’s about to run away with me… I then feel nothing but the air around me as he seemingly chucked me into the air towards the steep slope with the beautiful view I looked at earlier.

Did he just throw a child? My face, one of pure bewilderment. I have no control while I’m mid-air, my body flailing as I panic.

I clutch whatever he stuffed in my hands tightly, and feel the first impact as my back and neck impact the snow on the steep slope. It surprisingly doesn’t hurt much as I begin to roll downward, and moments later I barely see the creature who chucked me down the slope fall to the ground with a few more arrows in his back.

I continue rolling, and I find myself unable to actually stop. My vision is limited as I spin and tumble, but I can tell that I’ve entered the evergreen tree line, and I keep tumbling. The slope is seriously steep, even if trees are around me now. I tumble and roll for another few minutes, gaining some serious distance from the burning village. Suddenly, I feel my head snap forward as it hits something hard.

I have my last thought, as my world goes dark. I really should’ve tried to maneuver myself so that I don’t hit a tree during my descent.