~~~
Veronica had always known she would be a queen one day. She spent her first few years of life in the warm embrace of her Mother’s Bog. Asleep, yet learning so many things through the dreams she was given.
She knew that she was born as a ruler. Her dreams showed her the possible futures as the apex of this place, simulated based on knowledge from the distant past. She would cocoon and then re-emerge as the one to lead her mother’s bog in her stead. The mother had lived there since time immemorial.
It had once been a beautiful lake, clear water shimmering like the sun reflected on shattered glass. Veronica was glad it had nearly dried up, the bog was the perfect environment for her and her future spawn.
They had planned it so that once the bog mother was free, Veronica would emerge to take her place as the ruler of the fetid mud.
Yet, a year before her rise to queendom, something new had entered her little world. Having seemingly fallen from the sky, Veronica was startled awake for the first time in her life as something big and ovular splashed into the mud just next to her!
She had half a mind to crush this upstart, this… egg? As Veronica circled the egg, she noticed it was cracked and leaking its egg fluid. When she curiously tasted it… it was intoxicating. The flavor was deep and rich, the amounts of nutrients packed in were enough to feed a starved man for a month. She had to have more!
So she wiggled her fat grubby body over to the crack, finding it had been covered up by the upstart’s still-squishy tail tip. It mattered not, if this creature was to live in what would surely soon be her swamp, then it could be her host as she fed on its life force. She dug in through the squishy, fetal flesh of the tail, not eating it mind you, for although she was a monster, she was also a queen and wouldn’t eat the… dragon, yes… this was a dragon egg. The dragon’s flesh before it even hatched.
She would, however, become a symbiont for this creature as long as it could feed her this delicious ambrosia. She came to rest inside the dragon’s tail-flesh, just past the exposed tip. From there she helped the dragon fetus work around, overcome, and even further mutualize with the other invading life forms.
By the time she was done and the yet unhatched dragon would live, she was very tired, but also better fed than she had ever been before. She drifted off to hibernation once more as the bog mother quietly whispered to Veronica that this creature was now a kin of the bog.
~~~
The dreams had stopped recently. Veronica was pretty sure it was because of the dragon officially hatching and crawling free from the deep life-packed mud that had always been her home. It was both exhilarating and terrifying to know that she was technically out in the open world for the first time in her life. Though truthfully, she was safely tucked into the hatchling’s tail flesh.
Veronica had various ways of knowing where the hatchling was and what it was doing, but the easiest and nicest way for her was by supping on more of the hatchling’s blood. She could tell that she was becoming even stronger than the bog mother had planned for her to be, the nature of dragon blood, as well as it’s complimentary affinities matching her own, strengthening her into a mighty grub!
Soon, she would cocoon in the safety of this dragon’s tail and emerge victoriously as a true queen! Not in a way that would permanently harm her new kin, of course.
She was nervous when the hatchling began to head deeper into the forest, dragging its tail, and by extension the lump she made while within its flesh, behind its long sinuous form.
She was happy that this “Wyrmwood” had named itself as one aligned with the swamp, yet why did it keep moving farther away from her original home?! She was going to have a very hard time getting back at this rate!
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The quiet clearing was interesting, with how it gave off such ominous mana signatures.
The dryad was terrifying! She could instantly tell it naturally fed on her kind!
The gryphon, though, infuriated her. The mana it gave off spoke of pompousness, unending pride in its species, and a hatred for all lizard-kind! She could feel it, the gryphon wanted to be a king, nay a tyrant! It wanted to dominate and mock all others! Such a perversion of the qualities her mother had shown a ruler to need was unforgivable!
Yet, she could not yet act on her anger, for she was not yet a queen herself. The feathered dragon, ‘Mayflare’ he called himself, was quite charming to Veronica. She liked his dialect and his caring nature. He had even saved her and her kin from that awful gryphon! More than once! There was only one problem.
That dreadful tail whipping motion he taught Wyrmwood. She had felt her kin’s energy and mana collecting and building like a tidal wave as it approached her and the tail tip. Seconds later, she was dizzily trying to make sense why her head hurt so much!
Mayflare had basically taught her kin to bludgeon her, a future queen, upon their enemies! It was shameful! The first dark spot of shame in her life!
Yet, she let it slide for her kin’s sake. Wyrmwood was still just a hatchling and didn’t know any better. She was pretty sure that he hadn’t even realized that his tail was swollen because she was living inside it!
~~~
And it all led up to this moment. Her kin lay severed in half, creating blessed mud with his own blood. The tyrant cawing mockingly at him as her kin, her brother, laid there unconscious and bleeding out.
She couldn’t let it end like this, she couldn’t let him die like this! There was only one choice available. One way to save both him and herself. Yet it was a heavy one.
If Veronica truly bonded with the dragon’s flesh… she could give them a fighting chance. Her mastery of her kin’s inner workings, that is, the other entities living symbiotically within Wyrmwood, would let her work miracles.
However, she would lose the chance to ever be autonomous again. Her physical form would become one with Wyrmwood and they would be two minds in one body.
She hesitated for just a moment…
Before beginning the bonding. She was a queen. And a true queen did not abandon their precious kin!
~~~
The gryphon smugly stood over the detestable lizard. Even though it was but a hatchling, it had proven surprisingly deadly. That single tail strike had heavily injured it. But it wouldn’t let its, far more noble, life end here! Like the first bird to wake in the morn, it had beaten this worm! Wyrm?
The gryphon scoffed, there was hardly a difference, wasn’t there. They would soon both be what this magnificent one feasted on!
..!
The gryphon quickly turned its head! It had seen movement. Yet, it was just the worm’s lower half, seemingly twitching. The gryphon idly wondered if both halves could survive and regrow like an actual worm. Not that it would give them the chance!
It flung a wind cutter spell at the twitching tail, when the tail suddenly avoided it?! The gryphon watched in shock as two fuzzy antennae grew from the tail, just behind that dangerously hard cone at the end! Said cone had cracked all the way across, for the second time when it had struck the gryphon, creating a +-shaped crack.
That crack now opened up to reveal a hidden maw! The underside of the hard shell was lined with hundreds of small, grub-like, tendrils that constantly squirmed! It would have been appetizing to the gryphon if it wasn’t so shocked.
The once-hidden maw let out a breathy, buzzing hiss. It sounded like a snake had swallowed a bunch of mosquitoes. The gryphon fully turned to its new target.
Whatever this thing was it was-
With a twitch of an antenna, the thing lunged! As it chomped down just under the gryphon’s beak, the gryphon felt a long proboscis stab into it! It shrieked in outrage and tried to shake the wyrm’s weird bottom half off by stomping around and clawing at it, yet the thing’s inner grub-like tendrils dug into the gryphon’s flesh helping hold it firm!
The gryphon was starting to lose strength fast, it could feel this thing sucking its blood out! It was truly desperate! It angled its neck towards the nearest tree and ran at it, intent on slamming this threat into paste! It was confident it would kill this thing and feast on the hatchling’s flesh to re-invigorate itself. Then it would be strong enough to finally kill that feathered lizard! It would rule this forest! Nothing could sto-
*SNAP*
~~~
Veronica had retracted her proboscis and detached as the gryphon ran at the tree trunk, rather astonished when it didn’t seem to notice and continued running full speed while angling its neck at the trunk.
Her fluffy antenna twitched at the loud snap that sounded out as the bird-brain broke its own neck. It was kind of funny, but she didn’t have time to care right now. Both of Wyrmwood’s halves were still bleeding out right now!
She aligned her side of the midsection stump with his and pressed them together. It hurt like nothing else, the pain making her mind go nearly full white, yet she needed to stay conscious for the process to work. She commanded the flesh knit back together, and the discolored spots along their body suddenly moved and converged on the cut!
The dragon flesh along that area felt like it was boiling, and there was a sizzling sensation as the two halves reconnected.
When it was finally done, Veronica was exhausted, yet satisfied. Her antennae protrusions retracted back into their tail’s flesh, to keep the delicate appendages safe, as she too fell unconscious, dreaming of the day when they would surely rule the world, together.
~~~