Now clean and hydrated, Wyrmwood began to search for a safe place to rest. It wanted to stay relatively close to the swamp for now as there didn’t seem to be many large creatures that would put up with the danger and smell. It decided to test how it moved its upper body as it slithered along. Previously, when it moved it kept its arms pressed to its sides since they looked too weak to hold its upper body up on. Now though, it considered using them to help pull it along faster, it decided wouldn’t be at risk of breaking its arms if it didn’t directly put pressure on them, AND it could test just how strong it actually was, while ALSO working its limbs out to help grow the muscles if more really were needed for it to use them properly!
And so the critters on the edge of the forest watched the strange sight of a snake with arms pulling itself across the ground with spindly stick arms. Many would go on to sire kids and grandkids who would eventually tell druids of this weird sight. None of them were ever believed.
~~~
As it turned out, it couldn’t support its front body with its limbs, but it could just use its strong spine to lift its head up like any other wyrm or snake. The pulling also worked pretty well. It didn’t help it go much faster, but did feel surprisingly fun and worked out its arm muscles. As it slithered over another large root, something landed on its back with a *wud*! Wyrmwood swiveled its head around a full one hundred eighty degrees and glared at the attacker, some kind of winged ape with the legs of a bird its fur was a strange deep green color that transitioned to feathers of the same color around its hips. The beast whooted before grinning wickedly back and began to scrape at Wyrmwood’s scales with its clawed hands and taloned feet. Wyrmwood’s scales held for now, but they could both tell that wouldn’t be the case for long.
Relying on its instincts for its first fight, Wyrmwood tried to inhale deeply before summoning its draconic flames. It’s instincts told it that its flames were the go-to attack of any dragon. The heavy hitter and the defense all in one as a dragon’s flames were magic and couldn’t hurt the dragon that breathed it. The hatchling felt rather excited to breathe its first flames and see its own affinity!
Yet just before its lungs were filled with enough air, they suddenly itched terribly, causing Wyrmwood to let out a great cough instead. A deluge of damp, warm air mixed with the slight tinge of rotten flesh washed over the winged apes body, ruffling its fur and feathers.
The ape gave the embarrassed hatchling an unimpressed look and was about to attack its scales again, when it suddenly slumped over on Wyrmwood’s back, feeling a great lethargy overwhelm its senses. It tried to get back up, to get away, but its limbs were quickly losing strength! As the ape looked down at its body, it saw countless mushrooms growing quickly out of its flesh!
Its eyes widened in terror as more energy was drained from its body. It limply slid off of Wyrmwood’s back, no longer able to even keep itself latched onto the scales. Wyrmwood watched in shocked fascination as the beast’s form was quickly lost under a heap of growing mushrooms until finally it all went still.
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The hatchling leaned in and cautiously sniffed the mound of mushrooms…
They smelled like food.
It shrugged and began to eat.
~~~
Wyrmwood hadn’t been particularly hungry yet, but its inherited knowledge whispered that wasting prey was how you starved. So it ate the little snack and kept going. It was a little concerned about what had just happened, but wouldn’t think about it for now. It needed to keep vigilant until it found a proper shelter, otherwise it’d probably get surprise attacked again!
It slithered along until it finally happened upon a decent spot. There at the base of an old hollow tree, was a hole that was just big enough for it to slide into.
The tree had been really thick, about as thick as a shed… not that the hatchling could make the comparison. Inside the hollow it was obvious what had happened. The tree had been struck by lightning and then rotted from the inside instead of recovering. Wyrmwood didn’t really notice any of that though. It was just happy to finally have a place to coil up and sleep in.
Even with the large inner space, it was a tight fit with just how long the hatchling’s body was. It coiled up tightly inside the hollow, until its swollen tail reached the hole and got stuck…
The hole wasn’t large enough for it to pull its malformed tail all the way in, but that was fine. It reminded the hatchling of when it was in the egg. Those comforting thoughts surrounded it as it drifted off to sleep.
~~
The Draco Forest was in an interesting place on the continent, it took up a large space, as big as some of the great empires on the eastern continent of Carna. The continent the Draco Forest was located on, called Dochna, was the third biggest continent in the world. And most of it was Dragon territory!
Draco Forest was the biggest area of high purity, stale mana in the world. It is said that a dragon can still naturally spawn there once every thousand years! The results of said dragon’s exact race and power may vary, but that it could happen at all showed just how much more mana was there.
This naturally meant that all the other sapient races wanted a piece of that sweet magical pie. What they found, however, was the Chantico mountain range spanning across the land and the great cliffs of Ceto banning any who would try to enter by sea.
There were passes through the mountains, but many strong beasts tended to make those part of their territory. The mountains that weren’t covered in molten rock tended to be tall and freezing, all of which still had many dangerous beasts roaming around.
The continent was shaped somewhere between a box and a blob and from up high looked like the hoof of a horse, the countries of the sentient races making up the horseshoe, with the rest being the naturally defended Draco Forrest.
As if all of that wasn’t enough, most of the named dragons lived in or under the Chantico mountain range instead of the forest itself!
With all that said, the resources that could be hauled out of the great forest were the best and richest in mana in the world. Any adventure that got to a high level made their way to Dochna.
As the high leveled adventurers got their gear ready, there were many rumors and bets about where their bounty could be. While most of the countries on Dochna were speciest, (until they were forced to alliance by whatever massacred its way out of Draco Forest,) the many races of adventurers were a lot more amiable to each other since they needed to use whatever they could to survive. It was this connectivity that quickly narrowed down the area that no one had been in when they had taken all the abandoned eggs…
The Buzzing Bog.
~~~