~~~
Once Wyrmwood had learned how to awkwardly slither itself backwards, it could relatively comfortably work its way in and out of the giant hollow that it used as a base. This home wouldn’t really work for long though, it knew it wouldn’t fit anymore once it started to grow. The hatchling didn’t really mind that fact, it was too distracted by a disturbing revelation; it couldn’t breath its draconic flame.
It knew it had a draconic flame. It could feel the muscle it was supposed to use to breath it, but to properly use it, Wyrmwood needed to take a full deep breath… which it couldn’t seem to do.
As far as it could tell, nothing was hindering its lungs, Wyrmwood could breath just fine. The problem only occurred when trying to take a full, deep breath. Its lungs would feel a terrible itch and force it to cough instead of breathing its flame. And then the growth…
Wherever Wyrmwood coughed would be quickly covered in fungus and mold. It grew at an alarming rate and could spread over an organism, draining the organism’s energy away! It seemed to work better on smaller things. It made any critters that Wyrmwood coughed on become heaps of mutated fungal and mold snacks, but any large tree seemed to be able to fight the stuff off, looking healthier afterwards instead, also it didn’t do anything to inorganic matter.
A dragon who couldn’t breath their flame was just a big reptile! Wyrmwood would never be called that! It had to think of something!…
The hatchling paused from its furious munching on fungus. It stared at the piles of fresh mushrooms and mold…
Perhaps… it could just pretend this was its draconic breath? It only happened when Wyrmwood coughed, and Wyrmwood only coughed if it tried to take a full, deep breath…
Yes. It decided, this was Wyrmwood’s draconic breath. And no one would ever be any the wiser.
~~~
After a few days of successful hunting, (though only of smaller critters), Wyrmwood felt comfortable enough to head deeper into the forest itself instead of sticking near the swamp. There just wasn’t much food around here and those scarce critters were quickly becoming scarcer every time it went out to hunt. The deeper woods would be much more dangerous with all the bigger creatures around, but also had the potential to be much richer in game.
Yet the deeper into the thickening forest of trees Wyrmwood went, the quieter the surroundings seemed to become, the constant buzzing of insects in the air quieting down disturbingly fast. This made Wyrmwood move very slowly, straining its senses for any indication of other creatures. All that could be heard was the rustling of the leaves overhead until the treeline suddenly met an abrupt end.
Wyrmwood’s breath caught in its throat as the biggest tree it had ever seen in its admittedly very short life dominated a massive clearing! The trunk alone was thick enough to fit five normal sized trees into it. The branches, far, far above the rest of the already tall canopy, dominated the sky of most of the clearing… It was also dead.
Not a single leaf decorated the massive branches that seemed to grasp at the sky. As if this goliath tree had breathed its metaphorical last screaming at the sky, weather in rage, or fear. That same massive trunk was covered in craters and had a massive burnt hole in the middle of it. As wyrmwood entered the clearing it began needing to slither its long body around many protruding roots that were hidden by the tall grass covering the clearing around the tree. The closer it got to the long dead goliath tree, the more obvious it was to wyrmwood’s instincts that a massive battle had been fought here. As it slowly and meticulously explored the area its inherited knowledge told it that this had been a dragon’s nest. The size of the tree and the aggressive looking roots were both telling factors that it must have been a heavily nature aligned dragon. Possibly a lindworm or an elemental dragon.
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As Wyrmwood finally reached the tree it inspected the craters in the trunk and the massive hole. Each crater splintered the wood around it yet in the center was the clear indentation of knuckles. Looking between the indents and its own claws, it formed a fist and held its hand up to the indent. The shape was similar, but the indent’s knuckle prints were much smaller. Wyrmwood was curious what gave such a small creature so much power.
It then inspected the scorched looking hole. It was burned to a crisp around the edges, the charred black wood crumbling in Wyrmwood’s grasp even as it tried to delicately slither in. The entire thing smelled strongly of magic, the hole itself went clean through the tree, a gentle, somehow depressed feeling wind blowing gently through. The charred throughway was big enough to fit the circumference of Wrymwood’s base tree inside of! The hatchling couldn’t help but shudder when it imagined what kind of creature might have caused so much damage in one attack. Surely it must have been a strong being!
Taking one last look around from the hole in the dead tree, Wyrmwood noticed something gleaming on the opposite side of the clearing from where it had entered. It approached them to find strange shiny rocks connected to sticks. Some of the rocks were long and sharp looking, while others looked like the large versions of the prickly burrs Wyrmwood had seen growing around the bog. The inherited knowledge supplied the term ‘weapons’ but Wyrmwood didn’t understand what that meant. Each one of these ‘weapons’ laid on a mound of dirt. It sniffed at the mounds of dirt but didn’t smell anything but fresh soil. Its curiosity sated, Wyrmwood left the silent clearing, not noticing the hidden figure that had been silently watching it since it entered the clearing.
~~~
The farther Wyrmwood got from that silent clearing, the faster the normal sounds of the forest returned. Instead of just hearing the soft whistling of the wind and rustling of the leaves overhead. It lifted its head over the group of shrubs it was currently wrapped around, twiddling it fingers like a nervous child as it took in its surroundings. Wyrmwood could hear the cheerful tweeting of birds, taste the smell of delicious critters scurrying around in the underbrush, and feel the tremors of an intense battle shaking the ground somewhere in the distance to the left.
…
Wyrmwood decided not to go that direction until it grew bigger. Turning to the right, it tasted the air for prey again, picking up the scent of its favorite meal. For the few days it spent near the bog so far, it had eaten a few different critters. Some spiky rats, a spider the size of a cat, and one strange creature that turned out to be entirely made of twigs were just a few examples, none of them big enough to be a danger for any self respecting dragons. But the one it had enjoyed the most was the lizoink.
Lizoinks were small boar-like creatures with lizard scales growing sporadically along their body, they had a fat, juicy lizard tail that they dragged behind them as they ate the organic detritus off the forest floor. They were generally the size of a rat, and lived in small burrows with others of their kind.
Wyrmwood hadn’t actually even caught the lizoink it had found, the moment they noticed each other the lizoink’s tail started wildly thrashing around as it detached from the quickly fleeing lizoink. It was enough of a distraction for the little thing to disappear, especially since the tail casted a glamor spell! Wyrmwood’s focus was completely on the tail as it wiggled, twitched, and hopped like some kind of worm breakdancer, until it ran out of energy.
Once the spell cut out, Wyrmwood finally snatched it up and ate it, the taste was good enough to make Wyrmwood let out the first draconic purr of its life. Until that point, Wyrmwood hadn’t even considered that food could actually taste good. It had followed the scent of the escaped lizoink back to its burrow, but the hole was too small and deep to do anything else. It had explored the area anyway in the hopes that one would be returning home, but instead found multiple other entrances to the burrow. It was able to reason that it wouldn’t be getting anymore of them here and thus slithered off elsewhere in search of other prey.
Now it clearly smelled one out in the open nearby! Wyrmwood couldn’t help salivating a little as it tried its best to be as quiet as possible as it slithered in the direction it had smelled its favored prey. Once it had spotted the little thing, it was snuffling around in a pile of leaves. Wyrmwood slowly reached out with its draconic digits and- *snap!* Wyrmwood pulled its hand away just barely quick enough to not get bitten as from under the pile of leaves the massive fanged head of a Venus Dryad emerged!
~~~