~~~
Over the next few days, Mayflare did indeed teach Wyrmwood many new things. First of which was language. The garbling cries it kept hearing others emit did turn out to be a form of communication. It was rigorously taught the basics of draconic and a bit of common.
It was very stressful for Wyrmwood, but thankfully dragons were all geniuses and could learn new things quickly when they applied themselves. Most dragons were also lazy, though, so they would never learn more than they felt necessary, unless it was something they were passionate about.
Second was gender. Mayflare assured it that it wouldn’t really matter for its own gender for a VERY long time, but was useful in telling others apart. Thus Wyrmwood learned that it was, in fact, male. It- He didn’t really care much, but took Mayflare’s word about it being important eventually.
The old quetzalcoatl had been eagerly dragging him from cave to cave. Showing off his stuff while also explaining what each thing was called. It was apparent that Mayflare was an organized hoarder. One cave had been full of gold and other precious metals, another was full of fancy quilts, he even had one cave dedicated to an art gallery of random humanoids! It was all a bit much, but he did learn much about proper hoard keeping, the names of many races, and to not be a “jack-of-all-trades” as Mayflare called himself. It was alarming just how much stuff the elderly dragon had collected over the years.
“Safe?” Wyrmwood asked.
Mayflare just guffawed, “This place is deep in the Draco Forrest! Near the center even! Humanoids know not to come near here.”
What Wyrmwood decided was the most important lesson, however, was a new means of attack.
Using his long sinuous form, Mayflare would twist and swirl his body, generating force and momentum until, with a wicked snap, he’d whip his tail in front of him! When he demonstrated by performing the move on a large boulder, the boulder split in twain.
It was harder for Wyrmwood to try because of both his extra long tail and the fact he didn’t float in the air like quetzalcoatls did. After long experimentation and moral support from Mayflare, (that he didn’t need or ask for), he thought he’d figured out a way. Slithering in front of his own boulder, Wyrmwood started by doing a hop with his upper body. This created a vertical bend in his coils that he used his muscles to push further back along his length. As the bend traveled back towards the end of his tail it seemed to pick up speed and power, practically without his help now!
There was a blinding flash and what sounded like the peal of thunder! Wyrmwood hissed and tried to flee in surprise, but Mayflare grabbed him while guffawing uproariously. In front of them, where Wyrmwood’s practice boulder had been, was now a slightly smoking pile of small rocks and pebbles.
“Well done, lil tike!” Mayflare continued to laugh, “that there tail strike was truly impressive, but seeing yeh scare yerself with yer own attack!”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Wyrmwood glared at him as he began chortling uproariously once more. He didn’t like the feeling of being laughed at. To distract himself, Wyrmwood examined his tail where he’d struck the rock.
The cone at the end of his tail was also steaming slightly. More alarming, however, was that the strike had formed a small fracture line on it! Even with how hard it was, the full bodied tail whip generated too much power for the cone of dead and hardened dragon flesh to handle.
He picked up his tail end and showed it off to Mayflare.
“Hurt?” He asked
Mayflare finally stopped laughing and looked at it.
“Nay, lil one. It’s cracked all right, but it shouldn’t be anything too dangerous.” Mayflare’s feathers ruffled along his body as he considered. “Though, it’d probably be best to not do that again unless it’s a last resort. Yer body seems to generate more power with that move than intended.”
Mayflare pat Wyrmwood’s head before taking him to another part of the caverns.
~~~
Sidney blocked the bowly-poly as it slammed into his kite shield with enough force to put a dent in it while pushing him back. After stress filled negotiations with the hag, he had compromised to do some of her trials if she told them the information they wanted upon completion. This first trial was dealing with a bowly poly infestation.
Imagine a roly-poly the size of a cannon ball. Now imagine its carapace is almost as hard as orichalcum. Finally, imagine there’s about 20 of them attacking you at once.
This was only the first of three trials he and his party were given and they were already struggling big time. Sidney had them all focusing on defense and evasion, with Ella using her magical prowess to cook them one at a time. Magic was the one known weakness of bowly-polies.
He cried out in pain as one of them managed to bounce off his armored legs, breaking it and denting the metal to painfully keep pushing on it. These things would bounce off trees, rocks, and even each other in mid-air to make themselves harder to track. They also had the nasty habit of going for the legs first, bowling you over, hence their name.
Bethany quickly cast ‘full heal’ on Sidney’s leg, time seeming to reverse on it as the damage to both his leg and his armor seemingly being unwritten from the timeline.
“Son of a biscuit, I hate these things! That’s the fifth time they’ve managed to do that! Ella, there’s only about five more, hurry it up!!”
“I’m going as fast as I can, but I need to wait for them to stop moving first! I can’t hit them hard enough when they’re moving!” She squeaked back anxiously.
Braid was using a skill called ‘graceful counter’ to grab the one coming towards him or Ella and then use its own inertia to spin himself full circle and chuck it back the way it came. Using the move so much, however, used up a lot of his concentration and he was visibly tiring.
Sidney growled as he realised they weren’t going to win at this rate.
“Change of plans!” He roared sharply, “Bethany, stop healing and shield me, Ella, use your strongest spell right in front of me, Braid, keep protecting Ella just in case!”
The other members quickly followed Sidney’s orders, all of them being quite experienced in battle.
“Come at me, you oversized grapes! I squash your kind under my heel for fun!” Sidney shouted out, using his taunt skill.
All five of the remaining bowly-polies instantly changed the angle of their bounces. Two of them bounced off Sidney’s shield painfully hard. The other two bounced off a shield of faith Saintess Bethany conjured just in time, as the sky darkened and a massive bolt of lightning arced down, enveloping the shielded Sidney and all the bowly-polies around him.
The final one was heading right for Ella from her blindspot, only to be stopped by two muscular hands, somehow just barely managing to catch it with bare hands! With a determined shout of effort, he turned and lobbed it too into the still striking lightning bolt in an impressive shot-put toss!
The lightning continued for an entire minute before Ella finally ran fully out of magic, collapsing upon the spell’s completion.
Sidney stood there,panting heavily. Around him, where the lightning had struck, were lichtenberg figures all around. Etched into the ground, trees, and even rocks from the amount of sheer power that ran through the area with that magical act.
“That’s… ‘gasp’… one… ‘pant.’”
Sidney was really not looking forward to the other two tasks.
~~~