Crawling with my belly flatted against the ground, I poked in first with my head, following the scent of rotting meat. Once my head was in, the rest of my body fit through without much effort, and the ceiling past the entrance was much higher. Wait, no, that wasn’t quite right: it wasn’t that the ceiling was getting higher; it was actually that the floor getting deeper. Every inch I moved forward, I was descending deeper underground. Well, whatever the case, it gave me more room to sit up and swivel my head around rather than continuing to crawl with my belly flat against the ground. It seemed like I was in an actual cave. It was hard to tell how deep it went: the entrance, while wide, was also short, and didn’t let in much sunlight, but the longer I spent the darkness, the more my eyes adjusted, allowing me to make out the shape of the cave walls. Whatever the case, the scent of carrion seemed to be coming from deeper within the cave, so I prowled forward. I wondered where the odor might be coming from: probably, some critter had decided to make this cave their home, and had died here, maybe simply passing due to old age, leaving their body to stink up the place. Well, “stink” might be the wrong word: I certainly wasn’t minding the smell. In fact, it was downright enticing, and that alone was enough to draw me deeper into the cave.
Besides the intoxicating aroma of the meat, the cave itself felt...enticing. Rich with possibility. Ever since reincarnating, I had only found myself in large, open spaces, which were hardly the ideal circumstance for my breath attack. A tight enclosed space like this, however, could be completely enveloped by my [noxious breath], and while it was possible to escape this cave, the tight entrance meant that anyone trying to crawl their way out would suffer more damage-over-time in the attempt. Maybe this was the ideal place for an ambush predator like myself to call home. The entrance wasn’t big enough for more than one hyena to enter at once, and if they did, it felt much more like they would be the ones trapped inside the cave with me.
As stepped forward, I planted my foreclaw on a bit of ground that felt...softer, somehow. Or rather, it felt like there was something soft on top of the ground that my claw crushed before hitting the hard ground beneath. I lifted my claw, wondering if I had just crushed something, and was startled to find that something was sticking to my claw. I wondered if it was some kind of sticky residue, but something came up with my claw. I inspected it as best I could in the dim light: it was a glob of material that was lighter-colored than the rest of the cave, so it presumably wasn’t moss, but maybe it was some other form of vegetation? Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough to halt my progress, and it seemed harmless enough, so I placed another claw forward, and it too encountered a sticky substance -- again, not enough to trap it or impede my movement for more than a second, so I tentatively decided to take a step forward.
Admittedly, the scent of rotting meat was a big part of what kept me moving forward: it was so close now that I could practically taste it. I reached out again with my front claw, and hit a lump. I poked at the lump, and realized that it was the source of the smell -- it was the same size as the rabbits I had encountered yesterday. I reached down and bit into it -- I realized after my jaws shut that I had acted totally on impulse, but I didn’t regret it -- up until the moment that I tried to open my jaws to chew, and found that they didn’t open nearly as easily as they had closed.
The rabbit, I quickly realized, was covered with the same sticky material that the floor of the cave was covered in. It had no discernable flavor, but it certainly didn’t feel pleasant in my mouth. It was almost like having hair in my mouth -- I could feel a bunch of small strands on on my tongue. I spat out the rabbit -- again, it was an act of impulse, and after I spat it out I considered my best move. Was this situation dangerous? Was the sticky substance poisonous or otherwise something that I would regret putting into my mouth? It was really hard for me to make any judgments from inside the cave: I had no idea what I was dealing with here. I was curious about what this was, but I was increasingly aware that if a retreat became necessary, I wouldn’t be able to vacate this area rapidly. My sense of unease grew, and I considered turning back: if I needed to explore deeper into the cave, that could wait until later, when I’d had more time to give this situation a more sober evaluation. Okay, no need to panic.
Still, if I was going to leave the cave, it seemed like there was no reason for me not to leave with the rabbit carcass. It was what I had come for, after all. And I had already bit into it once: if there was some kind of booby trap or fast-acting poison, I would have encountered it the first time I bit into it. Maybe I didn’t want to swallow the rabbit (or more specifically, maybe I didn’t want to swallow whatever was covering it), but I might as well take it with me. Once again, I grabbed the rabbit with my jaws, and turned around to exit the cave.
Big mistake -- I turned around, rather than simply backpedaling. And in the process of turning around, I swing my tail behind me. I felt it catch on something. It was the same sticky covering that I had felt with my foreclaws, and which had covered the rabbit, except my tail was pointing deeper into the cave, where the stickiness, whatever it was, seemed to be thicker and more dense. As I walked forward, I felt it pull on my tail, and I actually struggled to work my way forward. I tried swinging my tail free, but moving my tail from side-to-side just got it more trapped and tangled in the sticky substance, and I quickly found myself unable to move my tail or turn at all. Okay, now I was starting to panic.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The walls that moments earlier had seemed ripe with possibility now felt strangely menacing. No longer was I an ambush predator fantasizing about making my home here; I was now keenly aware that I might have just walked into some trap laid by some other ambush predator who had already made their home here.
No longer able to walk forward, I grabbed the floor of the cave with my claws and pulled my way forward, using the same motion that I had every time I’d pulled myself vertically to scale the side of the plateau. The same movement that had proved strong enough to overcome the force of gravity was apparently forceful enough to overcome the pull of whatever it was that ensnared me, and I was able to make slow, gradual progress as I clawed my way toward the cave’s exit. It was slow, and I was still a sitting duck for any predator behind me that might be laying in wait, but it was progress nonetheless. All I could do was hope that I was alone and continue clawing my way forward.
I kept my eyes on the cave entrance, moving my body toward the sunlight, and my salvation. The motion of clawing my way forward was oddly comforting, working the same muscles in the same motion that I’d become familiar with from climbing. Every inch I gained was reassurance that I wasn’t trapped, just impeded. Keeping that thought in mind helped quell my panic. I just had to keep moving myself forward using the same motion that I had used to escape danger countless times before.
The real test came when I reached the entrance and had to flatten myself to fit through: the widened stance made it harder for my claws to grip the ground. But, I realized that whatever it was that had stuck to my tail wasn’t pulling as hard against me as it had before. As I wormed free of the entrance, I felt the sticky substance releasing my tail with a sensation that was simultaneously pain and relief, like the sensation of pulling off a band-aid. With my tail now mostly free, I was able to wiggle my way out of the cave.
As I emerged, the sweet anticipated sunlight hit my face, and a wave of relief washed over me. I took several steps forward, putting several steps between me and the cave entrance. I was pretty sure I hadn’t been actively pursued by anything, but I was still fully unaware of what it was that I had become stuck in. I turned around, and as I felt myself start to breathe normally again, I spat out the rabbit carcass -- in my intense focus of crawling forward, I had completely forgotten that my jaws had been clenched around it the whole time. As I looked down at the rabbit in the light of day, I realized it was wrapped in what looked like white strands of some kind of...string. No, thinner than string, but woven together. Like silk.
I brushed my tail, dragging it along the rough surface of the craggy ground, and it left behind the same substance that had the texture of silk, woven into a web. A spider’s web.
I looked back at the cave. Evidently, I had invaded someone’s home, but I was pretty sure that it wasn’t the rabbit I was trespassing on: this rabbit had met its demise trespassing on the territory of some spider that had woven webs strong and dense enough to ensnare a baby dragon who was too careless to think about where he was putting his tail.
Just to be cautious, I decided to get much, much further away from the cave entrance -- I brought the rabbit with me, since, as far as I could tell, it was still good for a meal, if I was willing to pick those webs off of it. It seemed unlikely that the spider’s webs were toxic, considering how long I’d had my mouth wrapped around them without feeling any ill effects, so eating the rabbit seemed safe, but just to be safe, I didn’t eat the fur that had the spider silk stuck to it. The parts I didn’t eat, I assumed, could become more food for the ants. I dug my claws into the rabbit and splayed it open before gobbling up its soft entrails.
[Monster trait: Carrion feeder. Reduces penalties from consuming rotten meat. Scales with mouth level.]
I blinked. It had been awhile since I’d discovered a new passive ability like this. I guess it made sense that ingesting new things would inform me more explicitly about what kinds of things I was capable of ingesting: my discovery that I was a [carnivore] had come about from trying to ingest rocks. What made this new ability unique was the fact that it was a contingent ability: much like my [noxious breath] attack, this ability’s effectiveness apparently scaled with my mouth level. I supposed that made sense. In fact, I mused, the same aspects of dragon biology that allowed me to spew [noxious breath] might also be responsible for my ability to eat rotten meat. Rotten meat wasn’t inherently toxic: the thing that made rotten meat unhealthy to eat is that it was covered with microorganisms that specialized in breaking down meat -- and, well, animals are also made of meat, meaning that any human that ate a lump of rotten meat was at serious risk of having those same microorganisms then go to work on the inside of their digestive tract. I, apparently, had a heartier digestive system, and the same things that made my breath (conditionally) lethal to other creatures could probably also do serious work on whatever microorganisms were causing the decay or rot in meat. I was hardly unique in that respect: nature was full of carrion feeders like vultures possessing digestive systems adapted to deal with the bacteria that cause decay in meat.
Earlier, I had questioned why I had gotten to the rotten meat before the hyenas. Now, I had a better inkling of why: perhaps the hyenas had learned not to mess with giant spiders. Admittedly, I hadn’t actually seen the spider, but based on the size of its web, it certainly didn’t seem like a little spider.
I eyed the entrance to the spider’s cave, an entrance that had been so short that I had first nearly mistaken it for nothing more than a shadow under an overhanging rock. This area was full of craggy ground that looked just like that cave entrance. How many other caves might be here? How many of them were full of giant spiders? I shuddered at the thought.