Arthurs "Stats" (list of magic spells and natural abilities)-

Spells:

1st lvl: Unseen servant

2nd lvl: Enlarge/reduce, invisibility, pyrotechnics, misty step

3rd lvl: Fireball-(at will), haste, dispel magic

Natural abilities:

-breath weapon

-dragon fear

-Dragon shapeshift

-legendary actions/resistance

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{Adventurers Guild, Whiteridge}

The large tavern-like building stood near the main road of the capital city of humans, Whiteridge. The city itself was busy, like every morning. Stall owners shouting to buy their wares, a multitude of races going around in their day-to-day lives.

Near the main road, approaching the Adventurers Guild, a group of a dozen knights in pristine full plate, marching in sync and creating a natural rhythm with their armor. In front, they were led by a tough-looking old man clad in simple chainmail, a shortsword strapped to his side. A young man followed close to the old man, struggling to carry multiple scrolls.

Denizens of the city made way for the knights, most turning to watch curiously. When the armed group stopped in front of the Guild building, the old man entered with the struggling servant following behind. The new and old citizens of Whiteridge knew what this meant.

An important quest was about to be submitted to the Adventurers Guild.

{Arthur}

He flapped his powerful wings once, gliding in the direction of Mirfield.

FLAMES. FIRE.

Arthur breathed deeply and exhaled. His thoughts lingered to the ‘vision’ he had experienced just twenty minutes ago. Gods were dangerous, messy business that he wanted nothing to do with. When he was thrust awake, he had taken to the air to clear his head.

DESTROY. CONQUER.

Arthur suddenly let out a roar of frustration, flames spewing from his mouth before he shut it with a SNAP.

Shut up, already!

His subconscious, or instincts as he dubbed it, was constantly whispering in his brain. His claws reflexively kept twitching to destroy anything, anyone.

It wasn’t this bad before, he could always keep a cap on his more destructive impulses. Was he just antsy? Or was this Tiamat messing with him?

Arthur was driven from his thoughts when he was close to Mirfield, landing a few dozen feet away from its entrance and startling a hunter that was a couple of feet from him. He ignored the human and approached Mirfield’s gate.

There was a new addition outside the gate of Mirfield, a large post board with scrolls tacked on. When Arthur was in shouting distance an old-looking guard from atop one of the watchtowers yelled out, “Welcome, Arthur! If yer here for quests, that quest board was set up for ya!” Arthur glanced at the grizzled guard, who seemed unaffected by his presence.

“Yes, I am.” He stopped a dozen feet from the board and sat. He brought his head down and squinted to properly read all the quests. Hmmm… a lot of these quests were quite far. For example, special sulfur can be found in an active volcano, with a hefty reward to bring some back and extra depending on the amount, but it would be a few days travel from here. For a human, anyway. He needed to find something close…

Eventually, he cast unseen servant and tore a scroll from the board with it. “I will complete this one,” Arthur stated with a nod of finality. The guard simply nodded, watching him. Arthur backed up and spread his wings, taking to the air.

{Benny}

The grizzled guard watched the dragon fly off with the scroll in its claws. It’s huge, very sharp-looking claws. He shook his head of the nervousness that had built up despite himself and shouted to the guards on the guard to check what quest the dragon had taken.

“Erm, looks like it took the troll one sir!” A young guard shouted up to him. Benny sighed.

“Go tell the town master to get a cage ready.” The guard he was talking to saluted and rushed off. Benny settled back into his chair. Something nagged at him.

...Did the dragon use its mind to levitate that scroll?

{Arthur}

The quest he had taken was simple. A wizard wanted a live troll to study. All Arthur had to do was capture one, and the town should be able to handle the rest. The details had also mentioned trolls being sighted frequently west of Mirfield. So that’s exactly where he was flying.

Going into the forest to find a troll would take much longer than simply flying on top of a mountain and searching from there. Argh, will his presence scare them off? He really didn’t want this to take too long.

Twenty minutes of flying later and Arthur had landed on a sizeable mountain. He started off by breathing deeply, searching through all the scents. He trekked the mountain this way, trying to catch a scent. As he climbed down from the mountain top he eventually picked up something smelly, and somehow rubbery at the same time.

Following this new scent, it got stronger and stronger that Arthur doubted a human could miss it. He noticed more and more bones carelessly strewn about on the ground, picked clean. After a minute or so, the scent trail led him to a cave. If whatever he was smelling was a troll, it would be in here. Many bones littered the entrance of this cave, and he could practically taste the rubbery, smelly scent at this point.

Arthur approached the entrance and frowned. He was too big. He cast reduce on himself and continued, ducking even under the effect of the spell. The cave had one path, eventually turning to the left. When he turned the cave opened up into a large cavern.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

He took in the surroundings and spotted, to his relief, a troll in the middle of the cavern, back turned to him. The gangly creature was loudly and messily eating some sort of corpse.

Arthurs mind slowly faded out any unnecessary thoughts. Right now, he was content to let out some pent-up energy on this creature and allowed instinct to take over.

He approached, purposefully crushing a large skull. The troll immediately turned to look at him, teeth bared, but choked on its meal when it saw Arthur. He dispelled the reduce spell, returning to his full height, and proceeded to launch himself at the troll with a roar.

The creature barely managed to throw itself to the side, causing Arthur to slam the ground, causing a small shake to ripple throughout the cavern. He retaliated by whipping his tail at the troll, hitting it square in the chest as it tried to scramble away, and sent it skidding to the ground. Arthur didn’t need to just knock this thing out, he was fully aware of the creature’s regeneration ability. He needed to BREAK this troll, so it wouldn’t fight back.

He pounced on the prone creature, slamming down with all of his weight. He could feel and hear some satisfying crunches, alongside the troll’s screeches of pain. Arthur continued to slam, claw, and twist the troll as if it were a ragdoll. The cavern shook with every slam, but the troll would not give in, trying to scramble away almost uninjured every few seconds. Finally, Arthur had had enough and slammed both his claws into the troll’s head with all his strength, causing the cavern to violently shake underneath his claws.

It was going to collapse. He hissed in annoyance and spread his wings to fly. As the cavern continued to violently rumble the troll, unnoticed by Arthur, healed its head back from the broken egg it had been seconds prior and got to its feet, grabbing onto Arthurs right-wing in a panic with a death grip. He snarled in annoyance, slashing at the troll’s back but it refused to let go. The ground beneath him finally gave way, and his snarl of annoyance turned to surprise as he fell with the weight of the troll.

Arthur and the troll fell through, crashing to the ground several dozen meters below. Arthur picked himself up, smoke billowing from his mouth. He was going to KILL this troll! Without bothering to look at his surroundings, he turned to the troll, which was still gripping his wing, and proceeded to tear into it, throwing it bodily in a random direction.

The troll skidded backward, regaining its footing after a moment. It snarled at him, a sound of aggression drowned out by a new noise.

The troll’s anger suddenly vanished as it looked down the tunnel, a tunnel that was far bigger than it’d originally appeared. A rumble made itself heard, building and growing and deepening. It wasn’t entirely unlike… a train. A large one. And a very angry one at that.

Arthur shook himself from the brief anger that had consumed his thoughts, ignoring the troll and tuning his senses to better hear what was approaching. Now that he thought about it, what was this tunnel?

The rumble turned into a roar only moments later, and the troll bared its teeth.

Some kind of weapon - a large, ropy thing - blurred out of the darkness too quickly for sight to follow and impaled the troll through the throat. Before it could react, the end of the thing bloated, and then snapped back with the troll yanked along with it.

A mouth, a horrific maw big enough to fill the tunnel, loomed from the black tunnel. The ropey weapon jerked out of the troll with a squelch, sending the unfortunate creature sailing into the mouth. Still moving forward, the owner of the mouth made itself known.

It was huge, whatever it was. Easily thirty feet tall, this centipede like creature bore a massive, armored skull with at least a dozen crimson eyes on both sides. It closed its mouth, innumerable legs with plate-like armor pounding the stone floor as it moved onward, and the rope-like weapon from earlier was identified as a brutally long antennae, its twin snaking from behind the creature’s forehead to rest along its back, which ended far out of sight.

It stopped when it saw Arthur, and all of its eyes fixed on him.

Arthur had never been frightened or worried since he became a dragon. With his knowledge of everything D&D-related, nothing ever scared him, because he knew exactly how said thing worked.

He had never seen this creature in his life. And while he’d never been frightened before, he sure was now. An involuntary, “WHAT.” slipped out as he continued to stare, mind going a hundred miles a second.

Its eyes narrowed, and it somehow managed to look… disappointed. “Well,” It stated in a voice like rocks smashing into each other. “I was hoping you couldn’t talk.”

It was sentient. He couldn’t tell if that was good or bad. Arthur cleared his throat, and answered, “Hello.” His mind raced, and he added, “I did not mean to fall into your… home?” He exhaled smoke and hesitantly sat. This wasnt a good situation, to say the least.

It chuckled, and the sound was dangerous. “Nobody ever intends to enter my tunnels. They prefer to remain in the ranks of the living. But you speak, and my son has requested that I not eat anything that speaks. Much as that limits me… I shall respect his wishes.” It looked him over a little more closely, examining him in much the same way as a scientist might inspect a microbe. “What, and who, are you?”

Arthur took a deep breath, stating with more confidence, “I am Arthur,” he forced himself to say his next words despite himself, “Thank you for not attacking.” A stab of indignation went through his mind, but he willed it down. Just from a glance, Arthur knew he would not win against this creature. Scratch that, this thing was on a whole other level. He was trying to figure out what this creature was. A demon lord? He’s never heard of this.

“Your gratitude is accepted,” It replied bluntly. “I have many titles spoken in fear, but the name I choose to be known as is Nahma.” Raising the front of its body, the creature, or ‘Nahma’, reared until its head was scraping the ceiling. After a tense moment, it rolled its head around, a series of audible pops echoing through the tunnels, and then lowered once again. “Dimensional travel puts considerable strain on any living thing, even one such as I.” He added off-handedly.

Multiple emotions were swirling in Arthur’s head. Dimensional travel? After a second, he responded neutrally, “Yes. If that is all, I should depart. I have… urgent tasks.” He hesitantly motioned to the hole in the ceiling.

“Just a moment,” ‘Nahma’ growled. The giant centipede moved closer to Arthur, each thunderous step making the loose stones on the floor of the tunnel dance. Lifting its body once again, ‘Nahma’ looked down at Arthur, eyes slit. “Are you familiar with a creature called a ‘dragon’? They were described to me as a greatly powerful being. I desire to either battle or eat one before I depart.”

Under the creature’s gaze, Arthur fought to control his expression. Was it messing with him? He decided to try his luck. “I have heard of them, but never met one… If that is all, may I go?” Lying felt like the right play, as much as it hurt his dragon pride.

‘Nahma’ snorted irritably. “You may. However…” It leaned in closer until its mouth was mere meters from Arthur. “Do you know of any places where I might find food? Whether or not it lives is of no concern to me.”

He fought to not retreat. Arthur decided to answer honestly if only to leave more quickly. “I… find my food in forests.”

Nodding thoughtfully, the centipede asked, “As a departing query, what was that creature I ate? Its smell was rancid, but the taste… it felt as though it were trying to mend itself even as it died.” It suddenly grinned, revealing far more teeth than any mouth had the right to bear. “I rather liked it. Are there more of them in the forest?”

Arthur nodded simply, hoping it would leave. He couldn’t tell if the creature was genuinely curious, or was seriously just messing with him. “If there is nothing else..?”

‘Nahma’ shook its head. “There is not. You have my thanks for confirming the existence of dragons - I had not been certain they were genuine.” Rising, it twisted its head up and around until it was walking on the ceiling, and then kinked back again to look at Arthur, eyes still narrowed. “Your scent reminds me of lizards, fire, and gold.” It told Arthur bluntly. “But deep underneath it, I can smell the faint stench of human.”

Satisfied with its statement, it began building speed along the ceiling of the tunnel, and the rest of the centipede’s body followed. It took four full minutes for the last segment of ‘Nahma’ to flick upward onto the ceiling, disappearing into the tunnel’s darkness.

Arthur released a pent-up breath, exhaling smoke. He spread his wings and made his way up the passage he had fallen through, casting reduce on himself to make it easier. Every now and then, he would glance down with slight dread. Once Arthur made it to the top, he immediately cast enlarge on himself, growing easily sixty feet tall and almost filling up the cavern, and began to stomp and smash the walls and floor.

Five minutes later, he had caused a cave-in and was now flying through the sky once more. Arthur had learned of dimensional travel, a creature he’d never seen before, and he had experienced fear for the first time as a dragon.

The most prominent thing tugging at his mind at that moment was the fact that he would have to find another troll.