'So this was where this buzzing originated from… It's beautiful.', Arvinakon thought, he was gazing upon rows and rows of iridescent crystals of pure bioenergy going up and down, waterfalls at every angle.
It was half a month ago he ate honey and he continued to explore and so he got there through a cave he found at the bottom of an underwater ravine, and now the constant background hum was bordering on painful. The concentration was such that one chip on a crystal could cause an uncontrolled explosive chain reaction.
He could feel that they rejected him… or more precisely that it wasn't the time to become one with the stream and so with a soft grunt he swam away. Trailing back to where he came by following his scent.
The cave started to shake, and unweariedly increasing his speed he came to see amidst the darkness the head of a giant creature. Its bioenergy was dense in Fire and Earth Elements, not only that, but it was also pure and concentrated. With this to the other Elder Dragon, he met and himself.
'Fellow whatever we are, aren't you in a precarious situation?', Arvinakon thought, clearly amused by what he was seeing. The funniest part was how the turtle was careful to not damage the structure of the cave but because of this, it was stuck which also means both of them are stuck.
It looked like an alligator snapping turtle, half biological and half living magma. Said turtle finally noticed the fishron presence and its reaction was a mix between panic, shock, and hope. Very hard to read on a reptile's face but Arvinakon could tell by the smell and how its bioenergy shifted.
Both stared into one another's eyes, despite being massive the turtle was stuck and pretty much defenseless.
~Thee block the way. Thou art did stick. Thee aren't very cunning. Doth thee needeth help?~, the fishron said, his body taking on a defensive but lazy stance. He wasn't in the mood to fight and particularly not here and there.
He waited but didn't have any answer from his interlocutor but a blank stare of incomprehension, then it hit him. It or more like he didn't know how to speak which complicated things quite a bit. As communication was key to avoid it devolving into a fight that would end in both of them going kaboom.
~Hmmm, by the way, doth thee has't a name? Blink twice f'r aye.~, the water thrummed as he manipulated it to push against the giant turtle. The current got progressively stronger, coming from the end to where the two Elder Dragons were.
The turtle didn't blink, whereas he didn't understand Arvinakon or he meant no. The fishron didn't know, not like he could have done much more.
The current kept on increasing, drilling on the side of the cave, while Arvinakon thought of a name for the turtle.
Confused, the turtle didn't do much, he was passive, to begin with, and was smart enough to somewhat understand the situation he was in. He possessed the mental capability of a ten-year-old human, he wasn't an adult.
~Thy name shall beest Zorah… Ah, and mine own name is Arvinakon Dux'Maximus beest in haw.~, his bioenergy thrummed in power as those words left his heart, literally as that is how he speaks.
The newly named Zorah made bubbles and stayed in place, the scary super powerful fish was strange. Arvinakon's maw opened and a hyper-pressurized beam of water with Dragon Element zapped out. Cutting through the wall of the cave like a hot knife through butter.
Avoiding damage to the magma turtle, the beam cut with inhuman precision multiple parts of the cave, and the fact that the fishron could bend it to his will made this endeavor all the simpler.
Clouds of sand rose, immediately blown away with a flap of Arvinakon. Half an hour and hundreds of tons of rock-cut latter. The structure was clearly weakened but in a way that will not normally cause the entire system to collapse.
Super durable he might be he doesn't believe himself capable of surviving million of tons crushing him.
With a smirk full of wicked teeth Arvinakon gazed upon his work, Zorah fell asleep some five minutes after he started to work, and even if sizable pieces of stone fell on his head, he didn't register any of them and kept on peacefully sleeping.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
It was strange for the fishron to be in the presence of something so calm and passive, uncaring for the world surrounding it and always zen.
That also meant it was not a good creature to fight, for several reasons such as the time it would take to kill and that it won't ever fight back.
And he also kinda hated the taste of bioenergy-filled Fire Element. He disliked the Fire Element in general, it rubbed his instincts the wrong way and was one of the only things capable of doing 'significant' damage to him he knew of but he has a hunch that Dragon Element would hurt way more.
Bioenergy flowed through the muscles, bones, and tendons of his flippers amd tail via his bloodstream. Heart pumping blue blood faster and faster he propelled himself with such force and velocity that it caused a shockwave.
*BAAAAMM!*
Arvinakon slammed into the shell. The result was instantaneous with the blue whale-sized turtle being flung out of the cave.
'Broke my snoot.', the fishron thought, thick blue blood escaping his nostril. Shaking his head he pushed water and with a sickening crack, his snout was put back in the right shape.
Swimming out before the exit/entrance collapsed, he snorted in amusement when he saw the turtle spin on itself thanks to the momentum and force of his dash.
Zorah awakened, head spinning, looking for Arvinakon but couldn't find him as he was already far away. The turtle felt sad, the fish was scary but the only creature that didn't die or swam away from his presence like their life depended on it.
Luckily for him, it won't be the last time there will meet, far from it.
Life continued on and without Arvinakon truly realizing it 70 years flew by. Now shyly arriving at 20 meters in length and thirty tons of pure muscle it can be said that he grew quite a bit.
'No this is ugly.', Arvinakon remarked, delicately picking a piece of coral between his jaws he placed it at another place on the floe next to his main den. At that point more like a gaping hole in the emerald green ice where water takes on a more azure color.
His yellow-slitted eyes caught a glimpse of a long fish, and vague memories of a similar-looking fish from an anterior life flashed in his mind. It was very similar to a giant oarfish. In fact, it was sealord's crestfish, extremely rare and delicious.
The serpentine bioluminescent fish swam with grace into the more azure-colored water, and it realized but all too late that its scale started to melt. Coughing a whiff of it, Arvinakon plunged beneath it, a flick of a massive tail and he gulped it with gusto.
Life didn't change much for him. Other than that now he is the equivalent in human years of a thirteen-year-old. He is around a century old, it might be a long time for humans but not for Elder Dragon, and his perception of reality was nowhere near that of a human at that point.
This was the case for some decades already. He knew his age roughly but the impact was mild at best. Then again the body is as, if not more impactful on the mind than anything else. Be it positive or negative.
Since he is for all intent and purpose a 'teenager' it came with several annoying things such as at times being a fucking horndog. It was worse than as a human but luckily he could control himself, somewhat as long as it didn't go far in the deep end.
Such as necrophilia… very common in nature, or doing it on more alive beings, like male sea otters sometimes doing it on baby seals or sea lions on penguins, dolphins, and etcetera. Nature is beautiful, full of love, innocence, and balance isn't it? Anyway, ice worked just fine or even water as his control was excellent.
And he was happy with that because going freaky with corpses or random creatures was just a big no, not for reason humans might think of, they didn't deserve it, as insane as its sounds. Also, he wasn't into that,
Other solutions for this problem were doing something else such as what he was doing, aqua spacing, and other like eating honey from the hive and fighting. The last option some time only worsened things, though.
Besides the rise in hornyness, he didn't feel that much different, if stronger and more in control of his emotions funnily enough.
Feeling the water getting warmer he looked down and saw the familiar shape of a volcanic turtle. Zorah followed him when they met again five decades ago. One of the rare creatures he could tolerate, proved by the turtle, another Elder Dragon blatantly entering his territory.
But that's to be expected, both simply didn't have any potential for conflicts, and if there was it would end with Arvinakon pushing the turtle away. He, as much as he grew in strength, couldn't kill the turtle before getting bored.
He tried once when Zorah entered his territory the first and he lost his composure, and after a month of relentless fighting, the turtle was pushed thousands of kilometers away he got bored and abandoned. He refused to consider this a loss, however.
~Arvi! Green scaly ooman trash doth beest on hot wood trash on We sea to us! And a big brown thing with yellow gloomy things!~, the turtle exclaimed slowly, each word punctuated, broken, and nearly intelligible showing his inexperience, even if he is two centuries older than the fishron.
~Pardon?~, he mumbled. Humans as far as he recalled the ones he knew never left the comfort and safety of their island prison.
And green scaly? Yeah, that crossed humans off the list and any humanoid species he knew of counted it was less than his number of flippers, and that too this point still baffled him, how could there be so many sapiens humanoid species at the same time?
Ears twirling he thought about it, he didn't have things to do, as per usual so he was going to meet those 'ooman'?