Dungeons, Sentient Trees and Liches all have something in common.

Dungeons are usually underground death traps, feeding off greed from sentient and lesser intelligence creatures. However, what I want to talk about are how they live. Dungeons have a core, usually a spherical marble to bowling ball sized and made of condensed mana, although at times other items have become dungeon cores.

Dungeons affect their surrounding area to become the cores body, or the dungeon, with all creatures killed within feeding the core. Sometimes these are brought back to life or copied to fight for the dungeon, alongside rare items to entice the greedy.

Liches operate under a similar premise, using a phylactery to maintain immortality. It is a rumour, so keep quiet, but the first liches were born after a mage messed up a scrying spell within a dungeon. Don’t ask the details, such knowledge is highly restricted and simply knowing it could get you killed in the Claret Confederacy.

Liches, similar to dungeons, exude a presence of death over their home, spawning or making undead from whatever is around, all focused on protecting the phylactery.

Now the odd ball, Sentient Trees, with their ability to create fully sentient creatures like Fairies and Dryads alongside Treemen. Also exuding a presence of life over an area, mostly enhancing plants.

So similar, but also so different in their operations. Convergent evolution or closely related with a common ancestor. A debate that all arch mages participate in, with even the God’s debating.

-Basics To Being An Arch Mage (BTBAAM) Published By Victor Von Aquinas IV

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FOUR MONTHS LATER

From early Spring to early Summer the little grey lizard increased in size at a fast pace, being a little glutton and devouring anything of interest be they animal, bug, plant and rock.

A group of adventurers, 3 to be exact, are passing through the dense undergrowth that grew at a visible rate. All of them carried large backpacks, as well as an assortment of things on their person.

At the front is a swordsman who proceeded to chop his way through bushes in a straight line without a second thought, only side stepping trees as apparently their body sized backpacks did not have an axe packed. However, they did bring everything else with them, including an assortment of pots and pans that the swordsman carried visibly in his backpack.

First in the formation, the swordsman is wearing leather gloves, boots, greaves, cuisse and cuirass with a built-in gorget to cover the neck that is made from chainmail, with a brown cotton shirt and brown trousers underneath the armour. This left the arms extremely exposed as well as the head, which is full of flaxen hair, on this rather buff human.

The current protection would do little in the way of stopping a fantasy worlds flying monster birds, from swooping down and clawing at the limbs. Without any head gear, an assortment of things could land of the man’s head, like a dropped tortoise from one of the monster birds resulting in an untimely death.

Currently I am witnessing the benefits of being a cold blooded creature, as the Summer heat appears to be unkind to these humans, who are looking rather sweaty with sweat forming on their skin. The group shows exertion in their expression’s, as they ventured further into the forest from a direction that would lead back to the mountains.

The second in formation is a wizard, dressed in a loose fitting dark green robe with a stave, as it is made of a metal and reached up to the wizards chest along with being etched with unknown glyph’s. The glyph’s glowed every time the man tapped his stave on the ground, his taps are infrequent and followed an unknown pattern from my personal observations. Adorning the top of his stave is a white sphere, unetched of any visible glyphs and showing no glow. His personal belongings are also the smallest, as the backpack only took up half of his back.

The wizard would also do very little around their camp’s, I followed this group for a while and the man would ignore any duties for studying flora and fauna of the area. Every camp he would set up a glass set of vials, flasks and tubes, before burning things and funnelling fumes from one glass piece to another. ‘Rather boring’.

Third in line is a woman, who is filling the archer, or scout, or ranger, or bowwoman position within the group. She travels behind everyone and is the least armoured of them all, wearing a sleeveless tunic and trousers. She is also wearing a leather helmet on her head, that has a gemstone embedded into the leather at the front, with the helmet also covering her nape but not going past her ears leaving the front of her face completely exposed, she also has black leather boots but that is standard for this group.

The scout carries a backpack the size of herself, within the backpack are the groups sleeping bags and some butchering tools. While the swordsman carries the actual tents.

I found this group easily 2 days ago, and have been following them ever since. Not for fear of losing them, even with the fast growing vegetation this group still makes a clear path through a forest that lasts days, no I follow this group for the things they leave behind. This group has a habit of leaving destruction in their wake, like the plants any and all animals that get in their way are doomed, allowing me to pick up the scraps.

Wide sword swings, chop through bushes, snakes and bugs without discrimination, as the swordsman serves up sushi to me at the cost of his blades sharpness. Larger creatures like maned wolves, or actual wolves or large birds are shot through the eye by the archer, the woman takes her arrows back but leaves perfectly good food lying around, luckily I am there to gobble it up in the background.

Must hand it to the group, they have been feeding me quite well over these past 2 days, especially with my new larger size, still a lizard but the size of a Komodo Dragon.

The archer always has an arrow nocked, ready to pull back and kill anything that is unfortunate enough to get in their way. Luckily I keep my distance, and being behind them allocates me some extra safety, from the pointed ends of their weapon’s.

Arrows fly with such strength, that after embedding in the animals eye they become lodged in the skull, resulting in the swordsman having to pull some of them out. Showcasing the scary strength of the archer, and her readiness to kill.

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Sometimes the party would stop for a break, hang around the area after the swordsman gets tired of swinging his weapon. The archer proceeds to skin anything nearby, and the wizard does a whole lot of blabbering in a language that I do not understand. This lasts for around thirty minutes before they set off again. Leaving me with a skinned snack.

However, as this party makes their way through the forest I sense something bad. Looks like this buffet is about to close. Without thinking twice, I distance myself some more from this group and wait for the party to approach.

Once within the area that I dislike, the party halts due to a loud hiss and from a tree above a massive magical snake falls down just in front of them.

The strong smell clearly indicates that the snake is digesting something, but even with it slowed down it is still strong, and with me only being 1 metre (3 Feet) in length I have no choice but to stay and observe.

With a *Thud the snake falls.

The mage cries like a child *Awhaa

Luckily, all of the party instantly drop their backpacks as they ready for a fight.

The snake darts forward, arriving before the swordsman and showcasing the size disparity, at 13 metre (43 Feet) long the man is dwarfed as the snake tackles him to the ground. The weight slowly crushing him even as he cries *Aaargh.

The archer is ready as always, shooting a fully drawn arrow precisely into the snakes left eye.

*Twack

After the shot, the snake lashes out in a blind fury while it still crushes the swordsman. The thrashing upper body shakes trees when it collides rips whole bushes out of the ground, eventually managing to hit the mage who has been mumbling and waving his stave while the fighting has been happening. The frail man ends up being sent high into a trees canopy, hitting a particularly thick branch before promptly returning to the ground.

The archer had repositioned on the right side of the snake, quickly drawing an arrow nocking it, and firing at the right eye. Never missing a shot as the arrow pierces the other eye and leave the snake supposedly blind, yet this time the snake thrashes its way towards the archer. Coiling its tail while rolling left and right on the way, continuing to hit tree’s and narrowly avoiding the prone wizard.

Two arrows sticking out of the snake’s head, almost like horns, showcasing the tough skull that is too dense for the arrows to pass through even with the thinner bone behind the eyes. Barrelling through the forest straight at the archer, mouth wide open with teeth the size of daggers curved inwards. Luckily, the archer dodges left at the last moment, managing to avoid teeth that rip open her tunic’s sleeve.

The lack of sight has not dampened the snakes precision, but it has distracted it long enough to allow some respite for the two prone members to rise back up again, bruised but not wounded.

Snakes have a pit organ, that allows them to see their prey’s heat but just because the large monster can see the party does not mean that it is fast enough to dodge the arrows peppering its back. Instead of turning around and facing the party once more, it rises to half its height, before dropping down atop the archer like a jumping whale.

The attack sends clouds of dust into the air, blocking all lines of sight, yet from the edge of the dust cloud I see a figure rolling away. Unfortunately, it was an uncontrolled tumble as the archer rolls through bushes before stopping at a tree.

Without missing a beat the swordsman rushes in, aiming to not give the snake any respite, his sword stabbing deep within the snakes coils, unfortunately for him he just gets wrapped up by the snake while unable to draw his sword back out. His charge was not for nought, as his sword glows a bright red with a *Sizzling sound.

Finally, the mage has cast a spell and without missing a beat his glowing staff proceeds to cast another spell but he holds off from casting this one. Writhing on the ground and next to the snake is the swordsman, he was released but was also promptly flattened and is now being beaten up by pure muscle and scale.

After some time the battered snake dislodges the sword from its body, leaving the cool blade on the ground to focus on the swordsman, who is now looking equally as battered. This team works perfectly, the archer shoots at the snakes open mouth and getting a single hit on the jaw, leaving the jaw unhinged, as the snake itself reels back preventing an attack.

With this opportunity the wizard fires his spell, a light in the shape of an arrow flies at a safe distanced from the swordsman below. Flying true and hitting the snakes belly, where tough scales protect the snake from debris on the ground and are therefore thicker resulting in a minor puncture.

Already reeling, the snake falls on its back, belly scales protecting most of the incoming arrows while the mage casts once again. The swordsman struggles to his feet.

Twirling around, the body spinning in random directions before forming an ‘S’ shape, and running for the archer. Swatting a barely standing swordsman down once again, luckily the wizard shoots forth 5 ice shards, hitting along the lower left of the snake.

Although, the ice spikes are the size of a humans forearm, they did little to immediately stop the slithering beast, it did however get to change the snakes momentum slightly as the open jaw missed the archer but still caught her with the back half of its body.

This time, the archer got hit much harder and was launched directly into a tree, staying motionless in a heap on the ground.

The snake is also bleeding profusely, and I had a chance to win it all again by being a scavenger, if the snake wins then it will bleed out eventually. Alternatively, if the wizard survives then he most likely would be running low on energy and would be physically unable to battle me. As for the archer, well she will most likely stay unconscious as that last hit was very hard.

As I moves down from the tree trunk, that I was patiently using to observe the battle from, my opponents stay locked onto one another. Ignorant of my approach, or the strong smell’s this battle has released.

The snake is apparently very intelligent, noting the huffing wizard standing opposite it and instead of finishing the fight it decided on coiling around the archer. Staring in abject horror, the wizard is left once again sputtering and waving his stave. There is no scream or cry for help as all the air gets pushed out in a breathless gasp, and soon the sound of bones creaking can be audibly heard even from my methodical advance.

Five more icicles get shot at the snake, but it simply ignores the attack, instead preferring to squeeze the archer from some form of sadism. Squeezed even further, blood starts leaking from the mouth, then they eyes pop out as bones are ground down before shattering and then later turning to dust.

Going pale, with bloodshot eyes the mage fires off a spell a final spell as his dark hair turns pale at the roots. The resulting spell is a fireball the size of a man, it races the distance between the snake and man as fast as an ice spike despite its size, before hitting the coiled snake and flash cooking it. Highly doubt the Archer would have survived this if she still had bones.

The snake goes still and the human wizard slumps on the ground staring at the beast, his friends dead or missing.

*AEEEEIII

Finally, I lunge at the wizards back as he is on his knees and send him sprawling on the ground with a shriek. Accidentally, my front horn pierces through the robes and into the mages back, losing the staff from his grip the mage might look like easy prey but I do not want to see what tricks he has up his sleeves.

Dislodging the horn, I bite down on the mages neck from behind, before beginning to thrash his head back and forth even after his shrieks die down. I don’t stop until I pull a chunk of flesh with my teeth, blood pooling under the corpse, warm and fresh but I know better than to indulge. Must pick quickly what I want from this buffet before something else arrives.

The snake adorned by brown scales with most of them burned and a few broken lies there, but it is too big and I cannot eat it fast enough or drag it away.

The humans are what remain, the wizard is clearly the most juicy option but he doesn’t catch my interest for I already had my eyes on something shiny long ago. The archer is the perfect creature to digest, small enough to drag away and climb up a tree with while also possessing that shiny gem in the helmet that radiates power. Recently cooked and de-boned.

So, I do just that, moving the cooked meat far away from the carnage as screams of wild beasts can be heard behind me, there will most likely be nothing left, but I got what I wanted and I am very happy with this choice. I eat the head first, for the gem embedded in the helmet, the old leather is tough and the gem is even harder. Which is why I remove the gem with my claws, cutting it out rather roughly from the entire cap, and swallow it along with some leather scraps that are left attached to the gem.

Over the next few day’s the lizard will lose some weight as its scales lighten, but also toughen ever so slightly. And over some more time Tom will grow to be truly bipedal once more.