The first thing I saw when I stuck my head through the wall was another hallway. This one though, was a lot straighter and smoother than any I had seen so far. For as far as I could see, there were no holes, alcoves or cracks in the rock. My vision was limited to about 10 meters, before the light from the illusory wall was too dim for me to see by. At least there's nothing standing guard in here. That eliminates my greatest worry. But how am I going to sneak in here if I can't even see anything?

I hadn't considered before, that these kobolds might have harvested all of the light sources I was getting so used to. I guess it's not like they can even see it. Hmm, maybe if I take some from outside, I could light my way? Worth a shot.

I then went back out again to search for some moss that hadn't been harvested yet. All of the patches immediately around the entrance were so dim that I didn't bother looking at them further. I had to walk for a minute before I found a spot that had seemingly been missed. Another point of evidence that they can't see the light.

I carefully removed the entire patch from the rock, using my claws to rip, more than cut, the roots holding it in place. While I had found my claws to be rather hard, they weren't exceedingly sharp, likely to prevent dragons from gutting themselves in the egg, or even destroy it prematurely.

Another minute later, I had a small, glowing carpet of moss that would light my way for a few meters at least. Now, how am I going to carry this? I'd rather not hold it in my mouth, never mind that it would constantly fall apart from only being held on one corner. I tried holding it under one wing, but that restricted the glow too much.

Putting it on top of my head worked surprisingly well. I could only imagine how ridiculous I'd looked, walking around with a mane of moss. Step one, complete. Now, to actually get into their territory and learn their language. On my way to get myself a light source, I had tried to replicate the sounds I had already heard. Mostly the ratcheting and clicking, which I assumed came from somewhere in the back of the throat.

The latter sound was a lot easier than the former, at least in isolation. I would still need to be able to make the sounds flow into each other, as was normal of any language. The hisses and chirps, I could make rather easily, and making them in close proximity to each other wasn't difficult. The ratcheting, however, eluded me for the moment.

As I reached the wall once more, I made myself as flat to the ground as I could, then sneaked in. No turning back now, the only reasons to come out will be to get food, and to flee if they find me.

There were still no kobolds behind the wall, so I cautiously moved forward. After something like two minutes of walking along this pleasantly straight and smooth tunnel, I came up on an actual light source. It looked like some sort of crystal, and it's light was a distinctly yellow hue, rather than the blue I'm used to from mana.

I was rather confused that the two kinds of light I could see didn't make green to my eyes. No, the normal light and the mana light were entirely distinct to me. Both kinds behaved exactly the same, but I could focus on both individually, somehow.

The crystals were set into the walls at regular intervals, just close enough that the light they cast overlapped for a meter or two. No use for this, then. Not like I can use it for camouflage either. And neither can I just leave it here. That would seem very suspicious. Sneaking in would be a lot more difficult, with everything lit up like this, but I had made my choice.

I started moving again, and it didn't take long, maybe a minute, until I came up on another ledge, like the one I had encountered after leaving my place of birth. The difference now, was that there was a large ravine here, rather than a lake.

To my left, there were more of the crystals along some path down to the bottom, and even more all the way down there, giving it a very warm look. The ground was at least 100 meters down, and some 20 meters in front of me, was the opposite wall of this giant chasm. It got a bit smaller going down, but the bottom was still about 10 to 15 meters across, as far as I could tell.

From up here, I could see small holes in the sides of the rock face on the ground level, likely the dens of kobolds. I hardly had to strain my ears to hear the constant and reverberating chatter of an entire kobold community. I was just about to try and pick out some specific sounds, when I heard a set of clicks and chirps coming closer.

I looked over the edge, towards where there was a line of yellow light sloping down to the kobold village, and sure enough there was some blue light half-way up, and coming closer. I looked around for anywhere to hide, but couldn't see anything useful. That is, until I looked at the opposite wall of the chasm.

There was an alcove in the rock, conveniently just below the level I was standing on. I didn't think for long, taking a few steps back and running towards the ledge at full speed, wings spread wide.

I'm really glad I took the time to at least learn to glide somewhat. I had dropped off less than I had expected and had to angle my wings down, hard, just so I didn't crash into the rock face above the entrance. It did make for a less than gentle landing, though.

The chatter of the new group of kobolds stopped abruptly, when I hit the ground, but I didn't leave them enough time to find me on this side of the wall, where the actual light might still have been enough to see me by.

I slithered deeper into the alcove, making no further noise, and the kobolds started chatting again, somewhat more subdued now. I thought I made out three different voices, but I could have been wrong. After they had resumed their conversation with their earlier gusto, I chanced a peak out at them, and found three kobolds.

They had just turned their backs to me, walking off towards the entrance, but I was entirely focused on one thing in particular. Of the three, only two were glowing in the blue light of mana. The third, painted a very light orange by the yellow light, was holding a stick with one of the crystals at the tip.

The other two, slightly taller than The light orange one, were a dark orange and a muddy brown. The former was also half a head taller than the latter. If I were to assume that the colors are made with pigment, then that might mean they're all some shade of red. Following that logic, the small one would be pink, the tallest would one would be dark red and the last would be...red-brown? I wonder what they're talking about.

I decided that walking in the light would be dangerous, until I knew how the kobolds would react to my presence. There were plenty of places I could see down in the village, that were a lot darker than others. Let operation 'skulking in the shadows' begin.

I couldn't very well get over to the other side of the ravine, as I still wasn't able to generate enough lift with my wings, so I looked for any more places to make a landing further down the chasm. There were a few, but they'd be rather awkward to reach, considering the aforementioned difficulty.

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I picked one that was about 25 meters down, and maybe 35 or 40 meters to my left, away from where the village was. I went through the movements in my head. I need to run out of this hole, bank to the left, hard, then level off and descend. I'll pick up some speed, then have to level out again, when I'm just above the level of the landing spot.

A few meters before I'm there, I'll need to bank hard again, this time to the right. And hope I lose some more elevation for inefficient turning. I guess I'll decide how far above the spot I stop descending, based on how much height I lose on the first turn. I tried to go through all of the things that could go wrong in this series of actions, and how I could try and correct them.

This is where I wish I had some way of doing proper aerodynamic simulations. Or even had any background in such work at all. But unfortunately, I had never taken the time to really study aerodynamics, or even general fluid mechanics. All I had was disparate pieces of knowledge that gave me just enough confidence to know I should have practiced more, when I had the chance.

Nothing for it but to go ahead, now I went through it one more time in my head, then ran out and jumped. The first turn was more difficult than I had anticipated. I didn't bank left far enough and almost flew straight into the wall. I managed to correct myself at the last second though, just barely brushing the rock face with the tip of my right wing.

That caused me to turn too far left though, and I was now going to hit the wall I had come from midway between where I launched and where I wanted to go. I had also lost about 7 meters of height from this turn. I then went on to adjust my flight path, banking and turning right just enough to be on a trajectory leading into the new alcove.

I just had to bleed off another 18 meters on the way, so I also angled myself down slightly. This made me, as I had expected, pick up some speed, making my flight a bit harder to control. I could already feel my wings struggling to stay straight under my weight, but it was manageable for the moment.

I was proud when I smoothly entered the hole without any further complications, but I was still very fast, and I didn't know how deep this one went. In a small moment of panic, I tried to flap my wings, which was just the wrong thing to do for me right now. I must have done something wrong, because instead of slowing me down significantly, all it did was remove the stable surfaces I had used to glide.

Most of my momentum was horizontal, so when my left hind foot made contact with the floor, I was sent tumbling head over heels, until I hit the wall. It's always the landing, isn't it? Everything else is easy, just coming down without falling on my face is hard.

I picked myself up on wobbly legs, checking for injuries. Thankfully, there were none, except maybe my pride. I brought up the list to check how many times it had been so far, that I kissed the ground.

Name: unknown

True Name: unknown

Age: 4 hours 8 minutes 34 seconds

Species: (some sort of)Dragon

Gender: female

Life Stage: Hatchling

Titles and Given Names: K

Statistics:

  Notes to self:

    Never do auto-cunnilingus again

    Always pay attention to your surroundings

  Times I thought of my situation as weird in any way: 8

  Times I fell on my face: 47

Goals:

  Learn to fly. Progress: 10%

  Learn the kobold language: Progress:3%

47? And still not a single drop of blood spilled. It's either because I'm a dragon, or because I'm a dragon hatchling, specifically. And look at that, both my goals got a bit more progress. I wonder if that is my perceived progress or if the list tracks that the same way it tracks Statistics.

I went over to the edge again, looking for the next place to land on the way down. There were a few viable option this time, including the ground, which I estimated to only be about 60 meters down at this point. Let's make one more stop before going all the way down. I don't want to repeat the landing I just had, with more than twice the kinetic energy.

There was one place, right below me and on the same side of the divide. I thought about maybe doing some parkour style moves, catching myself against the wall and pushing back off, but decided against it. I could comfortably walk and run and sneak, but contorting myself in the ways required to pull that off, and with what I just assumed was a fatal drop below me, was a risk I wasn't willing to take.

That left one wide opening in the opposite wall, about 10 meters in the direction of the village, and about 20 down. It would require the same moves As the glide just a moment ago, but with less space for error. Well, if I miss, I can just try to make a better landing on the ground. The village was only a hundred and fifty or so meters away, so there might not be enough distance to bleed off energy through air resistance.

Before I tried anything, I let my wings rest for a few minutes, though. I wonder if all dragon hatchlings are this active after hatching. That might be an indication that abandoning an egg is just the modus operandi of dragon mothers. Especially if all dragons can see mana like I can. That seems like a very useful adaptation, when most things shine like some sort of mana beacon.

After three minutes of rest, I made the second daring glide down one level. It was better than the first, right up until I was making the last turn into the alcove, where I clipped my left wing on the way in. I was spun around for a moment, then hit the ground and started tumbling again, this time less violently, as I had already absorbed some kinetic energy with my wing.

I only started to feel the pain a few seconds after I had come to a stop, likely due to shock. FUCK! That hurts! Just my fucking luck! I had squeeze my eyes shut from the pain, and didn't want to move from where I lay on my back. My right wing was under me, but I hardly felt that compared to my left one.

After what felt like an eternity, but was only about 7 minutes, the pain had faded enough that I could move it without too much pain, so I slowly started to get up again. There were a few stabs of pain when the wing slid across the floor, but it was manageable.

I had a small desire to lick at the affected area, but kept myself from doing so until I knew what it looked like. The Moss carpet I had used as my light source so far had been knocked off at some point and lay right next to the entrance to this alcove. Still a bit wobbly from the pain, I slunk over to it to inspect the damage.

There was a nasty bruise on one of the joints of the wing, but it seemed like it was still straight. I tried folding it up, but had to grit my teeth at the pain and stop. Fuck, this is not good. I can't get further down like this, let alone back up. I don't know how often a dragon hatchling has to eat, but I didn't want to to find out in this god damned alcove, where I won't be able to do anything about it!

Fuck, I don't have a choice, now, unless I want to climb down. Fat chance for that. As a human I might have considered it, but I don't know if a dragon even has the range of movement needed to climb efficiently. Pulling the moss with me in my teeth, I made my way to the back of the alcove. It was only about three meters deep, but it would do for taking a break until I could move my wing again.

I hadn't even noticed that I was tired, until I had found a semi-comfortable position to lie down in. I had curled up cat-style in a small dip in the rock, but that was anything but comforting. The flattest spot I could find in this area didn't do it for me either. I tried a few other positions that wouldn't put any pressure on my left wing, but nothing worked. The best I could do was actually curling around a small pile of rocks. Beggars can't be choosers, I guess.

It wasn't long after that, when I was startled awake by the sounds of kobold conversation. I was immediately awake, but decided not to move in the slightest. According the the list, I had slept a little over 90 minutes, and I could already feel that my wing hurt a little bit less.

I was just about to force myself to see what the commotion outside was about, when I saw some blue light peek over the ledge of my little hiding place. I first noticed it on the ceiling, then it flooded over the floor, about half way to where I was resting. I was confused for just a moment, before realization struck.

They found me! Fuck! I've got nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. If they are aggressive, I'm so screwed. My instincts made me bare my teeth in the direction of the opening, as well as flare out my one good wing. There was a low growl, my own addition, but the kobold seemed to get the message. The light disappeared, and I was left alone again, with my hurt wing and a blanket of moss.