Whew, this chapter took a while. I was in a typing mood today. Hope you enjoy chapter 2! :D
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In a cave alongside a mountain residing in beastman territory a black snake with small wings is slithering around her eggs. In her eyes you can tell there is no love, just indifference when gazing at her offspring.
Only a flicker of curiosity shows itself every now and then when it looks at the black egg with blue stripes. That egg along with three others are all situated next to each other resting so they can hatch. The other three eggs are all solid black and the size of a coconut, while the black/blue one is basketball sized. This egg is Jacob Ryder, now known as Xaramax.
{A/N: To tell the truth, I don’t know about snake breeding at all so I’m just going to give the MC a mother and leave out the father.}
------in the egg-----
Xaramax is feeling around to get a sense of his surroundings. He knows he is in an egg, however he is using this time to test how his body feels and moves. Also he is going to wait until the other eggs to start hatching before he does. How does he know there are other eggs?
Simply put, it’s an innate ability that dragons have. Their senses are sharper than almost all animals, so Xaramax can sense the tiny hearbeats of three others and another big one that he assumes is the parent.
A few minutes later he can hear one of the eggs next to him crack. At the same time the mother snake slithers over to watch her child break out of its shell. A small black snake pokes its head out of its shell and turns around in different directions before seeing the mother’s sharp gaze. The mother looks at it from different angles while figuring out it’s a girl. With a hiss that sounds like a sigh and then the snake version of clicking her tongue she loses interest and waits for the others to hatch. Meanwhile baby snake girl gets out of her shell and scurries over to the mother to wait also.
Xaramax decides it’s a good of time as any to get out of the uncomfortable confined space so he starts to break the shell.
‘I wonder what my parent will look like…’
While thinking this, he finally breaks out of the shell and does the same look-around dance as his sibling. Once he sees his mother he gasps in his heart. Only one word to describe her floats in his mind: Intimidating.
Unbeknownst to him, the mother is thinking ‘What the hell is this? He has legs?’ She can also see the little stumps on Xaramax’s back that are only supposed to show up later on Onyx Wing Serpents when they start to mature. While she is debating what she just gave birth to, the other two eggs hatch.
The other two are male, so now there are 3 males and 1 female babies. Xaramax waddles over to his sister because she is giving off pheromones showing she’s scared out of her mind and also trembling. It’s reasonable too, because the 2 brothers that recently hatched are fighting to see who is top dog. Or top serpent in this case.
‘Wow, they just got out of there and they are already fighting? Hah, mother isn’t even doing anything either.’
Just like he said, the mother serpent is looking at them with indifference and a bit of amusement. The only one not watching is the sister, who is currently hiding behind himself. After a short time, one of the brothers finishes off the other and holds his head up high in a prideful snake pose. Xaramax looks at the small corpse with no feelings whatsoever, thinking,
‘Well, one less mouth to feed….Damn did I really just say that? But…do I really care anyways?’
This is the temperament that the ancient dragon explained to him. Only now does he realize this, and that he doesn’t care at all. His emotions are even more altered than before he died and didn’t even bat an eye over his brother’s death.
However, rationally who can blame him? He has only known his sibling for a whole 30 seconds maybe. The thought of apathy over the other snake’s death only scares him for a split-second before turning back to his calm and predator mindset.
After their brother died, the mother told them to follow her outside to learn how hunt for their own food. She shows them what to kill and then sends them out to find animals themselves. If they can’t find something to kill and eat, then they starve. Furthermore if they go back and beg to be fed, they’ll end up like their ‘dearly departed brother.’
Xaramax split up with his brother and takes the sister along with him. More like she wouldn’t go by herself and stuck to him like glue. This, currently she is riding on his back in between his wing stumps as a makeshift saddle.
‘For some odd reason I feel like I should stay next to her from now on and help her learn to get over her fear of killing.’
{A/N: Just want to make sure you guys know there is going to be NO incest between him and her!}
Suddenly he catches on to a scent of an animal. Keeping low to the ground as possible with a snake on his back, he sneaks up on a large rat. These rats are actually the size of an adult cat on Earth, and are very swift. Luckily the rat is too busy eating to notice Xaramax a few meters away.
Semi-quietly Xaramax with his sister sitting atop him, pounces on the rat. It notices them only after it’s too late. He has already bit down on the rats head and ripped it off, ending its little life to be used as dinner for the two reptiles.
Suddenly a noise alerts both of them, sounding like a snort from a large animal. After the bushes rustle for a few seconds a large boar lumbers its way out and towards them. The boar stands as tall as 4 Xaramax stacked on top of each other. Its ugly face looks as if it’s eager to dine on some scaly critters.
‘Who would have thought I would see a ‘pig’ again so soon.’
After releasing pheromones to his sister basically communicating “Stay back I got this”, Xaramax turns back towards his future dinner on legs. The boar charges towards him recklessly while he just stays there and gets into a crouched position. The boar, thinking that Xaramax has frozen up in fear, increases his speed intending to ram the puny lizard.
Xaramax however, waits until the pig gets close enough and heats up his body, opens his dragon maw, and let’s loose the deep blue fire with all of the flame he could muster in his tiny body. Fortunately, dragons aren’t legends for no reason. Even if his body is tiny the flame itself is hotter than the depths of a volcano, and erupting from his draconic mouth it obliterates the face of the pig leaving what used to be a head but now looks like melted ice cream. After a few moments the pig falls and slides to a stop on the ground.
Now that he has finished his fire-breathing it takes a few seconds to get himself oriented again.
‘Using too much flame puts a strain on my body.’
Indeed, he was only born today, with minimal amount of strength on top of being a newborn. However part of his dragon hereditary memories he received when he was born describes that dragons grow faster than all other creatures on this planet. As long as he eats his fill, he will boost his growth exponentially. Back to the story,
His sister came out of hiding and starts helping him quarter the beast to share with each other. Sadly, when Xaramax was separating the parts he found that his brother had actually been eaten by it earlier. One can tell the pig was a voracious eater since even though the snake was a baby, it still took up a large amount of space inside the stomach of the animal.
Xaramax only noted that his brother was there and moved on to eating the pig with his sister as if it was just a goldfish that died and nothing else. Such thoughts of grief and regret aren’t needed to survive. Those emotions will only hinder his plan to get stronger and carry on.
Xaramax and his sister finished eating and traveled back to the cave where their mother was resting. The mother saw both heading back, noticing their brother wasn’t there just shook her head in disappointment then slithered away after speaking,
“Tomorrow I will name you then you will leave to hunt and live the rest of your life. If you think you cannot survive you might as well let me end your life. Our race does not need weaklings…”
His sister stays still looking at Xaramax in shock and fear while he is thinking,
‘Sometimes I don’t know whether she is lazy and indifferent or really cares about what happens.’
Both of them just decide to resign themselves to their fate and lay down to go to sleep until the morning.
-----Next morning-----
After waking up he notices the changes to his body rather quickly. His stumps for wings have actually grown into wings at just the right size to probably be able to fly. The wings are black just like the rest of his body and sturdy too. Not to mention his size is about half of that of the boar from yesterday. He stands as tall as a great dane dog. The hereditary memories were definitely not joking about rate of growth.
{A/N: here is the size. I got this from google, no idea who that is in the pic lol http://www.fordogtrainers.com/images/large/great-dane-william-margo-main-1301_LRG.jpg}
He also notices the changes to his sister, which are less interesting. She is still a shiny black onyx color but now she has stumps that look similar to his from yesterday. Only slightly larger too. Just like last night she is curled around him like he is a buoy in the middle of the vast ocean.
Xaramax nudges her with his newly lengthened tail to wake her up so they can get ready to leave. He wants to hurry and gain his ‘freedom’ from his serpent mother and try out his human form to see if it will work. It wouldn’t be wise to change into the hated race of his species in the den of said species.
Out of the darkness, the mother snake approaches both siblings with a confused face after looking at him. Then she starts speaking,
“Son, you look like the legends about dragons, but that is impossible however you must go and find what you are and take your sister with you to become adults in the world. As for your names, it will be Xaramax, and you my daughter will be Valexii. Remember not to shame our Onyx Wing Serpent name. You may leave.”
Done with her speech and the first time she has ever said that much, she slithers back to wherever while Valexii hops on the back of Xaramax who strolls out of the cave. When he is outside the wings on his back unfold ready to flap and take flight. Valexii who has started to understand speech says,
“Big brother…fly?”
Her cute face inquisitively looks at him with stars in her eyes. Hearing this Xaramax chuckles then starts to flap his wings and gain altitude. From his hereditary memories and natural instinct he starts to fly albeit a little shaky before he finally eases it out.
Smoothly flying in the air, it reminds him of when he was a human and always wanted to fly with the wind seemingly parting its way for him to travel through. It was a dream spawned from his childish emotions from the adolescent days. Those days as a boy he thought, ‘If I can fly then my parents can’t walk, run, or drive to bring me back home, I’ll be free.’
However when he grew older he realized that most likely even if he did leave, they wouldn't lift a damn finger to try and find him. Rather they would pop open a bottle of champagne and celebrate.
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‘Now they are dead and I am no longer a part of this world…family is something alien to me…no, I have Valexii, I guess she is my family, albeit a new family. Even if my sorry excuse of a snake mother were to block my way, she would just end up being my dinner. If Satan was to knock on my door with an army of demons, I would greet the bastard with a snow-blower and make him sell HIS soul to ME.’
-------In the forest nearby Xaramax flight path-----
“Hey bitch stop trying to run, if you do I’ll make sure to tell my men not to touch you, you'll be safe.”
A group of human slavers and bandits are chasing after a Naga tribe girl. Earlier they found her alone wandering through the woods and decided to take her and earn some coin later on when they get back to the closest kingdom a couple weeks away. Their group is paired with another much larger caravan which should be arriving at the village this girld belongs to. Usually it’s rare to find someone from the Naga tribe outside of their villages since they are just like the elves: wary of outsiders.
Furthermore, contrary to most popular Earth mythology and fiction, in [Polareuse] (it’s the name of world remember) the Naga’s beauty rival the elves. Meaning if they sold her to a noble in the kingdom they would be able to make enough to live lavishly for several years. That just goes to show how most nobility is scum in this world.
She is definitely going to be a world-class beauty when she gets older. The only place she has scales are on the side of her neck going towards her back and down to her bottom. The scales are only the size of a pinky finger nail. There are hundreds of them going in a line, like a streak, but they only add to her allure. Along with her violet hair that flows like an undisturbed river and her equally deep and naïve eyes that instinctually make you want to protect her from even the smallest of sinfulness.
{A/N: btw the girl has legs instead of the typical half snake appearance.}
Unfortunately this girl was arguing with her parents about some trivial matter and decided to calm her mind, thus leading to the current situation. The bandits slowly catch up to her small strides, closing the gap every step. Finally one of the men latch onto her arm to stop her when she lets out a shriek like a banshee,
“KYAAAAAA!!!”
“Shut the hell up, and get into the damn cage!”
The bandit grabs the small girl and drags her back to a wagon with a cage used to carry slaves while she is kicking and screaming. After the girl understands the pointless squirming isn’t working, she gives up all hope…
-------In the air above------
Xaramax’s heightened senses pick up on a girl screaming in the distance. He feels that there is no reason to concern himself with something that is going to bring about trouble. However at the same time he feels curious to see what human interactions and cultures are like in this world. It is his first time experiencing a medieval age after all. Even though she most likely isn’t even a teenager, she could become a person he could use later on if some circumstances appear. Furthermore, the girl won’t betray her savior.
Deciding to see what the commotion is he speeds up and arrives close to where he last heard her scream. This is also the first time he is going to try and go human form. Visualizing his human form he is wrapped in a black shadow that then disperses showing a small 8 year old boy version instead of the adult one.
‘Well, I guess it will work.’
Valexii saw Xaramax’s transformation and could sense that the humanoid is her brother so she climbed her way to his shoulder and wrapped around his neck like a scarf. Xaramax figured this is a good opportunity to try out the limits of his human form, so without further ado, he walked over and made his presence known.
“Hello gentlemen, personally I don’t mind the act of slavery, however I know you will take turns raping her, and that irks me. Rape is a vile, disgusting act that suits you guys perfectly, and that’s the reason you will all die”
When the crowd stopped and looked towards the newcomer’s voice, they were stunned. A child no older than 10 with black hair and blue eyes, wearing black leather made from exquisite material, and a coat that is black with small blue stripes along the sides. On the front chest of the coat a blue dragon is outlined with blue thread making the dragon seem as if it will start moving at any moment. At the end of the sleeves the blue thread makes an “X” for Xaramax. Not only the outfit that is immaculate so is the slick black snake resting atop his shoulders and coiled around his neck. It has eyes that seem to pierce right into you.
'Hmm, it seems like I'm not naked. Going to have to thank that ancient flying lizard next time we talk.'
Xaramax was trying to make a friendly smile, though for the others it had the opposite effect like ‘Is this really a kid?’ The smile was great, however his eyes were cold and calculating, and displaying wisdom and pure animosity a child should not have. It took a few moments for the leader who held the girl to snap out of it,
“What are you dumbasses waiting for?! Kill his pet and lock him up, I bet we could make a fortune off of him at the slave market!”
Once the greedy men heard that they rushed towards Xaramax as fast as possible. Seeing this, he made a mock sigh and also rushed to intercept. His speed was faster than the bandits by far, and he appeared before the closest one too fast to react and with an uppercut his enemy’s head snapped back in an unnatural way breaking his neck and killing him instantaneously.
When the others saw this the whole group practically skidded to halt in absolute fear. How could a child kill a swordsman so easily? While the ignorant fools were debating to themselves the reality of the facts before them, Xaramax noticed the bandit leader was locking up the girl and going to escape with the rest of the bandits and leave these here to fight.
‘Cowards. It’s going to be a hassle killing these guys one by one then catching up with the others. Time to get serious.’
After these thoughts he decided to end it quickly so he reverts back to his true form: dragon form. The bandits who were sneering in their hearts earlier about a an innocent boy walking out of the forest and right into their group were now gulping while sending silent prayers to any god possible. Some even released their bowels which caused Xaramax with his super senses to cough and choke. When a dragon coughs and chokes, standing in front of one is not wise. Flames shot out of his mouth setting fire to most of the men in front of him. Valexii couldn’t help laughing which sounded to humans like an evil warning hiss instead.
After most of the group died Xaramax had Valexii finish off the rest while he goes and deals with the leader and saves the girl. Valexii had no qualms killing the humans because in her mind they are filthy and dared to attack her big brother. (even though she hatched before him making her the older one…)
Xaramax, who no longer gives a flying fuck about who sees his dragon form easily caught up to the slave caravan. Even though he is small because he is two days old, when he is in the air and uses his fire-breathing that more than makes up for his lack of area destruction. He rained down flames from above on the humans and left the horses alive. He needs some raw food for later.
The Bandit leader who sees this turns pale and takes over the reins of the wagon with the cage. He tries to make the horses run faster but how can he be faster than a dragon? Xaramax notices the leader’s futile attempt to escape and decides to try something different.
Flying above him he suddenly switches back to human form and sails through the air to land feet first on top of the leader’s head killing him. He then raises his arms to his side,
‘And the judges vote 10/10 hehe.’
Suddenly a voice breaks him out of his Olympic fantasy,
“Umm, you might want to stop the horses now…”
Certainly, she does have a point. Realizing this he stops the horses and turns the wagon around to head back to where Valexii is. The rest of the way is quiet until the end when they meet with his sister,
“I’m Xamarax, this is my sister Valexii, and you are…?”
The small Naga tribe girl does her best attempt of a curtsey,
“I am Nikki from the Naga tribe it’s nice to meet you. So you said sister? Does that mean the flying animal is actually you? I wasn’t dreaming?”
Expecting this question he decided to tell the truth. Of course he won’t let her tell anyone else, this is also another reason he is keeping her with him. It might sound cruel however he is not strong enough to announce himself a once-extinct dragon has been born. That would be akin to suicide. He then turns back into dragon form to prove it. Nikki’s eyes went as wide as saucers.
"Yes, I am the only dragon alive. You are also going to be my servant.”
His thoughts are basically, skip pleasantries and get to the heart of the matter.
“Eh, but what about home and my parents? They will be looking for me!”
Even though he disapproves her going back to her family since it would be a liability he would just need to use Valexii to make sure and keep her mouth shut about dragons.
“Ok but you need to take Valexii with you, she can keep you safe on your way back. I will follow far enough until we get too close then I’ll wait for you to get back. Just tell your parents you’re going on a trip for a few years and if they don’t let you then run like hell and I’ll pick you up on the outskirts of the forest near town.”
Before Valexii could complain, Xaramax used snake language (hissing) to tell her to make sure no information leaks about him. After that Xaramax makes Nikki sit on top of him along with Valexii who is in her designated position. It takes only a few minutes to reach the outskirts of the forest near the town and he lands while Valexii reluctantly leaves her spot and climbs on Nikki. Both walk back to the town to get things sorted out.
‘Ah! Almost forgot, I need to go back and eat those horses…’
Revision notes!!:
Spoiler :
Okay so as per promise, the changes have been made:
-The bandits are now a part of a larger group. The majority of the bandits have split off from the ones who found Nikki. That majority is headed to Nikki's village to do what bandits and slavers do.
-The mother snake doesn't give a shit about meeting in two years. Yes, I know, I'm being a lazy author and just cutting that whole scenario of 'the return' out. Deal with it.
-Nikki is no longer going to be a guide like it was told before. I agree with you all that it's not needed. The ancient dragon voice gave him the basic information he needs already. Therefore I gave her a servant role. It fits better with the MC's personality. He obviously wouldn't say something such as 'I need a friend' or 'I need an ally'.
-The next chapter's revision will happen soon. I really have to fix this damn fictions rating of 3/5 stars.