This may come as a shock to most but I know well enough that I have no self control when it comes to curiosity. It's not a big problem but it's still one of three things I consider a problem.

Putting my hand in a mousetrap just for the experience was probably the best example I could give. I have a few more examples now that work just as well but that is the experience that I believe encapsulates my curiosity.

Licking sap from a tree that was just mauled by bears who also licked it? Yeah, that seems like lacking self control to me. Sure I didn't just run up while they were still feeding on it, instead waiting until they left, but I really could have just copied what they did on a tree of my own.

Which brings me to my second problem, I'm opportunistic. Rather than go through the effort of doing something myself I will be “conditionally lazy“ given the first opportunity. The bears did all the work for me? Great! I'll just reap the reward!

Spit sap is disgusting. I vomited. Surprisingly the vomit was nearly clear!

My third problem is that I don't consider my actions. In hindsight my eyes are twenty-twenty, foresight and my peripherals? Probably better but when you're a dragon human centric metaphors fall apart.

These problems are nearly impossible for me to fix, I have tried and failed miserably.

The reason for my melancholy and philosophical thoughts about my greatest problems?

The ginourmous ash, char and soot filled clearing I'm sat on the edge of with a large crater in its centre.

Pretty sure this is where my dirt lair was. Apparently breathing fire underneath a forest of unknowable age is a horrifically bad idea. Maybe one of the pests crawled out while on fire or some cinders drifted out into a dry branch. My best bet is that the roots caught fire considering that the blackened trunks all point towards my lair or point at the sky like charcoal spires. A few fell in other directions but the ones closest to the crater all point in its general direction.

I am intelligent, not wise.

Sitting here with the ash blowing in the breeze really makes this clear. Dragging my claw along the crumbling trunk next to me basically disintegrates what's left.

Getting up and walking deeper into the clearing small clouds puff up around my claws and drift in the breeze before settling down once again. Looking downhill from the clearing I can see black ground stretching into the distance. The rain must have dyed the ground black, the tops of the nearby trees are probably dyed black and grey too.

Walking down into the crater the ground cracks and crumbles under my weight causing me to slide a little. The bottom of the crater is filled with a black pool...

Dipping my claw into the pool dyes it pitch black. All this destruction and I'm the cause, it really puts things into perspective. I casually spat flame into my lair to burn intruders and devastated the local forest, I didn't even think to come and look until today. It was just a casual moment to me that meant I had to move, to anything living here it meant death. Hell! I only came here because I thought there might be charcoal in my lair to make toothpaste out of!

And the only thing that I feel looking at this pool is regret and thirsty...

Fuck it.

Slipping into the water I lay down leaving just the top of my head surfaced and start to drink the dark water.

It doesn't even taste bad, it tastes like regular water if a lot thicker. It's refreshing even. How sad is that? I try to wallow in my self made misery and it's refreshing...

Lying in the slightly gritty water and continuing to drink I can't stop thinking of all the mistakes I have made. All the mistakes I keep making...

More water down the drain and all I think is that it's quenching a fire that's been burning for days. I wish something would have quenched the fire that caused this but I didn't even consider the possibility.

I'm a genius.

Slipping the rest of my head under the surface I close my eyes and focus on drinking.

----------------------------------------

I must have fallen asleep or something... crunching down another bite of meat and bone I shift to a more comfortable position as I chew. Savoring the texture of the meat I rip off another chunk and chew on that in addition.

Then reality hits me like a truck.

Opening my eyes wide I realize it's dark except for a faint light shining through the entrance that I assume is moonlight.

But that light is just enough to see what's filling my lair from the entrance to the far corners.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Corpses.

Pests, Puff martens, long bears, charred birds and some other animals I don't recognize. Stacked bodies laying atop one another, occasionally dismembered and occasionally burned.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume I did that... Swallowing in shock makes me choke on half chewed flesh that takes me a few attempts to swallow.

Taking another bite as I stare in shock at my surroundings I chew mechanically not even considering the taste. Not that it matters, everything tastes like ash anyway.

The stray thought brings to mind scattered memories of what happened since I started drinking the water.

It can be summed up in one word with a few for emphasis.

Carnage, Utter destruction of life.

Trees were shredded and knocked down with full body charges to get to the pests, puff martens fell alongside them. Long bears tried to run only to be tackled and have their necks broken and flocks of birds were taken out of the air with small sprays of fire. The deer goat looking things were burned out of hiding and dragged down the mountainside and the mole creatures were ripped from their hidden burrows beneath the roots. The large brown dappled cat with six legs was straight up smoked out of its lair and decapitated with a claw swing.

For several hours I was basically a feral killing machine... I didn't get hurt the whole time...

They started running from me.

Crunching into a leg and chewing slowly grinding the bone I slowly thought through all the violent memories coming to mind.

I was still eating.

The strong urge to continue eating and the feeling that stopping would be a VERY bad idea settled my thoughts on the matter. If dragon instincts scream at you to keep eating, you eat and don't question evolutionary guidance.

I'm assuming the trigger of my little episode was drinking the water filling the crater. Of course my moment of misery was beneficial to me. At least I think it was beneficial?

Finished with whatever I was eating I shoved the pile of nasty into the heap of disgusting next to me and got the next body to start eating. Cooking all this is not going to happen, I'd starve before I got halfway.

Hopefully I can get some sleep tonight, eating until the sun rises really doesn't interest me...

----------------------------------------

Leaving my lair reeking of drying blood and heading for the stream what gets to me is the silence. No birds or insects.

Just silence.

The trees hardly sway in the breeze making them rather quiet and there isn't much vegetation to make sound. The streams coming out of the caves are loud compared to everything else and I only have one near the entrance to my lair.

It's like I'm living in a horror film.

Ignoring my distillery and drinking straight from the stream I can't help but agree with some of the villains. Sure they murder people but all they want really is people to leave them alone or to stop being assholes. Sure the response is drastic usually but what else are they going to do? Say “Hi there! I live in a small creepy shack about five minutes from here and all you kids fornicating while taking drugs with music blaring is distracting me from my fishing with meat hooks and rusty axe sharpening. Could you calm it down a little?“ The attitude of some people nowadays would make that end in murder anyway!

Wait... what day is it even? I went to sleep on... was it Sunday or Friday? I didn't have work so I'm assuming Sunday but Saturday is just as possible...

Getting the urge to vomit I retch out a pile of grey slurry onto the ground and go back to drinking. That is incredibly unpleasant. Back at the crater I had to vomit multiple times but it was mostly brown.

I've drunk a lot recently... where does it even go? Do I have an internal water tank or something? Magic?

And on that note I shout a classic fighting game move in draconic and launch a blue attack of death at the mountainside.

At least I picked up a new breath attack trick when I went rampaging. Drinking another litre and feeling bloated I get out the last of that sludge and head back to my lair. Guess it's back to eating. Yay, raw meat.

----------------------------------------

Gorging on the bodies around me the question of where it's all going is really bothering me... I have over a metric ton of food here, even discounting the inedible and disgusting bits, and I just can't stop eating. If I'm going into hibernation or something like that which is a decent guess from what my instincts are rather incessantly screaming I have to question if I'm going to gorge on all this or if I'm going to use it over time.

Leaving it lying around is a bad idea from what I know and with all the freaky bugs about I'm really scared of eating anything left out if that is the case. Before I take the big nap I'm going to be cleansing my lair with fire as a bug repelling measure because I'm sure that they will be attracted with this much ick and blood around the place. The stone might get melted or warped but I can fix that later.

Physical damage can be fixed, bug based psychological damage cannot.

Crunching through another long bear femur I look at some of the new animals that I found and promptly exterminated. The goat things are grey with white patches that look like lichen, they also have patches of moss coloured fur. There are some lumpy bits that look like pebbles along their legs too. It's like they needed to blend in with the mountain so they became it.

When I was butchering them they were invisible against the stone and boulders so I have no idea how I found them... considering I kept spraying fire everywhere I assume that it was a fluke.

Looking at the next specimen all I feel is shame.

One of the mole things bit me.

That's the only reason they died.

Probably the only reason I noticed them too.

They're about as big as a human hand and have rather soft and sleek looking fur. There's hardly any meat on them making them worthless for my size. I assume that the part of my brain that collects pillows and blankets pointed and told murder lizard brain to kill them and hoard their skins.

I like the initiative but it's just going to rot making the effort pointless.

They have been systematically hunted to extinction near my lair for nothing.

Whoops...

As for the dappled cat with six legs I'm assuming I took its territory. I walked past a cave and got a freaky screaming noise sent my way. It ran back into the cave after air swiping at me and refused to come out. Having flames spat into its cave changed that and a swipe of my own settled who's territory this area really was.

I really don't know why this thing has six legs. I didn't see any advantage in particular and the mountain lion frame really didn't suit them. The middle set does look smaller so maybe it's vestigial or something? It's fur is more suited to the forest if I assume everything in the area has some form of camouflage.

Tossing another finished body onto my rapidly growing refuse pile I get into a comfortable position. The moon was a quarter of the way through rising when I went to drink so I probably have a long night ahead of me. I'm only a quarter of the way through eating everything after all.