I was stuck, unmoving, trapped within a dimly prison. Swirling colors floated all around me, veins of red and blue surrounded me. I was encased in some sort of gel-like, starchy liquid. I tried to move but it seems that my brain cannot get the message across to my limbs. But it seems that I was conscious, bringing up a series of questions: who am I, what am I, where am I, how did I get here?

I tried to recall my last memory but to no avail, in fact, I had no memories. But then why do I have all this knowledge? Why can I reason? Why do I know something is wrong? My situation does not make any sense to me. As I pondered the questions in my jelly prison, I noticed a small ball of white light in front of me.

I was curious and tried to reach out with my will. I imagined an invisible limb stretching out from my body and towards the light then grabbing it and reining it back to me. The ball of light slowly came closer and closer until it was in front of me. I slowly scrutinized it, examining every single, little detail and I found that it was a ball of light.

There was no astonishing detail nor any peculiarities on the light, it was simply a ball of light. There wasn’t a core that held it together nor were there any casing to keep it in place. It was just a floating ball of light.

Perhaps I missed something so I brought it closer to me to take an even closer look. As the ball came close enough to touch my body, it suddenly dived into me, like it was attracted to something inside.

A feeling of strength and energy washed over me. I felt stronger and revitalized like I had a peaceful and full night of sleep. Wait, how do I know how a full night of sleep feel like? Shouldn’t I have just been born, or rather, not even born yet? This is rather peculiar. Perhaps it is just my species to be awakened before being born.

As the ball of light washed over me and disappeared, two more balls of light appeared in its place. Perhaps, I should grab those too. I did the same as before but I had two different limbs to grab them both at the same time. I pulled them towards me like before and held them close to my body. Identical to the first ball of light, my body absorbed them and the strengthening began. My body felt stronger and my control grew.

As the two lights faded, four more took its place and I repeated the process. As the four disappeared, eight more appeared and I absorbed those as well. It seems that everytime I absorb every ball, twice the amount of balls would appear. Absorbing these balls allowed me to control more arms and also strengthen my body.

I continued to clear the balls of light 30 more times before a shadow fell over my prison. The shadow did not fall on top of my entire but rather on select parts of it, shaping into some kind of creature. It had two larger shadows, one on top and another on the bottom, with a smaller shadow connecting them together. The lower shadow had two more thinner shadows sticking out of it on either side.

The upper shadow got bigger, I assumed it leaned towards me. A feeling of warmth, love and belonging flooded into my mind. It was warm and cozy, like I was in the arms of my lover and her in mine, our legs interlocked like knots, bathing in each other’s warmth, feeling each other’s heartbeat.

I reached out to the shadow like how I reached out to the lights and to my surprise, I felt something warm and smooth but hard like a rock. It caressed the shadow some more, feeling every detail of it, wondering what it could be. Suddenly the shadow jerked back and I could hear some sort of muffled sound like it was surprised.

“Wait, don’t go!” I tried to scream but all the came out was silence.

The shadow stood there, unmoving, like it was deciding on what to do but as if it had heard my call, it leaned towards me again. This time, I heard a sound, a very beautiful sound. It was like the choir of the angels; the voice was like speaking to me, answering and comforting all my questions and worries, calming me down, holding me tight and not letting go. It gave me a sense of security and warmth.

The billions of ball of light surrounding me reacted to it too and started to vibrate to the song. I thought it might be a good time to catch them, so I did. I brought out my invisible tendrils and grabbed as many ball as I could, about a few million. As I held onto it, I could feel the light wiggling and squirming. It felt very strange, forcing me to laugh and squirm with it. I held the millions of squirming light balls close to my body and absorbed it.

What I felt could only be described as a tsunami if what I felt before was a small ripple in the water. It overwhelmed me, my brain kicked into hyper overdrive, I felt like I could do anything, like I could conquer the world. I had to get more. The amount of hands I could summon tripled and was in the tens of millions. I continued to grab the lights until the singing stop and the shadow had receded, returning my world of veins into what it once was.

But I had achieved much, I had cleared 2 levels, absorbing 4 billion balls of light. The amount of hands I can control amounted to a hundred million. The amount of hands I had was now getting out of control, though I could technically control them, it took a toll on me. In addition, it was getting tiresome and inefficient to grab billions of little balls of light, one at a time. I had to think of a better way.

I started to experiment with different ways to use my limbs and hopefully combine them into more manageable parts. I only used ten tendrils to experiment so that in case of emergencies I would only lose at most ten, hopefully. The rest were put to work, collecting the light. I tried to forcefully fuse them together but they would only phase through each other, I tried to wrap them together but the same problem applied. After two days of pondering, I finally solved it. Or rather, I had accidently solved it but accidents can sometimes lead to great things. I had retracted my ten tendrils into my body and was pondering on how to combine them. The atmosphere was relaxing and calm since nothing really happened much and I only needed to dedicate a part of my mind to control the other fifty million tendrils. It was rather taxing but the light would also replenish and refresh my mind.

As I pondered, I feel asleep and somehow entered my own, well, spirit? I don’t have a name for it yet but it was bright white as far as the eye can see with nothing in it but me; a glowing snake eating its own tail, an ouroboros; and the now-visible tendrils, revolving around the snake. Curious, I approached the ouroboros to study it. As I got closer and closer, the small symbol grew larger and larger until it was the size of a ten-story apartment building. The symbol resonated with power, making me more alert than usual.

As I stared at the snake in awe, the balls of light appeared behind me. They were floating towards the ouroboros and as they reached it, the self-injuring snake glowed and grew a little. I realized that I was staring at my own soul or some kind of soul-like thing. Amazing discovery, marvelous!

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Then an inspiration struck me, what if I merged the light with my tendrils, or maybe merge the light together, or maybe merge the tendrils here since they’re tangible, or maybe all three at the same time? Thus I chose the last option and tried to do them all. I willed the ten tendrils to combine and morph into a vacuum like object can suck all the light into my, what I now call, soul realm. It seemed pretty weak but as I called in more tendrils and merged it with the vacuum, it grew stronger and stronger.

The tendrils were the same size as the amount of tendrils used to make it. It was gray in color and on top was a giant mouth surrounded by tendrils that pulled in light whenever it got too close. In fact, the tendrils were all around the wall and automatically grabbed onto anything too close to it.

I called the remaining tendrils back in and split them into ten groups, five million in each and combined them into ten different vacuum tendrils. I sent all but one out into the world and it seems the efficiency improved by a lot! The number of light coming in at least tripled!

With that done, I pushed to balls of light together and lo and behold, it got brighter! As I merged more and more light, it got brighter and brighter. The size, for some reason, remained the same no matter how many times I combined it with different lights. After a few hundred lights were combined, I was able to will it to change its color and texture. My excitement had caused the light to go red and emit heat. This caused even more excitement and the light burned more brightly. I quickly willed another color and characteristic, the light changed towards a light blue, emitting a chilling aura, black, white, silver, gold. Each color had a different attribute. I was on fire today!

Excited at the prospects of this discovery, I tried to combine different colors. Some devoured the other color and glowed brighter, others combined together to form a new color and some just exploded altogether. Then I had the bright idea to combine them all together and it was truly bright. Willing all the different colors to come together, the collection of different colors formed a bright white light, identical to what I had been absorbing but much, much bright. It shone as bright or perhaps even brighter than a sun. I was pleased with my experiment and sent it towards my soul. The aftermath felt wonderful, it was a hundred thousand times better than the wiggling light. It was pure bliss.

As for the final test, I merged the light with the remaining vacuum. The vacuum was bathed in light before its color turned white, radiating the warmth and rest that the light had given. The light was now attracted to the tendril and those close to it floated towards it. But what would happen if I combined colored lights with it? Millions of questions ran through my mind, suddenly everything grew dark.

I awaken to my usual world, red and blue veins and a membrane that I can now see. It seems to me that I had been experimenting for quite a while. I could also feel my body and move it, or rather twitch it. But it was still quite a milestone, considering that I couldn’t feel my body, much less move, not long ago. Or may be it was a long time ago, considering that I had no way to keep time.

The black shadow had once again appeared before me. And it had once again sung, but this time it was filled with energy, not that the last time wasn’t. The song made me want to move and break out of my prison. It wanted me to walk outside and feel the wind in my face. It wanted me to taste freedom. I wanted to taste freedom.

So I did as any prisoner would do and started move, or in my case, wiggle. I twitched my head a little and the tip of my mouth bumped into something hard. I felt buckle a little and kept at it. After minutes of struggling, my mouth finally broke out. And I didn’t even break sweat!

With a hole, the rest of the shell was easy game and I effortlessly made my way out. I opened my eyes and I found myself staring at a snow-white snout. That was new. Perhaps what I was seeing wasn’t with my real eyes?

I looked up and saw an overgrown lizard with a pair of wings. I think it was my mother. She had green scales that looked more like rocks and legs the size of tree trunks. Her wings were folded back but it might have a wingspan of a few dozen busses. I tried to call to her but only cute, little squeaks came out. My mother turned her head down and looked me at me. I forgot to mention but she was a giant and was at least a hundred times taller than me. Or it could be that I was short.

She lowered her head and nudged me gently, pushing me back into the egg. Wh-What? Do you not love me? Even if you don’t love me, I can’t be unborn! That’s not how life works, it’s your fault that I was born!

I looked to her eyes and saw her motioning me to something. I traced her stares and found her looking inside the egg. Wait, am I supposed to eat the liquid that was surrounding me? I remembered something did that after it hatched. Perhaps I’m supposed to do so too?

I walked back to my egg, feeling my limbs for the first time. And there were four of them on the bottom and two on my back. The two on the bottom were used to move on land and as for two on my back, take up space? I assume I look similar to my mother except for the coloring. So perhaps those were wings? And what did wings do? I guess I’ll figure it out later, as for now, bon appetite!

I dove my head into my ex-prison and started to slurp up the devil fluids that had kept me imprisoned for the last who knows how long. The liquid was surprisingly good, it was sweet but not too sweet complimented with a herby tea flavor. The texture was very smooth like it would slide right through mouth but it melted as soon as it touched my saliva. I wondered why I never thought to eat it.

Soon I heard some more cracking next to me. I turned my head to find three more eggs of different color and pattern, one was red with scales on it, another was like it had been tied dyed in blue ink and the last one was purple with gems fitted into it. I looked back at my shell and it was plain white with a very detailed ouroboros marked on it. Biology at its finest.

The cracking was soon replaced by sounds of slurping before three different dragons emerged from their eggs. Out of the red egg, a red dragon with a black mane walked out; out of the blue, a dragon with only two legs and two wings that substituted as hands; and out of the purple, a three headed purple crystal dragon emerged. Wow, my mother had been busy.

My, or rather our, mother dragon roared a mighty roar, shaking the entire cavern before lowering her head, gesturing us to get on. By instinct, I flapped my wings and used my soul use the light to make myself lighter. I flew on top of my mother’s snout and laid down, watching my brethren and sisters waddle forward, getting used to their new limbs. After minutes of slipping and tripping, they eventually all got on and the mother dragon lifted us up and walked out of the room.

And that was how my life as a dragon started.