Best night of tree sleeping I’ve had in ages! Wait, no, I haven’t been here for ages. Never mind that. Climbing out of my tree, I do a stretch and it feels gooood. Looks like it might be about afternoon, so I should get some breakfast.

Hmm… Something’s off… I definitely flew here last night, now how did I manage that? I’m pretty sure I couldn’t fly. I give it a think and yeah, I definitely just did it. Did coma dragon teach me to fly?

That’s so rude, I wanted to learn that on my own! Which I guess I did, since I am coma dragon just as much as I’m Kira, but I also learned it separately from Kira... I don’t know how that works, but it’s a little annoying that I didn’t get to learn it on my own.

Focus, Kira, breakfast. Where does one find breakfast in a forest? The only answer I arrive at is "in the forest,” which isn’t helpful.

Eh, I’ll just see if I can see anything from above. Time to try flying again! With a short running start, I set off, and it goes mostly well, I don't crash, but it is a bit on the wobbly side.

Okay, so I still need practice. It takes a couple of jumps and then I’m off!

I spend some time orienting myself and looking out for landmarks, but I'll need to go higher than just above the trees.

So I do just that! And up I go, which takes a surprising amount of effort, but I can feel my wings empowered by my magic, and it feels pretty awesome, sort of tingly and strong.

I can’t quite tell how far above the ground I am, but I’d say quite far. Looking around, I can see that Raya’s town isn’t that much of a distance away from my lake.

We’re practically neighbors! The other side of the town is pretty much just a large flat area. If there are delicious critters there, it might be a good hunting spot.

Naturally, I spend my time being entirely productive and really getting to know the area from up here, sort of. Yeah, I’m definitely just flying around having fun, and I may have spent most of the day up here.

This is hecking amazing! I can do loop-de-loops and whatnot! My new favorite thing might be flying almost straight up and tucking in my wings, free fall feels so awesome.

I completely understand why people would jump out of planes and stuff.

Okay, there’s gonna be plenty of time for sky fun, and I need to be learning landmarks. I make a note of the mountain I fell from in relation to the lake and Raya’s town, I’m fairly confident I can now reasonably find my way back. Even if I end up grounded for whatever reason, I’ll figure it out.

And now to focus on breakfast again! I’ve been looking for something delicious, and I have spotted a… What’s a group of boars called?

Probably something that sounds weird. Go away, distraction! Okay, scouting mode.

I’m surprised at just how good my eyesight is and how many details I can make out between the trees, like an eagle or something.

Nevertheless I’ve spotted a few boars in a small clearing, and I’m gonna get one or two! Quickly swooping down on one, I latch on as best I can, it squeals quite loudly as my claws sink into its flesh, but a quick bite to the neck and it stops moving.

I leave it on the ground and quickly take off again, I want to catch another one. In barely any time at all, I’ve caught up to the others. As I’m preparing for another swoop, I hear those dang wolves again. It’s practically evening time, why are they hunting now? That’s so rude.

I hope they don’t find my previous kill, but that’s a concern for a bit later. For now, I feel compelled to deal with these wolves.

Which would be much easier if they weren’t so dang quiet right now. Who knew wolves wouldn’t be howling during an active hunt? Well, I’ll just have to keep an eye on their target, the boars.

It doesn’t take long for me to spot the first wolf. It seems to be pretty good at using the shrubbery to stay hidden.

But I have the high ground advantage, so I see you, Wolfy! I’m gonna have to be quick and precise about this. If Wolfy manages to alert its friends, they’ll scatter for sure, or attack me. Definitely one of the two.

With great guile and agility, I aim for the wolf and swoop down to take it out. My descent is near perfect, aside from the part where I focused a bit too much on the wolf and hit a large branch.

The upside is that I successfully attacked the wolf, the downside is that the ‘attack’ was more ‘landing on it like a very large klutz.’

Even if it didn’t have time to let out a howl, the noise I made certainly would’ve alerted its pack.

For the sake of my bruised ego, I’m gonna write that off as an intended body slam. I try to go for a quick bite to the neck, but this wolf is a lot more frisky than the boar was and it manages to evade me.

I’m tempted to use my fire breath, but I’m not sure I want to start a forest fire. The wolf definitely looks worse for wear.

If I don’t hurry, I could be outnumbered by its pack arriving. I look around for a bit to get a read on the terrain, and I may have screwed up. Taking off from here is not gonna be easy, these trees are closer together than I’m comfortable with.

I lash out a few times, trying to get a hit in on Wolfy, but it clearly knows it is at a disadvantage in bulk and strength. The rascal is playing for time, stop being so smart!

To my surprise, it doesn’t take long for the others to join up, and I become increasingly convinced I screwed up here, I shouldn’t have gotten greedy. Now there are five of them, although the one I landed on is still injured.

Just like the other pack, these wolves encircle me, but that is a strategy I’m familiar with. I considered trying to get to the clearing where I killed the boar. But it’s too far away, and that would give these guys too many opportunities for sneaky strikes.

I’m just gonna have to try fighting between the trees here. It doesn’t take long for the first wolf to strike, it goes for one of my legs, and for the sake of trying, I attempt to strike it with my tail, but it dodges easily. I really need some actual combat training.

Unfortunately, my failed strike seems to have bolstered their confidence, and now they’ve increased their rate of attack.

They’re attacking me in several places, trying to tear off scales, but it seems harder for them than it was for the last pack; however, it isn’t impossible, which is a problem.

I wait for one to attack one of my wrists, and then I try my wing trick again, but as I attempt to catch the wolf, the bastard manages to scurry around.

Darn it! I can’t even really tell them apart, and they just keep jumping around, making this whole debacle even harder.

Screw the forest, it’s time to light these wolves up. Digging in my claws, I brace against the ground as I swing both my head and tail to my left, and then I let loose my flames, creating an arch as I turn right in a solo pincer attack.

The wolf in front of me scurries right as well to avoid the flames, but I catch it with my tail. Blade digging into the side of the wolf as it tries to dodge. One down.

I need to make sure it’s actually down, so I quickly jump onto the downed wolf and rip a chunk out of it. If it wasn’t dead before, it is now. Time to deal with the rest of them. Clearly, this pack is significantly more foolish than the previous one, since they’re still here.

I see a wolf hiding behind a tree, so I let loose my flames again, aiming for the trunk. The flame splits to both sides and I hear the wolf yelp. Must be toasty back there.

Unlike when I was testing my duration with Joras and Raya, I can now tell when I need to stop and, unfortunately, that time is now. I kept the flame going for longer than I felt necessary, so I’m very curious how the wolf handled that.

Unfortunately, it isn’t coming out of its shelter, but I can’t deal with that right now since the last three are still around. I refocus my attention and find the last three appearing a lot less motivated to continue fighting, but that’s their problem, not mine.

I quickly launch myself at one of them before they come to their senses. This time, I manage to latch onto it with my jaws, I rip and tear into it, a chunk of flesh separating from the wolf. Delicious victory. I can feel myself letting go of my self-imposed restraints.

I look around and notice that I can’t see the last two wolves anywhere. Darn it! I really wanted to get all of them, but I’m not gonna go hunt down the last two wolves.

It was my plan to return to town much sooner, just a couple of kills, but this whole thing sidetracked me, so I just chow down on the last wolf I downed. I should check on the toasty one as well.

Wow, okay. I, uh… I need to be very cautious about doing that again. That wolf most certainly did not survive. I can feel part of me being thrilled at how that turned out.

Looking around at my handiwork, it occurs to me that my initial reservations about starting a forest fire were well-founded. I’m gonna have to put out some fires quickly!

There isn’t a lot of fire, to my surprise, but I’d feel bad if I burned the entire forest down. Time to stomp out some embers!

As I start turning to the first wolf I killed, I find myself curious about what extra crispy wolf tastes like, and yeah, I definitely want to find out. It’s delicious is what that is. It’s so delicious that I give the last wolf a nice roast as well. Don’t kill it if you won’t eat it. It’s the rules.

It occurs to me that I just packed away three quite large wolves, and I feel like I could easily go for seconds. Fourths? I… may be a bit of a glutton.

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Their fault, if they weren’t so tasty, they wouldn’t be getting eaten. I should also look over my injuries, and what I see is not good. The protective scales on my ankles are basically gone, and I have bled a fair bit, but it seems to have stopped.

They got further than I felt, I can definitely see some raw muscle. My body even feels quite bruised too, so their attacks, wait, no, the body slam, that's why my body hurts. I might have to stay away from wolves until this heals up properly.

I doubt I’ll get much hunting done from down here, so it's time to start my trek towards… Right, getting my bearings.

Turns out it’s pretty tough to see where you are from the ground when you’re surrounded by trees. One could make an argument for seeing that coming, especially given that I’ve already gotten lost like this once. Yeah, that boar is definitely lost. Darn it.

I guess I’ll just pick a direction and go until I find somewhere I can fly from. To speed things up, I try to run, which is working out surprisingly well.

I’m not even tripping or anything. I even manage to stop before I crash into that small house, although not entirely quietly. Overall, I’m doing quite well with coordination. A few setbacks here and there, but don’t let a setback become a quit.

The house itself is in fairly decent condition as far as I can tell, and there’s a neat little fence surrounding a kitchen garden, not much in the way of windows. It’s built with some pretty bulky logs in a general L shape, and it has a very neat grassy roof. All this is sitting in a lovely clearing.

“Ner du faro ti wiraei yerc un turui?! [Who the fuck is causing such a racket?!]” I hear some gibberish I can’t understand coming from inside, I guess whoever it is speaks a different language.

And then the door swings open with quite some force, and in the doorway is a regular old human woman. She’s not actually old, but she does appear quite pale as she looks at me. I bet she knows where we are.

“Urlo.[Nope.]” Huh, she just went inside and slammed the door. I get the impression that some fences need mending here. This is a very delicate diplomatic situation, so I’m gonna have to be very careful.

I gently navigate my way towards the front door so I can knock, also gently. It’s surprisingly difficult not to step on things.

I’m kinda proud of how well I’m doing dodging stuff, barely crushed anything. I’ve even made it all the way to the door. Don’t mind that it was only four meters or so (13 ft), I did well.

And my tail may still be outside of the garden, but it counts. Now for the next challenge: knocking on the door without breaking anything. Okay, Kira, you can do this. Don’t think about this like a social event, it’s just asking for directions.

I’m trying to think of ways I can actually knock on the door, but it appears my biology is ill-suited for door-knocking. My head and neck are getting in the way of my hands being able to reach the door.

I just realized I’m overthinking this. I’m just gonna knock on the wall, which is next to me and far easier to reach.

It doesn’t take me long to become aware of one problem I’ve overlooked; I’m blocking the door. I’m gonna have to walk backwards here, carefully.

With great guile and agility, I actually managed to not squish any flowers. Huh, good job me. I’m fairly proud of that, don’t look at the pathway I walked on. It was torn up and full of claw marks when I got here.

Okay, so while I wait for her to get to the door, I’ll employ my artsy skills again and build a small diorama of my lake and Raya’s town. Surely she’ll know exactly what I mean. To my surprise, this has gotten a lot harder with my growth and twigs being so fragile.

Aaand I’m done, that didn’t take too long at all, but it did get surprisingly dark. Hmm… The human hasn’t come out yet, I’ll just knock again. Knocking on houses is a fairly delicate matter.

Since I’m fairly large, if I knock too hard, the entire wall shakes and stuff on the other side of the wall falls down.

I know this because apparently something important broke, and the human is now outside throwing things. At me.

“Lero untarei Obletch! [Stop breaking things!]” She’s yelling something, but once again, I have no idea what’s being said. Admittedly, this hasn’t been the best first impression, but I’m sure we can recover.

To my surprise, she’s actually throwing quite hard, and I find myself having to use my wings as a shield. If she threw an actual weapon, she might do some damage.

Luckily for me, she’s running out of stuff to throw, so maybe there’s a chance I can get directions now. I peek out from under my wings and she’s just standing there at the edge of her garden, looking around.

I’m gonna have to do something before she finds more ammunition, so I pounce, knocking her to the ground, pinning her gently under my claws. “Runei tona furu nui. [Please don’t hurt me.]” Dang it, now she’s crying, I didn’t mean for that to happen.

I slowly lift my claws off of her, ideally she won’t attack me again. Gonna give her some room; hopefully, she interprets that as me not meaning her any harm.

At this point, I’m a little hurt at how poorly this has gone, I don’t feel like I’ve shown any hostility. Guess it can’t be helped, I suppose I am a bit intimidating.

At least now she’s getting up, that took a bit longer than I had hoped, but we’re getting somewhere, maybe.

“Cora to er orin? [What do you want?]” I take a few steps towards my diorama, which is thankfully still intact, and indicate towards it, hoping she’s familiar with the location.

Before I realize what she's up to, I feel her touch my neck and- HECKING OUCH!

She shocked me! This darn human shocked me! Here I am, on my best behavior, and she just uses some sort of electricity to shock me, that is incredibly rude.

Unfortunately for her, I flinched a lot and the shock unfolded my wing, hitting her quite hard. I thought we were getting somewhere and now she’s unconscious on the ground. Honestly, I feel like I keep getting attacked.

Screw getting directions, I’m just gonna look around and see if I can find enough room to take off, this has been entirely fruitless.

Yep, there’s a decently large area behind her house, because this is a clearing, so not only was this interaction fruitless, it was pointless too. Damn it… I need to cheer up with some fun flying shenanigans.

Night has fallen, but it’s still pretty well lit out here. Spending some time doing glorious flying shenanigans, which did cheer me up a bit.

I fly towards the familiar mountain, at least from there, I can find my way back to my lake. I can definitely feel my body having taken some hits... Oh dang it! I forgot the boar! Screw it, I’m sure some wolves or a bear or something has gotten to it.

I’ll just head back and check in with Raya and Joras. Flying really is handy, and you get places so remarkably quickly. I could’ve saved a bunch of time if I had just ignored the weird forest lady. At least I don’t have to bother with her again.

As I get closer to the mountain, I can see the light of Raya’s town, it’s fairly close, if you can fly anyway. A quick stop by my lake to get rid of some grime, and I'm ready for a town visit.

I take off and make short work of the short distance between my lake and Raya's town. I’ll just set down outside and spook the guards.

As soon as I land, one of them readies his weapon and starts charging, but the other guard seems to have different plans, because he just thrusts the less pointy end of his spear between Chargie’s legs.

That faceplant was fantastic. My keen dragon senses tell me there’s gonna be bickering in their future.

The calmer one of the two seems to have stopped a regular person and sent them into town, I’m certain I heard Joras mentioned, but I wasn’t paying too much attention.

I’m kinda curious whether he sent someone else so he could keep an eye on me or his partner.

Either way, I’m just gonna have a lie down while I wait patiently and don’t get into trouble.

Chargie keeps eyeing me suspiciously, and it’s making me wanna mess with him, but I need to control myself and be responsible. Seriously, control yourself, Kira. Don’t let the intrusive thoughts win.

I’m just gonna focus on a specific spot on the wall and not do anything. How can I not do anything when he turns around to check out what I’m looking at?! I rear up on my hind legs and give him a blast of wind with my wings.

Admittedly, I may have overdone it by infusing my wings with extra magic, but on the other hand, he did half a flip, and it both looked and sounded very funny.

Okay, he may be a little upset. I might apologize when Joras gets here. For now, I’m just gonna lie back down and relax; I've been doing a lot of exercise today, so I deserve a rest.

———————

I may have fallen asleep, which is something I suspect, because I’m woken up quite rudely by Chargie whacking me over the nose with the blunt end of his spear. That was heckin’ painful. He wins this time… But no apology!

Evidently, I slept for a decent bit, judging by the daylight at least. Joras is here, and he’s still got those fancy markings. He’s an efficient fellow, I know this because he immediately drew his dagger as he approached and jabbed himself and me.

“Impressive restraint, Kira. I would have thought a Dragon would rip someone apart for doing something like that.” Much to my amusement, Chargie went pale at that. I suspect he forgot to consider what kind of creature he had struck.

I’m not gonna hold him accountable though, gotta be able to get if you wanna give like that. Bringing my attention back to Joras again, I ask how he’s doing and if he’s learned more about those markings.

“I’m quite fine, thank you. And regarding the markings, they appear to overlap exactly with my magic conduits, and they have been thoroughly purified. Most creatures capable of magic will clutter up their magic conduits by interacting with nature. And to remove that residue, continuous use of magic is required. Keep the magic flowing to keep the river fresh, so to speak. But I haven’t had many opportunities for using my particular… flavor of magic, resulting in an unfortunate buildup. And then I was essentially overloaded by untamed and chaotic magic. This magic burned away all the residue. As a result, I’ve gained a decent amount of extra power, but I’d request that you not repeat that event, at least for me.”

Ah, well, that’s a bunch of stuff I don’t know about. Given that he seems quite fine, I suggest we head to his place, since standing around here outside town is all well and good, but I wanna see more stuff. He’s pretty quick to agree, so off we go! I even fit through the gate!

With everything that has happened this last almost week, I really appreciate that Joras hasn’t been pressuring me for anything. He seems like a genuinely decent, albeit naturally suspicious-looking guy.

My gut feeling keeps telling me that I can’t trust him entirely, but what do I know? My gut feeling hasn’t exactly been reliable so far.

Disregarding that stuff, I ask if we can go visit Raya first, he eyes me for a moment, and I’m pretty sure I sense a bit of frustration and resignation. Haha, submit to my demands, mortal.

“We can visit her if you stop being smug about it, Kira.” I really need to find out how he does that, it’s getting eerie.

It takes barely any time at all to get to her place, granted it helps that folks are fairly quick to move aside as I approach.

I like that they’re giving me room, since some of these streets are quite narrow, but I feel like it’s because they’re afraid and not because they're being considerate.

Standing outside Raya’s place, I employ my newly acquired knocking-without-breaking skills, and it works quite well, I dare say. I only left some dents in the wall.

Good job, me. I can tell that Joras is impressed by how gentle I can be. “I’m surprised you didn’t break anything.” What?! Of course I didn’t.

There’s a large amount of things I haven’t broken! Gonna have to wipe that smug look off his face at some point.

Doesn’t take long for Raya to get to the door, but for some reason, she isn’t opening it. “Who is it?” Compelled to answer, I answer with my various growls, which Joras apparently found funny.

Why is that funny, Joras? Oh, right, she isn’t affected by his comprehension spell… “I don’t know anyone named Rawrawr.”

Oh, I see what they’re doing, those rascals! For a moment, I consider just opening the door and pulling her out, but I’m not confident that I can do so without breaking stuff, so I need a different plan…

I don’t get time to devise a clever scheme because Raya just opens the door and asks Joras whether I looked funny or not, which apparently I did.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone think that hard about opening a door.” Obviously, retaliation is in order, and Raya shall be the first to receive my judgment!

A thorough mlem across her face, and she is drenched. Excellent.

“Why am I getting punished? I didn’t do anything!” Ah, but you did, Raya, you pranked while delicious, a crime punishable by licks. For some reason, Joras is looking like he’s focusing on Raya’s face, but apparently not enough to say anything about it.

“How about we head to my lab and get down to business?” Right, the thing I might or might not have agreed to. The blood thing.

Turns out Joras and Raya live quite far apart, with Raya living in what appeared to be a more destitute area, while Joras is clearly well-off. At least he isn’t a snob about it.

A while later we arrive at his shop, or house, or houseshop, definitely one of them. And there’s no way I’m getting in there, the door was not made for someone like me. I’m gonna have to talk to Turo about making the town dragon-accessible. Guess I’m waiting outside.

Raya and Joras both go inside and all I hear is some rummaging and walking on stairs. It hasn’t been long, but waiting out here has quickly gotten boring.

Ooh, I hear someone small walking down stairs, I bet it’s Raya, so now is the time to give her a startle! Moving my head to the door, I open my mouth as much as I can and wait for Raya to open the door.

As the door opens, I hear a very loud scream, I got her good! Haha… Oh, that is not Raya. I may have made a mistake.

At least it doesn’t take Raya long to appear now with Joras following after her. Clearly I’m gonna deny any involvement.

The two of them give the fallen woman a quick check, as far as I can tell, she’s at least fine, but I may have to apologize.