The nation of Shael is the furthest from the Darklands, as such those that live there have little care for the demonic taint that their neighbors worry over. Instead they act as a neutral ground to the other nations. While they have not prevented the smaller skirmishes between the nations, there has not been a full war since soon after the Darklands were abandoned to the demons.
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Two days have passed since I ate the drakes and the last day that I can spend in the mountains if I am going to make it back to the village by dawn. I have had less success than I had hoped but it seems to be that some of the places that Analais marked for me are old and they are rather spread out. Flight is at least faster than the walking and climbing that I had to do before.
I circle in the sky for a moment enjoying the morning sun while looking at my next potential target. Analais’s map marked this cliff as one to avoid. That there was a true dragon here, he even wrote what kind. One that I feel is a weak dragon, a white dragon. I don’t know how old it is but white dragons are the weakest of the chromatics.
Soon enough I find the cave I am looking for on the side of the cliff, one that I would not have been able to get to without flight. I land in the opening and slip on the ice. I let out an involuntary groan from pain as my tail feels like it was a knocked funny bone.
After a moment I stand pack up and shiver. I feels colder, a good sign for what I want. I slowly descend into the icy cave. Second turn to minutes and I think more than an hour has passed by the time that I find myself in a large opening standing before a dragon with dull grey scales. One that happens to be sleeping, the dragon is larger than anything I have ever seen. Something isn’t right with Analais's info but I don’t want to cut my losses, not yet.
I move closer slowly until a deep voice rumbles through the frozen cavern, “not even dead yet and I already have poachers moving in on my territory.”
“So much for hoping that you would be asleep” I mutter before saying more loudly, “you seem awfully fatalistic.”
“I’m already dying of old age. Do you even knowhow old that is wyrmling?”
“More than a millennium.”
“You’re a smart little wyrmling. Tell me what was your plan in coming to my lair.”
“Grow stronger by eating you” I say as she seems like she already knows the answer. The dragon just seems feminine to me.
“Well, you didn’t lie even though it was a stupid thing to admit.”
“I thought you already knew and you hadn’t attacked me over it yet.”
“Fair enough but give me a good reason why I shouldn’t.”
“You’re dying anyways, grey isn’t your color, is it?”
“No, I’m silver. And me dying is no reason to give you what you want.”
“You haven’t attacked or thrown me out so what do you want?”
The giant dragon smiles, “first a question. Do you know what you are?”
“Not sure, but I’m me. What does that even matter?”
“Because it is the reason why I haven’t turned you into an ice statue. You have the mutation that forces you to eat your own kind but haven’t gone mad from the hunger or died from starvation or trying to eat something too strong.
Normally, that would be more reason to kill you but, you have another aura on you. Remember the name Thes’racnellum.”
As soon as she finishes her sentence she rips through part of her front claw and showers me in her own blood. I begin to greedily drink before everything goes blurry. The last thing I see is the dragon in front of me grinning as a dark mist flies into me from her body.
At first it felt good, at least until it started to hurt. My muscles begin to lock up before I feel myself falling and my vision going dim.
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My sight slowly returns but I find myself somewhere else. I’m sitting in a room that looks as though it could be a grand hall in a castle all ready for a feast save for one missing detail, none of the platters have food on them.
“Running around for only a few moons and you’re already gotten us into something you can't handle on your own” a female voice says and I look over to the speaker.
She's the girl that brought me to the mirror that showed me how to meditate.
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“What do you mean and who are you?”
“I’m you-but-not-you.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s like the dragon you already met after gorging on those drakes.”
So that strange dream was 'real'. Something does seem familiar about this girl though.
“Then do you know what's going on?”
“With the dragon, this place, in general? You’re going to have to be more specific.”
I frown before I speak, “yes, and I expect to be told why I’m not with my harem.”
The girl laughs before she responds, “the dragon is trying to steal your body but that isn’t going to succeed. What's left of your inner dragon is fighting with her right now and that’ll hold her long enough for us to talk. This place is your mind though it isn’t finished being fixed yet.
In general, well obviously you’ve been thrown backwards in time and are suffering memory loss and a regression in power from it. You have been capitalizing on it very well though.
Of course there is still a lot of work to do to get you back where you were before. I’m still working on your left over memories and will get them back for you in time. . .”
I look at her impatiently but she just continues onwards.
“. . . This isn’t something you chose to have happen and you're not ready to know how or why it did, at least not yet.
As for your harem, well they are all alive in this timeline.”
“Where?”
“I set everything in motion to get them all back before you woke up in the woods.”
“Thank you.”
“No need to, I am you after all. Now there isn’t much time left if you want to make sure to get your K back and you still need to deal with an intruder.”
As she says K like a name a sense of warmth fill my heart and I can almost see the silver-haired lycanthrope from my dreams. That’s what I called her in my head. I don’t remember why I thought of her that way, only that I did.
I nod at . . . me-but-not-me, that just feels right. I want my K back and to do that I need to destroy that bitch who wants to steal my body and get back to the village. Then beat down anyone that challenges me at the Paring Howl. I may need a way to get her to accept me too. . . She’s friendly but not the same friendly as the dream memories.
These thoughts go to the back of my mind as what I see shifts and I am standing in some sort of coliseum. A slightly smaller black dragon like the one I dreamt of recently if fighting a much larger white dragon and is losing badly. Its presence feels thin. The giant white dragon feel solid and seems to become more so by the second.
The black dragon retreats from its losing brawl the moment it noticed my arrival. The white dragon seems confused but smirks as if my arrival does not matter. Surprised but not worried.
The black dragon slams into me but I don’t feel any pain, instead it’s form breaks and the leftover mist flows into me. Something seems familiar about this location though, as if I had fought here before. I look at the white dragon and as I begin to let out a breath of freezing cold air I think in reflex no.
The icy wind vanishes half way between us and I smile. This too is in my mind. It doesn’t matter how intimidating that dragon looks, I am in charge. I am stronger and this intruder is in my way.
I teleport while taking a step forward, instantly I am exactly where I wish to be and a blade of fire is in my hand. I stab it into the hind leg of the white dragon and can feel a bit of its presence vanish.
I smirk as I feel ever so slightly stronger and that moment of hubris gets me smashed by the leg I just stabbed. I vanish and reappear in the stands as my body rapidly snaps back into its proper shape but I feel much weaker than when I arrived.
I swear under my breath before vanishing with a step to dodge many tons of angry dragon only to appear on it’s back to form and create another blade of blame to stab it with. This time as soon as the blade slows, I retreat. Hit and run, I can’t hold up to melee.
That pattern of teleport, hit and flee repeats and the only variation to it is to either reject the changes the dragon tries to make on our surroundings or to add some form of projectile bombardment, mostly Magic Missiles. Ever so slowly, the white dragon begins to shrink in size and presence while her rage grows and grows.
I don’t know why but it feels so easy to simply will things into existence. Like I had practice doing so in a more difficult environment but can’t remember it. My for seems to be getting faster and starts to predict me after a time but she has shrunk to only half again the size of a large horse by that time though.
I appear to make an attack only to meet a claw to my chest instead. I fly backwards and smash into the stone wall but it does not hurt nearly as much as the first hit I took. Less of me had to be pulled back together but that my attack pattern no longer works is a problem.
I need something else, but it was unrealistic that I could continue to do the same thing without my opponent eventually figuring it out. I teleport away from a charge and release a barrage of Magic Missiles, only for most of the missiles to be intercepted by a barrage from the dragon at point blank range. Not leaving enough time for me to deny them existence within my mind.
Ranged kiting won’t work either. Maybe a large explosion, more than it can negate. . .
I will a massive explosion into being but the results are lackluster. The dragon did take damage but not enough to be worth the will power it took out of me. She is resisting my power over this place somehow.
I growl in irritation, it seems like I will have to resort to a melee brawl which my opponent is better suited to if only because a dragon's body is full of natural weapons unlike the 'human' shape I think of myself as.
But I’m not human, I’m some sort of fucked up cannibalistic dragon. I can shapeshift in real life so why not here too. . .
I smirk before my bones begin to pop and the clothes I had envisioned myself wearing tear as my point of view shifts upwards while everything begins to seem smaller. I keep thinking bigger until I am larger than what is left of my draconic opponent.
She growls and charges me but I teleport above her and dive. Crashing into her in a tackle while I rake my claws on her side as her wings snap under my new found weight. A maw full of teeth turn towards me and lunge for my neck but my own teeth sink into her neck first. I twist my head to prevent the snapping jaw from hitting me and while I do so its claws hurt my hind legs, she is weakening faster than I am.
I begin to suck on the blood filling my mouth, I know it is not real but I still enjoy the taste. Oh, so rich and delicious. I want to prolong the fight just to taste more but I need to get back to the village before dawn so I can work on getting my harem back.
I clench my jaws tighter and as the presence of my foe gets weaker my teeth dig deeper and deeper. Should I get more than just my K under the next full moon? No, I don’t know any of them and K is better. Get my girls back then think about if I want more. I still don’t know the names of the other three though.
The white dragon slowly ceases to exist and my surroundings fade soon after.