64.5 KG
Biomass required for evolution: 40 KG.
Evolve: Y/N?
I clicked yes. I had plans for the rest of the day; Kat had assured me the thieving Dwelvers would be busy moving down through Mount Bob, so I was going to go exploring.
Rolling for evolution choices…
Please select from the following six options:
- Increase Mass
- Draconic Charm
- Claw Sheathes
- Calibrated Reflexes
- Terrific Countenance
- Venom Glands
It was nice to see some of the old options coming up again. Kat had mentioned that I could get the same choice multiple times, but seeing 'Increase Mass' back in the rotation made me smile slightly.
I picked number one and yelped as I felt my bones growing, new scales appearing to cover the sudden gaps where the soft black flesh, usually hidden beneath my armour, peeked through for a few moments. When the creaking, stretching, and low-grade agony finally faded, I took stock.
“Five inches?” I snarled. “All that for five fucking inches! Where's that small-dick-energy ring?” I stomped over to my litter tray and snatched it up while Kat smirked at me. I slipped it onto my finger. This time, my bellow of agony echoed out of the lair and spread across my mountain.
I screamed, thrashed, and convulsed. Spasms ran through my limbs, and my tail stood vertically. Even though I twitched and snarled in pain, I worried if Kat had been lying about the rings' use, and I would be stuck with a permanently erect tail. The tiny former cultivator had a dark sense of humour.
I felt something brushing against my back leg and kicked back out of pure reflex. A rattle and clanking noise rang out, and a new pain hit me. This one wasn’t physical. It was spiritual. I’d kicked my hoard! I’d scattered my beautiful golden bed across the lair!
In comparison to the fiery agony of my body growing five times larger than it had been before, this knowledge made me want to cry. It stabilised me. I locked my muscles in place and clenched my fangs in determination. I didn’t move again as I grew. When it finally stopped, my tail fell behind to lie flat against the ground, and all four legs splayed out to drop me onto my belly. I drew a ragged breath.
My neck curled up, and I looked back at myself. My wings were splayed out as well. I raised them and was shocked at their new span. Thirty feet across? Golden spikes sprouted from them about halfway along. I flexed muscles I hadn’t possessed a few minutes ago, and the shining wing-claws flexed.
I climbed unsteadily to my feet. I guessed I was fifteen feet long, nose to tail. Perhaps a little bit more? Killjoy Gargant might have had issues, but he made good rings. I brought the ring up to my face, and a tongue that would have made a well-known rock singer jealous flicked out and tasted the metal band that had grown to accommodate my much broader claw.
It tasted…
“Precious,” I hissed.
“Alright, kiddo. Maybe go easy on the possessiveness. That way lies plucky hobbits coming to slay you. How do you feel?” Kat asked.
“I feel… good.” I stretched like a cat, a sine wave of relaxation running from my nose to the tip of my tail, which was now so far away from my head.
“You look ok. No mutations, at least.” I snapped round to focus my saucer-sized eyes on the suddenly even smaller-seeming woman.
“You didn’t mention mutations before I put the ring on. Why was that?” My voice had dropped a little, becoming deeper, less squeaky. I could growl really well, now.
“I figured you understood what part of the anatomy the power of the ring was focused on? It was in the flavour text. You didn’t… You know he didn’t wear it on his hand, right?”
My head spun to the side, and I spat a blob of saliva the size of a human head at the wall. My claws reached up and scraped at the traitorous tongue that had licked the thing, then stopped as I was just bringing the ring back towards my mouth.
“You’re telling me it went on his…”
“Yep!” she cackled, and I quietly resolved to take a terrible revenge on her at some point in the future.
“Why is it so rough on the inside, then?” I asked, twisting it on my claw.
“Dude was a freak. Look, it’s on now, and I’m fairly confident the system washed it before issuing it as loot. Don’t worry about it. How about you get out of my hair for a few hours? You won’t get murdered by terror-pigeons now, so you can fly about without fretting too much about the wildlife.”
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“That was a concern before? That bunny thing nearly kicked my guts out of my… cloaca?” I muttered as I slid over to the nearest gap in the lair walls.
“Well done. Yep, you now have a combined sewer and playground. Isn’t anatomy fun?” I’d been taking my transformation remarkably well so far, probably due to my lizard brain not really being able to worry about that kind of thing. Now it hit home in a way the part of me that was still human couldn’t ignore. I pushed my head out into the wind beyond the shield that guarded my lair, and thin lines of tears blew away into the air, snatched by the wind before the nictitating membranes slid home and cut them off. I wanted to find something to kill.
Not a healthy response, perhaps. The rage at losing my humanity and genitals, shook hands with the cold, reptilian parts of my mind to form an alliance—catharsis through murder. Before Kat could say another word, I leant forward and dropped into the sky, wings snapping open and catching the updrafts. I circled higher and higher, hopping from one current of warm air to another as I gained ever more altitude.
Solitude. Peace. I looked down on everything. My monocle stayed firmly in place, despite the roaring winds. I rose higher and higher, passing into the clouds that streamed from the top of Mount Bob like a lacy scarf.
This was now my land, and I knew nothing about it. I began to orbit the mountain, gradually circling out wider as my eyes drank in all the details below me. Purple sparks from my eyes trailed behind me as I glared down at a foreign world.
The hills, thick with forests that looked like matchsticks from up here, spread out around my home, gradually flattening out into the plains that stretched in every direction. With the flick of a wingtip, I turned to follow the azure stripe of the river. It stretched out like a ribbon across the plains. As I flew, I began to see hints of civilisation. An isolated farmhouse here or there, dirt tracks that seemed to flow together into ever larger pathways, then roads.
The first town was half an hour's flight due south of my home. The purple sparks that my tears had turned into as I flew away from the lair had dried up. I’d known my anatomy had changed; I wasn’t stupid. But hearing Kat laugh about it so casually had sparked a mammalian part of my mind that was shaken by regret.
Sure, I was a majestic dragon now, armoured, dangerous, and equipped with a luxury golden mattress. The way she’d laughed had stung something, and I’d needed to escape. The bloodlust had faded. I watched as tiny blobs went about the business of farming and trading, my enhanced vision picking out the tiny humans going about their days.
I continued south, following the main road. I ignored the branches that led off into the woods or the low hills that rose here and there. Villages and small, walled towns lined those roads. But I wanted to see the Rome of this world. All roads led there, after all, and I wasn’t disappointed when I finally caught sight of it.
I found a city, unlike the town and villages, it was surrounded by high walls, covered in iridescent metal at the base but made of undressed stones at the top. It stretched over a mile or so wide: a grey, smoke-shrouded expanse of what passed for civilisation. I flapped to gain altitude. I felt like I was being watched. The turrets on the watchtowers all seemed to pivot in my direction, so I banked hard to my left and began heading back north.
Another city, even larger, glinted far in the distance, but that was a long flight away and would likely take me days to reach. My river ran through the centre of this city, and in the distance, past its larger sister, it opened out into an estuary that blended into a sea that stretched as far as I could see. I wondered what the place was called. What kind of people lived there? How had magic and enchanted items changed this world? Had the occult arts made it more similar to my own than I would have thought? I didn’t want to approach too closely.
This was clearly a powerful city, and I was at best a juvenile dragon. The larger city in the distance would be even more formidably defended.
As I flew back towards Mount Bob, I lost altitude. I skimmed along a mere five hundred feet above the grass. Farmers looked up and screamed, running for cover as I passed overhead—the cold, reptilian part of me revelled in their fear. I flapped and gained altitude. Did I really want to be feared? Other than by the thieving Dwelvers, of course. Those bastards had better stay scared of me.
As I came to the end of the road, the point where it turned into a series of muddy tracks through the foliage, I circled down. I saw a wagon pulled by a pair of oxen stuck in the mud. I wasn’t sure what season it was, but from the taste of the air, I’d say it was spring, and heavy rains had turned the mud tracks into mud baths.
A man was slapping the oxen with a long stick as he tried to spur them on enough to drag the cart from one puddle to the next. I landed carefully a safe distance away, almost silently and well behind him, to watch for a few seconds.
“C’mon, y’all lazy lumps! We need to get to Fidler’s Mill today or I’m going to cook and eat you bastards!” The slender rod thwacked down on one of the ox’s rumps, and it lowed unhappily. “Contracts, girl! I’m sorry, Jen, but it’s all get out that we reach there today or Mordechai will have my balls, or at least an arm!”
“Why will he want your balls?” I asked. The man jumped and spun round before going pale and backing away. His clothes were clean enough, soiled by some time on the road perhaps, and he ran to his ox and cowered below the lip of his cart.
“Dragon! Fu– it’s a– DRAGON!” he screamed the last word.
“Dude! Chill out! I’m not going to eat you! If I wanted to, you’d already be dead, right? Think, man!” A wide eye, pupil shrunk to a tiny dot, peered over the lip of his cart. He ducked back down as soon as I moved my eyes to look at him,
“Go away, monster!” he called. “I’ll summon the Guild!”
“What Guild?” I snorted and looked around theatrically, before curling my body up and settling to the ground to try and make myself less threatening. It was probably a wasted effort, but I hoped he would appreciate the gesture. Worst-case scenario: I’d eat the oxen and fly away.
“Mighty warriors and mages, you filthy beast! They’ll hunt you down and turn your scales into armour, your horns into cups and your balls into–”
“I recently discovered I no longer have balls. Maybe you should leave that subject alone?” I snapped. It still hurt.
“Er– Your eyes into lamps!” he finished, perhaps a little half-heartedly.
“I don’t think they can get here quickly enough if I decide to go full draconic-monster, can they?” I asked, lowering my head to the grass. My tongue flicked out, and the taste of the ox hung in the air, making me hungry.
“Probably not,” he admitted reluctantly. “Why aren’t I dead already?”
“I’m not going to eat you. Where’s this Mill you want to get to? Maybe we can come to an arrangement?”
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