Chapter 11: 'Blessing'

Sometimes later at the border of the nameless Boaboas' village. The sun was already set, and days were short in this part of the world.

Maxim could be seen slurping the last bit of bone marrow of a snapped femur finishing it like a milkshake; he then spat the bone, deep bite mark and crack on it. 

'Damn that was good. Every part is the best part!', thought the fish. Burping loudly, he licked the remnant of the blood of his chop.

Feeling something nearby he pointed his snout at the sky and sniffed the air in attention. His ears and eyes instantly locked onto a mound of snow not even 20 meters north of his location, two fluffy ears popping out of it. 

His slitted pupil was slightly dilated and he glared annoyed with a hint of anger at the infant Boaboa underneath it, the little shit was too curious for its own good. 

It felt a suffocating pressure gripping its body as the beast's intense gaze bore into its very soul. It squeaked and excreted on itself before fainting right after.

Snorting in contempt and no small amount of disgust he sealed his nostril as he slowly hoisted himself up the compacted snow. Balancing himself on his tail, pelvic flippers, and pectoral flippers.

Similar trails of snow were left everywhere he crawled, they mostly were around the barioth's carcass. Crawling like this wasn't particularly uncomfortable, just extremely annoying. His movements were slow, sluggish, and clumsy and he didn't like it.

His body felt very heavy and vulnerable, restricted. He wasn't a fan of staying on land. Being on it caused him to be jumpy, more aggressive, and easily irritable. More than he already was. If the Boaboas weren't interesting to him and were this small, the equivalent of a normal-sized rat to humans, he might have straight-up killed them all driven by his instincts.

How was he fine as a human to live all of his past life this way? Maxim didn't exactly remember how being physically a human being felt, it was a blurry mess, and when he tried to remember it got blended with his current and superior body. 

The snow against the bare and softer scales of his belly didn't bother him, even if he knew it was extremely cold but it came without the usual mix of discomfort and pain, this temperature was just right.

And he knew. He knew from experience that diving headfirst while nude in it is unpleasant, to say the least. Not having a weak bipedal mammal body was the best. He would not say no to hands or something along those lines but he understood that he couldn't have everything and he was content with his body.

Back flippers unfold in all of their glory, deep blue membranous skin stretching. He made a few tentative flaps, increasing the force behind each one and with a low grunt of effort he took off.

'Harder to take off than I would have thought and liked... Tho... The physics of this world is pretty fucked up. I mean I'm not particularly light, quite the contrary in fact. I don't complain, flying by yourself is the dream of all the plebians that cannot. But fuck the laws of physic, I guess. Different world, different life, different species, different rules.', he thought internally, flying over the village.

The villagers inside gasped and stopped doing whatever tasks at hand to immediately bow as his shadow under the moonlight passed above the small village.

Maxim went ever so higher until he flew straight through a particularly dark cloud. Hail loudly pelted and bounced off his scale, he always loved the sound of hail and rain. It was relaxing. Wind pleasantly whistling past his ears. 

His eyes drifted up to the full moon, the silvery moonlight bathing his body, it was breathtakingly beautiful. It would have taken it if he actually needed lungs to breathe.

A reminder that he was in another world, this moon was bigger, or closer to the planet, or both but it certainly was brighter than the one he observed when he was a human. 

The night sky was also void of any grey smog, clouds of pollution, random planes, and satellites that he was used to in his old world. The stars, planets, constellations, and galaxies of this unknown universe were beautiful and perfectly observable to his naked eyes. Aurora borealis were not rare either during his short time as a flyer he saw four, each more spectacular than the last.

With his eyesight he could easily tell that at least 4 planets were orbiting around the sun, them being shinier dots in the sky. He also name the constellations one looked like a penguin to him

Speaking of penguins, they have an equivalent in this world and they are one of his favorite midnight snacks.

They were amusing to eat too, pressing them against his palate with his tongue in a specific way causing the flightless bird's inside to be expelled from their back or front as if the bird was a toothpaste tube he squeezed too hard. 

The organs thereby fell into his awaiting maws for him to spit out the pesky warping, it being the feathers and skin. He thanked orcas for this ingenious technique; feathers weren't tasty after all and they could get stuck in his gills with the spines on them.

It was amusing to feel them uselessly squirm in mortification and panic before their inevitable demise. Was he sadistic and cruel? Maybe yes, did that stop him? No. It was his right to do as he please when he was the strongest.

On the bloody snow were the remains of the barioth that he left behind, the furs and muscle meat still mostly lay untouched, head split in half, brain eaten. The remains were left for whoever wanted them.

An hour and a half later he was back into the sea. His mind instantly got clearer, he could breathe outside but it was less effective than having water directly flowing through his gills. It was similar to having a mask on your face, an annoyance but a price he was willing to pay for flights.

He certainly could stay outside of water for an extended period but only if his gills were hydrated. Because if they were to dry out he would slowly suffocate to death while squirming on the soil if no water source was nearby, a desert or the underground of a volcanic area for examples, and thus die like the fish he was… But he can hydrate them himself with the water in his body so it will need to be really intense for him to be in that position.

An inhuman grin formed on his snout. His bio-energy flared through the dense muscles of his flippers, dorsal fin, and tail.

Currents formed and water shifted around his scales nullifying most of the drag. Most of this 'magic' came instinctively to him and was hardwired into his very being; he could control water surrounding him to a certain degree such as making waves, making vortexes, drastically increasing his speed, making a water spout, and controlling/creating current. And he knew he could do much more.

Elder Dragons while extremely powerful and in most cases as, if not smarter than humans, were for the most part beings that didn't train or didn't try to understand their natural gift more than the strict minimum and relied on their instincts, only tapping a small part of their full potential.

And, understandably so, they are nigh unkillable by other non-Elder in the first place, only Hunters can do this and it's not with a small squad of four unless the Elder Dragon is already greatly weakened, too young or too old, or others. Pure skills will always be at a disadvantage in front of overwhelming powers. 

With a powerful flick of his tail and his speed exponentially increasing, trails of bubbles and small shockwaves were left in his path. 

Scaring, stunning, and even sometimes straight-up killing the sea life behind him.

'I'm speed!', he thought childishly, slitted pupils becoming thinner and thinner with the pure and simple pleasure of moving at such speed. It never got old.

He was marginally faster in the sea than in the air, at max speed for both he was ten times faster, it wouldn't be far-fetched to say that he was the fastest creature to have ever lived in the seas and oceans. He flourished in water and combat.

Zapping through a small school of glass parexus, a species of fish found all over the Hoartfrost Reach, their names stem from the transparent scales and skin on their body showing their skeleton and internal organs. His maw wide open is full of razor-sharp teeth he swallowed dozens of them.

Slowing down as he arrived in his territory the ice progressively morphed from its usual soft blue and white to brilliant glowing emerald green.

The start of a reef growing could be seen surrounding the entrance of his den. Hard coral in the form of ghostly blue plate corals growing in clusters and on top of one another, the bigger ones were large enough for Maxim bulk to comfortably rest on, soft coral of all shapes and colors, and form swung in tandem with the soft but constant current, a sort of royal purple bioluminescent gorgonians were the most noticeable. 

'Beautiful as always. Taking care of it was a pain in the tail but the sigh is totally worth it.', he thought bubble of contentment escaping his nostrils. 

Swarms of shrimps, dozens of different species of fish, crown-of-thorn starfish look alike, clusters of crabs with asymmetric claws one looking like a high shield and the other like a sharp lance, marine worm with multicolor and iridescent feathery branchia used to filter the sea that disappeared with lightning speed into their protective tubes made of calcium as Maxim swim by.

It was only a sample of the biodiversity present here. There were no big predators that dared to enter this place with the knowledge that a bigger more aggressive, and ravenous dwelled here. And if they didn't and ignored the smell and mark they would end up as snacks at best.

Entering the large opening of his den. It led to a complex system of caves connected to the other major cave he dug.

Everything was done meticulously, instincts telling him what should be dug, how it should be dug, and his own 20 years of expertise in this. He knew every nook and cranny of this place by heart.

Moving to the chamber where he slept, crystals and ores of many kinds lay there. For two reasons. One, they are shiny and he liked shiny things.

Second, they served as whetstones for his scales and tusks but mostly his tusks, and he didn't do it with any of them, no, he was picky and only used the one rich in Dragon element. Such as the Dragonite Ore, forest green in color, the one he possessed extremely pure and he has tons and tons of it. 

He excavated them from a vein he found in a particularly big leyline of the Everstream; located below this den and the main reason he dug it here in the first place.

One month later.

Ahnah the chieftainess hummed a song passed from generation to generation, words she didn't know the meaning of escaping her lips.

In front of her was the newest generation, barely one winter solstice old; they were inexperienced, rash, and weak. Most will not live very long, to her sadness but it was life. 

With practiced ease she cut a piece of cured meat with a knife that has a jagged fang for a blade, she carefully placed the stripe on a stick covered in such stripes to place it into their primitive version of a smoker, three sticks placed in a triangular formation with a basket, stone at the base the whole standing together with ropes.

It was to conserve it for times of need.

Though it was pieces that the great beast didn't touch as such it didn't have any of its salivae on it. They realized that after ten males and seven females ate the meat from those specific areas and all but one died with the bacteria contained within, not that any of the Boaboas knew what even that was.

The consumption caused them to have an intense fever, lethargy, seizure, loss of fur, internal bleeding, fever, hyper aggressivity, hypersalivation, loss of higher cognitive capacity, weakness, nausea, abdominal pain, necrosis of skin, and abrupt chaotic growth of the bones, sinew, nerves, and muscles fibers… that act drained the organisms of nearly all its nutrients and such took a toll on the body causing of most of those symptoms.

The bacteria were trying to adapt the host to its biological needs which meant a rapid and uncontrollable change host body concluding in almost every case in the death of said host after days of agony and falling into madness and despair, of course. 

Luckily it wasn't airborne and didn't spread as they were put in isolation, even if five were killed before they had the chance to attack anyone.

The exception, one that survived was currently in a deep slumber and has a very low to no chance of ever waking up.

Oh, but the chieftainess didn't see this as remotely bad; on the contrary, for her, it was a blessing from the Elder Dragon, they just were too weak and unworthy to handle its power, and thus by the laws of Nature they suffered the consequences. Death.

They were numerous; a litter from a healthy and young female could contain on average seven or so infants and they breed like rabbits. Death was part of their daily life and an integral part of their belief of how the world should work. They weren't the pacifist bunch, either.

"Matriarch! Big Aput awake!", the old Boaboa stopped what she was doing, staring with her one good eye at the young adult male that entered the tent through the flap of hiding, he tried to look away under her criticizing gaze. Her eyes widened as it finally clicked, this 'Aput' was the sole survivor and in a coma for the last two weeks.

"Well, children. I'm sorry to inform you that I must go attend my grandson's awakenings.", taking her wand in clawed hand she walked out, and the small furballs that were the infants parted ways like the red sea in front of Moise.

Patting the head of one of the small ones, a female she made high pitched giggle. The elder smiled under her mask at that. 

Scrolling through the settlement with rapid steps until she arrived at a tent. Studying the figure lying on a piece of fur, members bound by corsage made of processed sinew stripes entwined together.

"Ho Ho Ho that's fabulous… The Blessing of Nakon.", she giggled and said in a croak and hoarse voice with a manic tone that sent shivers down the spines of the two guards posted outside, the sound of her wand tapping the floor as she walked closer. 

Inching closer she backed up when Aput snapped at her, his round pupils now slightly almond-shaped while the rest of his eyes were bloodshot. They were filled with primal rage and hunger but she could see her grandson hidden behind those orbs.

His mask was taken off, normally seen as the highest insult, a show of weakness and submission, or that you weren't worthy of having one because of being too young and not having a successful hunt. Only infants, mates, and very close ones could see ones without masks.

He was one of their strongest hunters if not the strongest, his loss would have hurt the morale of the tribe and she wanted none of that. His blood tie with her was not important here as more than half of the tribe was her descendants.

Aput was nearly unrecognizable from before. Now two head taller, if before he was bordering the meter without a mask (3ft3) he now comfortably pass the meter, standing at roughly 1.35 meters (4ft5). If he was a giant in comparison before now he is a titan. 

He gained muscle mass, his fur, however, was mostly gone and will take time to grow back, the only patch of fur was newly grown and was located on his crotch area and forearms. The fur was not pure white like usual but with a tinge of black.

"Ggggrrrrrr!", he growled and trashed around, hitting the air. Using all of their strength to escape his bond, his mind filled with nothing but an insatiable want to kill anything and everything in sight.

The guards were tensing up ready to pounce at any moment, a gesture of her clawed hand and a tap of her cane calmed them down.

*snap*

One of the ropes snapped. The raging mass of muscle immediately attacked the old female with his left claw.

Ahnah calmly gazed at the unfolding event, slightly surprised, stepping to the side she dodged the vicious claw aimed at her chest with an air breath.

Twisting the wand in her hand she trusted the pommel with force, precision, and speed that betrayed her advanced age this hit was aimed right at the throat of the burly male. 

She would have aimed at the universal weaknesses of males with bits unprotected by the body if she did want him sterile, which she did not. Maybe his offspring with one of the young and strong females will be apt to survive the blessing too. She had a few screw losses.

Aput's body froze in shock, gasping and coughing for air on instincts he reeled back, taking immediate advantage of this the elder throw a small fistful of powder from a skin pouch at her hip and blew it at his face.

It was a potent sleeping powder made of ground sleeptoad's skin, Icebloom pollen, and other herbs.

"Go to sleep."

She berated in an almost grandmotherly tone, the big male body went instantly limp with the sleeping powers in his system and snored loudly soon after.

A small smile radiating smugness made its way onto her aged face. Old she may be but that doesn't mean she was defenseless. Turning around she made her way out.

'My back… It's stuck.'

She was still an old hag.