9 Dragon

Travel log: day one

I was as gobsmacked as you could possibly be when king bob came up to me on one fine Sunday evening and asked me if I wanted to immigrate to a new land.

My knee-jerk response to his request was to refuse. After all, I had built a life for myself here.

Why would I give that up?

But then Bob told me something that made his offer too tantalizing to resist.

In this land. I would be the only dragon.

Me and my children could rule the world. Our power would only be comparable to the most powerful of wizards.

The life I could build there would be a thousand times better than the one I had now.

And so I gathered my eggs and strengthened my will.

And walked through the portal.

The second I walked through to the other side a smell hit me. It was different from the usual scent of mana. It was something foul. But not evil?

At that moment I came to a horrible realization.

I might have been scammed.

End of log

John looked at the sun peeking over the horizon. His face was caked in sweat and he was wheezing intensely.

{+1 agility 1+ cardio vascular}

The city was ten kilometres across. And he had speed-shuffled across it twice.

Meaning he had 'run' a half marathon. Although whether or not it counts as running was up for debate.

Needless to say. John was starving.

"I need to eat."

John walked down the street his eyes darted to the charred alien corpses. He was searching for the ones with the least ashen skin.

They would give John the most gourmet dining experience.

He spent the rest of the day searching

{200,000 calories consumed}

In that time he found two well-cooked aliens that had been protected from the explosions either by buildings or by standing just barely at their periphery. This gave them a slightly crisped consistency.

John consumed them with a bevy of moans and groans.

As any reasonable person would.

{+1 strength, +1 toughness}

…..

John was walking through the city. His eyes darted in every direction. He searched with an Eagle's focus for the next alien to eat.

John paused. His fat swayed as he halted his motion.

In the air in front of him, there was a crack. John looked at this crack with furrowed brows.

The crack squirmed and widened.

Soon, it had been upgraded from a crack to a hole.

John's jaw unhinged and drool began to drip from his mouth.

~this is really trippy.~

Soon, the hole became wide enough to fit a semi truck through it.

Crawling from the home was a massive reptilian creature. It had deep red scales that shined off the sun like solid steel. Its eyes were dark red orbs and growing from the reptile's head was a mane of fire.

It had large wings coming from its back but four legs down below, rather than the bird's legs most flying creatures would possess.

John looked at the dragon with an even more intense confusion.

"Is that? Is that? Is that a dragon?!??!"

John did not take the time to answer that question. He spun around and started to speed shuffle away.

The dragon did nothing as John shuffled away. It simply watched.

….

Travel log: Day one

The second I walked through the portal I encountered a strange entity. It almost looked like the troll folk. Except it was larger and emanated that same mana-adjacent energy. I saw in the world.

I couldn't help but think that there was something wrong with it.

Luckily, I didn't have to engage with it for long. It stared at me for a moment, then turned around and lumbered away.

This world is getting stranger and stranger.

End of log

...

John spent the rest of the day searching for the final alien. After finding the alien he ate it with great joy.

And so night came.

John laid himself on a pile of rubble and closed his eyes.

There was no life in this city. Other than John. Not a single organism of large enough size to make sound existed. And John wasn't enough.

The trumpets began to play. The envelope began to unfold. Blood seeped into John's hands and discordant whispers played through his mind. They mixed with the trumpets, creating a screeching cacophony of sound. It was like a cheese grater was being rubbed upon John's soul.

"No!"

John shot to his feet.

The silence was too much. As thing we're now he would never sleep.

A dejected sigh fell from John's mouth.

"Maybe if there were some crickets or

Something making noise I could manage to sleep."

~Crickets…..~

To John's memory, the dragon's mane made a semi-loud sizzling sound.

"The dragon. It's like a cricket. It's like a reality tv show."

All three could give John the noise he needed.

John started to shuffle through the city. He had but one goal in mind.

Find the dragon.

...

John searched until the moon had reached a midpoint in the sky.

Finally, after all that time he found the dragon. It was asleep curled up into a ball and leaning against a pile of rubble. The flames of its mane had taken on a dark purple colour as they sizzled against its flesh.

John quietly tip-toed to a pile of rubble near the dragon. He laid on the rubble and closed his eyes.

With the crackling of flames near him he slowly drifted off to sleep. A serene smile was on his face.