They were perhaps less wary of me than adult bears would have been. That raised another question. Where was their mother? If I remembered correctly, bears were much more protective of their offspring than dragons were.

  I spoke to them again and asked about their mother, which brought a round of lamentations from them. Clearly she was dead, though they had trouble explaining what had done it.

  It seemed as though there was some twisted monster, or monsters, in the forest which they didn't understand. That likely meant a magical beast—which would explain the aura I felt permeating the forest.

  Looking down at the injured bear cub, I knew there was no way I could help it. His body was covered in deep puncture wounds, most of which were inflamed and puffy. Rather than blood, the wounds leaked a clear thick fluid and reeked of rot. The bear cub would die soon. And short of powerful healing magic, there was little to be done about that.

  I didn't mourn it. Death was part of nature’s cycle of life, and this was just an animal. But my mind raced as I tried to determine what value I could wring from this situation. The bear cubs’ news about this forest, and perhaps a bit of information about this magical beast, might come in handy.

  Fighting whatever it was would be sure to net me some DKP and possibly materials which I could sell or trade for the tutoring in reading that I needed. The more I thought about it, the more I decided I needed to fight. For now, though, I'd maintain this form.

  I made my intentions clear to the bear cubs and asked that they guide me to where their brother had been killed. They insisted on staying next to their brother as he died, but once he was dead, they seemed to relish the idea of revenge.

  While I waited and they maintained their death vigil, I found a stout branch of an oak tree which had fallen. I couldn't use Fabricate on living matter, but it was easy enough to use it to shape the dead wood into a stout staff.

  I even managed to compress the wood a bit with the spell, making it stronger than it would otherwise have been. Since I still had more time to wait, I dug around with the staff, hoping to find some pieces of rock with some ore in them.

  It would, of course, have been fortuitous to make such a find. If I was that lucky, though, I would still have been safe back in my cave in the desert. With a sigh, I reluctantly used Fabricate a second time to shape a stone spear head for my staff.

  This was such a crude weapon that it made me wonder what the primates who became modern humans had felt like when they first learned to make such tools. Of course, my magic was cheating, but you can't expect a dragon to perform manual labor—not when magic will suffice.

  The spear wasn't amazing, but it should be enough to penetrate the hide of most natural beasts. If push came to shove, I'd simply transform back into my natural form.

  A few moments later, I realized that the dying bear cub had passed on. I felt a sense of relief, since I was impatient to be on the hunt, but kept it to myself. Oddly, I felt more compassion for the bears than I did for the humans I had killed hours before.

  Night was fully upon the forest now, and the noises had changed to reflect the number of nocturnal critters that were out and about. Owls hooted from treetops, crickets chirped from beneath the undergrowth, and something far off in the distance made an eerie howl that sent shivers down my spine.

  We moved slowly through the darkness, staying close together as the sounds of danger came closer. The bear cubs were obviously terrified, but held their ground bravely as we made our way closer to where they believed their mother's attacker was to be found.

  As we got closer, I heard a low buzzing sound—a sound which continued to grow stronger till it felt like the very air was humming around me. It wasn't so much that it was loud, as it was powerful. When we reached a clearing, I saw the desiccated corpse of a massive bear. This had to be the cubs' mother—and judging from her size, these two would become powerful beasts someday.

  What drew my attention, though, wasn't the dead bear, which appeared to have been completely drained of all fluid. No. It was the monsters I found perched atop her corpse.

  Now I understood some of the confusion the cubs had when they’d tried to describe the threat to me. It wasn't a single monster, but rather a swarm… of sorts.

  Each of the monsters had the body and long sinuous tail of a monkey with forelegs longer than their rear legs, but that was where the similarities to any primate ended. Their heads were purely insect-like, with a long spear of a proboscis—much like a mosquito.

  Beneath the spear appendage, which was as thick as my finger, sat an odd mouth formed of different ridges and razor like stylets. The mouths were clearly intended to latch onto and eviscerate anything unlucky enough to be caught in them.

  Their eyes were also insect-like—large and multifaceted. The wings which sprouted from their backs were membranous like a dragonfly’s and buzzed in an almost musical way as they fanned the air around them. I could feel a distortion in the air around their wings, a distortion which not only accounted for the hum in the air, but also indicated a magical aspect to their wings.

  I stepped closer, my spear held tightly in my grip, expecting one of the creatures to attack at any moment. Surprisingly, they didn't move. There were six of the creatures perched atop the carcass of the mother bear. But when I looked up, I realized there were dozens more perched in the trees.

  Suddenly, my thirst for battle didn’t seem quite so wise. I needed to remember that while I might become nearly impervious to harm someday, that day was not today. My instincts told me that a pre-emptive strike was the best option.

  I rushed forward, allowing my far greater than normal strength to push this small body’s legs with great force as I drove my spear into the closest of the twisted monsters. The creature had no time to react and went limp as the spearhead pierced its furry torso.

  Beneath the hairy exterior I felt some resistance, like from a chitinous inner structure—not that it could withstand my strength. Even with just its sharpened stone tip, my spear drove deep into the creature's body. A veritable flood of blood and that same thick, clear fluid came gushing out.

  Instantly, the other five creatures became more interested in their fallen comrade than me. They dove for it, each trying to drive their spear-like noses into either it or the puddle of fluid forming around it. Actually, I knew they weren't noses, but they looked a bit like noses. And these creatures were so twisted, I felt I could describe them however I wanted.

  I wrenched my spear back and then began to swing it around like a staff, aiming not to kill the beasts but to shatter their seemingly fragile wings. A burst of magical energy erupted each time one of the wings crumpled and my staff took quite a beating. Multiple times I expected it to break, but apparently Fabricate did good work.

  Without their wings, they careened into the ground. Surprisingly, the bear cubs who had cowered behind me up to this point, didn’t hesitate to rush in and pounce on the fallen creatures, batting at their heads and crushing them within their still growing jaws.

  Soon, all six of the beasts were down and the swarm in the trees had started buzzing. It was so loud that nothing else could be heard. There had to be several dozen of the creatures, though it was equally clear that most of them didn't want to attack prey that fought back so effectively.

  If only they had known what I could have done with my breath weapon—if it were available. A few of the other creatures began screeching and darting around, now circling around my head like a swarm of giant, agitated bees. Their attacks lacked any coordination and thus their strikes couldn't even come close to breaching the defense of my whirling staff.

  With a series of powerful swipes from my spear, I managed to disperse them, pushing them back into the dark sky as the last of them elected to move on to easier prey. After what felt like an age, an eerie silence descended upon the clearing as the faint buzzing of their wings retreated further into the shadows.

  Chapter 9 - Followed

  You have defeated six mutated horror spawns and driven off forty-two others.

  Threat level: Minimal, but numerically significant.

  DKP awarded: 2

  I processed the notification and thought about how I earned DKP. I knew there was a method to it. From the dragon dream, I realized it had something to do with the level of danger I experienced and overcame, but also with the magical essence of the creatures I slew.

  Sadly, this battle wasn't over. But I couldn’t afford to stand around lost in thought. Deeper in the forest, I felt a concentrated presence from something darker and older than those mutated monsters. The trees shook as it moved forward.

  My mind reeled. How could something this powerful live so near a human town like Cloverdale and not be known?

  This clearly had to be a new arrival, but there was a mystery here that needed solving. I determined that I would be the one who solved it—not because I cared about what happened to the humans of Cloverdale, far from it. Other than Cami, they could all rot.

  Solving puzzles was almost an addiction for dragons. Any being who lives for centuries and more soon realizes that the greatest enemy they face… is boredom. When days roll into months, and months into years and then decades with no real threats and nothing but monotony, a dragon only has two defenses: hibernation and curiosity.

  For me, the latter was rising strongly inside me.

  I felt a pulse of consciousness roll out from the forest. Whatever was giving off this strange aura was trying to communicate with me in some way. I'd been reckless with the small monsters, but decided to investigate before letting it know where I was.

  I ran back out of the clearing and into the woods again, all while casting Project Image. An illusion of me, as I now was in my human form, sprang into existence within the clearing. The bear cubs had immediately followed after me, so when the monstrosity broke through the trees into the clearing, the only thing it found was the illusion.

  This particular draconic trait created particularly powerful illusions—but more importantly, it created illusions which had a tangible element. At my current level of mastery, that tangibility was only five percent, but as my own power increased, that too would rise. Essentially, that meant the image had five percent of my HP and could hit five percent as hard as I could hit.

  This tangibility, for lack of a better word, made Project Image almost impossible to penetrate even with high tiered magics. And even if a mage did see through it, they might walk past it only to find that the image still had a bite.

  Now, though, my eyes were fixated on the creature which loomed over my illusion. It roared and squeaked and seemed to be trying to communicate. The projected image moved, mirroring any action that I took—so long as I maintained a mental connection to it.

  I waved my hands and distracted the creature while getting a better look at the horror. It appeared to be humanoid in form, but its features were blurred, its skin nearly translucent. Beneath the slightly opaque surface, there seemed to be thousands of writhing tendrils trying to break out from within, like some kind of ancient parasite seeking to escape its captivity.

  It walked all hunched over, and massive lumps rose all over its skin as whatever there was within it moved more and more violently. I could feel its mind reaching out with a type of telepathy, but I braced myself.

  Psychic Domination Resisted.

  Oh, that was worse than I'd expected. I needed to gather my thoughts, so I severed my mental connection with the projected image while giving it a last command to dance around the monster, evading it as best it could. Hopefully, that would buy me enough time to escape through the forest.

  I wasn't exactly quiet, not with two large bear cubs following me, but Project Image specialized in distracting creatures. Something about the magic of it drew others in. And it worked perfectly this time.

  I ran for a good twenty minutes, until I was halfway between the clearing where the monsters had been and the edge of the forest closest to Cloverdale. I would likely have kept going. Reason dictated that if someone had to fight against whatever horror that was, it might as well be the human adventurers.

  Galbrecht, at least, didn't seem like the type to let such a monster munch on the people of the town.

  Recollections of creatures like this danced along the edge of my consciousness, but I couldn't form a solid memory. Perhaps if I had time to meditate or even slumber, it would come to me. That was often the way it worked for me—which made sense, given that it was called the dragon dream.

  None of that mattered, though, because I heard the sound of branches breaking nearby. It was a creature larger than any of the tiny forest animals I'd seen as I fled. I whirled around, expecting to find some new horror. Instead, I was greeted by the sight of a petite, blond human girl standing in a patch of moonlight which had made its way through the foliage.

  "Cami,” I almost shouted, “what are you doing here?"

  Now that I saw the human girl, I realized I could feel her presence, too. My Awakening near her had clearly caused a connection to form between us. What that meant for the future, though, was yet to be determined. I decided that I needed to protect her—and for now, that meant getting her out of this forest.

  "I stayed up waiting for you..." her voice trailed off, as though she wasn't sure what she intended to say. Then she looked at me directly. "You never came back. I was worried that something had happened to you, or that Modessa would claim you had run off. I told them I thought you'd gone to the north and followed your trail into the forest."

  "Wait, how did you know which way I went?"

  She shrugged. "Since whatever you did today, I seem to be able to sense you. It's… it’s like there is this energy around you. The further away you are, the fainter it gets.” She pulled her lips up and back, flashing her teeth at me—which I had to remind myself was a smile.

  “But this close to you,” she continued, “I feel like it’s making me stronger. I even got two classes."

  I didn't know much about classes—they were a thing for lesser races. The only time I even had a class, was when I was in this human form. Dragons just…well, we just were.

  We didn’t have classes. We didn’t have levels. It was more our age categories— which, of course, were based upon more than just our age. They defined how strong an individual dragon was.

  "Two classes?" I asked out of curiosity before I shook my head and said, "No, don't answer that right now. There is something lurking in the forest and we need to get out of it. I don't want to see you get hurt."

  She looked at me for a moment before replying. "That's the first time anyone has ever expressed concern about me. Thank you, Nico. I won't forget it.” Then she nodded at something behind me, “But what's up with them."

  She pointed at the bear cubs who were sitting on their haunches at my feet. The two bears were acting oblivious to our obvious danger and to Cami's presence, as they scratched whatever itches they happened to have.

  "Oh, them?” I scratched my cheek. “Their mother and one of the other cubs were killed by monsters in the woods. I saved these two. Perhaps someday they might turn into worthwhile servants."

  Cami tilted her head in a manner which I wasn't quite sure about and squinted her eyes at me, pursing her lips. "Suuuuuure… You're really just a big softie, aren't you? I knew you were nicer than you try to act. Did you want to bring them back to town with us? I’m not sure if that’s such a good idea, people might get scared. I know they are only cubs, but they must be getting close to a year old. They have to weigh more than me."

  I glanced between the cubs and Cami. They were obviously still babies to me, especially when compared to their mother—who would likely have weighed over a thousand pounds. Well, if her body hadn't been completely drained of fluid, that is.

  I still tended to size things up as a dragon and to dragon me, these cubs were tiny. As I thought about it, though, I could see what Cami meant. They might scare the fragile humans. I had already invested too much in them to want to have them taken from me.

  "Okay…” I tapped my stubby chin. “We'll need to find some food for them and then a place to keep them. Do you think I could sneak them into my room at the inn? Galbrecht said he paid for a private room, didn't he?"

  Cami held her hands up to her mouth and giggled. "Oh, you kill me, Nico. You're so funny."

  When I stared back at her with a flat expression, her face grew red. "Oh! You were serious. Um, no, we can't sneak them into the inn—and even if we could, they'd likely destroy the place. Bear cubs don't exactly belong inside an inn."

  "Neither do dragons," I muttered.

  She nodded. "I'm sure you know better about that than I do, but I get the feeling you're something of an exception to the norm. Nico, I'll do whatever you ask, but it would probably be better if we found a spot near the edge of the forest to house the cubs—maybe a thicket or a cave that they can hide in. If we get them some food, they'd probably lay low for a while. It seems they think you're their new mother."