Samazzar’s tail swished violently back and forth in the dark, a smile splitting his scaly muzzle. In the distance, the tunnel gleamed golden-red in his magical vision as heat poured off rock walls. Sam couldn’t tell the source for certain, but the massive churning pillar of warmth, sinking deep into the ground likely had something to do with it.

When he pushed his new magical senses to their limit, the glowing cylinder whispered to him. Of immense pressure in much deeper tunnels, bubbles of bad air compressed beyond their limits by the rock-

Rock? Sam squinted. The heat source roiled gently at the edges of his perception. The misshapen oval of deep red energy was heavy, pushed upward from a deep place. Squeezed so tightly that it grew hotter on its own.

An excited hiss escaped his muzzle. It was stone. Boiled by massive fires beyond his comprehension deep in the ground, and then forced up through narrow cracks. Even better, the crush and pressure of those snaking vents made the rock even hotter.

At the edge of Sam’s comprehension, a thought started to tickle him. A secret from one of the mysteries sat tantalizingly out or reach as he contemplated the subterranean heat source. He knew that he was just one moment of epiphany away from realizing something momentous, but at the same time, he didn’t even know whether it belonged to the mystery of heat or pressure.

Closer. Samazzar felt his head bobbing of its own accord. He was too far from the phenomena that sang to his senses. If he drew just a little nearer, he’d be able to finally part the veil and plunder the superheated rock’s secrets.

He blinked, letting his sight slip back into the normal register. Sam was only a day out from the lake, the bruises and abrasions from his fight with the otter only partially healed, but the tunnel he was in glowed a dim red.

There was no way he was anywhere near the surface which meant that either there was some sort of plant or animal life glowing up ahead, or, more likely, the heat source he was tracking gave off light like a fire.

Claws clicked quietly against the rock floor as Sam snuck down the tunnel. His eagerness might lighten his step and light a fire in his eyes, but at the same time, he wasn’t a dragon yet. Anything more interesting than the deep tunnels’ drab rock walls would either be dangerous in its own right, or guarded by something that could consume him in a single snap.

Featureless stone slipped past Samazzar, the tunnel growing noticeably warmer as he approached his quarry. At some point, he switched off his heat vision to avoid being blinded by the oppressive and omnipresent glow of the burning rock.

Finally, his tunnel rounded a corner and Sam’s breath caught in his throat as the cave in front of him burst into view, illuminated by the gentle ruby glow of a basin of thick bubbling liquid. One look from the porous black rock to the pool, and even without turning on his heat vision, Sam knew he had found his source.

“Magma,” he whispered to himself, his eyes twinkling in the reflected light. “Rock so hot it becomes a liquid.”

It was under so much pressure, forced through a narrow channel until it burst free, spreading out and settling into a comfortable equilibrium with the outside air.

“That’s it.” Sam mumbled, licking his thin lips contemplatively as something clicked inside his tiny scaled head. “If you squeeze something down, it becomes hotter and heavier. If it’s near something that isn’t as compressed, it will push it out of the way so that it can expand and-”

He activated his heat sight, wincing away from the sudden riot of color. Shielding his watering eyes, Samazzar squinted at the pool only to start nodding fervently.

“Of course.” He muttered, blinking his vision back to normal. “The surface is so much cooler than the depths of the vent. Just like pressure brings heat, expansion cools the substance. How could I have missed it?”

A deep snort rattled Sam out of his contemplation. A large lizard, its shoulder easily twice as tall as the tiny kobold and its body almost as long as the otter he’d already bested, tossed its head as it sauntered into the cave.

He reassessed his judgement of the creature. Its body was covered in black skin and inlaid with triangular red patterns. Despite its reptilian appearance, it didn’t have any scales.

Sam’s breath caught in his throat. An elder salamander. The same breed of monster that the chief slew when he was younger. Strong and deceptively quick, elder salamanders were feared for their ability to breathe fire.

He dismissed all of the half remembered warnings from Crone Tazzaera’s bestiary. More important than any risk was the fact that elder salamanders carried a draconic bloodline. Their blood wasn’t nearly as thick as a drake or wyvern, but by the same token, it was much closer to their common ancestors than a scale wolf or lizard person.

His breath came in short sharp bursts as Samazzar watched the giant amphibian lazily walk toward the pool of magma and wade into the thick liquid rock. He barely even noticed the distinctive caps of a trio of firespore mushrooms growing a couple paces back from the back as the salamander rolled over onto its back in the viscous liquid, fully covering its dark skin.

Crone Tazzaera warned him to start small. Every time she lectured him on the process for fortifying a kobold’s bloodline she made a point of emphasizing that their heritage came in tiers. They were at the absolute bottom, and skipping a tier assured intense pain at best, and rejection and death at worst.

Apparently, that was why Duromak ‘donated’ his elder salamander blood to the tribe. The Chief was afraid that consuming it directly would kill him outright. Instead, he opted to dole out preserved and diluted blood for the awakening ritual.

Sam’s expression soured. If it wasn’t for Lellassa tainting his share of the blood, he would already have his first bloodline evolution. His body should have been sturdy enough that he wouldn’t have to fret so much about consuming third tier blood.

Still, despite a moment of indecision and worry, it was never really a choice. Duromak might be right to fear the side effects from consuming elder salamander blood, but a dragon didn’t let fear rule his thoughts.

With the addition of the fire spores, Samazzar had everything he needed to make an oil that would temper the blood. It wouldn’t stop Crone Tazzaera from skinning him alive if she found out what he did.

“Safer” was a matter of degree, and no attempt to draw himself closer to his draconic legacy could ever completely eliminate endangering himself. That said, as optimistic as Sam was, even he couldn’t conceptualize a world in which what he was about to do was a well-reasoned and logically sound risk.

One mushroom worth of the spores wouldn’t dilute the concoction too much. There was little question that it would trigger a bloodline evolution, but at the same time-

He exhaled gently, watching as the salamander happily rolled back and forth in the magma, its long pink tongue lolling peacefully from the side of its mouth. Dragons couldn’t let fear rule them.

Risky or safe, deep in his heart, Samazzar knew that he was meant to be a dragon. The path may be long and it may twist or turn, but he believed that it would happen with the same certainty that the sun would rise tomorrow morning. If that process involved cutting some corners and a little pain, he was a big kobold. He would need to start making sacrifices eventually, it might as well be now.

Slowly, Sam crept away, carefully checking each of his steps as he backed out of the tunnel overlooking the magma pond. As harmless as the giant salamander looked, splashing its paws in the molten rock, each of its claws was almost his size.

If it spotted him, Samazzar wasn’t even sure about his ability to escape down his tunnel. In all likelihood, the elder salamander’s fire breath would roast him alive before he could scamper to safety.

Finally, after ten or so minutes of quietly creeping away, the sounds of the elder salamander frolicking in the magma faded away. Sam let himself exhale in relief as he stood up, stretching upward with his tiny scaled arms into the yawning darkness of his tunnel in order to straighten his back.

His mind whirred rapidly, a single claw tapping against the scales of his chin. Sam looked thoughtfully down the tunnel that had brought him here, calculating the time it would take to travel back to the milklight cave and perform the necessary alchemy. Finally he nodded, clapping his claws together quietly, a grin splitting his face.

Samazzar pushed his magical vision to its maximum, drinking in the extra information as he began jogging back toward the otter’s lagoon. A month or so ago, he would’ve been too afraid of surprises to run in the deep tunnels. Now? He saw an entirely new world of heat, good air, and pressure.

Even if a predator could avoid one of his new senses, there was no way it could avoid the chaotic rainbow of magical input that assaulted Sam. Maybe a monster could hide its heat signature, but pressure would reveal its lungs and good air would mark when and where it exhaled.

He still wanted magic that could do more than unveil the secrets of the world to him, but Samazzar was beginning to understand why practitioners learned magical perception first. So much of discovering the mysteries was learning to see the natural world in new and innovative ways, that enhancing his senses was almost a necessity.

Sam almost shuddered as he thought back on how hard it was to learn the mystery of heat. Each attempt since then had become easier and easier as he learned more and more ways to view the world, but ultimately he could see why Crone Tazzaera started with a magic that could be felt without any outside aid.

With a shake of his head, Sam focused on jogging once more. Even if he could easily spot predators, it wouldn’t help if he wasn’t paying attention. After all, a distracted kobold was stormcrow lunch.

Hours faded into each other as Samazzar ran back to the milklight cave, carefully following the scratch marks he’d let in the tunnel walls. Periodically he scooted out of sight, hiding himself in side passages as predators prowled past him.

Finally, twelve or so hours later, Sam was back in the otter’s cave munching on milklight gills as he began setting up his portable alchemical gear in the dim blue light. Lovingly, he unfolded the strip of cured rat leather and admired the pouches containing his reagents.

It had taken hours under Crone Tazzaera’s tutelage with a bone needle and sinew thread to sew the pouches on, but the old woman was right. An alchemist was only as good as his gear. If he let someone else in the tribe make his equipment, there was no way that Sam could trust its quality. Powders could slip out through poorly stitched pockets, and watertight pouches might leak leading to potentially dangerous cross contamination.

A couple of hours of carefully monitoring his alembic later, Sam decanted the second of his two oils of burn resistance. His tail twitched happily as he looked down on his achievements. Technically, the oil wasn’t anything new. He’d made it at least a dozen times before under Crone Tazzaera’s watchful eyes, but this was his first time making anything other than a healing salve on his own.

Without further ado, Samazzar slathered the first of the oils onto himself, working it into the cracks of his scales until he gleamed in the pale blue light of the mushrooms. He checked the dagger strapped to his leg to ensure that its bindings were tight and began searching for a rock. After about ten minutes of searching, Sam found one that satisfied him, a fairly round chunk of stone roughly the size of his head.

He picked the rock up with both of his claws, thin arms straining against its weight as he nodded to himself with satisfaction. Before Sam could talk himself out of it, the tiny kobold sprinted to the bank of the pond, taking a deep breath as he ran.

Samazzar tucked his legs and tail around the rock as he jumped, hitting the scalding surface of the water with a huge splash that sent waves lapping at the pond’s banks. The rock pulled him downward as he screwed his eyes shut.

Distantly, he could feel the heat and pressure increasing as he sank toward the bottom of the lake. Bubbles of bad air trickled out of Sam’s nostrils as he reached out with his senses, tracking down the collection of low pressure and bad air that made up the otter’s corpse.

He dropped the rock and kicked his legs out, swimming through the water toward the huge mammal’s body. The oil did its work, preventing the scalding water from burning his tender scales as Samazzar made his way through the crushing pressure and toxic gas bubbles.

By the time he reached the purple otter’s well preserved remains, Sam was struggling to focus past the ache in his ears. He didn’t dare open his eyes, instead relying on feel to guide his claws as he cut three large clumps of toxic meat.

Just as he wrapped the soft fur of his prizes around a claw, his ears burst. Sharp pain stabbed through Sam’s head as the silence and gentle burble of the lagoon was replaced with a loud, incessant ringing.

Information flowed into him as he kicked upward. It was almost impossible for the poor kobold to sort between his splitting headache and sudden realizations about how water pressure flowed creating currents as it moved from high concentrations to lower. Even good air seemed clearer to him as he noticed for the first time that it too would move toward spots where neither good nor bad air existed.

He shook his head, accepting the sharp pain from his ears to clear his thoughts. Distantly, Samazzar was excited to earn a new level in a mystery. Apparently the depths of the lake had served as another baptism to help complete his understanding of pressure, but that was something to explore on another day.

For now, his lungs screamed for good air as he flicked his tail back and forth in time with kicks of his claws. The good air above the water seemed so far away, so Sam bit down, wincing as one of his incisors practically pierced his tongue.

The sharp pain cut through the dull ache in his head, helping Samazzar focus. His perception narrowed until he was only thinking about each kick of his claws, narrowing the distance between himself and the sweet air of the milklight cave.

Finally, his perception narrowed to a pinprick, Sam’s head burst through the surface of the water. Bad air exploded from his battered lungs as he tried to replenish his weakened body.

After twenty or so seconds of treading water, he began paddling toward shore. As much as the dive had taken out of him, he knew that things would only get worse if he stayed in the water long enough for the oil of burn resistance to fade.

Limping, he dragged the three chunks of pelt and meat toward his alchemical gear and plopped down. Warm liquid, thicker than the superheated spring water but almost as warm, dribbled down either side of his head as he began concocting another healing salve.

He sighed in relief as he applied it to either ear. It didn’t end all of Sam’s pain, but it took the ragged edge off. From experience, he knew that it would aid his healing and restore his hearing in a day or so, but at the same time he suspected that without the alchemy, the injury would repair itself much slower than that.

Then, his work done, Samazzar began carefully packing up his alchemical gear and reagent pouch. Satisfied that the priceless equipment was safely stowed in his pack, he picked up the three hunks of toxic otter meat and slung them over a shoulder.

Luckily for him, the combination of bad air from the volcanic vent and scalding water kept all but the most robust of scavengers from the otter’s body. Still, even with those factors working in his favor, in another two to four weeks Sam expected the corpse to be more or less putrefied.

He glanced back at the meat appreciatively as he walked toward the cave containing the elder salamander’s magma both. It took some effort to rein in the saliva that threatened to dribble out of his gaping mouth.

After days of nothing but milklight gills, Samazzar wanted nothing more than real meat. Cooked, charred or raw, it didn’t matter, his growing body screamed to feel blood dribbling down his chin as he filled its tiny stomach.

Tearing his gaze away, Sam chuckled to himself. Of course, that was the point. As big as the elder salamander was, it was almost certainly hungry at all times. More importantly, it wouldn’t have any reason to doubt a trio of morsels if it happened across them.

A half day or so of travel later, a tired Samazzar slipped down from his tunnel entrance into the magma cave. The hot rocks of the floor stung his claws as he scurried toward the center of the chamber, a good distance from the magma bath and set all three of the purple otter pieces fur side down.

He rubbed his taloned hands together gleefully before looking around the chamber one last time to ensure that the elder salamander was nowhere in sight. Of course, if it was nearby there wasn’t much Sam could do about it, but at this point, his nervous surveillance was a force of habit, a survival instinct that helped preserve a tiny frail life in a dangerous and uncaring world.

Nodding to himself, Sam ran back to the tunnel he’d taken to the salamander’s cave. He winced as he climbed up the waist high wall before pulling himself into the narrow passageway by his carrying satchel.

He turned around and laid down, propping his chin on one claw as he reached into his pack with the to pull out another chunk of bland but nutritious milklight gill. He plopped it in his mouth, reveling in the sound of his own chewing as his hearing slowly returned.

Finally he swallowed, shifting himself into a slightly more comfortable position to wait. With any luck, a day from now he would be one step closer to becoming a dragon.