The black emptiness seemed to constrict around me. From a void of weightless water floating, and strange half-light with which I could see my limbs disappeared too.

It was so waaaarm. Oh yeah, I could get used to this. It was as though the liquid had decided to hug me, and the resulting comfort could not be ignored, nor should it be. I deserved this, after the time I’d had. It was definitely tight, but it didn’t feel claustrophobic.

Swaddled in that snug space, I slept.

Real sleep. Blissful, relaxing, refreshing sleep. I awoke with a stretch. An attempted pushing of my arms. The dark comfort around me swelled at my pressing, but it wasn’t fulfilling without actually being able to move. I pressed again, enjoying the use of my muscles.

It felt a little like waking up having slept on your arm, except the sensation was all over me. The knowledge of how to move my limbs was met with a strange inability to feel the walls stopping me from moving. Struggling felt quite nice, and I enjoyed that it made me feel tired.

With a lurch, I felt everything turn on its head, and suddenly I felt upside down. That certainly woke me up more.

Gravity? Where was I? Curious, I thought about my status page and it appeared before me, just as I had last seen it.

Name: Izaark

Race: Kobold

Species: Gem Dragon

Level: 01

Class: Warlock

Debuffed

HP:22

Strength

Tier 0

MP:43

Body

Tier 0

Magic

Tier 3

Will

Tier 1

Except… That wasn’t true. There was something new, next to my health points. I’m… debuffed? I focused on it, and found more information.

Debuff

Restricted

Your movements are hindered.

So, this wall around me was something physical? It wasn’t that my arms and legs couldn’t feel anything, I realised. It was some kind of slippery slime? Still upside-down, I kicked. A little claw on my foot seemed to catch a little on the sac that I seemed to be in.

The liquid seemed to run away, and I was choking. The walls seemed to close in around me, as though the slime had been activated by my kick and attacked. Oh fuck. I’ve broken something and now I’m dying. What can I do? Amidst the panic, asking that question seemed to activate the system.

Ability Page

Strong Constitution

Effect: You are immune to the effects of diseases and poisons.

You have a small resistance to physical damage.

You have an increased stamina, relative to your Body attribute.

Warlock Spells

Effect: You can learn and cast spells from the Warlock school of magic.

Great. Brilliant. I have no idea how to use spells though, so it doesn’t stop me from drowning, right now. I kicked again, mashing both feet as much as possible. With each kick I could move more and more, becoming more frantic by the second. I began to flail my arms around, finding new room to do that in. I attacked my restriction with everything I had.

I raged and roared and clawed with everything I had. My jaw was working overtime, clamping onto bits of the slime and ripping at them. Still, my bondage was unreleased. This was the worst! Was I really going to die before even seeing what this new world is like?

My lungs were burning, screaming for oxygen that wasn’t there.

Until it was. With a schlor-POP, I slid from my containment, landing on my front. I coughed, feeling very fragile. My limbs still felt like jelly with no true control to them. Still, I rolled over onto my back somehow, taking big, gasping breaths. The air tasting like coal, and I found it comforting, like the smell of a log fire. Like a man dying of thirst I gulped up those precious lungfuls of air.

That was horrible. Why had I nearly died the second I stepped foot into this new world?

As I opened my eyes to glare at my nearly fatal prison, it took a moment for all the pieces to fall into place. It was dark, and I couldn’t see very well at all. I blinked a few times, starting to make out shapes. A large, purple and blue pod lay, the top of it shattered. Pieces of the pod lay around me, and stuck to me with the slimy substance from inside.

Something felt off. What was that thing? Why had I been inside it?

Clearing my thoughts from a haze, my stomach leapt to the right, the left, turned inside out and shrivelled all at once. The idea was too much. It… couldn’t be.

The prompt had said “Start new life”... hadn’t it?

So this hard pod that I was looking at was, most likely, an egg. My egg. The fluid had been my food, or whatever that stuff is. With growing horror, the pieces of that strange puzzle began to slot together. That movement from before that unsettled me… my egg must have been moved by something.

I froze, an instinct ingrained in most forms of life, it seemed. If something moved my egg, and it heard me break out and cough, I'd be in real trouble. With statuesque movements, I continued blinking. I used my peripheral vision to scan my immediate vicinity. The dark space wasn’t lightless, dim glows cast light from somewhere I couldn’t yet see. I felt comforted by the very low light. If I could barely see, hopefully whatever was nearby couldn’t either.

The floor beneath my back, from which I had not yet moved, was hard and craggen. Aside from my egg, all I could see from my position was a wall. The rock was fairly smooth, the dark rock worn away with time by some strange erosion. No matter what, if I wanted to know about my surroundings, I had to move. Without looking around I dove for the only safe space I knew.

My egg.

It was surprisingly easy to fit into the small space, my time on the ground giving my limbs time to wake up. Thank you evolution for creating oviparous creatures such as I was. None of that pesky nonsense about infanthood, I was able to move with limbs which were ready. My body easily slid back into the egg, and I rearranged within to look out of the hole.

As my eyes adjusted to the space, the vastness of the room staggered me. Not a room at all, certainly. A cavern, at least. Small pools of magma burbled occasionally, the only light source in the room. On one side of the wall, the rock behind it purple, lay a treasure trove.

The underground chamber had already seemed huge, but when considering that most of the floor was taken up with glittering jewels, coins and countless as-of-yet unknown items, the dimensions took on new scale. I wanted to sprint with all my might over to that vast treasury, something about the horde calling to a primal part of both my biology and my own intrinsic greed.

Instead, I waited.

And waited.

Nothing seemed to be happening. Caution reigned, still, but waiting would do nothing but give me an empty stomach. I was already getting peckish, and though rarely one to complain, if the first meal of the day was considered important, the first meal of my life should be even more so.

Before leaving my safety, I remembered due diligence, which was rare for me. I focused and thought the words “ability page”. It appeared, the gold and blue scroll sitting intuitively in my vision. Two abilities. Strong constitution, which seemed potent enough as a starting option, given the difficulty level. Seriously, I couldn’t start out as an adult kobold?

The other ability though.

Warlock Spells

Effect: You can learn and cast spells from the Warlock school of magic.

With time, waiting to see if anything moved, I delved deeper. The ability page vanished, and a new page appeared.

Known Spells

Spell Name

Description

Cost

Blast of Force

Emit a magical projectile.

Non-elemental damage.

25MP

Forceful Rebuke

Emit a wave of force.

Non-elemental damage.

5HP

A general understanding of the greater workings of the spells flowed into me. They required little thought, and I could feel the mana inside of me now, desperate to show itself off. It bounced within me like butterflies and fire.

I had magic. I was a magical creature, in a magical world and I could use magic.

I couldn’t help myself, I had waited long enough. Time to find something to eat. Images of blood, of meat and the success of a hunt made my mouth water, unbidden. I shook my head at that. The imagery had jumped into my mind as I thought of my hunger, and it was powerful. Fine. I probably wasn’t getting a burger in these caves anyway, so if my body wanted something a bit more primal, so be it.

I slithered out of my shell. It was weird to describe myself as slithering, but there it was. I stood, somewhat shakily, and got the true lay of the land. The trove really was staggering, but it was secondary for now. There was no life in this cavern, at least not that I could see. It was strange, really.

My egg sat alone, in a small divot, disturbed by my exit. Placed aside, near the wall. Did whoever made that pile of riches collect my egg, maybe? That didn’t seem right.

Too much thinking, not enough eating. Time to move.

The wall opposite had a huge opening, leading to a tunnel wide enough for just about anything I could think of to pass through. Walking over to it took a while from my egg. Mounds of warm rock kept distracting me, calling me to lay on them, ignored for the promise of something new. The air smelled different, as I wandered past small gurgling pockets of magma to the tunnel. Fresher.

An exit, possibly.

However, I wasn’t looking for an exit. I was hunting, right now.

I reached the tunnel’s edge and looked back. It was so far to the safety of my egg now. There were enough rocky places in the cavern that I would still be able to hide, but it was like leaving behind a safety blanket. Still, adventure awaits for no man… or dragonthing. The opening simply led to a long tunnel, running too deep for me to see the end, a slow curve to the left cutting off the view some distance away.

The walls were all the same dark rock as inside, a deep brown that held the heat of the area. I must be deep underground, though that was just a guess. For all I knew, I could be in the clouds of this strange world. Aside from the ruddy, brown rock though, there was a different colour.

It appeared almost too vibrant, standing out like everything around it was monochrome. A carapace which caught the small lights, shining in my vision like a beacon. I darted back behind the wall, scared, but felt foolish when I peaked my head back around the corner. It was an impressive specimen, with more bulk on an insect than I’d ever seen, but it wasn’t interested in me thankfully.

A large, green beetle scuttled between little pockets of smoke, sitting on them happily. It seemed to be feeding on them, or at least producing something from the smoke, based on the blue vapour it released every few moments. I wondered at that, but magical bugs will do as magical bugs are wont to do. It wasn’t important right now.

What was important, to me, is that it was probably made of meat.

I sneaked across the mouth to the other side of the tunnel opening, quiet as a feather in the wind. Being so small and light has its advantages, I was certainly stealthy at least. A calming breath, and a few more as I lined up my shot. The mana that bounced around within, the flames and fluttering, all started to aim itself.

Like a balloon in my hand, filling slowly with water, a weight formed. It felt like a ball of static electricity, a charged magnet and the pole was opposite to my hand. It was as simple as that. I felt my mana drain out of me, much less fire within. I knew it would be more than half empty, based on the cost of 25MP, and my max being 43 mana points.

It felt ready. I lifted my arm, left hand holding my right wrist. I smirked a little at the appearance of my arms before me. The ball of energy was casting a pale white light, and the purple scales on my arms were quite pretty, if I do say so myself.

With a feeling like letting go, the ball cannoned away from me. The force of it pushed my shoulder back and I stumbled. I was so distracted by the tail that I instinctively used to keep myself up that I almost didn’t see the destruction that my first spell had wrought. Staggering, I watched with wide eyes as the orb of death took it’s victim.

My aim had been true. The blast of force careened down the massive hallway towards the large insect and tore it apart. It connected in the middle of it’s carapace and the pathetic weakling was vanquished. I hopped over to my conquest, salivating both at the meal before me and the potential my magic had just shown. I began to tear at the pieces of the beetle, pulling hard shell away to find the inside. I felt like I was eating a delicious lobster dinner, the joy of the kill thrumming through me while I ate.

It wasn’t until after, standing and no longer hungry that I was taken aback. This body was controlling a lot, I definitely couldn’t have eaten that thing in my past life. There wasn’t much point in worrying about the things that now came natural to me, but the effect on my mind was disconcerting nonetheless.

Regardless, with my stomach full, and the warmth of the cave affecting me, I began to make my way back to my egg.

The wall started to fall, and I screamed. A tiny, high-pitched mewl at the chaos as the whole world seemed to erupt in movement and noise. The treasure scattered, the metallic discordance adding to the mania. A huge piece of the purple wall fell away, a massive boulder landing in front of the tunnel I had just come back through. Another massive slice of the wall fell away, blocking my path to my egg, though there was no way that could help right now.

I yelled as a shadow fell over me, closing my eyes and waiting for death. Life on hard-mode, indeed. Maybe I would get lucky and get another chance after this. It was around the time I had that thought that I realised I hadn’t died. The sounds had stopped, the rocks no longer falling, and all that could be heard was the movement of air, the cave-in must have dislodged something.

I squinted through still fearful eyes, afraid that any movement would send the whole mess tumbling down. The purple wall had enclosed me, easily five times higher than my height on both sides. I looked up to the rock that must hang precariously above me.

Staring down at me, with two glorious eyes of shining auroras, scales as hard and as beautiful as amethyst, a gargantuan, flicking tongue of dark muscle, majestic horns and teeth the size of a cow… was a dragon. We looked at each other in silence, neither of us moving until I couldn’t take it any more.

“M-... mother?” I asked hopefully. The seconds passed, a pair of massive eyelids blinking slowly.

“My baby!” A booming, gleeful, feminine voice filled the world.