I can't feel my face...

What I can feel is an excruciatingly painful headache and muscle stiffness across my body which doesn't seem normal from my limited life experience. Do I count life experiences before hatching?

What if my entire life was a crazy dream?

*Gao...*

Contemplating my existence prior to hatching is not helping with the needles driving behind my eye sockets... Water might help, It could be dehydration that's making me feel like death...

Attempting to get up is proving a challenge... I can feel my muscles fighting my attempts to move. Ugh, I think this might be the hardest I've had to struggle to get up to date... Besides that weird hibernation thing... The significantly louder joint cracks are pretty telling considering I haven't stretched yet.

Oh bugger off...

There are flies drifting throughout my lair with little scuttling things in the darker corners and others moving under the ash layer, I'm not dealing with this. I'll just smoke them out later. Hopefully my lair doesn't end up infested.

The moment I poke my head outside I realize why there were bugs in my lair. The forest is a writhing cloud of wings and crawling things. It's a drastic increase in numbers compared to yesterday! It's actually rather intimidating...

The droning buzz in grating on my headache. Burning them seems like a terrible idea in these numbers but it's a little tempting if it would reduce my pain a little... But the fireball would probably destroy the entire forest.

Awkwardly stretching on my walk over to the stream I can feel my muscles loosening slightly, my face is still numb though... Hopefully this goes away soon. Headache included.

The moment I see the stream a violent shudder ripples through my body, even with all the stiff muscles and numbness... What the? Weird...

Getting closer to the water my body is only trembling more and I have a really bad feeling in the... Gut area? Metaphors are difficult to translate across species... I guess the pit of my stomach still fits even if I don't know dragon biology too well...

Distracting myself isn't helpful, It's just making my head hurt more...

As for the bad feeling I'm getting, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's the water that's caused my headache, stiffness and probably other things I'm not aware of...

I didn't have any problems drinking rainwater, river water or my terrible tasting distilled water so there's probably something in the water coming out of the cave.

Putting the lid on the distillery and setting water to boil I head deeper into the cave and look at where the stream is coming out. There's a small tunnel where the water level has lowered heading deeper into the mountain but it's definitely not large enough for me to fit through...

Maybe it's going through a lead deposit or something? That would just be my luck. I could try and dig further in to get past whatever is contaminating the water?

Or I could use another stream as a water source...

There are others relatively nearby and now that I know how to make a basic distillery I can just make another. I could upscale it too since I'm drinking more with my increased size, the current distillery setup is too small for the amount of water I need when considering how long it takes to boil enough water to drink.

Heading back to my little distillery for my drink proves the point. I'm still thirsty and it's probably not worth using at my current size. Guess I'm getting water from elsewhere.

There's another cave with a stream coming out of it a couple minutes away I could use but... I'd just be building a larger distillery right? I wouldn't be drinking from the water so there isn't much point to moving...

Screw it. I'll just make a larger one here, It's closer and now I know the waters not safe to drink directly.

May as well finish drinking first...

What this stuff? There's a blackish brown fluffy coating along the tray now the waters evaporated. I didn't see it in the water before but there's a LOT of it now that the waters gone. Scratching it sends a small cloud into the air that drifts with the breeze...

I get the feeling I've found the cause of my problem.

But what is it?

Now I know it's in the water but I don't know what it is or how it got there...

I'm not bathing in that again. I'll wait until it rains and dig out a bath.

So now that I know that my water source is contaminated and I need to process my water I can either go hunt a goat for breakfast since I've learned where and how to find them or I could build a larger distillery and then go find food...

Looking at the sun it seems to be approaching midday, I really slept in. I'll get a goat first and make a distillery second because stone carving by firelight is fine but hunting camoflaged animals in the dark is a no.

Any plans for a forest excursion vanished the moment the swarm appeared. Bugs have short lifespans right? Hopefully they all just die out or something. I'm nearly out of wood! Well, except for my practice logs... It feels like a waste to burn my practice attempts... Maybe I can peel the layer off? I can burn the log underneath then.

Well times wasting and food isn't going to catch itself.

Turning towards the mountain I set off on a grand adventure in search of mountain goats!

The rocks are a lot less lively today, they haven't moved in the slightest which, now that I think back on it, was probably a good sign that I was hallucinating... I wonder if that fluffy grey stuff powdered up would cause hallucinations? If I ever find civilization I could sell it under my own brand, Dragons dungeon drugs! The name should be a best seller alone! I can sell them in little stone urns with a dragon carved on the front! On the side I could write things like;

All natural ingredients!

Incredible health benefits!

Increased libido!

And have the side effects in tiny writing that's hard to read...

Genius!

The plan requires a middleman but once I find someone I can get a business going to rival the greatest of the...

Where was I going with this? I haven't even seen signs of civilization besides the carriage and the road...

Whatever, it's a possibility for the future. In the meantime I'll just fill some containers when I clean the trays.

I can feel my eyelids now at least, which I honestly wish I couldn't... Transitioning from zero feeling in your eyelids to full blown sensation is a drastic change, especially when you have four of them. My scaled lip area is starting to regain feeling too which isn't that bad, it made drinking earlier annoying but it wasn't that big of an issue. I basically poured the water down my throat to ignore the hollow taste anyway.

This scrub patch doesn't have any mountain goats either. Third time's the charm maybe? Now that I know what to look for this is going so much faster. I could be passing right by some that aren't near any patches but honestly I just want a quick meal without having to search every boulder for moss. If I really started to look I would leave no stone unturned.

That pun was terrible. I'm disgusted.

Moving onto the third patch I find exactly what I'm looking for. A mountain goat that seems to think I haven't seen it. Time to put my perfectly thought out plan into action!

Walking behind the goat and checking the direction to my lair I initiated the first stage of the plan, poking the boulder.

Surprisingly the goat didn't move.

Time to up the ante, one swing of my claw later and the goat is launching itself in the direction I intended with blood rivers pouring out of its back. I could do without the ear piercing screaming though...

Step three is to herd it towards my lair. Easy enough when its mindlessly running in terror.

With my lair beside me and the blood flowing from the back of my prey slowing down I do believe it's time to finish my little hunt?

As I'm getting closer the goat uses what I assume to be it's remaining strength to throw itself into one last burst of speed straight forward into the swarm...

Fuck!

There goes my easy meal... The moment it got close to the humming forest it basically turned into a buzzing blob of legs, wings, stings and wiggly things. That image is going to haunt my dreams...

There are flies coating the blood on the ground already.

The level of NOPE is at critical mass.

I'll leave them to clean this mess up while I go and get another goat.

Note to self. NEVER approach the swarm.

EVER!

Instead of leaving the goat to run until the last minute this time I slashed a leg, It bled out halfway back. I probably hit a vein or something.

It's not as far to drag a goat as it was previously but it is still a fair distance, especially considering that this one is larger than those I caught before. Not to mention I'm taking it to my distillery area to use the wood there.

I might put on more muscle dragging heavy prey around like this...

Coming up on the cave I can see light inside, I guess I left the fire lit...

A cautious check later and my suddenly intense paranoia was satisfied. Yep, just left the fire lit. Coming home and finding lights on that you don't remember is rather scary...

The fuzzy deposit in the tray has crumbled into a thick powder layer due to being left over the fire. Moving it a little causes it to start drifting and I REALLY don't want to know what breathing in a large concentration of the stuff would do. Let's just ignore it for now until it eventually bites me in the ass.

While collecting some kindling from near the fire, (entirely too close honestly, I really should move it away from the potential fuel source...) it strikes me that I might be fireproof. Dragons can breathe fire, ergo they should have resistance to being burned.

Test result?

Positive? I'm not in horrific nerve destroying agony from sticking my claw directly into the flame. It is however uncomfortably hot, which is very concerning since the terms hot and cold haven't bothered me much outside of eating.

I don't think getting napalm on myself would be a good idea from these results...

On the upside that means that I should be relatively fine lighting my cooking fire without needing to use my napalm breath or worrying about burning myself holding a flaming stick.

Burning yourself using matches is never fun.

One relatively quick yet delicious goat later and I have a couple of hours until sunset to make a larger distillery. Hopefully this goes quicker than last times trial and error session since I'm just making everything bigger.

Step one! Make a fire basin. Easy enough to do. Dig hole in the wall, leave a shelf above it for the tray. In the wall next to the tray dig a second basin.

Step two! Carve a large tray for water. Maybe add handles this time? It's tough to carry the one I use currently.

Uh oh...

Maybe I just fill it using bowls? Because filling it, walking back and placing it on top of the fire basin isn't going to happen with how I walk... It's more like fill it, pick it up and then toss water everywhere because of how I have to carry it.

I should figure out pots.

Leaving that thought for a much later time, filling this tray is going to get old real fast...

The best solution I can think of is alcohol, the second best would be handled pots suitable for dragons.

What I'm going to use is large stone bowls. Which is pretty much my solution for everything food or liquid related at this point.

Now onto step three! The lid! The trickiest part.

Since I'm just carving the distillery into the cave wall this time I can just gouge a funneled dome above the tray. Then I break the wall between the second basin and the funnel groove leaving most of a partition. I now have a water collection basin instead of a bowl.

Hopefully the stone between the distillery and the water basin doesn't collapse...

Time to give it a test.

Using the old distilleries lid to fill the new tray I kind of feel like I might have overdone it... It's half full.

This should be good enough!

Lighting it and waiting results in exactly what I expected. It's not working.

My conclusion? It's not hot enough.

A quick spray of hellfire later and the tray is bubbling merrily! As is the stone nearby!

Looking at the setting sun I have to say that this happens to be a job for morning me. I'll figure it out tomorrow.

Heading back to my lair I can't help but feel like I've forgotten something...

Oh yeah... The bugs...

Ugh...