Chapter 4 Rebirth In Exposition

Edited by Hunter Steel

Ahhhhhhhhhh, fresh forest air, have you ever left the city to go hiking? The forest air has a distinctive smell, it's more… nature… like. Birds settling down for the evening, as jackalopes enter their burrows for the coming night, and the nocturnal creatures start to stir in their homes, getting ready for their foray into the coming night. Too bad I’m dead on my feet and couldn’t give less of a fuck, I'm sure someone does, just not me. My magic is at about two percent, my atrophied muscles are burning, I have a migraine, and I’m still fucking starving, ‘I should have eaten one of those bat-horses from the museum, I would be a wanted criminal but at least I wouldn’t be starving’. I had entered the forest a while ago, and the rough sloping terrain was hell on my weakened body. I needed food but I was in no condition to hunt, furthermore assuming I caught something I didn’t have any water to aid in digestion so I would just end up dangerously dehydrated. (Thank you Bear Grylls) so water first I suppose, finding water could possibly solve my food problem as well so that’s the priority made easier by the recent rainfall in the forest. Working through the migraine and fatigue I managed to enchant a twig to point towards the nearest body of water. The good thing about my form of magic is its extremely flexible, if Kirin magic is like a store with everything you could possibly need, my magic was a fully decked out workshop and laboratory in one, need a compass? Make one, want to go deep-sea diving but you’re not a sea pony? Design your own magical scuba gear. Need to send your neighbour’s dog to Tartarus? Chances are if you set your mind to it you’ll figure out a way.

So after clomping along for hell knows how long with my body taking every opportunity to remind me of its agony I eventually could go no further. Collapsing against a tree my brain promptly decided now was as good a time as any to shut down. Opening my eyes a little later the sun was setting and my body was stiff and sore as hell. Pushing myself into a sitting position I felt out my magic which had recovered somewhat. Deciding sleeping out in the open wasn’t a good idea I started digging a bit of a hollow at the base of the tree and promptly gave up at the protest of my arms. Failing that I curled up and covered myself in leaves the best I could. I woke up again, this time to a pitch black forest and the sound of a cicada on the tree I was sleeping against, after chopping it in two with my tail I curled back up before deciding to hopefully secure breakfast for the morning. Sinking the harpoon shaped double tip of my tail into the soft earth as best I could (which is to say barely at all), I drew on my magic thankful the migraine had lessened significantly, one of the tips strung a line of magic just below the earth in the direction I was traveling for a few meters before spreading out to form an runic array with a ten meter diameter that would be a trap for creatures of a certain size, after feeding the array a bit of magic I turned back to myself. I know for a fact I will be too stiff to walk when I wake up so I hope to fix that, another array formed below me, this one designed to soothe my muscles, out of curiosity I extended my senses and felt for my dementor, it seemed to still be haunting the museum, with enough magic to last it a week it seems. Reaching through the connection I added a few arrays to allow it to pass through solid objects and programed it to keep within a few miles range of me, never know when you might need lovecraftian backup. After retracting my tail I closed my eyes with a shiny new migraine and eventually dozed off again.

When next I woke up it was to bird song and an already risen sun and the feeling of prey caught in my traps, and quite a few by the feel of things. Tentatively standing up I felt out my range of motion. I could move so I guess things weren’t all bad, I was still aching and stiff but not as bad as it could be. Standing, stretching, and erasing the runes that I slept over and absorbing what magic was left in it with an empty stomach I made my way through the forest toward my trap, and I had quite a haul indeed, a family of racoons, three porcupines, a pink cat wearing a bell, two hedgehogs, a whole bunch of squirrels, a chinchilla, a wombat wearing a Countess Coloratura T-shirt (don’t question it), and the grand prize, a deer, the thing was still standing unlike its friends albeit on shaky legs. The trap I set while relatively simple is rather insidious in design, whenever something crosses the threshold onto above or below the array it immediately starts sapping their energy, the harder they try to leave the weaker they get as the array becomes more powerful from the stolen energy and continues to drain them until their fight is gone. Taking control of my trap I siphoned away all the deer’s energy. ‘Now for the rest.’ The deer is mine no question but the cat and wombat can go, racoons too, I'm not a fan of eating young. Hedgehog too not worth the effort of cleaning for so little meat, though that raises the question of why I'm keeping the squirrels… whatever’. I released the animals I decided not to eat from the hold of the spell to which they scurried off into the wilds, then I siphoned the remaining energy from the creatures left lulling them into unconsciousness, I didn’t exactly have somewhere to keep meat so this was my next best choice. But that brought up another question, how the hell was I going to carry all of them in my current state, I unfurled my wings to give them a proper stretch as I contemplated the issue only to hear them give off a creek reminiscent of unoiled hinges, grimacing at the sound I tucked them back to my side and begun the tedious task of hauling my catch along following my twig, taking extremely frequent stops along the way, often after recovering from a face plant brought on by exhaustion. It was long past midday when I came to an exceedingly large puddle of water about six inches at its deepest. Disregarding the teachings of Bear Grylls senpai, I drank to satisfaction, took a short rest and begun my search for wood.

Sometime later I had cooked and eaten the deer and was in the process of gutting the chinchilla to join the other small critters over the fire. When I was done setting it over the fire I noticed one of the two squirrels I was yet to prepare was just barely conscious and seemed to be begging me for mercy with her big pleading eyes that seemed to boor into my soul. Sighing I reached over to the incapacitated creature and gently picked her up before dropping her in my mouth whole and chewing thoughtfully, choking on the fur as a result. ‘Now I remember why I don’t eat these things raw’. Coughing, a bit of meat flew from my mouth and landed near the fire, well that’s what I thought before I took a better look at it. It was a squirrel, a fetus to be exact. I stared at it for a while. I had just eaten a pregnant mother, and killed her children in the process. I was suddenly aware of every piece of meat in my mouth. The bigger pieces could be dismissed easily enough. But my mind started telling me that everything else was a baby squirrel clawing feebly at my teeth, cheeks, and tongue, inaudibly pleading for mercy with unborn voices to please be let free. I shifted my tongue slightly and felt a tiny claw scrape against it before deciding to dig a small hole some distance away and spit out the squirrel. After that I rinsed out my mouth a few times and went to sit by the fire. My eyes elided upon the first fetus I coughed up. Its mouth was open in a silent scream of agony when it was not before. Using a stick to shove it into the fire I gutted the other squirrel after confirming it was male and using my magic to check for pregnancy just in case. By the time I was done the sun had begun to set, my magic had recovered to about five percent so I set another trap and used the remainder of my magic to excavate myself a five by five hollow a few feet below ground and settled in for the night.

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I had somehow managed to sleep through the night and through to midday, when I woke my trap was empty. ‘Well I guess I couldn’t expect the same result every time’. Though my magic’s recovery was hindered by my physical state my mind was much clearer when I woke up, of both migraine and fatigue. Now was as good a time as any to decide what to do. I very much doubt I was the only one to be put into stasis, and there are some beings I just don’t see being put down by that war, though whether or not they survived is another matter entirely. ‘Ok first things first, I need to contact that Ahuizotl’, I reached for my magic and paused. ‘No, not now, maybe when I’ve recovered and my magic is at full throttle, let’s just hope he doesn’t get himself killed in the meantime. It's better I focus entirely on getting back to full health’. Drawing upon my knowledge of the local topography I decided to go westward to where the river borders the forest, I had no solid measure of distances but since I wasn’t willing to risk flying in my condition it would be a few weeks of walking through the bush at most. My main concern is water since I doubt this puddle despite how big it is will serve me until I’m at full health, and I doubt I can depend on the ponies to provide rainfall enough to be of any significance so I’ll just have to improvise, and move along. My muscles aren’t all gone but I will need to stay active if I want to get back to my previous muscle mass, I certainly don’t look particularly unhealthy which could work in my favour to some extent, assuming I don’t meet anyone who knows what to look for, but dragons don’t build muscle like most other creatures, if you see a dragon that looks particularly buff, that dragon is undoubtedly a body builder. Dragons tend to have a base size if you will, this changes with age and can vary from dragon to dragon, and is influenced primarily by genetics. As a result of this the size of a dragon's muscles (barring extreme starvation, malnutrition or an extremely active lifestyle) are at a personal standard, but get stronger and weaker; denser and lighter depending on their lifestyle, and seeing as I’ve been missing my morning cardio for a little while now it’s natural that my everything has atrophied, but I’m in no condition to travel much less start building any significant muscle mass I need proper nutrients first, so my body can recover from the stasis. But my trap isn’t guaranteed to catch anything, especially since animals will start to avoid my campsite and the surrounding area. My magic isn’t fully recovered but I’ll need it to recover quickly. I have one magical construct already, I’ll need to make some that can hunt for me and get water when this puddle dries up.

‘Hmm how about something insectile, butterfly- no… bees sound good but… hmm hornets? Let's go with hornets.’ Dredging up what magic I could I ignited the runes across my hands and pressed them against the cave wall, focusing on the array I need the runes on my body reacted and started to engrave the necessary arrays onto the wall directly from my thoughts, by the time I was done rechecking the arrays for the umpteenth time and dropped my arms and accompanying concentration the migraine was back with blood in its eyes. I clutched my head, squeezed my eyes shut, and sunk to the ground before passing out... Again. I woke up to the sunset casting the final lights of day into my hollow, and several dozen meters of fine and intricate rune work. In the center of the cave was a blank square space ready for an initial catalyst. And there lies my next problem what to use, since this was only to be the initial catalyst, I could technically use anything seeing as it would only be needed until there was sufficient energy stored in it, metal or gems would be best, so would need to go back to the outskirts of the city and get some scrap metal before removing any rust and… I blindly reached down to the floor, grabbed the first decent sized stone I could reach, and chucked it at the empty square. Needless to say my aim was pitiful and it took more attempts than I’m willing to recount to get one in the square. When I did finally score that was followed by all my hard work starting to flow toward the stone and seemingly disappearing upon contact. Soon enough there was no evidence of cavemen, and my stone unfolded in the most peculiar way to reveal a stone hornet that couldn’t fly for shit. I watched as it crawled outside and out of my view before feeling the ambient temperature drop several degrees as my construct soaked up any available energy. Once it had enough I could turn it into what I call a proper magical construct, this process entails transferring all those runic arrays from the stone directly to the energy it’s currently storing up, think of it as writing on pure energy instead of paper or in this case, rock. This gives multiple benefits, chief of which is the ability of my constructs to clone themselves once they have accumulated sufficient energy, all the while looking and acting like a legit hornet. That rock golem is pretty much going to be the queen of a hive, and guess who’s the king… That sounded better in my head.

Now undoubtedly many of you are confused as to how I went from copying languages and releasing magic in waves to fend off perceived mental invasion to lying on a cave floor nursing migraines and struggling to draw squiggly lines with magic. Put simply, mum wasn’t as good as me with the second kind of magic elemental dragons could use, very few were, and they were generally the equivalent of a nerd in the fifties, not a pleasant existence I assure you. Anyways, The gist is this, the runes used to keep me alive did their jobs perfectly, they effectively paused time, that much is evident, sadly that’s not the best way to put someone in stasis great for inanimate objects and meat not so much living people, while you can pause the effects of time on the person, time tends to catch up once the spell is released, if you want to keep someone in stasis for an extended time, you slow down the effects of time to a minute fraction of a crawl as this allows time to pass without passing.

“…”

Yes I know that theory is crap, a draconequus that was neutral towards me explained it to me and that’s the best explanation I could derive from that lecture. One quickly learns not to try too hard to understand when they start to explain certain concepts, their minds are literally built to be on a different level. Mortal minds tend to get lost when draconequus preach passionately about anything we consider abstract… well that’s assuming they don’t like you, or are neutral toward you apparently.

“….”

“I wasn’t being poetic dumbass, I’ve seen Alicorns turn suicidally insane trying to understand them beyond a certain point. You want me to dumb it down for you more, fine then. People assume that time is a strict progression from cause to effect but, actually from a non-linear non subjective viewpoint it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... timey wimey stuff.”

“…”

I am aware I just quoted the doctor. The fact I did should make it clear I… sigh* whatever. Bottom line I’m wasting away and the bug is programed to stuff me in a chrysalis, so I can shed my skin in a sense. And before you ask, no dragons do not naturally shed their skin. The same nerds that get tormented generally go on to become doctors and other such respectable things, one of who figured out how to regrow limbs, heal decapitation (minus memory and higher brain function) and bring your age counter to zero by using your DNA to basically code you a younger version of your body, not smaller, just younger, you basically become a newborn version of your older self, all while a giant insect hive of your choice tends to your every whim. The last part being my own personal spin on the spell, I effectively removed the need for constant supervision, by having magical constructs initiate and maintain the spell but as I said before those hornets can do a lot of things. Hell they can make cement, he he, you should see the hives they make with the stuff. That’s not to say the society I ‘grew up’ in thought anything of it. If you weren’t a hunter, smith, fighter or some other kind of physical strength based profession you were likely to die in a few years. So much so that the guy who came up with the procedure was tortured and raped to death some time later for removing the infected claw of a hunter who claimed he was trying to cripple him out of jealousy. I ended up with his research though so I guess…

“…”

Um, yea, right, sorry about getting side-tracked. Yea so pretty soon I’ll be both safer and more vulnerable than I’ve been in a while. I just need to wait, eat more food to aid the process, and wait for my constructs to absorb enough ambient magic to actually do the procedure, which means I should probably put off my hike to the other side of the forest, indefinitely… this is going to be a painful couple of months isn’t it.

Author's Note

If you like the story so far leave a like and comment. They sustain me.

Thanks to my editor Hunter Steel for his help to make this story what it is.

This chapter was brought to you by DWK's Totally Legit Recap: "A Flurry of Emotions"