Chapter Prologue - Unnatural Environment
Written By Dr Armstrong
-->Unknown Location, Unknown POV<--
Warm...
Wet...
It was warm, wet, damp, and moist.
Small and tight, uncomfortable yet just right.
Isolated within, the Beast inside calls out to its kin.
"...Chirp...!"
Like the chirp of a bird, yet not a response was heard.
Frustrated beyond belief, again he cried out in grief.
"Tweet...!"
Silence.
More silence.
Yet silent.
At this rate, the Beast would not have to wait long before becoming irate. There were no other options besides the obvious, so it seemed he'd have to get his claws callous.
~Crack~Crack~!
The hard yet brittle walls of his organic enclosure cracked and shattered. Gradually, his claws finally managed to break through before the eggshells were splattered.
"Grr..." He took on the sights before him as a light growl was released from the Beast. It was strange, to say the least.
It was entirely beyond what he had expected.
Not the homely lair of his mother, but a large empty room built like a bunker. It was...unnatural. At least for him, it was.
"TWEET!!!" Panic swelled up inside the Beast as his sapphire pupils danced around their lava pool-like eyes, desperately searching for any traces of replies.
But this time, there was no silence.
Indeed, a response.
"Subject 03 has spawned from the egg, Subject 02 is showing signs of distress due to this event." A voice responded with little to no emotion in its tone.
The Beast may not have completely understood the words that had been spoken, but it certainly sensed the intent and was utterly displeased.
...Was he being treated like an object...?
"Subject 01 has shown curiosity, whilst Subject 03 seems to have yet detected the other Subjects as of now." The voice yet again spoke with that strange and unknowable language.
But the Beast knew it, he could feel it in his bones, the voice was undermining him, putting shame on his name, comparing him to the likes of uniquely-coloured rock...
It was treating him with no respect, which should already be a fundamental right for his kind.
"Grr..." He growled in an attempt of provocation, to lure out the cowardly creature that hid behind that unknowable voice.
"Subject 03 is displaying obvious aggression, but has not acknowledged the opposing nature of 02 or the presence of 01. The cause is unknown," the voice spoke yet again in its primitive tongue.
"Graa...!" The Beast yelped out before climbing from its eggshell into the smooth concrete floor, his sharp claws grasping the ground with newborn vigour.
However, in the same time frame he had managed to free himself from the egg, a sudden and voracious hunger swelled up inside the infant Beast.
...Eat...Devour...Consume...Predate...
The Beast looked down upon his former prison, that of his own egg. Flowing down from the various cracks and holes, was a strange jello-like rancid substance with deep green colouring...
For the Beast, it looked strangely...appetizing.
The fury that had been built up from the voice left faster than the breezing winds as a not-so-subtle desire for an egg jelly breakfast replaced it, akin to how a Cuckoo bird would implant their child into another's nest, with the Beast's mind being the victim.
The baby Beast's maws opened up like a beartrap before chomping down on the rancid jelly, the putrid stench of which was like rotten eggs being mixed with burnt toast filling his olfactory cavity.
For any other creature, it would have been like foul shite being forced down their gullet, yet for the Beast, it was no different than a mouthwatering feast.
Little effort was required to break down the gelatinous substance with the Beast's sharp canines. It tasted like sticky pudding, yet it brought unfathomable comfort to the Beast's tummy.
The Beast momentarily halted in its first feast as he lifted his snout before admiring the jelly's reflective surface, which showcased his true appearance.
A reptilian-like creature covered head to toe in smooth light red scales with an almost pinkish underbelly. Adopting a quadrupedal posture similar to that of a feline with a long and pointed tail.
4 clawed fingers grew out from the Beast's forelimbs, with one of them being opposable thumbs. Although the hindlimbs only had 3 claws jutting out.
A pointed, almost axe-like snout hid the Beast's jaws, which were like a valley of thorns. While a pair of small, fish-like fins grew out from the sides, giving the Beast's face an exotic look.
A pair of white, almost brownish horns jutted out from his head. Similarly-coloured stubs decorated various parts of his face.
A long, spiked fin grew from behind the head, all the way to the tip of the tail, like an extension of the spine that acted like a sail.
However there was one part of the Beast's body that attracted the most attention; his eyes, which were of a unique sapphire colouring, the complete opposite of his dominating red colour scheme.
Overall, the Beast deemed himself to be quite the beautiful Dragon. Although he noticeably lacked the one iconic feature of Dragonkind.
The Dragon was without wings...instead, black talons grew out from the tiny bumps in his back where the wings should have been.
After fulfilling his narcissistic tendencies, the Dragon returned back to its gelatinous feast.
"...Hrr..." The Dragon was left disappointed after swallowing the very last drops of the jelly. He tried searching for more among the eggshells, yet there was none but empty space.
In the end, he was content with simply licking the remaining jelly that had stuck to his teeth. With a belly full of jelly, he glanced back at the eggshells.
The Dragon battered the eggshells with nothing but his own body until they shattered into smaller and smaller fragments, some even turning to ground-up dust.
He then gathered up all of the eggshell fragments into a small, meagre bedding, a Dragon's Hoard.
A Dragon's first treasure is their own egg, an instinct developed so that they can curb their materialistic desires without trying to foolishly steal from their own Mother.
After the creation of his Hoard, the Dragon looked around the room that he had been born in.
It was quite sizable by mortal standards, but for a growing, it was but a tiny prison.
There wasn't much in here, some Pranic lights on the enclosed ceiling, a small pond to the side, and various domestically grown greenery, primarily large patches of grass and weeds with the occasional pine trees...
His egg had been placed on a slightly elevated concrete platform, but aside from the platform, the floor seemed to be of genuine fertile dirt, even some pools of mud were present.
There were also some mounds of dirt that had been artificially elevated to resemble hills, terrain that his kind favored...
Looks like whoever built this enclosure took their time and actually built it according to a Red Dragon's basic needs.
But in his eyes, it was still poor real estate. It was a prison, after all.
Beyond the horizon was nothing, because there was no horizon. Pure white concrete walls served as the barrier between this prison and the outside world.
The light here did not come from the sun, there was only artificial light. There was not even a sky he could look up to as a concrete roof covered it from his sight.
There was also a noticeable lack of fauna, aside from the Dragon himself.
Such an Unnatural Environment...he hated it.
But it wasn't like he could do much for now, so for the current moment, he curled up into his meagre hoard and sleapt like the baby he was.
There was no danger in sight, so he got a comfortable sleep, a really, really long one at that...
A really long one.
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