I Guess I'm a Dragon Now (Part 1)

A New Skill

'Seriously... is this really happening right now?' Ergen thought to himself as his mother blasted the side of the cave wall with yet another stream of fire, turning the rock into lava before turning to look at him expectantly. And even though he might have been slightly complaining in his mind about the absurdness of it, Ergen was excited to see if he could breath fire as well. After all, what was the point of being a dragon if you couldn't roast your enemies?

Sucking air into his lungs, Ergen wheezed all of the air out of himself, getting nothing but a coughing fit at the end of his attempt as his mother showed him the process yet again. First, she breathed in the air. Secondly... she blew it out and it caught fire. Seriously, how was he supposed to follow this?!

On his second attempt, Ergen managed to shoot a booger  that fell a few feet in front of him, but again, nothing else happened as his mother appeared to somehow be getting impatient with him. They repeated the training throughout the day with no results until Ergen finally felt something. It started at the back of his throat and started growing with more and more power with each passing second. Quickly, he gathered all of the air that his lungs could carry before he finally released that power... which turned out to be only a simple sneeze. Though, it was a simple sneeze that made him do a complete back-flip from the force of it before covering half of the cave in a layer of what looked like ice. Some of the ice had gotten onto his mother as well and she growled in pain before shaking the ice off, nudging Ergen gently with her snout as he attempted to regain his senses.

Eventually he clambered back onto his feet and immediately started trying to breath ice again. He didn't know why he breathed ice instead of fire, but it was awesome and he wanted to master it... Plus, it gave him something to do instead of just laying around all day and waiting for his mother to bring home dinner.

After spending the rest of the afternoon and even some of the night practicing, Ergen was finally able to breath a small stream of what must have been liquid nitrogen or something. And while he wanted to practice more, his mother finally grew tired of his noisy attempts and pulled him back to her in the side of the cave so that they could sleep. Seeing as he couldn't resist her at all, he complied until he slowly woke up the next morning to find that his mother was gone again and that he had the cave to himself. So, what else would he do other than practice using his frost breath?

Taking in all of the air he could, Ergen finally figured out that there was almost like a second throat that he could use together with his normal one to breath out ice. Though as he continued a stream of frost now, it soon started to fade until he finally realized that the second throat was basically just like his saliva glands... maybe... It seemed to refill over time, but it also seemed to run out quickly when he used it, which he guessed ment that he shouldn't use it unless he really needed to, though that was sort of unfortunate as he just wanted to freeze everything in sight now that he had this new skill.

Waiting for his ice... thingy... to refill, Ergen started prancing around the cave until he accidentally knocked over another of his bone totems, making the rats that had been inside scurry away before he chased after them. While he wasn't going to eat them, he found chasing them rather enjoyable until his mother finally returned, regretfully with no dinner. That night seemed like a cold one with a snow storm raging outside, but Ergen felt warm while in between his mother's claws, at least until the next day when the storm cleared and those same claws that he'd slept in wrapped around him.

Without even having been woken up first, Ergen found himself being carrying out of the cave and over the forest as he guessed that his mother was going to take him hunting with her again. Not that he minded it because he enjoyed looking at the surrounding while she did this, and with his eyes becoming more developed with each passing day, he started seeing more and more until he eventually started seeing far better than the other living creatures... Or so he thought at least as he had no way to compare.

With the high peaks visible in all directions, the large forest that was within Ergen's mother's territory seemed to be surrounded by a mountain range with steep cliffs and treacherous passes all around it. All of those passes were certainly completely closed off thanks to the recent snow, and Ergen grew certain of this when his mother finally spotted some prey and dropped him in the snow, burying him completely before he jumped to the surface and looked around. The snow had to be at least four or five feet deep, otherwise the snow drift would have never covered him as his head stood at least six feet tall while standing on all fours. Though, that was assuming that the humans in this world shared the same height as the others. Otherwise, comparing himself to the human skeleton would have been pointless...

Thankfully there were no other creatures around him, and Ergen spent his time jumping through the snow banks and eating the frozen water in hopes that it would make his... he was going to start calling it an ice stomach from now on, fill faster. Though that didn't last long either until his mother soon flew back and collected him once more, catching him in the middle of the air as he was about to jump to another snow bank before heading towards where his next hunting target was. And he was suddenly thankful that she'd taught him how to use his breath attack early on as he really didn't want to mess with what she'd found this time.

Snarling in pain as half of it's body was completely seared by what Ergen thought was most likely the result of fire breath, a massive bear was backed up against a tree, eyeing Ergen's mother warily as it trembled from it's situation. But while the wolf from before had been immobilized, the bear still had all of it's legs in perfect working condition, making Ergen even more hesitant than he'd previously been before until his mother shoved him forward. Once again, he didn't have a choice. Though thankfully he had more tricks this time.

Filling his lungs full of air while slowly approaching the bear, Ergen released a stream of ice at the bear's head when it looked at him, causing the animal to let out a miserable groan of agony before eventually it stopped moving entirely. And right as Ergen finished his stream of ice, the bear's head suddenly exploded into thousands of icy red shards, making Ergen think that his breath attack was an incredible weapon for him before he moved forward and started eating the bear. He had to act fast as he knew from experience that his mother would soon stop waiting and take the rest of the carcass, and so he contented himself with just eating one of its four arms before letting her have the rest. Though, he did grimace inwardly as she didn't swallow the bear whole like she'd done with the others. She actually had to chew first before she grabbed Ergen and they were once again on their way to their cave. However, when Ergen finally saw the cave's opening, he discovered that all was not as it should be.