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

Sera

If someone had told her just a few days ago that she would be attempting to explore a monster infested dungeon with her dragon nemesis fighting alongside her, Sera wouldn't have believed them no matter how much alcohol she'd consumed. However, regretfully, she now had to admit that neither she nor her fellow mercenaries would have gotten very far without him. Chimeras were lurking around every corner in this place, and she was sure that all of them would have died by this point if Ergen hadn't been able to see them before anyone else and catch them by surprise with the long reach of his tail. Even now, he was walking in front of Sera and the other mercenaries as he cleared the path for them, though she didn't mind it so much as she wasn't in a hurry to face another of the monsters again.

Shuddering as she remembered the battle with the first chimera, Sera could still remember how the creature had charged directly through their mage's barriers before stinging everyone so fast that no one could actually follow the movements of the stingers. Both arrows and magic were ineffective against their exoskeletons, and only spears had seemed to do anything before Sera had suddenly found herself all alone in what had once been an entire company of mercenaries. Thankfully her comrades had weakened it enough so that the creature was limping and out of most of its poison, though that still hadn't stopped it from stinging Sera as well before she somehow caught it's stinger with her free arm and was dragged through the air towards it as the stinger retracted. It was then that Sera managed to get above the chimera and stab the weak spot just before the creature's head, ending the fight almost immediately as she severed its spinal cord. However, she would have died then and there thanks to the poison already in her body if Ergen and Rae hadn't arrived when they did. Though, if they'd shown up sooner, then the massacre of mercenaries wouldn't have happened in the first place...

"Is it just me, or are there more of them now than when we first entered the nest?" Rae asked as Ergen killed another two chimera, though these had been much smaller than those that they'd been seeing up until this point. The creatures were getting smaller and smaller the deeper in the dungeon that they traveled, and Sera was willing to bet that they were approaching the center of the nest before they finally saw it. After so long of walking through the web covered hallway, they'd finally arrived at the next room and hopefully the end of the dungeon as Sera didn't want to spend any longer in this place. Though just as before, it's entrance was covered in webs before Ergen blasted it with his frost breath and they were able to continue. And when he did, none of them were expecting to see what they saw just past the wall.

With many columns in the center of the chamber having fallen, only the support columns on the outside of the room were still standing as there was a massive hole in the ceiling that must have led outside of the dungeon as it was allowing light from the moon above them to shine down. Thankfully, the scattered torch crystals were still shining as well, illuminating the floors and most of the walls, which was shocking as most of them had been knocked down from their originally positions.

However, it was strange in the fact that there were no chimeras in the room at all, or at least it didn't look like it as Ergen led the way forward. As they walked, Sera along with everyone else looked up at the massive hole in the ceiling once they passed underneath it just to make sure that there wasn't an ambush waiting for them before they continued walking to the next door. Though again they were surprised as there didn't seem to be another door as they instead reached the end of the dungeon. There, they found a giant torch crystal hanging from the ceiling with what looked like an old sarcophagus laced at the center of a small side chamber, and several of the mercenaries rushed forward with a few laughs of eagerness as they must have thought that they'd reached their goal.

"That's weird... and here I thought that there would be a nest full of eggs or something in this room..." Rae commented from the top off Ergen's head as she rejoined him, and Sera couldn't say that she blamed her as she'd expected the same thing. In fact, there really should have been a nest here with how many chimera had been in the dungeon, and the only reason that Sera could think of for there not to be was that these arachnid chimera weren't hatched from eggs, but rather birthed directly from a...

"Gather everything of value that you find and get to the exit, quickly!" Sera shouted an order, apparently forgetting her status as a 'former' commander as she moved forward to join the other mercenaries.

"What's wrong Sera?" Rea asked from the top of Ergen's head.

"Since there are no eggs, that means that these things have been birthed naturally, and I severally doubt that we've been fighting adult chimera as we haven't encountered anything truly small!" Sera quickly explained her reasoning as she rushed forward and started helping several of the other mercenaries push the sarcophagus's lid off of the rest of it.

"So... we haven't found the adults that have been mating yet?" Rae asked in confusion.

"No! It means that there's a-" Sera was just about to finish before they succeeded in removing the lid and something moved from the inside of it. Looking down, Sera was shocked to see that what looked like a rusted old sword had somehow flown through the air on it's own accord until it started gently hovering over her open right hand. Though her find didn't seem to hold that much attention at the moment as Sera looked up to see the pales faces of all of the mercenaries that had turned around. One of them was even pointing in Ergen's direction, and Sera turned to finally see what they had all been staring at only to pale herself.

Having been almost unnoticeable at first,  a clicking sound could be heard as dirt fell from the giant hole in the ceiling. Something large blocked the moonlight from entering the room, though thankfully the light from the torch crystals were still there to reveal four enormous arms slowly reaching into the room and grabbing hold of several of the support columns before pulling the rest of the body through. And as the creature started to enter the room, it's head slowly made an appearance, revealing that it was almost completely flat in the shape of a manta-ray before the rest of it's body finally fell from the ceiling to reveal that the bottom-half of the creature was that of a giant centipede. It's tail split into three separate stingers that all appeared to be at least twice as long as the original body, and now that it was out in the open, it started sniffing around the room before finally finding Ergen first and then the mercenaries. As it spotted them, it's flat head suddenly split open in six directions, revealing thousands of razor sharp teeth with eight tongues that all swirled around like tentacles in it's mouth.

"It's the brood mother!" One of the mercenaries yelled in fear, though his voice was soon drowned out by a ear-piercing screech that seemed to shake the entire dungeon.