Chapter 3: DD1 Chapter 002 – Awake

Typhoeus was still sobbing quietly on the floor when the next group of adventurers cautiously made their way through the mouth of his cave. Like their predecessors before them, whose entrails were now strewn across the stone walls of his lair, this group was a team of five all levelled midway through their fourth tier of power. It was a slight variation on the standard composition with two warriors, a mage, a healer, and a rogue, making them well suited for a vicious close-quarters fight within Typhoeus’s lair. Still, it was a setup that he had faced many times before, and as he saw them step away from the harsh light of the day and into the relative darkness of his cave, he had to stop himself from reflexively trying to extend his claws and bare his non-existent fangs in challenge.

"Gods above, look what happened to Gustar’s team!" the taller of the two warriors exclaimed while shock and horror played out on his dark-skinned face. Looking at the scene, the adventurer tightened his gauntleted grip around his greatsword, and the well-wrapped leather creaked loudly in response. Eventually the human settled down and cautiously resumed walking forwards, while his vibrant green eyes scanned the darkness for signs of danger, and his party followed a few paces behind.

"You can’t blame yourself for this, Caeber. You offered to work with them to take down the Stunted Dragon. If his group had been willing to split the bounty ten ways, they’d likely still be alive," the healer said, stepping up behind the tall man to place a conciliatory hand on his heavily armoured shoulder. She then looked down and wrinkled her nose with distaste when she noticed that the hem of her patterned off-white robe had been stained a deep red from her brief journey through the blood-splattered cave.

"Or maybe that would simply be your spleen Enora is stepping on instead. You saw it fly out of here. The dragon barely looked winded," the rogue commented, slowly creeping forwards  to avoid stepping on any of the spilt gore that coated the ground. 

"I am? Gods! I think I'm going to vomit. This is so much worse than the caves with the slime mould!” the slender mage complained, her calm voice indicating there was very little chance of such an occurrence. She casually kicked the offending organ away from her feet and she held her runestaff out, pointed away from her chest.

"In what delusional reality of yours is this worse than the mould caves? If I recall, we had to shave your hair off afterwards just to get rid of the damned smell," the rogue continued. The man had paused in his exploration of the cave just to chastise the mage, and Typhoeus couldn’t help but notice how a flicker of contempt briefly passed through the otherwise jovial smile on his narrow brown face. 

"This ain't the time to bicker, children. There could still be danger ahead," said the shorter of the two warriors.

"While I agree the reports on the dragon's threat level must be massively underestimated for this to have occurred, I highly doubt that they could be so wrong to have missed a secondary threat. Everyone knows dragons are solitary monsters, too antisocial and stupid for anything else," Enora said astutely. The mage then raised her runestaff high overhead, and a spell was quickly cast. From the large irregular crystal set into the top of the arcane foci, a bright blue light was emitted which then spread until it suffused the large cavern.

"Bad reports or not, it's still a rutting dragon. Mark me, this is what overconfidence gets ye," the shorter warrior grumbled unsympathetically.

"Wait, is that a survivor?" the healer asked, her question morphing into a shout as she raised a robed arm out to alert the rest of her party to Typhoeus’s presence while he sniffled loudly on the cold wet floor.

All at once, the adventurers stopped their discussion and instead focused all of their considerable attention on the disguised dragon. The change in their attitudes was as instantaneous as it was dramatic, and their joviality was replaced with a stern professionalism that spoke highly of their intimate familiarity with death and violence. It was the first time his [Alternate Form] had been subjected to so much scrutiny, him having only used the skill in the past to better avoid humans rather than confront them directly. He felt his small human heart race within his chest, his breath hitched, and tears began to flow again, his previous bout of crying doing nothing to dampen this second outpouring of warm salty tears. As he sat there naked on the ground, covered in the blood of his own victims, he couldn’t help but quake in the face of his own anxiety. This pivotal moment would determine the trajectory of the rest of Typhoeus’s life, however brief that may be. If he was discovered, he would be forced into a fight he would surely lose, and if he was successful, then his plan would continue unimpeded—an altogether more terrifying prospect.

"Are ye alright, miss?" the shorter warrior asked, the man’s gruff frown morphing into a poor attempt at a welcoming smile that was filled with equal parts concern and compassion as he looked down at what must have been a truly pitiful sight. The man followed up his question by crouching low to the ground where he offered Typhoeus an outstretched hand, the chain links beneath his plated greaves clinking loudly amidst the relative quiet of the cave.

"Of course she's not alright. Look at her. She’s obviously traumatised," the rogue snapped.

"Stop staring, Riyoul," Enora reprimanded.

"Don’t look at me like that. You can’t blame me for looking she's so…" Riyoul said unapologetically, trailing off as his eyes continued to linger on Typhoeus’s human form.

"Aye, we all have eyes and can see her, ahem, gifts, but that doesn't mean ye have to be an ass and stare like ye've never seen a naked woman before," the shorter warrior said, retracting his hand as he looked over his shoulder to better criticise the rogue.

Typhoeus’s apparently not-so-average breasts had managed to create a lull in the adventurer’s conversation as he momentarily held their enraptured attention, or at least it seemed that way at first. The taller of the two warriors seemed to be having some kind of silent exchange with the healer, and it wasn’t until she gave him a subtle nod that the rest of the adventuring party let out a collective sigh of relief. They all visibly relaxed, lowering their readied weapons towards the ground.

He tried to stand up on his own two feet, but as soon as he did, he stepped on something slippery that squelched, causing him to stumble and once again lose his balance and returned unceremoniously to the rocky gore-soaked ground. His new body continued its involuntary sobbing while the dragon mentally cursed his new ridiculous proportions and all things that walked on just two feet. Typhoeus clenched his eyes shut as he sat there on the floor, trying to will the tears back into his eyes; he just needed to catch his breath so he could say something, anything to persuade the adventurers he was a real human being and deserving of their mercy.

Before he knew it, he found himself lifted up off of the ground and held close to the taller warrior’s heavily armoured chest; the cold metal chilled his vulnerable skin, but was largely preferable to the blood-covered floor. The high-purity adamantine in the warrior’s armour did much to soothe his nerves as it pressed firmly against him, and the smell of the metal blended pleasantly with the human’s natural scent. One of the adventurers must have draped something warm and soft over his bare shoulders, as against his better judgement, he allowed himself to be gently rocked to sleep.

When Typhoeus awoke, the moon was full, hanging low in the sky like the malevolent green creature that it was. He knew it was looking down on him, judging him for what he had planned to do over the coming decades, but what did Typhoeus care? He was a dragon, and the moon patently was not. He let out a soft yawn as he indulged in a long, cat-like stretch that stressed the tight muscles in his back pleasantly. While he was oddly surprised by how much he enjoyed the higher-pitched sound of his voice, he was also more than happy to see when he checked his status that he had been magically healed of all his wounds while he slept. 

 

 

Name: Typhoeus

Species: Human

Age: 18

HP: 310/310

SP: 310/310

MP: 3167/5040

Strength: 31

Dexterity: 31

Vitality: 31

Intelligence: 120

Willpower: 120

Charisma: 80

 

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The thick, fur-lined cloak that he had fallen asleep under had fallen off of his shoulders while he was stretching, and he quickly pulled it tighter around his body to ward off the cold before it could set in. He didn't strictly need to, given his relatively high vitality, but he wasn't used to sleeping without a bed of coins or thick scales to warm him, and the weight of the cloak provided some small amount of comfort.

The adventurers, and by extension him, were currently camped at the top of a gently sloping hill amidst the open wilds of the foothills, and judging from the stars, they were barely an hour's flight from his lair. However, at the paces that humans tended to move at they could very well be several hours or days away on foot. The camp was nothing much to look at, five tents arranged in a circle around a large campfire with a felled tree sliced into thin sections to serve as seating. He didn’t particularly like the idea of sleeping out in the open, since a cave was a clearly superior place to rest your head as the single narrow opening drastically limited the avenues of a potential attack, but for all the faults of a hill, at least the adventurers’ mage had laid down some passable wards to keep the wild creatures of the foothills at bay.

Typhoeus sat up, turning towards the sounds of the cracking fire, where he could see his 'rescuers' gathered around the roasting carcass of one of the many bearlike animals that made their home in the territory surrounding his lair. His eyes widened as he looked them over for the first time without the added distraction of his unwanted tears. The sheer quantity of powerful overlapping enchantments, not to mention their raging unbound auras, was almost blinding to him, and the churning mix of riotous energies threatened to overwhelm his perception skill. The number of dragon-slaying runes and wards that he could see in a single glance put all the other adventuring teams he had faced to shame, and he knew then without a shadow of a doubt he had made the correct call in avoiding this fight. 

Once again, he caught the rogue and the mage staring at him, and the two of them shared a conspiratorial look before focusing on the contents of their own plates as the mage's cheeks flushed crimson. As irritating as it was, he decided to simply put the unwanted attention down to the human obsession with the female form and his clearly superior craftsmanship as a dragon.

"Welcome back to the world. Here, take this—you must be hungry," the taller warrior said, his voice warm and friendly as he handed Typhoeus a thin, pewter plate heavily laden with a large slab of spiced bear meat and a side of wild vegetables that were native to the local area.

"Thank you, this looks nice," Typhoeus said earnestly. His voice cracked from lack of use, and he suddenly realised that he was famished. He completely disregarded the cutlery that was being offered in the warrior’s other hand, and he instead took the meat directly off of the plate. He tried and failed to stuff the entire slab into his mouth, but upon remembering that human jaws didn’t distend in order to accommodate larger mouthfuls, he resigned himself to tearing the meat into smaller, easier-to-swallow chunks. 

The steak was delicious, a little underdone but expertly spiced, and with his 31 strength it was no trouble at all to rip apart the tough meat with his hands and teeth. Oily juices dripped down his hands and chin as he enthusiastically devoured the offered meal, but as he was about to ask for more, he looked up to realise that the others were once again staring at him. With [Sovereign's Perception], he could easily pick out the hushed whispers of the mage, the rogue and the shorter hammer wielding warrior.

"Ain't never seen anyone eat a piece of meat like that…" the warrior whispered, his thick beard spattered with meat juices obscured the movement of his full lips.

"How long do you suppose the dragon kept her for?" Riyoul mused lazily while he twirled a knife between his deft fingers and leaned in closer to the robed mage whose face flushed with warmth in response.

"Why would a dragon keep a human anyway?" Enora asked. 

"Don't be dense, where do you think those dragon bloodline traits came from?" Riyoul stated.

"I thought those were just stories," she muttered, sounding uncertain.

Typhoeus nearly missed it, but when the Rogue had spoken his eyes flashed with disdain and he began to subtly pull away from Enora. The Mage had tried to hide the look of disappointment that appeared on her face by covering it up with her hand when she went to tuck away a stray lock of brown hair that had escaped from her tight bun.

"No, they're real enough. The poor lass, that thing had to be at least thrice the size of a Thesian charger," the warrior said, his furrowed brow heavy with concentration as he studiously watched the interaction between Enora and Riyoul.

"Do you think she's..." Enora started to say, but then trailed off, allowing for the crackling fire to fill the brief silence.

"Ask Mara. She’s the one who healed her," the warrior whispered back to her, his gauntleted hand awkwardly patting her on the knee as he attempted to reassure her.

The taller warrior to Typhoeus’s right shot them a disapproving look, causing their whispered conversation to come to an abrupt stop, then turned back to Typhoeus, where he offered the dragon a warm placating smile, his white teeth contrasting sharply against his dark ebony skin.

“You might want to slow down. Trust me when I say that I understand how being on the receiving end of Mara’s healing can work up an appetite, but you’ll make yourself sick at that rate," he suggested.

“How badly was I hurt?” Typhoeus asked, well aware of the answer, but also that the unclassed woman he was pretending to be wouldn’t have access to their status and be able to see their health. 

“Your injuries weren’t anything I couldn’t handle," the woman tagged as a healer, presumably Mara, offered after a moment's hesitation. “How were you injured? Did the dragon hurt you?”

“No, the dragon was relatively gentle, all things considered. It was the mage in the group before yours; he wasn’t particularly accurate with his spells, and I got caught by the edge of one," Typhoeus said, hoping the fact that the mage he had killed was quite sloppy with his spellwork would help sell the lie.

The taller warrior and Mara frowned, exchanging communicative glances in a way that was really starting to annoy Typhoeus. 

“Razmund was famed for his expertise with high arcana, though we did find a rather large faultline running straight through the control rune on his staff. Judging by its thickness, he probably overtaxed his foci fighting the dragon," Enora suggested, speaking up at an audible volume for the first time. “I hope you don’t think poorly of him. He was one of the greats, and humanity is all the poorer for his loss," she continued, making eye contact with Typhoeus

“Aye, Gustar’s team will be missed, heroes one and all," the shorter of the two warriors said. The man’s tone was solemn and his eyes remained downcast while he held his hand over his heart for a long moment.

After that, the camp was silent; only the crackling sounds of the burning campfire and the distant cries of wild animals could be heard during the impromptu moment of silence for their dead colleagues. Typhoeus didn’t know how to feel about the sober mood that had rapidly descended over the adventurers. He had never had to deal with the fallout of his own actions before, and he had always just assumed that the people he had killed were simply never missed or mourned. The adventurers’ sombre attitude regarding the other party's deaths showing them to be everything that he thought they weren't. 

"Now I understand that you've been through an ordeal and that you might not be feeling quite like yourself, but I want you to know that my name is Caeber, and I'm here to help you," the taller warrior said, breaking the silence. "I don't suppose you can tell me your name? And perhaps how the Stunted Dragon came to take you as a prisoner?" 

He felt his heart race with anxiety. Over the four long years it had taken him to concoct his plan, Typhoeus had painstakingly rehearsed what he was going to say, but Caeber's apparent concern had already unsettled his confidence. His inherited memories had taught him that human behaviour was supposed to be significantly more mercenary and antagonistic than this, something that he had always found easy to believe from the scant few interrogations that he had conducted on captured adventurers within his lair. The level of sympathy that they were showing for him was not something that he was prepared for, and he was worried he’d already made mistakes in his disguise as an unremarkable human woman. Fortunately, whatever missteps he had made so far seemed to be attributed to some kind of mental trauma that he had suffered at the hands of the 'dragon.'

"My name is Typh—" he said, barely catching himself in time "Typh the weak human, that is what he called me whenever he demanded I service him! I was claimed by the dragon a little over a year ago when he killed and ate my entire family along with the rest of the merchant caravan we were travelling with," he said, trying to keep a straight face at his brilliantly devised lie. "I have spent the last year as his servant, tending to all the physical wants and needs of the great drag—"

Typhoeus was abruptly cut off mid-sentence and scarcely able to breathe, Caeber having wrapped his muscular, steel-encased arms around him in a tight embrace. Fearing he was under attack, he hammered his tiny human fists against the back of Caeber’s plate armour, though his soft hands rebounded off the hard metal ineffectually. He could see that the healer Mara was noisily vomiting over the large man’s shoulder while the other warrior was gently patting her on the back. Riyoul, the rogue was shifting uncomfortably while Enora simply stared back into Typhoeus's eyes, her mouth slack-jawed and open.

"It's okay," Caeber said softly. "I’m sorry if you don’t want to be touched. It’s understandable, given what you’ve been through, but you're safe now. You don't ever have to go through anything like that ever again," he said, quickly releasing the dragon from the hug as he instead backed away, showing him his open palms. "I promise to you on my honour that I will see you avenged, and that the Stunted Dragon who makes these foothills his home will die by my hands.”

Typhoeus paused, unsure as to what exactly he had said to evoke such a visceral reaction, but eventually decided that it didn’t matter. The humans had bought his lie, and he was sure that he could live with the consequences. 

"I think I’d like to see that, Caeber," Typhoeus said with a wry smile, the prospect of eating such a high-level human at a later date exciting the young dragon. “But you’re right. I’d rather not be touched... if that is all right by you.”

Things gradually settled down after that, and Typhoeus was eventually able to get another slab of bear meat to eat, which he messily devoured again. This time, there was less blatant staring from the party when he went about licking his fingers clean. As the evening progressed, the adventurers got progressively looser with their words, especially after someone uncorked a bottle of spirits. Typhoeus tried his best to be circumspect as he took advantage of this unguarded moment to study them for any potential weaknesses. On the one hand, it was an enjoyable and enlightening experience to see how adventurers interacted with one another without the looming threat of danger. And on the other, Typhoeus was acutely aware all it would take was a single slip up for the friendly and welcoming adventurers to turn on him. 

The healer Mara seemed to take on a protective role around Typhoeus, deflecting questions and unwanted attention away from him, Enora seemed to be quite fascinated with the precise details of daily life with a dragon, something which earned herself numerous withering glares from Mara. Before the night was through, the two women had offered Typhoeus some of their spare clothing to go along with his new cloak. When none of it would fit over his larger bust, they ended up bullying Myorik, the smaller of the warriors, into donating a spare shirt and trousers. The man's clothes were entirely too large, his shirt coming all the way down to Typhoeus's knees, but it was infinitely better than his near-nudity. When it finally came time to retire for the night, Mara offered to share her tent with him, and when he went back to sleep in his borrowed clothes, he did so confident his plan was working.

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