“At the roof of the cosmos rise the Dragon Peaks, titanic mountainous ranges that pierce the firmament of creation. This realm, the Dragon Eyrie, is the cradle and crucible, the sanctum and battlefield of all dragonkind. This is where broods of every hue claw their way from shell to slaughter, their first breath a defiance to immortals and kings alike. 

Dragons are no mere beasts. They are dominions clothed in scale, empires made flesh, heirs of fire whose wings carve the skies and whose claws have raked upon the bones of worlds. Their might has toppled kingdoms, silenced vast armies, and humbled civilizations; their fury is written in the ruin of continents. They are sovereign predators, apex creatures who stand at the top of the food chain in the multiverse.

Through ages uncounted, when empires withered into dust and gods fell silent in their heavens, the dragons endured. They are a people of flame and fang, of majesty and hunger, bound to no throne but their own dominion. Their peaks cast shadows over stars as mountains over anthills, their roars still shake the pillars of creation, and their wrath is a terror that echoes to every known corner of the cosmos.”

The cave stank of brass blood and smoke. Artorius leaned against the wall, ribs screaming with every breath, his vision clouded at the edges. The Dragonne’s corpse lay cooling behind him, its eyes dimmed to stone, its ruined body a monument to how close he had come to death. He could not linger. The Nest would not allow it. Already the shadows shifted beyond, he felt the weight of unseen gazes pressing in.

He needed more power. He needed more than the feeble strength and stubborn will he had. His thoughts turned back to the Hatchery Fields.

The memory of the place still haunted him, the nightmare that crawled and broke free, the eggs splitting open, yolk steaming in sulfurous air, newborn drakes shrieking and tearing into one another. But he remembered, too, the yolk’s shimmer, the heat of it on his skin when it splashed across him. He remembered how even his rawest wounds had felt steadier afterward.

The dragons were born of fire and hunger. Their blood was poison, but their yolk was life. So he had to go back and he did just that. 

The Fields stretched before him like a battlefield of broken shells and boiling pools. In the distance, he saw them — the newly born, already locked in duels of dominance. Scaled titans of varying sizes crashed into each other with enough force to split stone. Others, much more grotesquely and larger, towered like siege beasts, wings half-formed, jaws crackling with varying colored flames. Sparks and smoke marked their battles, their roars shaking the air.

Closer, on the ground he found what we were looking for as it was littered with failure. The broken and defeated crawled away into corners and shades licking their wounds. The malformed hatchlings cried out weakly, their wings and limbs crumpled, their jaws broken, their eyes weeping molten tears. Others limped, their scales thin as parchment, already bleeding out into the floor.

Artorius crouched low, skirting the edge where the shadows lay thickest. Every step was a gamble. One stray gaze from a healthy, powerful hatchling, and he’d be torn apart. But desperation had sunk its teeth into him sharper than fear. He moved like a scavenger among giants.

The first malformed wyrmling hissed at him, dragging itself forward on twisted claws. He drove his jagged spear through its throat, the motion clumsy but final. A chime whispered across his vision: [You have slain a Iron Drakeling — Lv. 1]

Another limped toward him, one wing dragging behind like rotten cloth. Its bite scraped his arm, drawing fresh blood, before he crushed its skull beneath a stone he had found. [You have slain a Sulfur Wurmling — Lv. 1]

The Nest seemed to watch him feed on weakness. He did not care. He was too broken for pride. At last he reached what he sought, the remains of a shattered egg, yolk still steaming within its shell. He dipped trembling fingers into the golden ichor and brought it to his lips. It burned.

Fire slid down his throat, seared his stomach, licked across his wounds like a cruel caress. He fell to his knees, clutching his ribs, his body convulsing as if the yolk sought to remake him from within.

The pain ebbed into a strange heat. The bleeding slowed. His muscles felt tighter, as though threads of fire were stitching them together. The agony remained, but now it sharpened him instead of drowning him.

When he rose, his legs no longer trembled as before. His vision steadied. The pain at long last faded. The Nest still threatened to devour him whole, but for the first time since entering, he felt he could stand without immediately falling apart.

In the distance, two colossal hatchlings collided: one a black-scaled brute, the other a scaly one whose roar split the air like thunder. Their duel cracked stone and shattered eggs around them, the ground trembling beneath his feet. He knew he could not face such things. Not yet.

But he could take from the broken. He could build, piece by bloody piece.And so, moving like a carrion bird at the edge of a battlefield, Artorius hunted.

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The Fields seethed with life and death, yolk boiling in sulfur, hatchlings shrieking as they tore each other apart. Artorius crouched near the fringe, blood still fresh on his hands, breath raw from the drakelings he had culled. He thought himself unseen.

Then he felt it. A stillness. Not silence, the Nest never slept but a pocket of quiet amid the storm. His eyes caught movement: a figure emerging from broken shells. Not a beast, not a malformed creature, but upright, balanced, refined, and watching him closely.

The hatchling was like him, humanoid in shape but much more draconic in nature and bug-like. Scales gleamed faintly along its jaw, shoulders, and arms, white bronze that shimmered faintly in the red mist. A helm of scale and bone crowned its head. Its eyes glowed low, like embers at the bottom of a dying fire. In its hand was a jagged shard of obsidian, threaded with veins of molten gold, glowing faintly in the dusk.

Image: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/32510428556217895/

It did not speak. It tilted its head. Once. As if curious. Then it moved, all he got was a system prompt before it was upon him. [Dragon Lancer — Level 5]

Before it even reached him, its lance seemed to flex with a serpent’s whisper, elongating until it hissed through the mist. The first thrust came from twenty paces away. He barely got his make-shift spear up in time as the lance snapped outward like a striking spine, the tip piercing through the stone wall where his head had been. 

The weapon retracted with a clang that echoed like laughter and he stared at the weapon in shock. “What on earth is that?” he asked, not expecting an answer and not getting one as the creature lunched at him again. 

The Dragon Lancer moved with a rhythm unlike beasts. Its strikes were not wild, but measured and to make matters worse its weapon came from an impossible direction — from behind a shell, from above, from the side. The weapon’s shaft warped and curved mid-flight, extending and coiling like a living serpent. 

Artorius did his best to defend as sweeps of the lance came his way, each one forcing him back inch by inch. Sparks screamed when his spear met the strange creature’s lance. 

They moved together like dancers in a death-song. Step, strike, counter. His spear darted like lightning, frantically protecting him. The lance fell like thunder, sparks lit their faces, ash swirled around them. Every impact cracked the stone underneath. Every miss carved scars into the Hatchery floor.

The ground cracked beneath each impact of the creature he dodged, it was as though the weight of the weapon was more than metal. Artorius bled freely whenever the lance grazed him. His crude weapon splintered under the onslaught. Every strike from the lancer creature left his arms shaking, his ribs screaming, his vision narrowing.

This was no scavenger like him or a simple beast. It was a hunter, a great predator, a rival. He didn’t know why, but deep down inside he believed it was created by the nest to counter him and defeat him.

The creature finally got the opening it was looking for as his crude spear could not hold on any longer and shattered in half. He could only look at his broken weapon as the Lancer’s next attack struck true. The lance extended and curved midflight, hooking behind Artorius’s arm and pinning him to the wall. Pain flared white-hot as the weapon twisted, spearing through muscle. 

The Dragon Lancer advanced slow, regal, inevitable and with each step the lance shortened back into its grip. He screamed, half in rage, half in fear. And then with no choice he let a Command rise to his throat. His voice burned raw as he spat the word, hoarse and bloody: “Kneel.”

The strange creature shuddered and froze mid-step, knees buckling as if unseen chains had bound it and its ember-eyes dimming for a heartbeat. For one terrible moment, even the hatchlings in the distance ceased their fighting. But the cost was agony — he felt his throat tearing as blood flooded his mouth. Still, he rose, grabbing hold of the spear in his trembling hands and dragged it out. 

Ignoring the gaping wound in his shoulder, light surged along the jagged edge of his makeshift spear. Not fire, not mana but something else that was greater. Heroic Blow. The strike came down like judgment.

However the strange being did the unthinkable, getting out from under his command it struck out against his blow which he thought was foolish until it activated its own skill.

Its eyes flared, molten veins racing across its body. The lance came up not to block, but to invite. His own attack came back rebounding with the same vicious energy he unleashed upon it. 

The spear split in his hands. His arms screamed with shattering pain. He was flung across the cavern like a rag doll, his back cracking against stone. Blood sprayed from his mouth. His own ability had been twisted, returned to him as punishment.

The lancer advanced, lance humming with stolen light. For the first time since he had arrived in this Nest, Artorius felt the bone-deep certainty that this was not a trial. It was an execution.

He lay gasping, chest torn open, weapon ruined. The humanoid dragon creature loomed, ember-eyes blazing, lance raised for the killing thrust.

Desperation birthed cunning and a willingness to sacrifice. Artorius did not rise. He rolled. Not away, but into the strike. The lance tore through his side, ripping flesh, spilling blood — but his hands closed around the shaft. He locked it against his ribs, screamed through the pain, and dragged the lancer down with him.

They crashed into a shattered egg. Yolk and blood hissed together, burning, volatile. The lancer twisted, trying to wrench the lance free. Artorius didn’t give it the chance as he bit down on his own scream, seized the jagged end of his broken spear, and rammed it over and over again into the creature.  

It weakly tried to resist, but he was ruthless, already used to pulling out weapons from his body he tore the knight’s lance out of his shoulder with bloodied hands, and forced it upward beneath its helm driving it with every shred of pain and fury left in him.

The sound was not of triumph, but of collapse. The creature convulsed once, ember-eyes blazing, then dimmed into ashen dark. The body slumped, pinning him beneath it. Heavy. Final. The System whispered in the silence: [You have slain Dragon Lancer — Lv. 5]

Artorius collapsed beside the corpse, blood soaking yolk and stone, gasping through torn lungs. His hand still gripped the lance that had nearly killed him. His body screamed, every nerve alight. It had not been victory. It had been survival bought with blood. But he still breathed and the Nest had lost one of its champions.

Also to add to this silver lining he finally got a message saying: Congratulations! You have leveled up.

Class: [Storybook Squire] has reached level 1 

Stat gains: +1 Str, +1 Con, +1 Dex, +1 Char, +1 Luc!

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Author Note: Sorry for being gone had to deal with a whole bunch of nonsense from the website moderators.