________________

The alligator rested, and prepared, jaws half-open to cool himself better. The spider had gone back to feeding on the cave deer, though its glittering eyes remained locked on Dragon, watching him. He watched it right back, calm confidence overcoming him as he prepared.

He had to focus his mind, focus his indignance, his anger. He had to soothe his body, rest it, and then fill it to the brim with magic. He had to--

Suddenly the spider sprang at him, and he blinked. He had not been prepared, at all, but his maw had been open, and touching the interior of an alligator's mouth was like stepping in a trap. He himself had no time to consciously react as his jaws lurched forward and closed, and he felt the thrilling sensation of cracking carapace and cool spider blood fill his mouth. He reacted instinctively, thrashing his entire body, twisting and cracking and ripping at the arachnid.

The spider made a noise, a sort of shrieking hiss, and Dragon found himself holding half its carapace and several legs in its mouth as the other half of it, five legs still intact, bolted back away. It sagged over the cocooned deer, staring at him again as if wondering what had just happened, but he could see it slowly bleeding out.

Smugly triumphant, he threw his head upward and gulped down the spider's broken pieces, ignoring the prickling of the pointed hairs.

________________

________________

After hanging and resting awhile longer, staring at the spider as it stared horrified back at him, Dragon made a realization.

I can melt those webs without actually setting them on fire...

And he could. He remembered the waves of shimmering, searing hot air he could emit from his jaws: not true fire, but boiling heat. He hadn't had much use for it since learning that he could actually belch flame, but this, he knew, might be the perfect application. He could melt the web without trapping himself in a burning cocoon.

He turned, carefully--glancing back at the spider now and again to be sure it wasn't coming toward him--and opened his jaws, the boiling heat of his gullet sending burning exhales of air forward.

...It was working! The alligator half-grinned to himself, and kept on applying searing heat in spots, melting away the cocoon slowly, carefully, bit by bit.

Eventually he felt it give way, and he dropped down, hitting the marshy ground below with a thud.

Then he looked up, peering at the severely-damaged cave spider and its dead deer prey. Many Gembound, for example those with common sense, would have probably taken this opportunity to turn and flee.

His thoughts weren't of running, though; he was a predator. He immediately wondered to himself:

Now, how can I kill that? And steal its food, too?

Never mind that he was already tiring from casting--or that his back was now burned by melted spiderwebs.

No; he wanted to eat.

________________

________________

Triumph gripped him. His maw slowly opened, and this time he could see the glinting orange of flames reflected in the spider's eyes. It welled up within, boiling inside him, burning forth--searing his throat with agony but he didn't care, not now.

Flames roared forth in a devastating blast, engulfing the entirety of the web, the cocoon and the spider in one hissing "whoomph." The spider began shrieking and hissing (or was that just the sound of steam escaping from its carapace?) as it scurried frantically away--then fell, curling, in a black twist of smoldering limbs, fire still licking at the spiny hairs.

The web collapsed, bit by bit at first and then suddenly and all at once as the structure gave, the cocooned deer hitting the ground with a thump.

Dragon wanted to keep going--he wanted to step forward, head swinging from side to side like a living fanged flamethrower--but it hurt, and he stopped, shoving his head down and into the swamp water to quell the pain.

The hiss of steam rising from his superheated maw eclipsed all else, and for awhile he stayed like that, triumphant and recovering. A few ...somethings, smacked against his face, and a roil of cool air swirled around him, carrying the mist with it.

As if summoned by his blasts of flames, it had begun to rain.

________________

________________

It had taken him some time--hours, in fact--to drag both the dead spider and the cocooned, dead deer to the offering pile. Longer still, in fact, because of the rain; it smattered over his carapace, dripping down and soothing his burns (when they didn't sting on direct impact), but it also made the landscape somehow alien and unfamiliar.

Instead of pale and drifting mist, he had to work through the sheets of falling, splashing water, squinting through them as he dragged his prey. What was going on? He shrugged it off, not paying it much mind. But he found himself, several times, making wrong turns; he nearly fell into the cave rat pit once, staggering right at the edge and barely pulling back.

Still rats in there, too, he noted to himself wryly.

Finally he made it to the offering pile, and here he circled, looking it over one last time. The rain made it more dramatic, he decided. Perfect for making the offering, at last.

He took his time in dragging the charred cocoon up to near the top, though he kept it at the pile's back; this was more to keep it in place rather than to give it any place of prominence.

The spider, though--he was proud of that, and so he dragged it up and hooked its limbs somewhat over the wings-spread bat, adding it to the gruesome display.

Then he turned, and launched himself off into the water with a splash, paddling out until he could turn and face back toward it. He tread water, floating, eyeing it over. Finally, after several weeks of this, he nodded.

It was ready.

The alligator swam back to shore, his mind working quickly. He would rest, and then, he would call upon Aquarian.

It was time.

________________

________________

He woke up some hours later, his sluggish metabolism finally shrugging off the last of the cave spider's poison. He yawned, first, and then dragged himself to both his piles, looking them over.

He'd get something to eat, then come back and try to call on Dad. But first, food; he wanted to be both rested and strong. Anything else, he felt, would be weak--wouldn't be worth Aquarian's time.

It was still raining, he noticed, as he slipped off into the marsh with a quiet splash. This was odd, and left the marsh's surface pockmarked with constant plinks of water striking it. Strange. The mist seemed thicker in places, thinner in others, as if it were more volatile now that the cave's weather had changed. It drifted faster, roiling and even spinning here and there. It both put him ill-at-ease--

It's too fast, it's unpredictable, it's not how it's supposed to be, I don't like it.

and at the same time brought some sort of strange thrill with it.

It's like a storm, it's like it's alive, it makes me feel more alive.

It was like being surrounded by a living, breathing, ever-shifting thing.

The alligator made his way down into the marsh, then came up along the shallows along one of the more distant shores. It took nearly an hour of slow and steady cruising--most of his mind on the rain and the fog--before he finally found what he was looking for: fish. He drifted up slowly, jaws open, trying to sneak up on them as they flicked about and fed from the silt at the bottom.

At length he thrust his head down, snapping one up, snatching it with a lucky, skillful bite. He bit, at first--crushing its skull with ease--then burped up just enough fire, just long enough, to cook it. Then he swallowed it down, revelling in the taste of the cooked cave fish.

Damn, they were good.

After a couple more hours' hunting and a few more fish, he turned and made his way back to the offering pile--excitement speeding his way.

________________

________________

This is it.

The young alligator circled his offering pile--more like a pyre, in places--twice, eyeing it over carefully. The rain was still falling, but that would just make it more suitably dramatic, he felt--the same as the roiling mist that came and went and almost seemed alive.

It was a place at the edge of the Heart of Cetus, where the black swamp water met the thick clumps of reeds where they shoved forth from the mud. The grass in a wide swathe around the pile was flattened, charred, so as to make the pile clear to see.

On one side was the pile itself. It was a hulking mound of meat some two meters tall and several wide; the stuff at the bottom was quite decomposed, liquified even in places. At the top the meat was fresher, some killed today or the day before. There were a good number of rabbits, lesser Gembound deer (their bioluminescence faded), mice, rats, hook-toothed cave rats (and judging by the matted blood on their mouths, many had put up a good fight), fish, blind cave fish (some cooked, since Dragon had found they'd tasted better that way), one Gembound deer that had been dismembered, another deer corpse that glowed a soft yellow-white (courtesy of Eve the crow, who had 'turned it on,' aka Baubled it), and more. Heck, near the top there were even cave bats, and one half-eaten, heavily-charred cave spider, as well as its previous prey, a cooked, cocooned cave deer.

Some of this meat was partially-eaten, some charred to varying degrees, some pristine. All in all it would, Dragon hoped, prove to be a mouthful or two for Aquarian, and hopefully enough to make a suitable offering. He had, after all, spent weeks collecting it--though he hadn't quite considered the effects of time.

As a result, the decomposition of the bottom of the pile let out an utterly rancid stench that filled the marsh for some way in every direction, overpowering even the normal reek of decay. It was probably this that had led to the vast number of rats and cave rats on the pile: scavengers coming from all over Cetus to check out the smell of carrion, only to be killed and added to the offering.

To one side of the pile sat a smaller, second one, an offering of a different sort. Here sat a glowing rock, small but bright, again a gift from Eve--magically infused with Light. As a result, the entire area glowed, which since it was filled with corpses, became rather grotesque. Beside and behind it lay a number of gems that dragon had plucked from his prey or found lying about; many were dull, lusterless and empty of their magic. Others still glimmered, warm with the faint promise of life still to be taken from them. There was also a now-lightless Light Orb he'd pulled from a tunnel wall after a great deal of climbing and gnawing, lying dormant beside the rest. Scattered around it all, like a strange frame of a glittering nest, were discarded pieces from gemstone eggs that Gembounds had hatched from and left behind. All in all it was something like a raven's gathering of shiny objects more than anything, and it would have been likely near-worthless if not for the golden collar set idly at one end, leaned up against the stones. The crimson cape behind it was tattered, stitched with golden threading, and hanging slightly into the mud, but it was still intact, and still recognizable for what it was.

Dragon circled these two piles, these offerings, and finally, he nodded to himself. He slowly clambered to the top, and focused, closing his eyes for a long moment and taking deep, calming breaths, feeling the heat blooming and swelling within his gut.

Finally he opened his jaws, and his eyes, both bright with glimmering fire. A plume of crackling flame--not nearly as long as he'd have liked, but hopefully visible from within the water nonetheless--spewed forth into the air, somewhat dampened by the rain but briefly lighting the whole of the offering in a guttering, lurid glow.

"AQUARIAN!" Dragon yelled, as loudly as he could--and it was almost more a hissing roar, now, than a squeak--"I HAVE AN OFFERING!"

Dragon scurried down the pile, scrambling to shore beside the shiny offering pile and away from the meat, so as not to be swallowed up. And then he waited, the rain splattering over his skin, peering through the mists and over the black water expectantly.

________________

The minutes following Dragon's beckoning were long and quiet. Nothing stirred; no birds, no cave rats, not even the surface of the water had moved. The jungle room was silent, as it seemed all eyes would fall upon Dragon at the top of his sacrificial pile.

The surface would suddenly explode as a massive beast launched himself from the marsh. Long, coiling body seemingly burst free from the water, diving up and then down towards the pile with gaping jaws. Dragon has approximately three seconds to move before he is devoured along with the rest of the pile.

________________

Very few beings have ever heard an alligator scream.

But that is exactly the sound that came from Dragon. Having already moved aside from the pile before waiting in silence, he nonetheless realized, as Aquarian breached back into the cave, that he had desperately miscalculated the water-dragon's size.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!" he shrieked, scrambling in a young alligator's scurrying gallop to quickly get out of the way.

It crossed his mind that it was a very good thing that he'd moved the shiny-pile away from the meat-pile. It also crossed his mind that he should thank Eve for suggesting it--or whatever she'd done that had made him think of doing it.

Into the mud he went, some distance away, before turning to stare up with wide admiring eyes at Aquarian, his face dripping with rain and his little reptilian heart pounding with fear.

________________

In the blink of an eye, the rancid pile of decaying bodies that Dragon had accumulated was snapped up in the massive jaws of the monster. Aquarian dove down, closing his jaws over the stinking collection of dead bodies, taking with it a mouthful of mud and debris. He pushed himself back up again, stretching his long body towards the ceiling as he gulped down the sacrificial pile. Akin to a bird swallowing a large meal, the beast took several seconds to pile it down his throat, but once it had cleared he blinked and slowly turned his head, seeking the one that had called him. However large Aquarian's eyes were, they were primed for vision underwater. The lenses in his eyes made it difficult for him to distinguish the alligator hiding in the mud nearby. What he did see, however, was the nearby collection of shiny treasures.

Aquarian slowly brought his head back down towards the shore. The creature's massive skull hovered over the treasures the alligator had brought, but his attention was wholly consumed by the gilded collar laying in the mud nearby. Aquarian blinked slowly and slithered closer to it. There, he tilted his head, examining the thing with one eye. The slow blinking of his eye was captured in the reflection of the golden collar. For the moment, Aquarian was entranced.

________________

Dragon stared up in utter awe as the creature gulped down his entire offering, glowing deer included. It reminded him of when he gulped fish down, only on a much, much, MUCH larger scale.

The young alligator kept watching, and only when Aquarian had lowered his head and was peering at the shiny-pile did he scurry back forward, coming close. Where the meat had been there was only an oozing bowl in the mud, filling with swamp water and reeking of decay. Dragon spared it barely a glance.

"...Dad?" he asked quietly, then quickly added, "I found things. For you. 'Cause I have questions." He had SO MANY questions, but now that he was face-to-face, or rather face-to-fin (he was too small to really reach Aquarian's face) with the beast, he couldn't really remember his words. He tried, nonetheless, stammering and stuttering, his words falling over one another like water over stone.

"I wanted to know if--if I can b-be as big as you and how and what the thing is in Eridanus in the water because it looked at me and it was gonna eat me maybe and how do I get really big? And are you my dad and am I a dragon how can I be a dragon, and what's a Ne-.. Ne-... Nemean and is Ghanyarah my brother and what betrayed you and--... And... I want to be the BIGGEST THING and the BIGGEST DRAGON," he finished, blinking at Aquarian, oblivious to the fact that he'd probably interrupted the enormous creature's perusal of the offerings. And oblivious to all else, really, just staring up in utter awe at the enormous creature, eyes bright. Then, with a sudden surge of inspiration, he added, "I want to know EVERYTHING!"

________________