Luck be Damned

10

^^ Zara the Nature Dragon ^^

— Alice —

Hearing Lukira say that it was all starting, I instantly started to feed all of my spirits to my dragon, beginning with all the nature spirits, and then the water spirits and air spirits, because I was sure those went together, and then the earth spirits. I didn't add fire, because it already had fire, and honestly, everyone expected fire from a dragon, so something different might be a decent advantage. I hadn't found any lightning spirits yet, or weather spirits of any kind, and I couldn't make them, no matter what I'd combined, but honestly, I could worry about that later, as the warmth in my hands started pulsating, like a heartbeat. After a brief instant of doubt, I let the dragon eat my Bulette, and grinned at the wicked look it adapted to have, and the feeling of safety as the nigh-impenetrable shell covered every inch of my skin invisibly.

Buri and Lena chose two different eggs, apparently on instinct, and the other elven children came over, touching the two remaining eggs one at a time, before shaking their heads and walking away, until one of them stuck to the egg, and began crying tears of joy. The last one also was chosen, apparently, because he stuck to that one, and knelt like he was praying.

"Good, Good... five for five... Alright, children, listen up!!! These are your humans, and you will behave, or your father will eat you! They will offer you their spirits, and you will pull them into yourselves, and you will be Bonded to their Bloodlines until the last dawn!" Amoj leaned over the eggs and began lecturing them.

Immediately, I pulled the dragon spirit into me, and looked inside the egg with my mind. 'Would you like to be my partner, Little One?' I asked, when I felt something brush my consciousness.

The dragon that was in me was pulled out slowly, and then a new one, more real, took its place. I could feel a second body now, twitching in warm fluid inside a hard shell, a swift heartbeat slowly synchronizing with mine, and evolving as it adapted to the spirit it had eaten, and then I opened my eyes, as a crack appeared in the shell.

From the crack, a small white armored nose pushed through the shell, and then snorted amniotic fluid into my face saucily. "Not an It!" She grumbled at me.

I smiled and cleaned my face as the other eggs also cracked open. "Yes, my dear, I'm sorry... would you like to come out of that egg? The floor is quite warm, I think you'd find it very comfortable."

She seemed to consider it, lounging inside her egg, and then made a decision, clawing her way out and shaking the egg-sack off of her body, revealing herself fully now. She was eggshell white, perfectly albino, and she had the same vine/scales/fur that the spirit had had, and the bladed whip-tail of the spirit was also reproduced faithfully. She was about two feet tall, it seemed, and her wings were small and tattered, too small to carry her, no doubt. Her tail was currently unsharpened, thankfully, as she touched the floor cautiously, and then purred, curling around my legs and seeming to fall asleep.

I filled a vial full of the egg-sack fluid, and then some shards of the egg, pocketing it and then looking at the others. My dragon was, predictably, the biggest, as I'd given her a full dragon's spirit, but each of them was unique enough to be considered their own species, and as far as I could tell, they were all female, though I wasn't an expert in dragon-parts.

Buri's Dragon looked like a miniature Zaire, with shorter and smaller frills behind her ears and down her spine, while Lena's was clearly a Magma-Elemental, the spaces between her scales pulsing a deep golden-red color, and both were sleeping on the floor, like mine. The two elven girls' dragon's looked... suspiciously normal, like simple green dragon's, with leaf-shaped wings and horns.