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

Alone

It had been over five days since Ergen had gone hunting last, and his mother still hadn't gotten any better. He looked at her wounds now in disgust as he could see the clear signs of decay happening inside of them. They were almost all infected, and she was getting worse and worse by the day... and it was at this time that Ergen knew that she wouldn't be surviving for much longer. But still, she was his mother, and Ergen was determined to stay with her until the end. Which ment that he needed to go outside of the den and hunt again, which would prove difficult as the foxes he'd found earlier had found new den somewhere else after he'd killed his third one.

Now, he needed to find something else to hunt, and it wasn't going to be easy seeing as the snow had continued to fall until the drifts were well over three times his height. Every small creature in the forest had hidden themselves away from both the snow and the larger predators, which seemed to be more active for some reason now that there was a snow cover. Going outside was dangerous, but it had to be done. If not now, then later when they were weak and starving... no, it had to be now.

Taking a deep breath, Ergen left his den while slowly scanning the outside, looking for any monsters that might be waiting for him to come out before he dashed across the small clearing and headed for the treeline. After he reached it, he stopped before he grew too far away from his den in order to listen and see if anything was chasing after him, though there was nothing. There were no new tracks in the snow, nothing crawling in the tops of the trees and nothing that was charging at him from the forest. All was well so far, and it continued to be that way until he finally found some prey later that afternoon. It was an enormous rabbit, almost double his size, but Ergen had managed to kill it with his ice breath before beginning the long effort to bring the kill back home to his mother. And thankfully much of the creature appeared to be fur as he never would have managed to carry it otherwise. However, his luck stopped there as he eventually arrived back at his den just before nightfall, only to find something from his nightmares there waiting for him.

Just in front of the den, an enormous scaled head rose to look at Ergen and his prey. The creature seemed to be a snake, though it was larger than any that he could have imagined with a skull at least twice as large as his mother. And the beast appeared to have been attempted to get into their den before it noticed Ergen.

Letting out a short cry, Ergen immediately dropped the rabbit and ran away as the snake crashed through the snow behind him. All it had to do was open it's mouth slightly in order to eat the entire rabbit before it continued chasing after Ergen, knocking over entire trees as if they were nothing while it chased after him. It was fast, catching up to Ergen almost immediately before he surprisingly fell through the hard snow on the surface of the ground and sank deeply into a hidden snow bank with the occurrence saving his life as the snake's head passed over him. Though, while he was saved, he quickly had to force his body through the hard snow to avoid being crushed by the rest of the snakes body as it passed over the location where he'd fallen through the snow.

Whether it was the instinct or some horrible error on his part, Ergen involuntarily let out another panicked cry as he finally emerged from the snowbank, alerting the snake to his position before he took off running towards the part of the forest where the trees were thicker. He knew that the trees couldn't stop the creature, but that didn't matter to Ergen right now as he desperately ran for any cover that he could find, all the while with the snake chasing him down.

Thankfully, Ergen made it to the larger trees in time before the snake finally caught up to him, crashing into the trees and sending wood chips showering everywhere as the trees shattered from the impact. Though they had been enough to slow the creature down as Ergen escaped, or so he had thought as he soon found himself on the edge of a cliff that overlooked a large lake beneath him. There was nowhere to run to, and the snake from before had followed him, eventually crashing through the final trees before it blocked off any escape that Ergen might have had with his equally massive body. And as he was trapped between the snake as a cliff, Ergen felt that he had no choice other than to jump before he was distracted by a thankfully familiar roar.