~~~

  Wyrmwood woke up groggy and slow. Strangely, most of his body felt just fine, it was his head that felt awful. The dissonance between the two parts of him certainly didn’t help either.

  Slowly picking his head up to look around, Wyrmwood found himself in a new place! Like the cage before, this place was mostly closed off, yet there were also many differences.

  The cage was much bigger first of all; it was big enough that he could almost stretch his length out fully! If he knew common measurements he’d have noted that it was about fifty yards wide, twenty yards tall, and thirty yards long from the giant doors that he now looked at. They went all the way to the ceiling and were made of some kind of thick stone. All the walls were made of thick stone. Wyrmwood tried using his earth affinity for once to get an idea of the kind of stone it was, yet something about the stone seemed to repel any attempts of his limited magic on it.

  The hard ground was covered in a layer of soft plant matter.

  He shifted focus instead to casting an invisibility spell on himself. The one spell he fully mastered while being taught by Mayflare.

  Trying to disappear made a new issue apparent quite quickly: he had metal rings fastened loosely around his thin wrists! He immediately looked along his entire length to check for any more and found one near his back coils and one, curiously, snuggly clamping his tail cone shut.

  Now that he thought about it, Veronica was sleeping rather fitfully. He gave her the mental equivalent of a poke as he cut off the draining and currently useless spell, his body becoming visible again as if he were a mirage taking form.

  He let out an annoyed whine as he tried to get the metal rings off of his body. His affinity actually worked on these. Telling him that they were made mostly of some kind of magic steel with a core of mythril. He… didn’t really know what that told him, but his inherited knowledge indicated that it was barely passable as accessory worthy.

  That thought had him stop his ineffectual tugging of the hoops as Veronica finally started waking up.

  Accessories? What are those? He wondered. Digging up more from his inherited knowledge he grew mildly pleased as Veronica went from a similar grogginess to what he’d awakened with, to suddenly snapping to attention!

  Where are we?! What happened?! He felt her skim through his memory’s since awakening as he brought a thin wrist up close to show off the loosely hanging cuff. Though it was loose around his wrist, there was no way he’d be able to slip it off since it was way too small to slip off his regular-sized dragon paws.

  He presented the metal cuff proudly to his view knowing that Veronica was seeing through his sight. “Look! Accessories!” He proclaimed out loud in an almost smug tone. “Tribute for Wyrmwood!”

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  Wyrmwood’s entire back half twitched. His tail lifting and Veronica’s antennae extended as she loomed over him.

  No. She said with an icey tone. The metal band around her maw creaked ever so slightly as she strained to open her maw anyway. We are still trapped. Prisoners. These are meant as chains. To hinder escape.

  She spoke haltingly, barely able to contain her own rage. She’d been unprepared last time, she’d panicked and their captors had used that against her. Wyrmwood could feel her writhing sense of indignation and deeper down, shame. Her mind was now awake and burning! She was analyzing everything she could, analyzing, categorizing, and scheming for a way out! For freedom!

  Wyrmwood meanwhile, looked between his looming tail end and the metal rings.

  “But fancy! And for me! Tribute!” He griped defiantly. “Memories say so!”

  There was another rather ominous creak from the band around Veronica’s maw as it strained before she relaxed slightly, one of her feather duster-like antennae lightly bopping Wyrmwood on the nose. He sneezed.

  I keep forgetting just how young you are. She sighs.

  A childish giggle echoed through the room. Wyrmwood and his tail both turned to the door, now noticing a small horizontal slit in a low spot of each one.

  “You’re a silly dragon.” The little voice giggles. “Why’d you hit yourself?”

  “Who are you?” Wyrmwood asks.

  “I’m Bixxy! Didn’t you hear me when you got to the fort?”

  “No.” He replied bluntly.

  “I’m Bixxy of the Newt clan!” The child’s voice proclaimed suddenly. “And you will be my-!”

  “BIXXY!” A deeper, more masculine voice boomed, cutting her off. “WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT YELLING IN THE DRAGON PENS?!”

  “…To not do it.” She mumbles.

  Wyrmwood moved closer to the door, trying to see through the small slit.

  “Then don’t do it! Everytime you come in here and rile one of them up it’s the whisperers who have to come in here and calm things down! Do you even know how much complaining I have to listen to everyday thanks to you!”

  “You’re the one yelling here.” Bixxy grumbled.

  “What was that?!”

  “Nothing!”

  “Good. Now follow me to the study. It’s time for your afternoon lesson.”

  “Awww, but I wanted to talk to the new dragon more!”

  “No. The talking ones are especially dangerous.”

  “Fiiiiine.” She whined before a little pause ending with. “Bye Wyrmwood!”

  And then the sound of two figures, one heavy and one light, moving away.

  ~~~

  A short while later, just as Wyrmwood was settled down, the metal rings around his body lit up with some kind of magic language and he became unable to properly move, the metal bands feeling immensely heavy!

  The giant doors slid open inwards with a grating crunching sound, revealing… a tiny shrew beastkin.

  The shrew had soft brown fur, a long pointy snoot with long drooping whiskers, and small beady eyes. He was wearing a hooded cloak that would probably look cool and mysterious on most humanoids, but just looked cute on him. That wasn’t really something the shrew could fix though, everything tended to look adorable on a person that small. He was tiny!

  Despite being rather uncomfortably restrained, a first for Wyrmwood that he very much hated, he still couldn’t help but ogle in awe that such a small person existed! Even the one mouse beastkin he’d seen was about as tall as a wolf! This guy seemed barely bigger than one of the bunnies he’d hunted in the forest! Yet despite his size, there was a certain presence about him that loomed over the whole room. This guy was in full control of all of the magic in this new cage.

  It was his magic that put me to sleep! Veronica raged. She was unable to even lift her head as the bangles seemed to be just barely too heavy to lift whenever either of them tried.

  “H-hello.” The shrew man said, giving the grunting dragon a nervous wave. “I’m S-Smith the dragon whisperer.”

  ~~~

  I'm focusing on details, but this chapter felt kinda slow, huh?