~~~

  Wyrmwood immediately noticed something had changed in the monotonous schedule when an entire wall of his prison suddenly made a loud cracking noise, before slowly lowering into the ground with long grinding sounds. It was a bit of a shame since the movement scraped off and crushed the moss that he’d been watching grow on that particular wall.

  Still, anything to give more possibilities of escape was a good thing… According to Veronica. Wyrmwood didn’t see the connection between a moving wall and escape yet. That quickly changed though when the wall lowered enough to reveal what was behind it.

  A massive enclosure was revealed! Though it looked more like a repurposed cavern as he scanned the very much less smooth walls that rose up high over this place into a dome shape, with a massive holey pillar right in the middle. Wyrmwood had to wonder if the fort was purposefully created above this place for a reason. It was probably bigger down here than the fort above it!

  The floor of this place looked like a tiny artificial world. From where his prison had opened, there was a patch of trees to his left, a salty smelling pond to his right, and through some of the holes he saw a pool of some kind of bright bubbling orange substance inside the central pillar. There were probably more kinds of places further around the pillar but he was busy trying to decide if he should even go into that place.

  “Safe?” Wyrmwood asked aloud as he sniffed the air. He couldn’t help but notice that his area being between the salty pond and patch of trees made it smell quite loamy and look muddy. A scent that reminded both Veronica and him of their origin.

  Veronica’s antennae fully extended from his tail and swayed and vibrated in the air as they picked up even the minutest scents and air fluctuations.

  “No, it smells heavily like others of your kind in there. Though, it’s probably nicer than this bland prison and this simple fungal bed.” Wyrmwood’s tail turned slightly in his direction as she continued, even though Veronica couldn’t see with it or anything. “How confident are you in meeting other dragons?”

  Wyrmwood made a contemplative hiss as he thought over his experiences throughout his life.

  “Don’t know. Only met Mayflare.”

  “Ah yes, the charming brute.” Veronica said flatly as she once again remembered just who had taught Wyrmwood to basically bash her against his enemies. “Well, he wasn’t… that bad.” She hedged since he really had been teaching and helping Wyrmwood without even knowing about her at the time. “I’d prefer not dealing with others unless I have to, so I’ll just leave this particular decision up to you.”

  Well, with her maw bound up as it was, it was true that she wouldn’t be able to help much at the moment anyways.

  Taking a few more moments to psych himself up, Wyrmwood eventually slithered out of his previous prison and into this much larger, (and admittedly nicer), one.

  When he fully entered the enclosure, he flinched in surprise as the wall behind him immediately slid back up into position, closing him into this place. Nerves had him quickly wiggle himself into the rich mud now beneath him in a good attempt at camouflage.

  This was just in time too as other places along the walls now opened up, letting others of draconic lineage step out of what Wyrmwood assumed were prisons of their own.

  To his left, an elemental dragon that seemed to be made entirely out of twigs with leafs for scales happily shuffled out into the patch of trees, going up to each of them and rubbing itself against them. Each tree it touched visibly livened up.

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  To his right, the large pond was shown to have been an even larger body of water that was more of an extension out into the enclosure with most of said salt water staying in the prison. Out of the water came an amphiptere looking sleek with small blue fish scales covering it except for two enormous wings it had as its only limbs, though, they were probably actually fins when he thought about it, so it was actually more likely a sea serpent variant.

  The sea serpent would leap out of the water to playfully loop in the air before falling back down with a splash, sprinkling the hiding Wyrmwood and his area in salt water.

  He couldn’t see past the tree patch to his left, but the pond’s flat nature let him see that beyond it there was a small hill full of craters and covered in gleaming protrusions that crackled as a bronze-scaled wyvern spit lightning at the sea serpent in annoyance as it stomped around it's hill. The metals naturally redirected most of the lightning into themselves while the rest that hit the sea amphiptere didn’t even do any evident damage to it.

  One thing was quickly made clear to Wyrmwood as he observed. The other dragons were way too shiny! Each dragon he saw seemed to gleam in the light… that he didn’t know the origin of. Anyway, they seemed to gleam like polished gemstones! Even the leaf scaled elemental dragon!! In comparison, Wyrmwood’s brown scales were so dull that the wet mud around him was slightly shinier!

  Wyrmwood had first assumed he had the natural gleam of dragon scales since Mayflare had been the same amount of shiny, but now that he had other dragons for comparison it was clear that Mayflare was just really old.

  Another thing he noticed was that he was almost twice as long as the sea serpent, which was already the longest lengthened dragon in sight! He felt that if they were next to each other, it’d look like a nightcrawler next to a common earthworm, with him as the night crawler. He thought his length looked just a bit thicker than the sea serpent’s too.

  He tried to pay attention to everywhere and not be seen, but when the sea serpent got bored of splashing around, it shot out a spew of salt water from its mouth at the plant dragon, the plant dragon got splashed and angrily hissed back at the sea amphiptere, before the hiss died off and Wyrmwood panicked a little as he realized that both the plant dragon and amphiptere were looking right at him now! The excess of spray had washed away the mud around his upper body!

  Wyrmwood made as loud a warning as he could as both sides curiously started to step closer. Since he was revealed anyway, he straightened up to appear extra tall and brandished his two clawed arms at the amphiptere before quickly turning and doing the same to the plant dragon.

  The amphiptere scoffed, yet didn’t approach any closer glaring back at Wyrmwood with what he assumed was suspicion. Meanwhile, the plant dragon didn’t slow at all, just tilting its head curiously as it approached. When Wyrmwood felt it had gotten too close he tried using his ‘dragon breath’ on it!

  A small cloud of spore puffed out onto the plant dragon, yet instead of any fungal growth, or even general aversion, the plant dragon shivered and then started to excitedly chirp at him as all of its leaves seemed to gleam just a bit more healthily.

  Wyrmwood was confused before remembering something similar had happened with the scary plant monster it had used its breath on. Did the spores… strengthen plant elemental types?

  Wyrmwood just looked on, befuddled, as the plant dragon rubbed its twig formed head against him. He flinched again though when her touch caused emotions to be relayed to him.

  Female. Friend. Safety. New strength.

  Wyrmwood looked down at her as she tilted her head innocently. Her eyes seemed to be made of amber resin, with some kind of grass trapped in the middle of each to act as her reptilian pupil.

  An empath? My knowledge tells me that’s a rare ability. Why didn’t the other dragons take her with them? Veronica murmured in the back of Wyrmwood’s mind.

  The feeling of the other dragon slithering over part of the later half of his tail made Wyrmwood turn back towards the sea amphiptere with another hiss, though this time a little less hostile as the plant dragon continued to transmit calming emotions.

  The fish scaled amphiptere looked rather shocked as Wyrmwood shifted all his coils revealing just how long he was to both of them. The plant dragon seemed rather impressed, then passed on emotions of being impressed to Wyrmwood. For the second time in his so far quite short life, Wyrmwood felt pride in himself.

  Unfortunately, the sea amphiptere seemed to take his smug grin as a challenge because they quickly turned and bit the closest length of his tail.

  Wyrmwood flinched with a surprised yowl, he wanted to smack the sea serpent but Veronica actually beat him to it. Even with her maw clamped securely shut with the metal band, she could quite effectively use Wyrmwood’s conical tail-tip as a bludgeon; so she did.

  A rough ‘thok’ noise was heard as the hard cone on Wyrmwood’s tail was bashed onto the top of the still biting amphiptere’s head, momentarily dazing it. This gave him enough time to move over and unclamp the thing’s jaws before throwing it away! About 10 feet away, that is, basically barely moving the dazed amphiptere from the point of view of something the dragons’ size.

  Wyrmwood would never admit he’d learned shame that day when he’d heard the plant dragon give an amused snort behind him. Instead he scoffed and turned to re-partially bury himself in the mud, not looking at the plant dragon as he decided to get back to scouting. It definitely wasn’t just that he couldn't seem to look her in the eyes right now.

  This was a new place! He needed to be extra cautious, like Mayflare taught him.

  Wyrmwood settled once again halfway into the muck as he spied more dragons doing something at the central pillar.

  ~~~

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