Stupid Overgrown Lizard!

“This is absolutely ridiculous!

It really was not Aeron’s week. First she’d been dragged down to gods only knew where to partake in some stupid fight between demon siblings that couldn’t make up their own minds about politics. Somehow she’d managed to survive that and was freed from their realm. But now, she was going in quite the opposite direction. Out of nowhere, a dragon had swooped down from the sky -- an actual fucking dragon -- and snatched her in one of its massive claws. She shrieked as it flew off with her, fighting and struggling for freedom and once again it was a fruitless endeavor.

It deposited her onto a cloud high up in the sky where she thought she was going to fall to her death. Out of everything she lived through, this was going to be it. She always figured she’d die at the hands of a sociopath, but she always thought it would be Thana, not some random ass dragon that wanted to give its meal a fright by dumping it into the empty air and letting her plummet for thousands of feet before gobbling her up.

Instead, she had landed on the clouds like they were solid and made of cotton, and now this overgrown lizard was sitting here telling her that he wanted to use her as some sort of guinea pig to test the mettle of human beings. Frankly, Aeron was starting to get a little tired of being treated like a lab rat. But once again, she was hardly being given a choice in the matter. This was a little easier to handle than those stupid demons -- at least she was just up in the sky where the worst she had to deal with was how difficult it was to breath in the thin air, as opposed to being trapped somewhere deep under the surface of the earth with no way to get herself out. Here, she could just sprout some wings and fly off.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t going to be given that chance. The dragon had named his desire and before she could light off any kind of snarky response in defiance the air really did open up beneath her feet. Aeron screamed again out of surprise as a red portal sucked her into it, but she didn’t fall as far as she thought she would. After only a handful of meters, her ass hit the ground and she growled in pain and anger, rubbing it sorely. “My life would be so much easier if I just let Thana go ahead and kill me,” she muttered to herself.

This place, wherever it was, was sweltering. The bare ground was rocky and filled with holes, the smallest of which were easily ten times her size. There were so many of them that there was barely any ground to walk on. The dragon’s voice sounded in the air, instructing her to reach the crystal in order to pass this trial. Her blue eyes panned around, and it didn’t take long to find what he was talking about. Far in the distance at the top of a craggy hill was a large pillar that was red in color and stood several feet tall, easily visible from any vantage in this arena type of place.

She grumbled to herself and got up, shoving her hands in her pocket and trudging toward the crystal in the distance. Aeron hadn’t gone more than fifty feet before the heat in the air picked up so quickly that it gave her pause. She looked down one of the holes she happened to be standing next to, which was almost a mistake that would have cost her her life. Luckily, her instincts went off like crazy and she threw herself back away from the thing as a pillar of fire shot up hundreds of meters in the air. Suddenly, all of them started erupting.

Now with a much greater sense of urgency, she tore off toward the crystal. As she ran, she evolved into her dryad take over form, the extra legs of a spider giving her a much needed boost to her speed as she scurried along. It also helped her more easily climb the side of the hill, the limbs hooking into the small cracks and crevasses with ease until she vaulted herself over the top and slapped her palm on the side of the crystal in relieve. “Oh thank god,” she breathed to herself, gasping for air as the fires finally died down and disappeared.

Before she could properly recuperate, another portal opened up beneath her feet and once again she fell into it. This time she landed on her feet, but only because it was easier to do so when she had eight of them. “Oh come on! she yelled up at the sky, furious that there was apparently more than one of these so called tests. Her anger was quickly replaced by confusion as she realized that there was a glass of water in her hand. Was he trying to rehydrate her? She was pretty thirsty. That last area had been hotter than hell, and a glass of water might do the trick to help with that, but as always she was suspicious of the motives of everyone around her.

She sniffed the contents of the glass carefully, shifting her nose to take on that of a beast with a greater sense of smell than she would normally have. It didn’t smell like anything, just water. Was there a catch? Maybe there wasn’t. The dragon didn’t necessarily seem unfriendly, just like a narrow minded scientist that was too busy focusing on its experiments to worry too much about the comfort of his specimens. Cautiously, she leaned forward to take a sip and nearly jumped out of her skin when the dragon’s voice once again boomed around her, instructing her that she was not to spill a single drop of the water in the cup she held.

It was then that the ground began to quake violently. Gasping in shock she nearly spilled the glass but quickly recovered. Sprouting wings from her back, she lifted off the ground into the air where the earthquake wouldn’t really matter for her. The quake lasted for a solid fifteen minutes, to the point where she was starting to get bored before it finally died down. “Took you long enough,” she muttered, dropping back down to the ground.

Or, well, back into another portal.

Once again, she found herself up in the sky. Though there were no clouds beneath her feet, she was not falling to her death anywhere. In fact, despite the fact that she could see thousands feet below her, she felt as though she were standing on solid ground. Once again, there was a crystal in the distance, this one blue like the sky. Fitting. With a shrug, she carefully started walking toward it.

It wouldn’t be long before she would be grateful to herself for choosing to tread lightly, for one of the eight legs of her dryder form did not land on a solid surface during one of her steps. Aeron stumbled and quickly recovered her footing with her seven other legs. After a bit of feeling around, she realized that this was an invisible maze, one that had no walls and certain death if she fell from the beaten path. With a shrug, she went to sprout wings again, as it would be simple enough to just fly to the target area.

However, the wings wouldn’t reappear. “Oh that’s just mean,” she accused the invisible dragon when she realized that he’d cut off her access to her wing spell. So much for getting through this the easy way. Instead, she committed herself to moving forward very carefully, using all eight of her legs to feel around the path on all sides of her and at least make sure she wasn’t going to fall.

Things were never that simple. A gust of wind picked up, strong enough that it fully lifted her off the floor and tossed her to the side where she started to fall. In a panic, she aimed her belly up above her and launched a rope of webbing out of her spinnerette wildly, hoping to make it stick on anything to keep her from plummeting to her death. Thankfully, she managed to catch the underside of one of the platforms. Using the sticky substance, she pulled herself back up to the top and then shot another string of webbing toward the crystal, using that to bypass the nonsense of the maze and go straight to the goal once more.

The instant her hand touched the blue crystal, she was teleported directly into an ocean of water. Aeron struggled briefly to stay afloat as her spider legs were nowhere near conducive to swimming, catching her bearings long enough to release her spell and revert back to her normal form. She coughed salt water out of her lungs as she tread in place, cursing dragons of all types and natures. For the rest of her life, Aeron was quite sure she’d stomp on every lizard she came across on Earthland, just out of spite toward their larger, more dangerous cousins.

Turning in place, all she could see around her for miles was just endless water save for a speck in the distance that appeared to be an island of some kind. Once again, her wings would not work, so she could only assume she was being forced to swim this challenge. Aeron hated swimming. With a resigned sigh, she started pumping her arms and legs, knowing that she’d just expel energy needlessly by continuing to tread without going anywhere.

She wasn’t swimming for long before the sharks showed up. “That’s just fucking fantastic.” Tapping into her magic, she altered her body so she developed gills on her neck and turned her legs and arms into fins. Her speed increased tenfold, forcing the sharks that were chasing her to have to work really hard to catch up. A few times they were able to get close and Aeron had to spend precious time and energy focusing herself to outmaneuver them.

Three miles she swam as fast as she could before she finally reached the shore of the island and threw herself out of the water, and out of reach of the blood thirsty sharks. The woman was absolutely exhausted by the time she got there, taking a moment to rest and catch her breath on the sand. Eventually, she found the strength to stand back up, having reverted to her human form once more, and trudge to the center of the island where another crystal awaited her touch. Once again, she slapped her hand on it…

And once again, she found herself in a new area. Immediately, her proverbial hackles were raised as a sinking sensation crept into her body. Aeron new a fighting pit when she saw one. Her entire life up until a few months ago had been scraping and clawing for her life in them, and she was not happy to be back in one now. What was it going to pit her against? Her survival instincts were kicked into high gear, adrenaline pumping even quicker through her veins as the disembodied voice of the dragon spoke out with a single word: survive.

A beast the likes of which she’d never seen broke away from the wall and rushed toward her. It was made entirely out of hard metal, with sharp blade like arms and rows of razor like teeth. Aeron utilized much of her magic to harden her skin against the creature’s attacks, as well as to strengthen her own. She smashed it to bits with a hammer like fist, but it reappeared. Every time she killed it, it came back to life and continued to rush at her like it had an endless pool of life and energy.

This went on for a solid fifteen minutes before she finally killed the thing and it stayed down. From its crumbled remains, a silver colored crystal was revealed. Aeron was really starting to get tired of this. How many more tests was she going to have to go through? She wasn’t going to run out of energy any time soon, as she’d always had an overabundance of magic power, but she sure was going to run out of patience and sanity any moment. Gritting her teeth defiantly, she touched the crystal. No sense in drawing things out. If she wanted her freedom, she had to keep pushing through.

The next area she was deposited in was filled so thick with a green mist that she couldn’t see through it at all. There was only a single space, a solid bubble around her, where the gas did not reach. It didn’t take a genius to deduce that this area was filled with some kind of poison. All the challenges so far seemed to be geared toward various elements associated with dragons, which was stupidly on the nose and just made her more angry about her current situation.

Aeron, can you hear me?

“Oh thank god,” she breathed. Aeron had been starting to wonder where her mysterious and strange new acquaintance had run off to. She’d been trying to reach out to him through the entire ordeal and gotten nowhere.

That pompous scale brain cut me off from communicating with you. I think the only reason I can speak with you now is because he wants me to help you here. There are a number of creatures in this fog that are hiding out of sight, and if they see you they will seek to devour you. Give me a moment to read their thoughts and I’ll see what we can do to get you through this challenge.

After a minute or two, the voice was able to deduce that there was another crystal in the room near a certain cluster of the idling monsters. With his help, Aeron was able to safely navigate the room with the bubble of air sticking around her. She came close a couple of times to running into one of the beasts but the soul in the amulet was able to warn her before she accidentally stumbled across any of them. Before she touched the green crystal, he advised her that he probably would not be able to speak to her again until the test was over. However, not even a great dragon was able to keep itself from being read by his magic, and he confirmed that she had only three challenges left to get through: one related to lightning, one to darkness, and one to light in that order.

Thanking him for his help, she braced herself and moved on to the next area. It was not what she was expecting after being told her next challenge would be related to lightning. The room around her was completely bare save for what felt like a thousand random door knobs. Surely she had to turn one of them to get to the next area, right? That’s what door knobs were for: turning. Unfortunately, chances were high that any which did not lead to her next destination were also traps. Unfortunately, there was only one way to find out. Bracing herself, she reached toward a knob and turned it.

A jolt of lightning coursed through her body, painfully electrocuting her. Aeron swore up a storm as she pulled away, her muscles twitching in pain and irritation. That certainly confirmed that this was a lightning round. Was she supposed to just let herself be electrocuted every time she tried the wrong knob? That was insane! All of this was literally insane! Anger overcame her and suddenly she just didn’t care anymore. Maybe she would die in here, or maybe she’d get out, but she was done being nice about all this.

Stubbornly, she reached out and started turning each and every knob that she could reach. If there was supposed to be some kind of rhyme or reason to tell her which was the correct one, she didn’t care to look for it. Eventually she would find the right one, all she had to do was endure a jolt of electricity each time she touched the wrong one, and Aeron had been tortured enough in her life to withstand an awful lot of pain.

It felt like it took hours to go through all of them, but eventually she found the one that turned and did not hurt her. However, as soon as she turned it her world was swallowed in darkness. Panic struck her as she realized she couldn’t see anything, nor could she hear or smell anything at all. It seemed like she was in complete and total emptiness, but that couldn’t be possible right?

As she stood there waiting for something, anything, to happen -- since there was little else she could do besides wander aimlessly -- she was struck heavily from behind. There was a creature of darkness in this area and it was attacking her. How was she supposed to defend herself from something like this? Swapping to her Hag form, she tried to cast a spell that would provide some light but it was swallowed by the blackness before it could have any effect. Again she was struck, then again, and there was no way that she could predict where the attacks would come from at any given moment. It felt like there was more than one thing striking at her!

Angrily, she reached into her magic and started sending out pulses of necrotic energy. If she couldn’t see them, then she would just attack everywhere around her. Eventually, she would be bound to hit something! Again and again she sent out wave after wave of attacks that filled the whole area, and after what felt like an eternity it felt like she was making some progress. The number of attacks she received started to reduce noticeably until finally everything in the area was presumably dead or retreated.

Her energy was really starting to be spent at this point. Normally she was able to recover her magic power quicker than she spent it, but this challenge had been something else entirely. She hadn’t had the luxury of planning and timing her attacks, she could only shoot blindly in all directions in the hopes of surviving. It had thankfully been enough, but Aeron found herself thankful that the next area would be the last.

She had the wherewithal to cover her eyes before she was teleported to the last area, which was going to be focused on light. Going from utter darkness to an exceptionally well lit area would certainly have wreaked havoc on her retinas. Thankfully, it seemed she was to be given enough time to allow her eyes to adjust to the light. Actually, it seemed like the last challenge really wasn’t even a challenge at all.

As she blinked and things came back into focus, she found herself face to face with the dragon once more. He congratulated her on passing all the tests and making it to the realm of light. He seemed pleased with her, and she was too exhausted and confused to care or argue about it. A surge of energy went through her, and she suddenly regained her strength. The numerous wounds on her body from all the various challenges disappeared completely like they’d never been there.

But in turn, something else had appeared. On her arm from her shoulder down to her elbow was an elaborate tattoo in the shape of a twisting dragon, its wings spread to full span high above its head. Aeron would have to get a mirror to see it in full. Truthfully she was a bit angry that this stupid creature had marked her body without her permission, but at this point she just wanted to be done with everything.

A tiny dragonette approached her, its scales appearing to be made of tiny slivers of crystal that shone different colors depending on which way the light hit them. In its maw was a worn and ancient looking scroll, which it offered to her by rising up onto its hind legs and stretching its neck out toward her. Aeron took it, wary of the creature even though it did nothing but gift her the item and then sit there and stare at her like a curious but well trained puppy.

Unravelling the thing, she found it contained an incantation and secrets to a spell that was in line with her nightmarish brand of magic. Aeron was too tired to read too deeply into it, though from what she could tell it was a pretty decently useful spell. After a few final words of farewell and thankfulness in her “willingness” to humor him, he used some of his magic to send her back to the surface of Earthland, hopefully never to bother her again.