A commission for  Artherion

Thumbnail art by  rollwulf

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Artherion and the Quest for Growth Potions

The reason why Starreach had such prospering crops had, predominantly, the ruins of the ancient spacecraft to thank. In the heart of the major city, a medieval metropolis about three miles wide at its widest and populated by tens of thousands of humans, elves and dwarves, there lay a ship about the length of five half-timbered shops and homes. Long long ago, in a time remembered by no one, the ship had been stripped of its valuables (first by thieves, then by the government), but it had never stopped being useful to the local environment. Upon crash-landing with the planet, the ship had exploded and unleashed a rare, plasmic source of energy that geoengineered the air and the soil, allowing—where the village was consequently built—things to be grown that could not be grown elsewhere.

Things like regents for growth potions.

A pair of large, black foot-paws tread up a cobblestoned incline. A winged black dragon came into the fringes of the city. He walked on two legs and stood about five meters tall (the height of two-and-a-half men). He clenched the straps of his backpack, smiling, looking over the bustling crowd with eyes the deep, bright blue of tropic shallows. He inhaled through his nostrils and hummed, for the air here smelled sweeter than the air of most other equally-urbanized cities, and he could smell stew being heated by some of the stationary wagoners.

He asked along a marketplace street where he might find a merchant who sells mage’s agate (the stuff to be mined from the local network of tunnels), or engine root, or basil of the north, among other things. Some competitive traders waved or cursed him off. That was a common enough response. After some persistent inquiring, he found a couple of traders who had what he wanted. Although he lightened his backpack by giving up some weight in gold, crafting supplies and alchemical brews of his own making, one trader in particular was interested not in what was in the dragon’s bag. He cared more about what was in his mind.

“Tell me, dragon: What brings you so far north? I’ve heard of your kind from travellers, but their stories are never the same. I don’t trust them much. Is it true, you were once human? Tell me of your adventures. Of how you came to be who you are now. Of everything that brought you to me. That would be more than sufficient payment for a pound of mage’s agate, I should think.”

So Kael Artherion sat before the stall of the trader, crisscross. He closed his eyes, and words flowed out of him. He told his tale as well as he could. So well that the trader mistook the quiver of shyness in his voice for one of sadness. The bittersweet sadness that comes from recalling epic things that have passed.

He told of a tribe of humans who had assigned him some impossible quest to be granted the ability to shapeshift into a dragon. He told of how he had chanced upon the mana core of a great dragon who once—but no longer—was; how he’d bonded with the core over the years and become a more proficient shapeshifter.

Young Kael learned his dragon-form was special. It grew when charged with mana, like a battery. He grew fond of growing, and he went to many a place, from sunken villages on faraway shores to magmatic underground ruins, in search of magic artifacts. Recently, Kael had discovered a few growth potion recipes, two of which he had yet to follow.

“There’s a cooldown on me for the first potion I used,” he explained. “Worked great! I grew to about the size of that building over there. Alas, I could injure myself if I try using a potion of that same recipe for another month, so I’m gathering all the ingredients I need for another growth potion, one of different regents.”

Many pedestrians had gathered round to hear the dragon’s tale. How splendid for business, thought the trader! “That was wonderful, Artherion. I have always wondered what going on an adventure might be like, though I trust your story more than the poet’s. Thank you for quelling my curiosity—and here, have your agate.”

Artherion thanked the trader, accepted a small knapsack, and turned to go on his way. He blushed at the number of folk who had clustered around him. He excused himself with a soft voice, shuffling gingerly through the crowd, careful not to bat anyone down with his bulky tail on the way out of the people sea. To other vendors he moved on, and once done shopping, he found an inn which could accommodate guests of his size.

One mustn’t rush alchemy. With potions of more common regents, Artherion could have fizzled with a few practice batches and settled for saying, “Oops.” But he had bought as much as he could and still had only enough regents for five potions, four of which he would prefer to have once his cooldown on the first one ended. So, he spent one evening, one night and one morning hunched over a table in a large and minimal bedroom, preparing the regents. By lunchtime he had mixed them together into a drinkable potion.

He brushed his working materials aside, then tipped to his nose a bottle of bubbling, glowing periwinkle fluid and inhaled. The potion smelled like grape, like licorice, like a therapeutic smoke. His scales tingled, and his heart pounded from memories of so many times in which he had expanded to stupendous new proportions. Ah, the blood rush … The euphoric tenseness of the body driving outward its bulk and girth, stacking on weight and bigness, the grower’s surrounds seeming to shrink more and more …

Artherion hiccuped from the thought, and looked around his bedroom. Maybe he should go somewhere with more space before he drinks the potion? No, thought Artherion: Surely, he would have enough time to leave the inn before his growth spurt started kicking in: a few minutes, at least. The smell of the potion goaded him to waste not another second. Tail swishing, he upended the bottle and glugged as though there were around him a crowd cheering him on: drink, drink, drink! The intoxicating flavor brought a blush to his cheeks, and he squeezed his belly as the substance filled in, warming his guts like an alcoholic brew.

His tongue lolled out, and he hammered the empty glass onto the table. Alright, thought Artherion, now I’d best be on my way out the door. Being on his way out the door was the plan, until the potion really kicked in, and he felt that first incredible crunch of expanding bones under his trapezius muscles; felt his neck broadening, and the rest of his body stretching outwards during pulsations from which he felt like his body was going to be torn apart from either side—except, tear apart he never did: He only became more.

“Rrh-aaggh~!”

Artherion gripped the wooden poles of his canopied bed, his fists enlarging in quakes of growth, the wood starting to crack and splinter beneath his tightening grip. His tail swooshed with abandon, knocking a chair over as he hunched over, his mind being completely engulfed in the sweet, throbbing tides of growing. It was an experience very intimate, one which Artherion did not wish to spoil by going out into public. He forgot all of his worries and thrashed rigidly with another wave of growth, his body having now grown from five meters tall to six, the height of three men.

The groans of muscle fibers tearing and reforming thicker, the creaks of his scaly hide mushrooming in size to match the swelling size of its owner: These filled the room and infested his body with blissful, ticklish pushing and twisting sensations. One little voice was saying, You shouldn’t have drunk the potion here! in the back of his mind, yet oh! it all felt too good for him to hold back on growing now. He wanted to let all the mass rush out, free, free!

“Rnng-aaugh~!” His muzzle elongated and enlarged briefly, allowing the rest of his body to catch up with him and equalize his proportions the second afterwards. That buckling quake of growth trembled the room, and a loud CRACK came from each held post of the canopy, the posts now cracking from his tremendous grip as he surged up to eight meters tall, the horns of his skull jutting just a few growth-pulses away from the rafters of the bedroom.

His grips crunched through the posts, and he staggered away from the bed canopy as it collapsed on the sheets, his backside thumping against the wall. “Ggrrrrrrn~” The space of the room, it was dwindling. Some folk become claustrophobic in small, tight spaces, but not Artherion. Such spaces did not confine him: They were outgrown—inevitably burst through when his form overdosed on magic from some artifact or the boon of some potion. He chuckled loopily, drunk off the external show of the bed and the bedstand and all the other furniture getting tinier around him.

Since the ceiling was only about six meters high, twenty feet above the floor, Artherion had been forced to crouch lower and lower until his horned head endeavored through another growth spurt, the wooden ceiling splintering as those horns jabbed into the vaulted roof. He could not help the destruction of the bedroom at this point; he was growing very excitingly uncomfortable and didn’t want to bend his knees any more than he already had. He spreadeagled his body and heaved on the ceiling, his cheeks growing flushed … And then an expansion swelled him HUGELY.

Outside the inn quivered, before the cedar tiles atop the second storey erupted forth as if no less delicate than antique china. And up from the savage aperture in the roof reared an immense, ten-meter-tall dragon. Artherion sighed as flakes of roofing crumbled from his snouted head, and pivoted at the torso, indulgently ripping away more of the roof to liberate more of his body as it stuttered with growth, gaining its last few extra centimeters.

Within the hallway adjacent to the bedroom, shouts of confusion echoed, for the owner of the inn had bolted up the stairs to see what was happening, and a couple of guests from other rooms had stormed out and informed him where they felt the tremors of their bedrooms were coming from, pointing at the door of a particular room. The owner tried knocking a couple times before he used his key, and dashed into the room of Artherion before dropping his keyring in disbelief.

Before him loomed a monster of a dragon! One whom he had no recollection of inviting into one of his bedrooms, that’s for sure! The calves of the dragon measured thicker than the innkeeper’s broad belly, the feet as big as those of dragons said in fables to guard great troves of treasure. As other guests peered into the room, crying out, the innkeep ducked the swish of a giant tail, then looked straight up into that blotch of skylight: And there looked down Artherion, whose kneecaps were raised higher than both the head of the innkeep and the heads of the guests present. The floorboards were creaking from the momentous weight the dragon pressed to them, pieces of wood breaking off to some lower bedroom, inklings of sun zipping down to the first storey.

“Bluh—my beautiful INN! You—GIANT!—h-h-h-how?!”

Artherion was in a daze from his skull penetrating right through a layer of roofing, and the sun and the winds on him had confirmed to him that he had broken free, that he had grown; and he was huffing happily, looking over the smaller streets of the city below and all the people wondering up at him with entranced eyes, till he heard that critteresque voice quacking up at him. At once he became super-self conscious and jumped a little, cracks of wood spiderwebbing across the floor. He heard the man’s complaints, and grew deeply embarrassed, as though he had been called out by some town crier.

“Oh no! M-my apologies, little man, sir! I didn’t mean to bust up your bedroom. I j-j … I … oh dear, I’m really deeply sorry …” Artherion covered his snout with his big paws, trying to hide his blush.

Now, the innkeep heard the floor creak doomingly underneath the two of them, and saw how sincerely sorry the big guy was, and although unable to settle the quiver of his jaw, he tried to speak rationally:

“Uh—don’t pull a muscle worrying, big guy—not now, at least. Would you mind stepping down from there—er, here?”

“What was that?” asked the giant, his booming voice forking a lightning-shaped crack in the floor up to the innkeep’s feet.

“Gah!” The innkeep pedalled back, pressing protectively to a wall. “I mean, if you could step down onto the street below, my floor would appreciate it!”

“Oh, right! You’ve got it! Coming up right away, sir!”

Artherion embarrassedly waddled forward, and was still in a different mode of mind, thinking he needn’t worry about such things as walls and roofs. That was just the issue. One half-timbered facade of the second storey was demolished by his big, scaly columns for legs. He cried, “Ohh!” and started to retract his steps, as though doing so would fix the fact that wood was raining on an alley below, shattering to shambles on some cobblestones, but the innkeep saw cracks mar the floor, as if it were an ice block ready for the thawing, and yelped, “Nevermind it—keep going!”

Keep going is just what big Arther did. He bulldozed through the remaining wall chunks and hit the street below and stumbled forward, hand-paws planting on a neighboring building whose wood crunched inwardly. He gulped, reeled back, and teetered cautiously out of the alley, pretending that he hadn’t seen the giant handprints he’d pressed into the opposite property.

When Artherion scurried into the street, the innkeep leapt between his legs and faced him.

“Now, I don’t want any trouble, big guy, but how am I to afford repairs for this place? It hasn’t had a lick of work done to it since it was in my father’s possession, and I don’t have that type of coin.”

So Artherion scratched behind a horn, frowning. He had planned to leave the city later today, to adventure to another city wherein he could find the regents to make himself even bigger. Now it seemed he had a duty, to repay this lad, that tethered him to Starreach. Not that he was in such a rush: This growth boon should last him a week or so.

“How much would you need for roof and floor repair?”

The innkeep gave him an estimate. Yikes, thought the black dragon, that was a lot of money. He opened his mouth to negotiate some sort of payment plan, but then he thought of all the things in his little backpack, which must still be by his bedside, and he had an idea.

“If you could bring me my pack, sir, it is upstairs.”

Puzzled by what the dragon could mean, the innkeep dared not question. He nodded, vanished behind a door, then presently came out, raising a jingling pack full of regents and coins as he approached Artherion. It looked plenty too big for the innkeep to carry, like a potato sack, but he managed it. The dragon accepted the pack, delicately opened it, then plucked out two growth potions one after another, handing each to the innkeep.

“Each of these is worth your roof, your floor and then some. If you decide to try drinking one yourself, you’ll be no less able to afford the fixes. But please, whether you sell one or both, do try to sell them into good hands. Else, someone else’s roof may later need the fixing.” He chuckled lightly. “It’s been nice staying with you. Time for me to be hitting the road now.”

Aweing at the luminescent bottles that now belonged to him, the innkeep raced into the inn to lock them away somewhere safe, then came back outside and answered:

“Although I feel it would be too odd to thank the dragon who destroyed my inn, I will say you’re the most peculiar guest I’ve had since that bounty hunter with the plasma rifles. Do come again and share a drink sometime, if you’d be so kind as to let my roof alone.”

“Aha, will do, sir. Goodbye.”

Silly, felt Artherion. He had turned away (slipping that meager backpack over one shoulder), only to realize he had no idea how to get to the second city on his road trip. “It appears I am lost,” he said to himself sadly, for the innkeep had left already. He stood, a monolith, over the curving street with what he realized to be the hundreds of eyes of amazed elves, humans and dwarves focused on him. “Eheh, excuse me, little ones. Big dragon coming through.”

He raised a foot-paw from a footprint, where cobblestone had been crushed several inches into the loam, imprinted with a depression of sole and talons that spanned as long as the average man’s outspread arms. Stones crumbled from the creases of the sole and the crannies between each mythical claw, and a few pedestrians goggled—a shadow cast over them by the rising foot—and scurried away. But before Artherion could get a move on, one voice vaulted over the mutterings of chatterers:

“Where might you be headed, dragon?”

The titanic dragon pivoted on one foot, a few folk grimacing and barreling out of the way as one foot gently stomped, facing the source of the voice: a dwarf whom Artherion considered to be not much bigger than an ankle weight.

“The city called Tantagroom,” he answered, “the one the roots of the earth have claimed.”

“Ahh, aye aye,” said the dwarf. “It’s a whereabouts I’ve been knowing, and travelling I’ve been needing. Might you be wanting a guide on the road? I could show you right to Tantagroom, bring you down a shortcut, in fact!”

“Really? You’re kind.”

“I could say the same of yourself. That’s why I ain’t afeared of you: I’ve seen you interacting with the locals, giving no one a hassle despite how easily you could, what with how humongous you are. The gang that goes by the name o’ Varms is what I am afeared of—they’re a’ wanting me head! and they infest the woods around Starreach, as you must know. All I ask is for your protection out in the field. A dwarf in bits wouldn’t be worth much directing, I don’t think. Call me Owen, by the way.”

“Hrrrrrrm.” That rumbly drone of the dragon’s gullet gave passersby jitters and set round fruits on the stands of the marketplace to rolling. “Owen, I’m Artherion. Are you ready to leave now?”

“Oh! Aye! But let us find a bite to eat at a stall. I’ve filled up on ale enough, but my teeth need some mutton for mashing!”

So Artherion roared happily, and galumphed alongside Owen in search of some mutton, the dwarf sprinting in short bursts to keep up with the dragon’s tremendous gait, despite that the black dragon was ambling as slow as he could. Once the dwarf took his first chomp out of a juicy lamb leg, he held the leg in his chops and embracingly climbed his way up Arth’s ridged, spade-tipped tail (the way he would climb up a stocky tree) as Arth had invited him to do.

Once he clambered up to one of the peaks of Mt. Artherion—the left shoulder—Artherion outstretched his wings and transformed from his titan form to the form of a quadruped dragon, this second form matching the other in height. A gale swept the leaves and litter of the streets into rushing swirls; and the gale they rode rent window shutters wide open so that civilians beheld the gales of a dragon who was flapping his wings, his foreclaws dipping down and bouncing. Owen let out a caterwaul, and, finding no other place to be seated safely for an entire journey, jumped into the giant backpack strapped around quadruped-Artherion’s stocky foreleg. Out the dwarf poked his head, the pack swaying like the basket of an air balloon as the city stole queasily under them, the great dragon winging up towards the clouds, challenging the thermals with his wingbeats like leathery booms of thunder.

“Why, I near ’most forgot,” said the dwarf, “we needn’t be going by foot, need we?”

“Not at all,” cheered Artherion. “Those Varms will never touch us by wing. Well, look at that: There’s a group of them on that overlook. Watch this.”

Wielding spears, the dwarves of the Varm gang turned white as the black dragon swooped below their vista view of the forest encircling Starreach. As soon as the gang members stepped to the ledge to peek down, up came Artherion charging along an air current, his husky, plated forechest hawking upwards at the angle of a saluting arm. The rush of winds from his sky-overlaying wings knocked the dwarves into somersaults; and down a decline they went rolling. Artherion and Owen laughed and laughed; and the whole flight was full of much of the same mirth.

*

Where the verdant canopy of the woods stretched so high, only sparse patches of sun reached the forest’s bottom; where buildings were tinged with green from the lush overstory and riddled with lacings of moss and vines and mushrooms, there was the city named Tantagroom. Like Starreach, this city no longer had any locals alive who remembered how the city had come to be so favorable for the growth of plants. But the forgotten event which had made the encompassing forest of conifers and broadleaves as dense as a jungle was the same event which had petrified the half-timbered buildings, making them stony, a purple-obsidian color. They were nearly indestructible, and so they never needed repairs—a point which would have irked the innkeep of Starreach: He’d have wished he’d had himself a tavern made of Tantagroom material.

Great spotted ferns swayed and glowing pollen of fungal overgrowths were dispatched when dragon wings galed down through the lime-green leafage above. Artherion sailed over the rooftops of the city, people gawking from the windows and the streets below, pointing up at the dragon and his draft which blew all the trees above and spread their sweet scents from block to block. He veered left, drawing a half-circle in a descent, and then landed in a circular plaza before the equidistant statues of three river-fish spouting water from their mouths into a basin. There, he flourished his wings widely then held the pose, concentrating.

From him the quadruped bone and muscle structures retreated, compressing his bulk into an anthropomorphic form, and he rose back onto two feet. There he stood, two storeys tall; and those in the plaza beheld him as if they saw the sun for the first time. One man prostrated; and many others followed suit, creating a circle around him of humans on hands and knees. Of shapeshifting gods they had heard so many stories growing up.

“H-hey, I’m not … w-well, I suppose I don’t mind this, on second thought …”

Owen chuckled. “What harm is there in lettin’ them believe?” The dwarf crawled down the biped dragon’s backside before sliding off his thickset tail. “Rejoice, people of Tantagroom! Kael Artherion, God of Dragons, has come for—erhm, an offerin’ of some sort.”

With a snort of surprise, Arth flicked the dwarf with a foot-claw playfully, then said hastily, “I confess, I am no god. I’m just an alchemist on a mission to grow bigger, and I’ve come to Tantagroom to fetch a few regents for another growth potion to make myself just that.”

Some of the worshiping humans looked winded by the truth, but one stood up and strode in front of the dragon, then knelt, their eyes raised to the sky-blues of Artherion. “Whether you call yourself a god or not makes no difference to me. In my life I have seen no dragon nor shapeshifter but you, and if there is a god, which I must believe, then you’re the closest match. If you would allow me, might I be of service to you?

“Aye. Have you any thornroot or sash’s powder?”

The kneeling man did not speak for a few seconds. “No,” he said after an absence. “But I will give you anything I have if you ask for it.”

“Why is that?”

“Because that is what a man does for their god, Kael Artherion, and I am much in need of a god’s favor.”

“Do tell.”

“I am a merchant. A few days ago, a group of thugs broke into my shop and stole all I had that was worth selling. I fear I won’t be able to pay the publican the next time around unless some good fortune comes my way.”

Artherion narrowed his eyes. His wings broke open, renewing their span, the arcs of leather between the wingtips rippling from the light draft he himself had stirred. “You know who stole from you?”

The man told the dragon he knew the thieves by name. He knew where they lived, too, but they had rifles and he had only fists that were worthless for fights, so he could not dispute the theft alone. He had gone to the police, too, and could tell them exactly what had come missing; and he’d brought witnesses to back him up by saying he had, indeed, owned such things; yet, the police had said he hadn’t enough proof of a crime. He said he didn’t despise that, because the police force wasn’t strong, so they at all costs removed themselves from incidents any more serious than petty crimes, else they could rouse the wrath of gangs over their heads.

Artherion grimaced. He asked the man to lead him to the home of the thieves. The man thanked him countlessly.

From the tremors of god-like footsteps, the only thief of four who was not asleep jumped with fright in the living room. He pushed the shutters of the window open. Megalith paws planted footprints into the boulevard ahead. Slabs of stone trickled down from the great claws as a dragon the height of five men tread straight toward the residence, following a running man: the man from whom the thieves had stolen.

A cry alerted the rest of them awake. One of them said they should certainly hide in the basement. Another said they should take the loot down to the basement but not themselves, and that they should then make out of town and then recover the loot later. Before they could decide, a sliver of teeth dropped into view from the opened window.

“Boo.”

The thief who had opened it jumped away, landing against the back of a couch, and bawled, “He can have it back! He can have it all back!” before anyone had accused the bunch of theft. The rest of the gang capitulated after that; and presently, the dragon was smiling smugly, carrying a relatively tiny loot bag which was too small for any man to lift alone, while Owen and the man whose things had been stolen walked with him to a shop on the edge of the city.

When they arrived, the man hugged Artherion’s ankle, but then suddenly fell back, fell onto hands and knees and proclaimed: “You’ve done for me more than I could ever pay for, Kael Artherion. I am indebted to you. Please, look into the bag. Take what you’d like. Perhaps not all of it—but anything that you want especially.”

Artherion stretched the loot sack open, rummaged through it. His jaw dropped, for he found thornroot and sash’s powder. “I thought you said you didn’t have either of these,” and he held the regents out to the man between large talons to show.

“To lie before a god would be a terrible omen. I didn’t have either of them—not when I answered you. But now that I do, feel free to take them both.”

That tempted the big dragon, but he thought the man still might struggle financially if he took so much without giving back. He placed a finger on his forearm, rubbed the forearm a few times, and managed to unlodge a lustrous, perfectly-carven dragonscale of black: one that had been dying to come off for a couple of hours, now. He handed the scale to the man, then dropped onto his knees and stuffed the loot sack through the front window of the man’s shop, saying: “The traders of the north cities have given me heavy coin purses for each of my shedded scales in the past. Hopefully, since that one’s bigger than others, it will earn you a coin purse I’ll have to come back to help you carry.”

The man held the black scale endearingly to his chest. It pulsated with the warmth of that mighty creature, who towered at level with the mossy roofs of the obsidian buildings, who broke gangs to tears with the simplest baring of his fangs.

“I must ingrain the feeling of this scale in my memory before I part with it,” said the human. “My family needn’t fear the publican now. Thank you.”

Owen applauded. “Marvelous work, O God of Dragons! So, now that you’ve got your thornroot and powder, I guess you’re going to make one of those potions you were hollering about earlier, yes?”

“Yeap, that’s the plan. Though, I could maybe use some help from the two of you. Now that I’m bigger from the last potion, I fear I might break a beaker or make a bad measurement in the making of the next potion. That’s where I could really use the hands, eyes and ears of some smallfolk.”

“Smallest of folk here.” The dwarf smiled.

The man’s eyes glimmered with excitement. “Ryan Tinderwell, at your service.”

“A pleasure to have your name.” The dragon’s eyes closed into tents of contentedness. “Shall we begin?”

*

Out in the forest, where a great, flat tree stump could double as an alchemical table, Artherion and his two companions set to work. Had he been smaller, he might have come into the man’s home, but he was large, too large to be fiddling with regents and instruments that needed great care in the city, where blacksmith hammers clanged and horses raucously trotted and dogs barked, so here they had come.

He lounged on his belly before the tree stump, his claws laced to form a steeple of hands. He watched the man and the dwarf work without his eyes never wandering off, following each step of the potion-making from beginning to end.

“Now,” he said, speaking softly to ensure his voice didn’t knock anything over, “take the beakers and mix their contents into the large bottle. After that, plug the bottle with the stopper then give the bottle a brisk little shake.”

Man and dwarf did as instructed; and so the time had come for Artherion to drink. He hoped all the measurements had been right. He didn’t see the millimeter marks on the beakers well when the beakers had been filled, but he wasn’t overly paranoid. He trusted that the two had been careful. He reached over himself, and clenched between a claw and thumb-claw a bottle of glowing, viscid lemon liquids of cloudy orange fog which swirled at the bottle’s bottom. The bottle was only as long as half of one of his fingers, so when he took it he clenched his jaws with a worried smile, thinking the pressure of his pinching might crack the glass.

But that wasn’t so. And the alchemist’s assistants had already removed the stopper, so he brought the mouth of the bottle to the pursed lips of his snout and drained it of its contents with a single sustained suckle. Unlike the potion made in Starreach, this one tasted earthy and bitter, and the cloudy stuff had a super tart aftertaste. The flavor made him screw his face in repulsion and his ears stand straight, but he managed to gulp the stuff down. The middle of his tongue, down which the potion streamed, felt like it was being electrocuted into a coma. His body tingled and buzzed from his throat to his spine starting at the nape to the tip of his tail. The jitters of his body sent the alchemical equipment on the stump rattling toward the edges of the stump. Owen and Ryan shoved their palms at the stump’s edges, catching any glass that had been slated to fall, allowing some less fragile metal instruments to drop into the detritus at the roots.

A full day of dragon-flight from Starreach to Tantagroom: It had been totally worth it, thought Artherion, the moment his eyes goggled and his mouth let out a “HIC!” The hiccup was accompanied by the first precious pulse of growth, a thrilling second wherein his muscles felt like they all bunched into knots before they exploded outwards like the hands of a team after a hand-stack has been formed.

“Gnnaaah~”

It felt like all the mana in his body was blissfully on fire as his figure throbbed outward in another growth-pulse. During the cry, his voice plunged again in pitch a key, and he grew to twelve meters tall, nearly forty feet in height. He rolled away from the stump to avoid destroying his alchemical things and staggered to his feet, but accidentally slammed his back into a building on the outskirts of town in the process, the furniture within skidding across the floor and vases shattering. However, the growth felt so good … Artherion couldn’t think about being careful anymore … He needed to let himself grow like wild—let all the size burst free …

“Hnnnh, more, more, moore …”

His head pitched over the three-storey building behind him; his tail grew almost as thick as a market street, and when he stumbled forward it clubbed the obsidian building, skidded off and rebounded to smash into a neighboring shop, sending dust billowing up from the rooftops and open windows as obsidian fractals rained from the side facades. Owen—having bagged up all the alchemical things—raced under Artherion’s legs, and bellowed into town, “Take coooooover!”

Right after that, Artherion’s body sputtered up to fifteen meters tall, flooding his mind with dopamine. His tongue lolled out. He forgot every care in the world, even the care of standing upright. He hurtled back into a cobblestoned intersection, his shadow darkening over the running dwarf and a slew of pedestrians, some of whom had been pushing food carts and riding horse-drawn carriages. The dragon’s gigantic rump dropped down, the force of his tush’s impact with the street chucking apples and pears from carts and sending a guy on a hover-cycle steering away. The guy cried out as he drove through someone’s clothing-stand to avoid being squished by the black dragon; he sped out of it with two layers of blouses flapping around his face and chest.

Artherion’s tush ached from the landing, and his shoulders hiked up and eyes clenched shut, for he was embarrassed about all the mayhem he had caused and didn’t want to peep an eye open to see the damages. Clenching his teeth from the faux pas, he felt his muzzle grow longer and teeth grow longer, his facial tissue stretching forward with a lovely searing feeling.

“Grrngh, gotta … k-keep gr-growing …”

This, he mumbled to no one in particular, and he felt the toes of his tubby paws tingle and his tummy tremble before his bones retched themselves outwards again for a delicious, explosive matter of five whole seconds. That gave people plenty of time to evacuate the premises as walls of black scales enlarged and blimped out, the round curves of his body slamming into the corners of abandoned wagons and corner stores, the obsidian architecture fracturing and bursting into multidirectional hails.

Owen and Ryan had escaped to a vantage point, the “L”-shaped flat portion of a roof on the third storey of a towering building. “Blimey,” said the dwarf, “that potion’s powerful as heck!” though the man did not answer him; he had a stupid grin on his face, watching his newly-arrived god expand and stretch over the skyline, the dragon growing to sixteen meters—seventeen meters—eighteen meters tall—

“Let us start on the second growth potion right away,” Ryan said, then began to unbag the alchemy tools and materials and set them on the rooftop.

“Ehh, do you actually recall how to craft one o’ those things?”

“From start to finish,” the man told the dwarf, grinning.

Meanwhile, Kael tried to stand, only to be swatted down by another powerful convulsion which started in the pit of his chest and rolled into his snout-tip, tail-tip, wingtips and claw-tips.

“Mrrrrnmff—”

Artherion had outgrown the little street he now collapsed over on hands and knees, and he became lost in the incredible feeling of his shoulders, flanks and hind mushrooming in size as did his body entire; the feeling of his hide being resisted by walls, cracking/splintering walls which presently shattered, causing around him showers of obsidian fractals and moss curtains as he huffed indulgently from the passionate wobbles and throbs of his growing frame.

Apartments collapsed to rubble in his periphery, and he caught glimpses of living rooms and bedrooms sinking and furniture slipping past his shoulders, infrastructure pouring in glittering chunks over his cheeks and nape and shoulders and arms as he surged up to nineteen meters tall, the people skittering away below him not much taller than his claws were long at this point …

Word had gotten around Tantagroom that Artherion was a benevolent dragon, and the majority had embraced the idea of him being a deity, so they marvelled at his growth without fear and enjoyed the spectacle nearly as much as he did—which did not make them immune to being smushed by the big guy, however.

Another hiccup of growth hit him, and he groaned happily, the sturdy wing limbs on his backside growing yet again, creaking and stretching, shoving aside the top floors of wrecked buildings. Leathery membranes grew thick and impenetrable, the wings batting outwards until they had cleared a space to thrust open and swell to full span, gusting over the open bedrooms of fractured lower storeys of buildings and over the channels of people below. The dragon felt what had seemed like a relentless growth subside … and pushed against the cobblestones to gather to his feet, stamping deep handprints into the street as he rose.

How he felt energized and replenished, like a charged battery … And he felt … big. His shuffling feet circumferentially swept airy waves of dust, leaves and trash away from their clodhopper flanks while his head rose high, high over Tantagroom, higher than the mini-skyscrapers around him stood, now that he had steamrolled their walls. He had squeezed his girth out between them and cleaved away much of their height with his wings, which now unfurled upon his back: a grand, exonerable black curtain. From their spreading leather resonated the sound of herculean ropes stretching taut.

Over Tantagroom Artherion flexed out his arms and puffed out his chest and exhaled contentedly. The grumble of breath rumbled like a volcano awakening from inactivity. Only when he arose fully did his growth-high wear off, for his growth had slowed to a halt when he hit twenty meters tall; and he looked about, his wings further destroying the places next to him when his torso pivoted.

“Err … whoops. This is quite the mess, isn’t it?”

He had twirled himself to face the outskirts of the city and had stumbled backward to avoid ruining the ruined places any further, only to bash into another slew of buildings. Biting his teeth together with a “yikes” expression, he erected himself onto his tippy toes, leaning his back away from the fragile architecture. Oh dear! Every move was clumsy and clunky, and he felt like a giant whale, what with gravity’s grasp on him trying to lever him down to his knees. Yet, the bigness and heaviness—not just in his body, but in his voice—felt glorious.

Excited from all the size on him now begging to be danced about, he wanted to whap his tail, beat his wings, totter about … But, at this point, doing so much as accidentally sneezing could devastate the city. So, he tried staying idle for a moment, thinking that maybe he should slip out of the city to somewhere less crowded … Then, a tiny murmuring sound tickled the scaly soles of his foot-paws—a pair of murmuring sounds, actually.

Artherion couldn’t not move, now: He was curious as to what was making that noise. He lifted his leg, turned his heel and saw on the flat of his paw a couple of pedestrians plushly imprinted. They were perfectly unharmed due to the cushiness of his paws (of which he was proud), but he had no clue when he could have stepped on them. He peeled them off of his foot, set them on the street below and offered a booming apology. The humans appeared dizzy and smiley, moving rigidly as they shook off the posture they had been stomped into since the time that they had been stepped on.

When Arth peeled them off, he had accidentally elbowed a tall oak tree behind him; the trunk cracked, and the top of the tree teetered down into an alley—having been lopped off—and crashed with a leafy poof and a THUMP. Now, although no one had been harmed, and the civilians watched the overgrown dragon with reverence and interest, he thought that he should probably leave to the forest before he caused any more accidental destruction.

Urgency setting into him, he began to plod toward the outskirts of the city, a small draconic kaiju, when he heard a series of puny shouts ring out behind him. He whipped around thunderously, and saw on a rooftop Owen and Ryan Tinderwell scurrying to the ledge, the man holding out a potion.

“We crafted another potion for you, Artherion,” he cried happily.

“You did? That’s more than kind of you. But, I’m afraid to say, I can’t drink it. Not for another few weeks. Now that I’ve drunk that particular potion, I can’t grow anymore from it.”

Artherion frowned at his own words. To be able to stack two growth potions, as he had today, was rare in itself. When would he ever get another chance to stack multiple growth effects like this? If only he could craft another potion … He would be absolutely leviathan in size …

They say news travels fast in towns. You must then imagine it travels even faster when a giant dragon’s the one transmitting the news. Once that voice resonated across the town, thousands of civilians who viewed Kael as a god and wanted to see him grow to greater proportions began churning their mental gears. Ironically, none of them would be the first to contribute to his growth: Instead, one of the very people who wanted to injure him would.

Furious Nicholas, a crime boss whose last wish was to have a benevolent god roaming around town and dealing justice to thieves, sat in the cockpit of a large spinnable turret on a high roof across town; and he spun the esoteric weapon towards Artherion, then charged the cannon, which happened to be fueled by mana of the Blue Moon: the main fuel source which Artherion usually used to grow bigger.

“Wait till the so-called god gets a load of THIS!” barked Furious Nicholas, and bawled with laughter as the isochronic, whirring noise of his charging cannon rose in pitch, till it became as harsh as a kettle whistle. “Seconds from now, I’ll become a dragonslayer—and then I’ll be feared by all and be able to beat people up as I please.” A laugh: “HYARK HYARK HYURK HURK!”

The criminal waited till Artherion swung his muzzle toward the direction of the cannon by chance—so that the pesky dragon could have a good look at the face of his slayer—then pushed a console button; and with a staccato buckling of the cannon, across the city zipped a blaring blue beam of concentrated magic as thick as a two-horse carriage.

That dragon opened his mouth at the sight, perhaps to yell out in surprise, but his opportunity to do so vanished as the mana-beam mortared his gullet, the impact ringing in his ears for four whole seconds. And then, Artherion’s belief that he might need to work hard to discover another growth potion recipe was amended, for, he realized, what was walloping his throat was all the fuel he needed to grow again; and he found himself shaking from the sheer pleasure, grunting as his immense black hide quivered before suddenly burgeoning out from the growth-inducing cataract of magic.

The taste of magic was more addicting than sugar, like candy, but refreshing like a beverage. He could feel the magic stimulating the expansion in his snout and stomach. The feeling coursed through him, his body suddenly crackling with arcs of lively magical energy before the man and the dwarf turned white with shock and turned and fled in the opposite direction, the dragon’s nearby shoulder swelling and ramming into the ledge of that level of the building the smaller pair had been on, while Artherion hunched forward and grinded his teeth together, balling his fists and sweeping his growing tail from side to side with abandon, the dragon’s face screwing deviously as he plodded toward that cannon as the mana-beam grew increasingly less thick compared with the black dragon due to him growing:

Twenty-three meters tall—twenty-six meters tall—thirty—

The criminal manning the cannon: He had about him a shattered look; and he tried slapping buttons on the weapon’s terminal half a dozen times, but it was no use: The black dragon was pulling the plasmic stream of power into himself with the greater agency—and even if the criminal managed to now shut off the cannon, its energy could stop pouring into Artherion no more than a leaky aqueduct can stop its defiant flows.

And as Artherion tread closer to the cannon, the mana stream arced higher to persist its run into his gullet, to which it now had a sort of magnetic attraction: And so the stream jerked the cannon higher and higher, until the criminal was flipping out inside his glass compartment, beating on the windows; but he couldn’t leave the compartment till the firing was done with, due to safety measures installed by the cannon’s ancient designers; so he suffered a show of the very dragon he’d sought to defeat now growing out of control and closing in on him.

“Egads, he’s gettin’ bigger off the beam,” said Owen after turning back toward Kael, and pointed, and Ryan slowed and looked too, aghast with amazement.

Each trudging leg of Kael Artherion outgrew the width of the average home, great obelisks of ink-black scales whose feet crushed whatever sections of city-blocks they landed on. Now the dragon grew to thirty-five meters tall—forty meters tall—and only the cathedral of the city, west of him, contested him in height now, what with its vine-riddled obsidian steeples that stuck forty-five meters in the air: The steeples came a storey short of pricking the overhanging boughs of the overstory bottom. Most of the city buildings fell below his waist, however, so that he was practically wading through them as he trampled them down in his pursuit of the source of the mana-stream. A cacophony of glass-like shattering accompanied the rising of dust-billows below his ascending figure.

To the rooftop where the miniature weapon was mounted, zapping his mouth with treacly goodness, his groin came; and then he knelt, clutching the roof and gulping down the last of the now-blinking, failing stream.

Creaaaaaaaaaak … Crnnnknkkkk!

Monolithic creaks and crunches of his bones echoed far and wide. Even on the opposite end of Tantagroom, the resonate blasts of rumbly noise came loud enough to interrupt conversations. Here Artherion felt his chest protruding farther and his horns elongating and his talons extending … In fact, any region of his body he could imagine, he could home in on with his focus and feel growing, while being sculpted with the same proportions he had before he’d drunk any of the potions.

The mana deified his size more and more. Now, even while kneeling, he towered high over the cannon, and his wings, fluttering in his glee, matched the altitude of the church steeples. His plated chest swelled and swelled to fill the vision entire of the criminal trapped in that cockpit. The criminal, white-faced, sunk low into his seat and watched with incredulity and the regret of a child on timeout as his vehicle pointed towards the canopy and beamed its magic into the maw of the thirsty mythical beast.

One last gulp, and Artherion grew to fifty, fifty-five, sixty meters tall … He stood to full height, his hide and muscles stretching to an outlandish size which no one in the city could deny belonged to a god. Spectators of his coming to Tantagroom might have thought, maybe, he was just a clever magician or maybe all dragonkind was like him, but now every scale measured larger than a shield; every gleaming talon could intimidate other dragons with the thought of being skewered upon them. Intertwining branches snapped around his rising horned skull as it breached the high canopy; and then the cannon sparked out of juice, unlocking its door, so that the criminal toppled goofily out of the cockpit the next time he banged on the interior.

Across the city, a trail of pawprints had laid a dividing line of rubble, of wasted shops and homes and towers. However, none of the civilians had dividing opinions about the overgrown dragon. Although many were dumbfounded at having lost property, the prevailing wave of chanting was of the words, “God of the dragons! God of the dragons!” Quickly, there caught on a narrative of the opinion that a small sacrifice of buildings had been necessary for the god’s presence; and that, soon, the god would gift the people of Tantagroom with something that would be more than worth the sacrifice.

Though, Artherion hadn’t learned that he’d accidentally formed a religion around himself, yet. He crouched down to bring himself as low as he could to the level of the criminal (the way a regular-sized person might bring themselves to the level of a wee lizard rested on a chair), and he thanked the guy for the munificent donation of magic. Hearing the dragon speak simultaneously scared the wits out of the criminal and relieved him greatly: Apparently, all the charges against him had been dropped! The guy laughed out loud, said it was no problem; and from that point on, he was one of Artherion’s most devout followers (and never dared to depose him from the city again), even though he would later be caught robbing an elderly person and be put on timeout under a giant paw as punishment.

But now wasn’t time for punishing of any sort; now was time for the dragon to relish in the extraordinary senses and privileges of his colossal body. He inhaled, and loved the feeling of thousands of lungfuls entering his expansive chest; and when he exhaled, he loved likewise the feeling of all that breath storming out, as though he were a force of weather.

He turned round, and saw for the first time the full scope of the damages he’d done to the city. He frowned at the trenches of his paws, and all the streets whose architectural guts were spilling out amongst one another. One half of him—the grateful giant—wanted to find his friends the dwarf and the man, to thank them for helping him grow to be as big as he had; but the other half—the responsible god-figure—thought, now, if ever, is the time for him to repay the civilians for all that they had lost.

So, he thought and thought: And then Kael Artherion set about to a laboring for the rest of the day, but told no one what he was up to. His task took him into the woods. As sunset came, people came to the border of the city and saw him ploughing a massive field with his paws: a field so expansive, it covered more surface area than the city itself. When he was done, there was more space than anyone could imagine what to do with for planting and growing crops.

Oohs and aahs travelled from the border into the heart of the city; and it was made common knowledge that soon, there would be a great harvest for all; and all would be well-fed and nourished.

And then they watched the dragon lumber to the high-rising trees, which were as thick as buildings and whose gnarled roots were like cathedral buttresses; and they watched him push his weight into one of them, until it cracked halfway up the bole and came down, the earthquake of its fall ringing over the earth for several seconds; and then he crept over the fallen tree, and used his talons to hack it into dozens and dozens of large logs of wood: enough to build many new homes and shops and inns with; and so the people of Tantagroom rejoiced, for they would be well-sheltered.

By the time he finished his labor, stars twinkled vaguely behind the leaves and boughs in the heavens; and he returned to the woods edging the city, and called out for his friends; and after some time, Owen and Ryan emerged from a crowd of people, jumping and cheering, glad to be with their giant companion again. With them came running a suited fellow. The fellow gestured as if wanting to speak, so the dragon took a knee and tipped his ear to listen.

“Kael Artherion, it’s an honor to be speaking with you face to face. My name is Shane Spruceson, and I am the mayor of Tantagroom. For hours, my people and I had been wondering over your work. But I’ve met your friends, who have told me good things about you and have led me to believe that you ploughed the forest and chopped this lumber for us? Am I right to assume that?”

“It’s the least I can do, Mr. Spruceson, sir. I wouldn’t like to leave your city like this; and I still want to put a little more work in. I do want to build a big cabin, so that everyone whose house I accidentally, uh, stepped on has a warm place to stay tonight, in the meantime …”

The enormity of his own voice puzzled Kael. The very roots of the ancient trees seemed to groan and shift as he talked, and most everyone hopped up at his first word in shock, although no one feared that he might smite them or intentionally do anything of malignant nature.

Rubbing his chin, the mayor gave the blue-eyed giant a measured look of respect. “You did ruin quite a lot, that much is true. Though, you’ve shown that you’re capable of building much more than you’ve already destroyed. I wonder if you would be interested in a trade of sorts? If you continued to help us build up our agriculture and rebuild our infrastructure, I have a few herbalists and alchemists who would happily find more regents and make more growth potions for you. And perhaps we could afford you more mana for your diet, as well?”

For a second, Artherion wondered how the mayor knew about the potions and the mana, but then he realized his friends had likely talked with the mayor about such things. As for the mana, everyone in the city had obviously seen him grow from it. He turned his head and smiled, daydreaming about a symbiotic relationship wherein the people helped him to grow bigger, so that he could help them to live better.

And so, accepted the proposal; and for many, many days, the dragon and the citizens of Tantagroom lived harmoniously. He did the heavy labor, and they used their little eyes to find potion-ingredients and little hands to concoct the potions. With the company of Owen and Ryan, and with his reciprocal relationship with his new worshipers, he was living a life that many dragons could only dream of.

Where would his own dreams take him, after he left Tantagroom? He wasn’t sure. All he knew was that there were many more adventures he had yet to experience. BIG adventures.

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