Frosti rolled over. The ground under her was soft. Strange. Everything she had known up to this point was ice or stone.
She stretched out, still just a little too tired to open her eyes. Her claws dug into the sand, and her belly did too. Underneath the top layer of cool soil was a hidden layer of warmth. Frosti wriggled just a little deeper into the sand to let the earth warm her frozen body.
Her relaxation was interrupted by the churning of her empty stomach. By the time it bothered her enough to open her eyes, she was halfway buried in the ground. Frosti soaked up just a little more heat before resigning herself to the effort of dragging her body back onto the surface of the sandy cave floor.
Outside the cave, she found herself under the light of the crystal pillar, shaded slightly by an overhang in the stony walls. There was a Frosti sized trail in the sand leading all the way from the water. A ton of footprints, too. It looked like the ground here was rarely disturbed, only tarnished by the marks of whoever dragged her out, as well as some tiny footprints along the water's edge.
Most of the prints were scrubbed out by the trail her body left as it was dragged out of the water, but two sets ran alongside it. One set occasionally interrupted the trough. The other circled her sleeping place inside the cave a few times before rejoining the former pair and wandering off towards the left.
Frosti peered in that direction, "The secret city of the rat people."
It was built into the massive cavern wall that supported the mountains above the underworld. The city was quite a ways off now, mostly obscured by the forest of mushrooms and moss. It was a good thing that it was elevated.
The underworld itself was the biggest cave Frosti had ever seen. This one massive room probably encompassed the size of the entire mountain. The ceiling was littered with... "stars". Purple stars. They looked much like the central pillar, and coated the entire room with a shallow, tinted light.
Her stomach rumbled again, and her mind echoed her mother's words, It's them or you.
The underground forest was teeming with wildlife: spiny rats with glowing shells; fluorescent grubs and worms writhing under the sand; screeching bats. The bats were the only things down here that didn't seem to glow in one way or another. All of them were speaking to each other. Frosti was sure of it. It was just in a language she didn't understand yet!
Yeah right, Frosti thought to herself, I'll get by just fine without killing anything.
There was a lot of forest to explore off in the other direction, but the city proved too tempting a destination to ignore. Hungry Frosti set off in that direction, accompanied only by the meandering footsteps of her unknown rescuers.
It seemed like all the earth in the underworld was competing to be the softest thing ever discovered. Away from the water, the dark sand gave way to a powdery charcoal that puffed out in small clouds with every step. The soil was powdery black and coated her paws, completely covering up the shiny scales underneath. Frosti's tail was blackened, too.
Unfortunate. It was like the very soil was trying to hide her beauty! Even more unfortunate, trying to rub it off only caused it to spread up her forearms. For now, she decided, it was best to leave it be.
As she wandered alongside the guiding trail of footprints, Frosti pressed out of the open sands of the lake shore, and into the tight confines of the mushroom forest.
The stems were soft. Not like a pillow, but like a rubber or foam. It let your skin sink in just a small amount before you were met with a firm inner core.
Frosti passed by a fallen cap, and took note of that too. The topside was smooth and light. Slightly darker than the stem. Underneath, hundreds of gills emitted a sweet scent.
Enticing enough that she tried to sate her growing hunger, but when she pressed her face in to try and rip some of the fins off, they reached back for her and grabbed on tight. The inside of the mushroom was suddenly slick with a thick saliva, and Frosti recoiled in disgust, wiping it off her face like a sickly honey.
Occasionally, the stems got so tight she had to squeeze between them, rubbing her shoulders, hips, and tail as she went. The soot along her tail rubbed off onto the stems, too. Sticking to them more ferociously than it did to her scales.
Frosti reached up and pressed her hands into the white mushroom stem. Two perfect copies of her paw prints, complete with claw marks, were emblazoned into the tree. This made her giddy~
In addition to Frosti's own footprints, which were now spread out in a delighted canter, a new set of tracks: a pair of dragon hands on each mushroom stem, joined the ever growing trail through the forest.
She began to develop a rhythm. Step. Step. Step. Press. Four steps to the next mushroom. Step. Step. Step. Step. Press. Three steps to the next...
Thud thud thud.
Those were not her footsteps.
Frosti hit the sodden deck just in time to watch something pounce over her head and crash into a tree she had just marked, folding the entire stem under its weight and sending the mushroom cap careening into the dirt to kick up a plume of soot.
It looked like a rat. But it was too big, and was covered in an assortment of spines which spilled out a purple light, and its tail was thicker, stronger, and moved with as much purpose as her own. So not really like a rat at all.
It didn't seem as impressed with her as she did with it. It stood up over the bent mushroom and lunged again. Frosti pulled away, just out of reach, as the creature's spines had gotten embedded in the mushroom stem.
Frosti may have had quandaries about hunting, but the spiny rat monster clearly already had its mind made up.
It was bigger than her. The spines would make it impossible to bite, too. As the creature tore its spines out of the spongy wood, something overpowered her curiosity. It passed like a wave over her body, leaving her scales standing on edge.
She ran like she had never run before. Faster than when she was hunting shadows under the egg shelf. Faster than when her brothers decided she wanted to participate in their wrestling.
If it had ever felt like she had been limited by her body, this time it was her mind struggling to keep up with navigating the twisted maze of trees as her legs propelled her as fast as they could possibly manage.
And while Frosti struggled to decide how to parkour across the many branches blocking her way, the monster behind her simply smashed a straight line through the forest. Mushrooms collapsed, occasionally springing back up, but eventually wrecking her navigation completely as a mushroom cap landed as straight as a wall and forced her to swerve off in a new direction.
As straight as a wall... She hit her head pretty hard chasing rats earlier, and now she was the smaller participant in this game.
Frosti kept running at the underside of the newly fallen mushroom cap, and only when the scent of its nectar overwhelmed her nostrils did she dare dig her claws into the ground and scamper along its length.
The monster managed to reach its head off to one side and nip at Frosti's tail, but the weight of its body sent it careening into the underside of the mushroom cap, which practically curled around the mass of the creature.
The monster shuddered and roared, forcing Frosti to crouch low out of fear, but as it struggled it became more and more apparent that the nectar inside the trap was growing thicker with each passing moment, until the monster was barely able to pull its head up and away from the cap.
Turning away from that gruesome scene, Frosti stared among the mushrooms and darkness to find she had totally lost her way. The path of destruction running through the forest crossed itself multiple times over, and following it in reverse was an exercise in patience. If she was to get to the city before hunger set in, she would need a more direct route.
In addition to those idle thoughts that crossed her mind, Frosti also began to feel she had picked up more unwanted spectators. Flashes of glowing purple crystals in motion behind the trees... footsteps that echoed heavier than her own.
Frosti picked one of the mushrooms to climb. Some of them were thin and flimsy, but others were fat and held up her weight even as she approached the canopy. More importantly, one of its neighbors was short enough that she could jump off the stem directly onto the canopy without trying to climb upside down underneath the mushroom's cap.
Climbing up was tricky, and the soot on her belly and claws made her tracks far too obvious for her liking.
The top of the forest was gorgeous. The mushrooms reflected the crystalline light shining from above. And from here, nothing was in the way of the city on the cavern's wall. It was lit up now, not by purple crystals, but by candle light. It looked warm and cozy compared to the underworld's wilderness.
Frosti's stomach churned again. She hadn't exactly solved that problem. Perhaps it would be safer to find something to eat in one of the smaller caves lining the underworld's walls or floor. Just enough to last until evening when she would already be at the city.
She peered off the side of the mushroom she was on. The ground was a long way down for a young dragon without any wings. Probably soft enough that it didn't matter though. The stem creaked and started to tip with all her weight off the edge.
As she pulled back to the center, she caught a glimpse of more rat-like monsters drawing near. Thank god she found her way to the top before having to fend off another one of those things.
Frosti set off for the city, hopping from mushroom to mushroom and occasionally checking to see that she was, in fact, being followed.
It wasn't until she had nearly arrived that the monster gave up being subtle. It must have been getting antsy chasing her for so long, because it stopped sneaking around and started toppling mushrooms like crazy, more than once forcing Frosti to make a risky jump to a neighboring mushroom!
Frosti picked up the pace a little, but didn't think much of the threat. She had been perfectly good at identifying which mushrooms could support her weight so far, and the monster was so far below.
That was until a volley of spines shot up through the flesh of the mushroom she was on. Frosti reacted quickly, but not quickly enough, dove to the right alongside three foreign spines embedded in her belly, and caught herself on the neighboring mushroom. It did not catch her.
As Frosti began to fall, the cap of the mushroom she was on began to catch air. She felt new muscles along her ribs twitch, pulling on wings that were still hibernating beneath her skin. The experience was exhilarating! Then, terrifying. It was not a glider, just a mushroom cap. It didn't keep moving in the right direction and twisted wildly in the air. Right before she would have landed, the cap finally flipped over, spiking Frosti into the ground.
The ground was soft here, too. Most people would have sunk in like a stake. Frosti (and most frost dragons for that matter) had wide paws to remain on top of the snow. The ashy soil caught into her feet much in the same way, and she was off running before she really knew she touched the ground.
The city wall was only a dragon-dash away at this point. Frosti had originally planned to jump it from the canopy. Without the luxury of altitude, she would have to make a mad dash for the front gate which was uncomfortably far away. Not impossible to make it in a single sprint if it weren't for the spines she was dragging through the soil.
The monster was right behind her, too. Spines flew over her head and smashed into the ground ahead of her. 20 seconds to the gate. Her breath was running out, too. She wished her wings would unfurl and let her fly away this very instant!
It never happened. Frosti gasped for air and ate a lungful of soot. 10 seconds to go. Claws raked her thigh. She choked and coughed up a black smoke. Ahead of her, the gate was closed.
There was enough space to dive between the bars if she was able to aim, but by the time she got there, her eyes had watered over and she couldn't breathe or think. With her last burst of energy, she gave it her best guess and dove towards the gate.
She tumbled through, and didn't smash into solid metal? Frosti blinked the tears out of her eyes. Four guards stood around her, pointing spears. Two more were at the gate winch, desperately spinning the wheel back to the other direction.
The guards dove forward. So much for a secret sanctuary! They were attacking her on sight!
But no weapons pierced her. Instead, the guards encompassed Frosti inside a defensive line. The monster smashed into the gate, managing to claw only one of the guards. It retreated after getting stabbed a few times, finally deciding that Frosti was not worth the effort after all.
"A black dragon? In the tundra?"
It was one of the guards. He spoke the same language as Frosti's family, but instead of coming in through Frosti's mind, his scaled lips curled and the voice echoed throughout the plaza.
Wait, black? Frosti checked herself. She had in fact tumbled through the soot and was covered from head to tail in charcoal and ash.
She responded to him telepathically, "No, I'm a Frost dragon. Covered in dirt."