The platinum-scaled, golden-eyed dragonling stared at his reflected image within the slow flowing stream, still struggling to believe what he was seeing.
He tilted his head to the right, and the reflection turned its own. He raised a hand forward, and not only did he see the small, scaly forepaw in the water, but the original hovering above it as well.
Turning his head back, he glanced over his long, sinuous body to spy a set of leathery wings tucked awkwardly against his back, a pair of hind legs stronger and thicker than the front two, and a long serpentine tail.
He was about one yard long—maybe a yard-and-a-half if he deliberately stretched himself out from nose to tail tip. If he stretched out his wings, he estimated they'd be roughly a yard long as well.
A normal size for a newly hatched dragon.
No wonder he had fallen when trying to walk on his feet—or rather, had tried to walk on just his hind legs.
His gaze turned farther back, taking advantage of his long neck to do so with no need to turn about. There, from where he had emerged, was the comforting 'blanket' prison he had been slumbering within; the shattered shell of his egg.
Just what was going on!?
He glanced back at the stream, staring at the reflection—his reflection—as his thoughts raced.
Reincarnation...
Knowledge from his past, or more accurately his past life, slowly percolated to the surface of his thoughts.
Before the Heavens—before everything that had happened—the Souls of the deceased were reincarnated.
Thanatos, God of Death, would escort these Souls into Heaven. Then they would pass through the Eternal Brazier to purify their memories—and, in the case of humans, purify them of Sin. Only after a Soul was unburdened by the old could it be escorted back to Pyren for rebirth.
Pyren, he remembered, was the name the Six Gods of Creation had given to the world—the cradle of their earthly works—before being joined by the later six Gods to form the Twelve.
There was no way typical reincarnation could explain his predicament. First, the Heavenly Flames within the brazier were extinguished, thus the Sin that had festered within his Soul during his age-long vigil should have turned him into a Demon. Second, all the Gods were dead, and thus there was no one who could guide his Soul to its next life. Finally, the Souls of each race had sprung from different divine sources and could not be interchanged—a human could not be reborn as an elf, no more than a dwarf could be reborn as a myrmidon.
So a human like him should definitely not be able to be reincarnated as a dragon, even ignoring the first two issues.
Yet his eyes couldn't lie.
He could spend all day trying to comprehend the mystery of his rebirth, staring interrogatingly at his reflection for answers, but neither would get anywhere.
So instead, he familiarized himself with his new... self.
Thanks to Oriana and his role as Elysium's Hero, he had plenty of experience with dragons. He could tell the subtle differences that would separate a male hatchling from a female hatchling, for example, and was relieved to see the distinct horn pattern of a male hatchling.
Hmm... That's odd. He didn't think a change in sex would be something he'd care about; there were much more important things to focus on...
A flicker of movement within his reflection distracted the dragonling from his latest contemplation.
It was his tail.
While he hadn't been concentrating, the long limb started to flick in a manner resembling a wag—a gesture that Oriana performed whenever she was happy.
Did that mean he was also happy?
He stared towards his reflection, watching the swish of the silvery limb, as well as the subtle expressions of his scaled face.
He was... actually... happy.
He frowned—but instead of making himself look serious, it just made him look grumpy.
Why would he be happy!?
He put the thought aside with a shake of his head. It was only natural for him to be happy. He was alive again after hundreds of years of unending torment.
Sure, he was a dragon now, but that was a minor problem in the grand scheme of things.
It's not like he could be happy because he was a dragon. That would be... so utterly childish!
He glanced back at his new reflection before, with a preening chuff, he turned away to investigate the cavern he had been reborn in—trying not to recall how Oriana would give a similar gesture whenever she was failing to act mature.
The cavern had only appeared so gigantic because he had misjudged his own size and how high his head was off the ground. But even after adjusting for his lower perspective, the chamber was still comfortably large enough to be an adult dragon's lair.
Although where the dragons that presumably made him were... he didn't know.
The hatchling turned his head this way and that to look over the cave, steadily getting better about bracing with his hands and feet—errr, all four of his legs—to accommodate the shift in his weight from using his long neck. Dragons were ungainly creatures, it appeared, effectively possessing eight limbs when one counted their four legs, two wings, tail, and head; quite unlike the four and one neck suited only for swiveling that he was used to.
The centerpiece of the cavern was a sizable, uneven stone mound that was basically a hill unto itself. The nest, which contained only the remnants of his egg, sat within a shallow alcove nearer to the hill's base—no wonder all his wobbling about within the egg only caused him to rock back into place.
His unknown mother had chosen her nest well.
Turning his gaze towards the stream's trickling source, he spied the passage leading to the surface. The entrance must not have been too far away, considering how well illuminated the cavern was for its size. Although he had to swiftly remind himself that the chamber only appeared so well illuminated for dragon eyes; a human like his former self might have found it quite gloomy, or perhaps even pitch black.
The stream continued to one end of the chamber, settling against the wall to form a small cave pond. The water must have continued flowing deeper still into the earth via some hidden cracks, given that the stream's continual flow didn't raise the pond's water level.
Hopefully, such porous rock meant that the cavern didn't flood. Once again, a good choice of lair as far as his knowledge went.
Peering about for a moment longer, he spied the edge of another entrance behind the stone hill. Unlike the cavern's entrance, which only sported smooth natural weathering, this exit seemed to be a deliberate construction based off of the sharp angles and remnants of carved, decorated flourishes... It must have been something important.
Well, there was no better place to start investigating his, for lack of a better term, home. Maybe he'd find the dragons who made him in the other room.
He took a step forward and promptly collapsed again.
With a frown, he awkwardly scrambled back onto all four of his legs, then attempted to lead his step with a rear leg which only seemed to unbalance his body's peculiar balance. He wobbled, tentatively reached forward with a foreleg, then tumbled to the ground once again.
'Behold, the supposed savior of Pyren, stumbling about like a newborn kitten!'
Internal grumbling aside, something was wrong. It only took Oriana minutes to be quite the nimble little dragon. Yet, here he was, struggling to manage a single step.
As he had learned, dragons were born with knowledge imprinted from their progenitors. They could walk and speak almost from the moment they hatched, and even inherited an ancient repertoire of lore. There were even rumors that dragons possessed glimpses to the time of Creation, dreams that were actually memories inherited from the Heavenly King who divided Order from Chaos.
Unfortunately, Oriana had never given him a direct answer when he inquired about such dreams.
Regardless, he didn't possess the knowledge of how to walk, let alone how to fly, breathe fire, or even possess a firsthand account of Creation; but he had retained the dregs of his old life's tattered memories...
Maybe one mystery explained the other. Maybe whoever it was that reincarnated him had taken advantage of a dragon's inherited memories, replacing the dragon knowledge so he could retain what remained of his old memories instead?
'So instead of knowing how to walk, I get to carry around old, bitter regrets... What a fantastic trade. Thanks, Dad and/or Mom.'
He frowned again. That thought had also been quite unlike him. Abandoning his memories would mean abandoning his duties, and now that he was here and Pyren hadn't dissolved back into nothingness... That meant...
That meant that there could still be hope...
Hope. It had been a while since he had felt that.
His tail flicked faster.