The journey lasted for days, Frost limping through the air on her injured wings. She was forced to stop and rest many times, each takeoff harder than the last. She had to run, actually run, from monster encounters, unwilling to risk further injury, each retreat only hitting her demolished pride harder.
She was humiliated. Utterly humiliated. How dare they? How DARE they? The humans, occupying her lair like the rodents they were. The other dragons, unwilling to accept their place as her servants. HOW DARE THEY?
Deep inside, the small voice of a young girl tried to whisper through, to cut through the draconic madness that had overtaken her previous body, but Frost snuffed it out. She had a goal. A clear goal, pushing her through the pain as the days went by, her unsteady journey continuing to the place of her rebirth.
At last, she reached Evergreen Woods and found it. The small clearing with the pond. Normally the magic of the pond would prevent her from finding it again, but with its destruction the magic had faded, and Frost managed to land to the place she'd left so long ago.
Which brought about her actual problem: The pond was destroyed. She dug through the earth, through the rocks, attempting to find the water, but her transformation had utterly ripped the ground apart, destroying the spring. The remaining water she'd frozen had long ago melted and flowed to the earth, never to be reclaimed.
She cried out in frustration.
"Why? WHY?! I need this! I don't deserve to be treated this way? How dare you, pond! I'll reduce even your memory to nothing!"
She tore through the remains, utterly bulldozing the area as her wounds opened up again, leaking blood. She collapsed, unwilling to continue her rampage. Not that it mattered. The magical water was gone, and it couldn't help her anymore.
That's when she noticed it. A small pile of human belongings, stashed nearby. Weather had taken its toll on them, the clothes utterly trashed, the crossbow unusable, the old rabbit corpse long ago picked clean.
And next to them was the canteen.
From the depths of her memories, she dug out a moment a human girl had filled the canteen from the pond. Could it be...
She carefully picked up the small container with her claw, and shook it. Her heart jumped in her chest as she heard the sloshing of water inside. The canteen had held all these months! The last water of the Spring of Potential was contained within.
But would it be enough?
Well, it was her only shot. She held the canteen in her claws, directing her will at it.
"All right. I believe I was quite clear before, but allow me to remind you. I want to be the strongest. A perfect being. Strong enough to take back my lair. Strong enough to show the other dragons where they belong. Strong enough to topple kingdoms at a whim, strong enough to destroy the WORLD if I have to. I want to be the utterly perfect, indomitable queen. No, a queen is not enough. I want to be a Goddess." she declared, and bit down upon the canteen, letting the water flow down her throat.
For a moment, nothing happened. Frost held her breath, waiting for a sign..
Then she shivered. That was strange. Ice dragons couldn't even feel cold. But the unmistakable chill flowed through her as her icy core seemed to supercharge itself, radiating coldness like a sun warmth.
The area around her began to be covered in rime and frost, a growing field of snow flowing out as the dragoness in the middle collapsed, unable to keep standing. As she watched, her wounds closed and her wings mended. She was back at full strength. But that was only the beginning.
She grunted as she began to grow. Her body was now bursting with boundless energy and it reacted to that, stretching out taller, wider and stronger as her muscles grew and her bones lengthened. She was visibly growing, soon reaching the size of Flurry, then Whitefang, then Blizzard, and soon stretching even further beyond, easily eclipsing her "friends."
She was so cold, her core a wincing pain within her chest, but it was soon subsiding as her flesh adapted to impossibly cold temperatures. Even as she breathed, panting amidst the transformation, she was unwillingly letting out bursts of cold, freezing the trees in front of her solid before they crackled to shards as her growing mass pushed against them.
Her body cracked as it mutated, adopting back features from her previous mammal form. Her hips changed shape as her skeletal structure morphed, allowing her to once again adopt an upright digitigrade posture. The hips widened immensely as she once more began to slightly resemble her previous human form, her front legs caressing the new swells as they grew another finger, once more becoming human-like hands tipped with even longer and sharper claws that began to glow bright blue and steam vapor, signifying the immense coldness they would now imbue her strikes with freezing effects.
In her chest, the firm scaly mounds began to throb and warp as they swelled, pushing against her hardening armor as her scales turned from merely steely to diamond-like structures, glistening in the sun as the froze over and grew stronger. Her breasts ballooned, once mere decoration, now forming actual cleavage upon her draconic chest. The scales topping the mounds parted as actual mammalian nipples formed to crown them, the breasts firming up further as they soon filled with subzero milk produced by the newly reacquired mammary glands. Down south, her lips puffed out as her reproductive organs evolved once more to bear both dragon and humanoid young.
She grew and grew, soon reaching fifty meters in height. Her tail lengthened immensely, becoming stronger and more responsive, turning completely prehensile. The icicle-like spines crowning her back began to glow the same bright blue as her claws, and she cried out as more and more burst through her skin, starting from the tip of her tail. Two spines burst out the opposite ends of the tip, turning her new tail into a deadly weapon on par with her claws. From there they spread out, her spine pushing out more and more spikes starting from her lower back, at least two or three sticking out per vertebrae, turning her back into a glowing forest of ice spikes. The growth abated as it reached her head, but through her skull burst an innumerable amount of icicles that flowed down her back, interlocking and melding together until they created a hair-like structure that flowed naturally like a human's. By now she was reaching 70 meters in height, and just kept growing larger, mightier and more beautiful. Frost closed her eyes as her ascension granted her delightful, cool pleasure, and when she opened them again the blue orbs were glowing like her spikes, and the draconic slit pupils had turned into snowflakes.
Her wings had had a hard time keeping up with her growth, but now as she was close to completion they picked up speed. The limbs grew wider and wider, getting room to grow as her body pushed itself beyond the treeline. Her wingspan increased exponentially, now reaching 300 meters in width. Her wings were massive canopies, their blue membranes filtering sunlight to cause the wintery landscape beneath her to change color. She grunted as on her lower back, above her hips, new appendages burst out and soon extended, turning into another pair of wings, not as large and mighty as her main ones but powerful nonetheless, officially crowing her as the fastest creature in the skies.
She was almost done, as the horns on top of her head twisted and grew, the icicles growing longer and larger as more burst out, her unimpressive horns soon circling each other and interlocking before forming into a vicious and majestic crown of horns to signify her new status. As she ascended, her brain swelled and was filled with all the wisdom of her people, arcane secrets, and beyond. The had been a young dragon, barely out of childhood. But now she realized just how pathetic she had been compared to what she was now. She wasn't an adult dragon, or even an ancient one. No, ancient dragons were small babies compared to the 100-meter height her new horns now reached for. Only the great Leviathans of the seas could now rival her in size, and they were just mindless brutes. Now, she was a Primordial Dragon; a mythical being not seen since the Age of Dragons. But now she was here, ready to take her rightful place in the world.
Frost giggled as her head was filled with wisdom, now realizing what a fool she had been to claim Queenship over the dragons. It was utterly impossible... unless one happened to be an ascended Primordial Dragon, as she was now. She was gigantic, without equal. Her arrival would herald the beginning of a new era, one that she would dominate. Her ice breath could fell entire armies, her claws could tear through bedrock, her mind was bursting with magic, and her very presence could incite a new ice age if she so desired.
With her ascension complete, she stood up to her two legs, easily doubling her length. The Evergreen Woods was gone, the cryonic power she released during her transformation had frozen the forest solid. And her ice would never thaw. Anything she would freeze from now on would remains so until the end of time, unless she willed otherwise.
She laughed at the thought. The entire world was now her plaything.
Of course, she would first need her lair back. Better do it now.
With a mighty FWOOSH, she spread her colossal wings, and took off. She was quite sure her wings created tornadoes somewhere, and the thought made her all the more amused Her powerful wings carried her back to the mountains within minutes, where the humans were starting to settle down, carrying her hoard out and starting to rebuild the base.
She wasn't sure if her arrival drove them to kill themselves at the sight of the huge dragon or if her presence simply froze them solid, but when she arrived there wasn't a human left to defend the mountain.
"Hm. What a disappointment. I was quite looking forward to flexing my muscles." she said, landing on the mountain. her huge body could now easily wrap around the mountain, but she realized a problem. She was too large to fit into her lair.
Of course, she could now shapeshift to become smaller, but she refused to make do with a lesser lair. So, reaching with her claws, she broke through the crust of the mountain, easily pulverizing the rocks that she'd previously struggled to dent. She dove in deeper, quite soon almost hollowing out the entire mountain, but leaving enough rock to keep a roof over her head, utilizing the lair-building techniques cultivated by dragonkind over millions of years, all of which now resided within her head. She carved out tunnels and compartments and connected the gigantic cave to her old lair for access to mortals. She carefully gathered her small pile of riches and put it into one of the sub-caves. The scoffed at the size of it. She'd need to get to work, and soon, to fill her new lair.
As a finishing touch, she let loose a blast of coldness from her body, coating the entirety of the lair in ice. She admired her new home. An entire hollowed out mountain, large enough for even her to move around in. Truly a lair befitting of a goddess.
And this was just the start. She now had all the time in the world to do whatever she pleased.
Frost, the Goddess of Ice Dragons, was soon to claim this world.