Fortuo's mind traced the details of lessons past attempting to ascertain some clue related to the enigmatic trinket's true abilities. He didn't notice the ten minutes that passed as he moved higher into the hinterlands where the trees began to thin out and become almost uniformly coniferous. It was almost a surprise when the mouth of the stony hollow he had made a home of addressed his vision against flat, rolling green hills and sturdy pines. Fortuo mechanically walked past the entrance and on the carpeted path to the back of the cave that served as a dormitory.
The dragon sighed in rememberance of the alternative chores ahead of him. Around his home in stacks and crammed into some essential furniture were the tools of his mission. Dozens of books ranging on topic from history to mathematics and alchemy as well as cultural literature disrupted the emptiness. Some glassware and shelves for conducting experimental examples of the alchemic tome's wisdom and performing religious rituals also occupied the room, but the rest of its space was filled by more casual objects. Some farming tools, a clothes hamper, and a fire pit near the center, but overall it was a simple little hole.
Fortuo once again planned out how to organize his studies, that years long exhile that all of his people's youth were sent out into the wild to in order to accumulate a full citizen's wisdom. He tried until his eyes were captured by the glinting of his guilty pleasure: an archetypical treasure pile. Heaps of coins, jewels, chalices, bracelets, rings, staves, globes, and relics claimed from innumerable places and by inconsistant means were piled in a single corner of the cave and appeared to generate light independantly. Fortuo giddly though of adding the watch to his collection, one that any dragon would be justly proud of, after he'd had his fun.
Seated comfortably on his bedsheets, Fortuo played with the knob that controlled that hands. He spun them around until the smaller hand pointed at the image of a hatchling-in-arms and its larger counterpart on the example of the modern world's version of his brood. He then depressed the button on the crudely drawn "individual" shape on the edge (chosen at random) and followed this with application of pressure onto the hand-knob. His claw felt a vibration. The watch was moving! It shook feverishly in his grasp and radiated a potent green. Fortuo almost dropped the crazed device, but suddenly, it quit its fit. Puzzled, the dragon walked over to his tall dresser drawers and laid the machine carefully on top not wanting to risk losing it in his collection until he'd tried more on it later. He started to move to the fire pit and start a flame when a mounting shudder coursed from his terminal coccyx to the front teeth in his maw.
The shuddering grew progressively more untense until his limbs spasmed beyond control. Fortuo felt a drastic shift occur beneath his scales. His back arched backwards attempting to keep his quivering body balanced. It felt like he was rapidly losing weight. When he turned down to look at his arms, he discovered that they did in fact appear to be growing thinner! As his eyes flickered over his body they watched as the muscular mass that the hard outdoors living had gifted him with was gradually melted away into the even outline of his form. His clothes, though at first more comfortable, soon became more like robes than a pants/shift set as the dragon started to lose height as well as weight. Perplexed, Fortuo felt his skeleton alter as bones started to separate and organs fluctuated in their activity rates. The release of ions from his thinning skeletal frame caused his reduced muscles to quiver, effectively knocking him to the ground.
"WhAT's HA-ppen-INg to Me-E!?" Fortuo yelped in a voice that cracked between alternating low and high pitches. The feeling in his throat reminded him of when his voice had just finished deepening form adolescence. 'I'm shrinking!' he thought horrified and threw off his oversized shirt, which was a constant reminder of this fact. The dragon then recognized something out of place on his yellow chest: the abscence of a mark he had acquired in a fight at age 22. Holding his pants firm in his claws, Fortuo waddled to a full-length mirro that stood across the cave from his dresser and feel over forwards from the combined reflection he saw and resuming tremors. His body appeared so thin and reduced stature looked no older than 17 years. "I'm getting younger!" he screamed in a forgotten tone at his the sight and fough to stand up. In his haste, he allowed the pants to pool around his ankles leaving his transforming body naked for observation.
Though afraid, Fortuo began to laugh for an unknown reason. He continued lose age, passing completely from adulthood into his teenage years. His body was undergoing a dramatic reversal of the effects of puberty. Fortuo's brain and gonads stopped producing key chemicals as his cells started to express the genes which commulatively carried the design for the anatomy and physiology of a younger individual. The unnatural chemical phenomena that ended the creation of certain compounds and allowed them to degrade in order to deconstruct the dragon's grown form caused strange reactions such as his twisting and giggling. Fortuo underwent a series of shrinking spurts that accomodated his outward figure to match the reducing size and resource demands of his dwindling tissues. His started to even in proportion to the rest of his skull and his lanky arms and legs pulled inward toward his axis. The broadness in his shoulders faded as he felt a sort of contraction in his colarabone that drew his arms to his ribcage. Perodically, his chuckling produced a potent stream of fire from the glands in his pharynx that became less hot and more uncontrollable as his body forgot years of dedicated training. His tail started to furiously whipped behind and sent a tickling sensation up Fortuo's spine that only served to embolden his laughter. Turning to his side, the 14-year-old noticed that his spines where melding into the scales on his tail as the unit itself started to push up into his back.
Moisture ran down the grooves between his scales as he underwent the final dramatic height demotion that finalized the unturning of his maturity and left him a bare and evenly spread out child. The boy feel back onto his buttocks and realized by their contact with the carpeting that his once adamantine scales had become far smoother and succeptible to force. He felt a pushing sensation against the gums in his mouth and opened his mouth as wide as he could despite the plague of laughter to investigate in the mirror. His adult teeth were being consumed by their sockets like the fangs of a snake or spider retracting into their hollows. Fortuo could feel every lost tooth steadily replaced after a short abscence with a smaller, yet sharper, occupant. Fortuo's booyish snickering inflected at the registering of a sharp tingling between his legs. Spreading them apart, the immature dragon saw his green scrotum start to become absorbed into body, it no longer serving a function in an sexually inert being. As he descended onto his eigth birthday, Fortuo witnessed the validation of his lost adulthood in the expedient reduction of his penial sheath into a a barely recognizable white bump beneath his naval.
Fortuo's giggling started to subside as the more dramatic reversions waned (except for the further fragmentaion of his skeleton) and the itchy tickling sensations in his mouth and genitals started fade. He felt a sinking feeling in his gut as it started to stick out with definitive plumpness. Much of his body mass, before being shed as liquid or consumed to power the metamorphosis, was being converted into a cushioning fat that gave the dragon's limbs a pudgier, stockier look that forshadowed infancy. Fortuo's mind had become used to his slowing regression and could finally apply some powers of reason. It clicked instantly that the watch was making him little again, and it left him with a dreaded connection. 'The hands! I'll become a baby if I don't stop it!' he thought in a panic. Now only five years old, Fortuo clumsily stood on his hind legs and dashed for his dresser. His miniscule momentum failed to disturb the centrally located watch and there was no chance of him climbing up to reach it. He sank to the floor and propped his back up against the dresser to see his tiny self in the mirror in front of him. "I'm turnin' inta a hatchlin'," he whined helplessly. Though his regression hadn't ceased and the ticklish itching never fully quit, Fortuo started to laugh at himself. How foolish he had been to play with an obviously powerful tool as he had. He deserved to have his physical age match his wisdom! 'Could be worse,' he thought, 'I could have wound up a dumb, primative animal or within a shell.' He'd find out how to restore his maturity eventually, but for now, he was a sleeply little toddler.
Losing a bit more age, the dragon's head adopted a more rounded shaped that included an even more evenly proportioned snout and wider eyes. It really stopped reducing by itself and instead gave off the illusion that the rest of the spellbound dragon's body was pulling into it. Fortuo barely managed to waddle on his stubby legs to the side of his bed. His squirrely laughter faded into a sort of conteted gurgling while his tail pulled into a more or less permanent length just above his knee joints an without much of its former articulation. Three year old Fortuo reached up with two round, soft arms and grapled with the overhanging sheets. Partially guided by long forgotten instincts, he used the fine formative talons on his digits to scamper like a lizard up onto the top of the mattress. His concentration was freed by the last of his baby teeth burrowing snugly into the recesses of his gums and his tongue took up a swollen position in his mouth. Fortuo stabalized himself on top his bed on his palms and knees giving his smooth and round yearling buttocks a position of prominance.
Finally classifiable as an infant, Fortuo realized the futility in trying to stand up on his poorly coordinated legs. With a happy coo, he allowed his weight to fall on his right side and rolled onto his back. The regression now had a smooth slowness to it an was more of pleasant "almost finished" sensation than anything else. However, Fortuo was now just a baby and so far more sensative. He waved his arms excitedly in the air and drumed his legs against the soft blankets beneath while he dropped from his first full year of life into his beginning five months. The entirety of his body lost some dimension and grew somewhat leaner, but overall his features altered little at this point. Just before he lost the strength, Fortuo decided that he wasn't comfortable on his back and rolled over onto his tender golden belly. He clutched the silky fabrics beneath him with both sets of appendages and exhaled in response to their cool touch. Exhausted, the hatchling's squeaky snickering finally passed out and his eyelids sealed shut. 'Why does my nest smell so funny?' were the little one's final thoughts before embracing his dreams.