Mono Mondays: Coral Hunt

On Mondays, we like to support our resident artist, Mono!  They're an up-and-coming scribbler of things dark and weird, and we consider ourselves lucky to have leeched onto— er, formed a mutually beneficial relationship with them.  You can watch Mono hard at work creating various pieces on their YouTube channel.  For those who don't feel like watching digital paint getting splashed around, we'll be showcasing a different piece of theirs right here every Monday.

This week we're going to discuss a little ecology.

While Mono has previously mentioned that their dragons are thaumavores, they've belatedly realized that they never discussed just how dragons decide what to eat.  Unlike slimes, dragons are rather pickier, with diets based both on magical content and environmental adaptation.  This even extends to how they eat.

Mono provided this particular dragon, whose lair is within a coral outcropping, as an example.  It devours the magical undersea creatures that make the coral their home, and it does so by extending its tail through the small gap above.  Its anenome-like tendrils grasp the prey and pull it into the lair, where the dragon then eats it. But because of the narrowness of that particular gap, the dragon often has to crush its food to make it fit.  In turn, the dragon has developed a fondness for pre-crushed food, and since its snack this time was small enough that crushing wasn't necessary, the dragon has decided to take matters into its own hands.

Mono also notes that the form of magic that the dragon consumes can also affect its nature.  Our coral dragon, ready to pulp its still living food for texture-based reasons?  Gets a lot of its magic consumption from sirens, and as a side effect, has become just as sadistic as they are.

For those following along at home:  for your own safety, if you have a pet dragon, feed them the nicest magical creatures you can.