There once lived a dragon, immortal, alone and apart, a whole planet his home where he had existed from the beginning of time. Through the eons smaller creatures evolved and grew to live with the dragon.

The dragon, for its part, paid them little mind, save for demanding a yearly tribute in food; for he was an enormous, thick drake as big as a hillside his belly and appetite were great since the whole world was his hunting ground.

Soon though, generation after generation as the dragon persisted, the smaller creatures ceased to respect it. It was a burden. One year when the dragon arrived at the prearranged altar normally heaping over with food, there was no tribute at all.

“What is the meaning of this?” He bellowed up to the one female present on the ceremonial, gilded ledge above, his ancient, yellow eyes glowering.

“There simply is not enough food.” The tiny figure said in a tiny voice. “The sun shines day and night and destroys our crops.Would you not take pity on this and block out the sun with your great size? It would take much longer for our settlements to relocate.”

And so the dragon agreed.

The drake drew his high neck up to the sky, his snout stretching wide open. His muscular breast seemed to rise and then continued rising as the dragon drew in a torrent of breath, filling up great, elastic pockets deep within as the trees rustled with the whirlwind . 

The drake felt his great scaled body swelling under the influence of his powerful lungs, his thick sides  heaving out, rounded underbelly surging towards the ground and growing larger and larger as it began to lift the rest of his great bulk and fight his strong limbs for space.

And so the great drake blew itself up, and up, and up. The watcher below craned her neck up in the sunlight as the Dragon surged unimaginably in size before her.

Atop the heaving orange belly the rest of the drake's body appeared small. It's titanic, thickly muscled legs spread far apart by its own midsection, his massive paws made indents in his own hide where he  clung to his ballooning underside. It surged out on all sides, the long body growing rounder and bigger by the moment, the bloated dragon as big as a castle estate. 

“You must grow bigger!” the girl cried out. the Dragon was intruding onto the horizon now, but not by much.

Chortling at his own ability, the great serpent momentarily considered his own pressured underbelly stretching out in every direction; under his chin, lifting his tail, knocking trees aside under him. His eyes closed as the drake blew harder and harder.

Each breath surged the shining drake bigger by dozens of feet, the sound of his creaking leather and drawn out puffing reverberating for miles as the Dragon grew to contain the volume of a small lake worth of air, swelling dramatically.

“Bigger!” the call came from below, barely audible to the drake's sharp ears over the roaring air and creaks of his own expanding hide. 

The tremendously swollen dragon cast a shadow on a far mountain range. The great worm could feel every portion of himself pushing further from his center with each breath. Gradually even his massive tail and neck thickend tremendously and were soon indistinguishable from the rest of his swell as his back joined the roundness of his sides and belly.

Inner pressure pushed the great beast rounder and rounder. He was only visible as a colossal, mountain-range sized dragonic belly from below, the orange-red plates slowly seperating all along it to reveal black flesh that shined as the gaps grew rapidly wider.

More air than beast now, the dragon wobbled and welled up, straining and swelling with his own long, continuous breaths and at last succeeded in filtering the sun on all below him. It shone through his body as the great, drum tight, miles wide sphere he had become visibly trembled with pressure. He creaked low and long as his snout finally closed, the sound of a giant balloon about to explode magnified a million times.

Unable to futher grow, the dragon took in a great gout of the frigid, high altitude air. He was utterly unable to move, his powerful limbs long ago bloated to uselessness and then engulfed into his all encompassing swell. Pride welled up in his chest as he took in the scope of his great body, and his wings spread as he roared out his triumph, overwhelmed at holding such a volume. 

The heaving, faded bubble of scales on the horizon seemed to wobble insubstantially a few moments before winking out of existence, the beast not even realizing he was pierced until he heaved out one last time as he finally exploded, shaking the better part of that world with an earthquake.