Side-Write: Grey Hoard (Patreon)

Finally done! I'm feeling mostly better now, and it was still a bit of a struggle finding both another area to explore and trying to tell a happier story, but I'm fairly happy with how this came out. Still a little silly, and turned out a little long while still feeling cut short, but I think I like it overall. I hope you do too!

As always, this is not strictly canon so much as an exploration of the potential in the world of Project Wild One! Thanks for reading!

~~~

Being one of the first of his kind hatched into this world, Grey knew many ancient and terrible secrets now long-forgotten by the lesser species, and even the other, younger dragons. But old as he was, he still had not personally born witness to the true greatness of the Forecomers, before they had become the Fallen. His parents, now dead, had told him much, but in his foolish youth, he had sneered at these weak, tiny creatures and their strange magics, already broken and lost by the time his wings had grown strong enough to bear him across the remains of their world.

Today, he strode through the broken streets of what had once been a great city, now largely a massive rubble yard. Some buildings still stood, albeit scarred and missing chunks, but most were little more than small mountains of metal and rock shaped by ancient powers. And he felt... shame.

In his youth, Grey himself had destroyed some of these buildings. Not even out of anger, or to attack those within, but simply to watch them fall. For his amusement. How he regretted it now. How much was lost forever, obliterated by his own claws? How easy would it have been to reclaim the relics of the Forecomers if those buildings still stood?

For a long time, he had held the Forecomers in contempt. If they had been so intelligent, so capable, why had they been so foolish as to wish their own destruction into existence? Few now remembered that detail: all the people of the world today, all those that came into existence at the Fall, had been made in the image of the Forecomers' fantasies. The Gods themselves, freshly come to this world, had tried to please them with new brethren, and wrought the destruction of the old world in the process. Many had died to his mother and father directly, in fact. They had accomplished great things, so it was said, but the creatures themselves were small and weak.

Grey had never asked about those achievements, before. Had never even wondered why the world before his arrival had been called such an amazing place, so much better than the world he knew. His young self hadn't liked the idea that he'd missed some better world, constructed by vermin. So for many years, he was content to destroy their monuments, to tear down the last vestiges of that world, and build his own atop the remains. He hoarded gold, he accumulated worshipers, and those that did not offend him began to gather under his protection, bringing him offerings in exchange for protection from the wandering beasts of this world that would not barter, only take. And for a long time, he... thought this was enough. He'd always felt dissatisfied, but he could not explain why, and he tried to pretend it did not bother him.

He didn't even remember, now, what exactly set him down his new path. It might have been that old man that tried to offer him books, claiming they were rarer even than gold these days. It might have been when people brought him pieces of strange technology that, somehow, still worked. It might have even been buried in him since early on, when he noticed his own power lingering in the Forecomers' creations.

Grey commanded the power of lightning, a strange new affinity unique from his parents'. From almost his first day, he could smite anything he saw with lightning, but with time and practice he came to develop finer control of this elemental power, and he realized bit by bit that his power coursed naturally through this world, both through living things and, strangely, through the ancient devices. He could sense it still lingering in some of them, and when he stirred the energy inside them, they would act strangely, lighting up and making noises.

He destroyed a great deal of these artifacts in his experimentation, but eventually, Grey found he could gently feed power into many of these old devices and make them work like they did before. The greater majority of them didn't work, of course, simply refusing to stir, or blinking on and immediately beginning to smoke and spark. But every once in a while, he found a device that accepted his power and actually began to do things. Some of them moved, or made light or blew air, or many other strange things that often seemed pointless. But some of them made little images on them, with pictures and ancient writing.

Eventually, his curiosity got the better of him, and he found Fallen to teach him how to speak and read their languages. The wretched creatures still wandered the world, sheltered and damned by the gods to be killed and live again constantly in a world that put them at the bottom of the pyramid. It was hard finding ones that still knew the written words, but they were out there. Once he understood the language, he found the devices had much more inside them than seemed possible. A book was full of endless story, but one of these devices might have as much written inside it as many hundreds of books. On top of that, they had many images of the old world, and of their fantasies abstract and absurd. They had moving images, sometimes perfect captures of living moments now centuries past, sometimes strange, drawn images that moved and spoke, telling stories that were impossible. Many devices had recordings of the Forecomers mating, especially. Strange.

And stranger still, sometimes, he found what seemed to be... a tiny world, inside the device! He could look around it, and make a tiny Forerunner move about to explore it. He never could have imagined something so absurd, and yet it fascinated him. He learned about these strange creatures he'd looked down on, and while many times he laughed at their foolishness, still he grew to sympathize with their struggles and relish their victories, reading through conversations, stories, fragments of he knew not what. It was almost impossible to sort everything clearly into fantasy or reality, so fragmented was it all, often mentioning their Online, some incredible, all-consuming presence that connected all of them with each other and with still more stories and images, vastly more than what he could find. Always, the device asked for the Online or to connect to the Internet, and often it refused him what he wanted to explore without it, leaving him always feeling like he was only getting the tiniest fraction of the picture even with all that he found.

As his fascination grew with what these devices could do, he started asking new things of those who worshiped or obeyed him. The area was already largely stripped of gold, but now, he wanted more of these artifacts. Wires, little plastic or metal boxes, picture slates, books, shiny plated with holes in the middle, all the odd little nubbins with plugs for connecting together. He took it all, and his worshipers, the kobolds, sorted through them. At first they were disgruntled-- they were like tiny, inferior dragons that moved like the other bipeds, and they loved gold almost as much as he did, but they didn't understand his new quest. Not until they, too, began to figure out how to get these devices working, and see how it would come alive and show them things beyond imagining. He had dozens of them constantly sorting through equipment, now, figuring out how to hook it all together, how to tell what was broken and what could be swapped to get a working machine. His lair was piled high with scrap and extra parts, rooms overflowing with it. His hoard grew immense, and still he always craved more. He craved it just as desperately as he'd ever craved gold, but somehow, he was happier now than he had ever felt before. He felt a connection with these devices, pulsing with his own power, breathing in time with him. He loved to peek through those tiny windows into another world and see all the joy, torment, and sorrow these long-dead creatures carried with them.

Especially, though, it struck him when he found a rendition of... a dragon. In those days, dragons were creatures constructed purely of fantasy and imagination, and the stories treated them with reverence and fear, as was appropriate. But also, they were treated as enemies, as monsters to be conquered and killed. Great trophies. Time and again, his heart lifted to see a dragon enter the story, suddenly drawing him in inexorably... only to strike him with a deep ache as they flailed stupidly and died, another stepping stone in some hero's story. Sometimes he grew to resent the Forecomers all over again, and he'd stop looking into those tiny windows... for a few days. But fool that he was, he always came back.

He knew he would this time, as well. Even as he walked these streets, struggling to clear his head and let go of his anger, he felt the temptation to go back and explore something else. Maybe he should just avoid the stories about his kind. But... this was his origin, wasn't it? His ancestors, effectively, were these fake images, these ideas the Forecomers shared between them. His parents had been born from these ideas. Any one of these fictional dragons might as well have been his grandfather. How could he ignore them?

It did his heart some small measure of good that the city was looking better than it used to. The people living here were reclaiming the land bit by bit, clearing some of the streets enough to reliably walk from one end to the other, turning every inch of open soil they could find into croplands. They were a chaotic rainbow of different species, many of which he'd seen in some story or image or other, in those devices. He walked a world of living fantasies, though none of them knew it. All of them were strangers to this world, by the Forecomers' reckoning. All these people he'd come to know and protect. He walked a strange line now, between these two worlds.

The people feared him, and rightly, but also some waved or bowed, even smiled. He was kinder than most of his kind, it seemed, and his city was gaining a reputation as a sanctuary in this hard world. He hadn't expected it to go this far, but his kobolds handled much of the oversight, and so it seemed that every time he came out to tour the town, things were livelier and cleaner than they had been the last time. This also made him feel warm, which was... strange, when he thought about it. Had these stories been influencing him? Changing him? ...Probably. But... perhaps that was for the best. He was happier, now, and maybe not only because he had so many stories and strange ideas to explore in his lair.

When he finally returned to the lair, his Treasurer, the cleverest and highest standing of all his kobolds, was wearing a great smile. This was a surprise-- she was usually quite dour, and Grey had left in a foul temper. Usually they'd all be tip-toeing around him a while still. But she said she'd found a moving image she thought he'd like, and she'd gotten it ready on the big light show.

He had to do much of his exploration hunched over ridiculously tiny devices, but they'd found a few machines that could project all sorts of images onto a wall, large enough even he could sit back comfortably and enjoy them. They could move images over to show on it with a little work, but it must have been something special indeed for her to already have it all set up. He settled into his theater to watch, and he was surprised again to find many of his kobolds crowding in to watch with him. He didn't mind them joining sometimes, as long as they were quiet and still got their work done. Still, this was almost all of them!

This image was a story about Forecomers living in some imaginary world without their devices, but with different kinds of magic, some similar to what existed today. The story was adventurous, and a little fun, but Grey didn't see why his Treasurer had been so excited about it-- not until a good ways in... when a great shadow loomed over the heroine, wings unfolding. The kobolds cheered as a mighty dragon blazed on the screen, majestic and implausibly muscular. At first, the dragon and the heroine fought, and Grey shot a frustrated look at  his Treasurer, sitting amongst the others in the darkness. He was still sour from another of these stories earlier today!

But... the dragon won. It wasn't even close. The heroine fell defeated, and when she gathered herself... she begged for the dragon's help. The dragon spoke, in what was obviously a Forecomer's voice with some trick to make it deeper, but it did have a dignity to it. It struck a bargain with the heroine! Grey was sitting up now, and he had to duck abruptly when he accidentally blocked the light, casting a shadow across the story.

They worked together to fight the evil armies, and the heroine asked to ride on the dragon's back, but the dragon refused. All the kobolds chittered and hooted at that, and even Grey was amused and pleased with how they worked together. Then, in the climax, they met the villain of the story: a Forecomer in black, riding an enslaved dragon. Kobolds threw debris at the image, jeering and chattering until Grey had to quiet them with a huff.

The story's dragon picked up the heroine, and together they attacked, tearing the bindings from the enslaved dragon until it came alive again, attacking and devouring its master as the armies were sundered below. The dragon and heroine flew into the sky triumphantly as the music swelled, and Grey found himself shaking, struggling to breathe. What was happening?

He turned away as his eyes burned. He ached, he hurt deep down, but he was not angry. He was... happy? So happy, it hurt him? What foolishness was this?

His kobolds crowded around him now, worried about him. Someone made the image on the wall stop moving. He found a laugh bubbling up in him, as he touched some of the foolish little creatures. He was fine, he told them. He simply... He liked this story. They had done well, finding this treasure for them. And before he could think about it, he thanked them. Thanked his servants. He had never done it before, and it sounded strange in his mouth. So strange that even they seemed confused, and some only seemed more worried that he was unwell.

After that, Grey watched that story many times with his little minions. He treasured it, and all the things gathered from that long-lost age. And with time, he came to find that he treasured also the little creatures that kept him company, and the many strange beings that sheltered in his city. He treasured this place, sundered by his own arrogance but now growing anew with the help of the lesser ones. He knew, from the many stories and from his parents themselves, that the life of a dragon was a lonely one. It was supposed to be. Maybe there really was something wrong with him. Maybe he was infected with some ancient disease of the mind. But so long as he felt like this... surrounded by those that cared about him and appreciated him, with a million worlds at his beck and call to explore... he did not care.