I have no idea what this is. After binge watching Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke and listening to the song Soliel over and over, I decided to make an au where Sebastian is an ancient dragon who found Ciel as a baby; and, of course, decided to raise that baby. Obviously, they have a father/son relationship here, the only ships in the au would be Sebastian/Agni and Sebastian/Grell and some fluffy (and age appropriate) Ciel/Alois.
For more info on this au, read the ending notes! (Dragon!Sebastian is still a shapeshifter btw, but he spends more time as a dragon than human. Dragon form is similar to the traditional Chinese dragon, but he has wings and a longer snout + whiskers. )
When the cries of the child first reached him, the dragon dismissed it; he had assumed the wind was carrying the sound from the nearby human town. He himself was busy, nosing through a large, wildflower-infested field in search of herbs or wild crops. Why pay any mind to the whining of one brat? His initial thoughts while rooting around for the turnips he could smell had been quite haughty, considering the tiny human's momentary despair insignificant to other sorrows in the world.
The moment he scented fire, he knew he was wrong. The scent was coming from the large manor at the edge of the town, as was the crying of the baby. The dark beast made his way towards the manor, stopping short when he saw the burning remains. No human would survive that blaze, for it was dragon-made fire. And yet...the child continued to cry.
Spinning around, the dragon soon saw the child; covered as he was in blood and dirt and ashes, the child was no more than five or six, with slate blue hair and pale skin. Blood poured from one side of the babe's head, from the gory hole where the child's eye would have been. It could only be assumed that the child had somehow escaped the fire, only to have his scrawny legs give out and send him into a pile on the ground. His crying was softer now, weaker. He must be tired.
The dragon approached slowly, though the distraught child barely acknowledged him. He sniffed at his hair, whiskers gently brushing against his burnt clothes and frail body.
The boy lifted his head, hiccupping between sobs, peering up at the dragon with a single blue eye. He didn't seem scared. Not of the beast, anyway, not of the dragon standing in front of him. Scared of the fire, perhaps. Scared of whoever had taken his eye. A tiny, shaking hand touched his snout, and he reared his head back, snorting in displeasure. He looked down, where the child was staring in awe at him.
Lowering his head with another snort, the boy placed his hand on his snout again, a faint smile on his face. At least he had stopped crying.
"K-kitty? Soft..." Ah. God damn it. This child was kind of cute.
"Little one..." The dragon rumbled, "Are you the only one who survived the fire?"
Silence. A soft whimper, a sniffle. The boy hesitated, then nodded, then shrugged. Good enough.
"Do you have a name?"
"C-Ciel. My names Ciel."
"Ciel, I'm taking you home."
"My ho-home is...gone."
"Your human home is gone." The dragon huffed, reaching to scoop the child into his talons. "Your new home awaits us in the mountains."
"Five years ago, a dragon set fire to the Phantomhive manor, killing the entire family, including their young son and almost the entire staff. It hasn't been seen since the attack." William read aloud from the five year old plaque, the one set into a statue of a tall man that could only be the once powerful Vincent Phantomhive. He wasn't sure if it had been built before or after the incident; the stone was kept clean and tidy. The plaque itself only changed with each passing year, as the dragon still had not been sighted.
"Well, I've asked around, but no one remembers what the dragon looked like. All I got was that it was dark, scary and big. Do any better over here?" Grell, his overly enthusiastic companion, leaned over his shoulder. With Grell's crimson hair obscuring his vision of the plaque, William straightened up. The redhead followed his movement, beaming at him.
"Grell."
"Yes, my dear William?"
"None of this is going to help us find the dragon. Or any dragons, for that matter."
"I'm aware of that. We could go up to the manor, you know."
"No, you heard what the old man Tanaka told us. The manor was burned down with dragon fire. The ground is still smoldering and the air is still clogged with smoke and ashes, it's not safe."
"You're going off the words of a deranged old man?" Grell jabbed at his side, a grin showing off the less-than-human teeth in his maw. A quick glance around them revealed that none of the townsfolk had noticed. Or if they had, they didn't show it.
"Be careful, Grell." William muttered, leaning in so that only the redhead would hear his whispered words. "These people have been through a lot in the alst years. They won't hesitate to murder a couple of inhuman hunters trespassing in their homes."
Grell covered his mouth with his hand, nodding vigorously.
"Excuse us, gentlemen." A deep voice from behind them made the two hunters jump and spin around. A tall man, dressed head to toe in black robes, stood there, holding a basket full of goods from the market in one slender, pale hand. William noted, with increasing unease, the crimson of the man's eyes, the abnormally sharp canines, and the dark shade of claw-like nails. What human looked as twisted as this? No mortal creature could have eyes like that, could like as if they knew all of the Earth's secrets.
Was this man even human? Or was he something merely parading as one, as he and Grell did?
"Good day, sir." Grell piped up from next to him, the tall man only dipping his head in return as he swept by them. At his heels, jogging a bit to keep up with the man's long strides, was a young boy of no more than ten. Dressed in the same dark clothes as the stranger, he could only be the man's son, or a nephew perhaps.
The hunters waited until they could no longer see the odd pair before turning to one another.
"No way is that guy human." Grell hissed, leaning into William so as to not alert the blissfully unaware locals. "And that kid! Poor boy only had the one eye."
"I know, I know. We have to follow them. If not for our current investigation, to make sure that boy is safe with whatever the hell that thing is." Peering over the meager crowd of people, it wasn't hard to spot the tall man, as he towered over the townsfolk. "Looks like they're heading for the hills."
"Or the mountain. That might be more likely, after all, isn't the manor in the hills? Not even a demon or spirit would make their home in a place desecrated by a dragon." Grell tried to look as well, but the man disappeared around the corner of a crumbling house.
William bent to pick up his bag, his companion doing the same. Shouldering the heavy satchel, he nodded in the direction the pair had gone in.
"Only one way to found out. Let's follow their tracks."
"Sebastian, who were those guys?" Ciel had to jog to keep up with his caretaker's pace, but that didn't stop him from asking questions. He had never seen those two in the town before, and they'd been coming to the market for over two years now. "The one with the glasses kept giving us a weird look."
The dragon-disguised-as-a-human said nothing for a while, leaving them to walk in silence. They soon passed the remnants of the manor, just a few minutes from the town. As always, Ciel stopped to peer at the still smoking ruins. He knew it had been his first home, but he could remember little of what life was like then. He could remember the way his mother smelled when she hugged him close, could remember playing with a black wolfhound and a girl his age with pale hair. Most of his childhood memories were of Sebastian, of the mountains and of playing in cold rivers and meadows full of deer and rabbits and flowers taller than himself.
"Come now, little one." The dragon spoke softly, pausing to ruffle his charge's hair. "We have a long walk ahead of us, and I still have to make dinner. For us, and our guests."
"Guests?" Sebastian started to walk again, heading towards the looming mountain where the sun always set. Ciel hurried to keep up, basket bumping against his thin legs. "We're having guests over? Why? Who are they? Sebastian who are the guests we're having over for dinner?"
"Those men from the town. They aren't human, so we need not fear them knowing our secret." He cast an amused glance behind them, though he didn't slow his stride. "Besides, they're going to follow us anyway, might as well invite them in for a meal. It's good manners."
"So...you're not gonna eat them?"
"Good heavens, no." Sebastian laughed, a thunderous, gravelly sound that sounded more like a dragon's chuff than a human's laughter. "Reapers have an unpleasant aftertaste. They're very rubbery, too. I don't plan to eat them, maybe scare them into keeping our secret and threaten to roast them alive."
"Ok. What's a reaper?"
"Ah, right, we haven't gotten that far in your lessons, have we? A reaper is like a Grim Reaper, or a cemetery Grim. They're dead, risen from the grave to keep the natural order of things. Obviously, though, they have heartbeats and are considered alive. Otherwise they wouldn't be too smart. They have weapons gifted to them by the Gods of Death, and these weapons can kill any creature they please."
"Even a dragon?"
"Even a dragon. Though, I suppose it would take a great deal of effort for a simple reaper to take down a full grown dragon. Anyway, most reapers don't dare to slay a dragon."
"Why not? Are they scared of you?"
"Something like that. Besides the Gods, dragons are some of most powerful creatures, and it is considered a great shame to bring slaughter to one. Humans, of course, don't care, and I doubt they ever will. It was humans that nearly drove dragons to extinction, and only through the Gods aid did we survive as a species. The reapers helped too. They destroyed all records of dragons, making us a largely unknown species to the humans of today."
"But the town knows about dragons. They must have seen you fly from the mountain, right?"
"Yes, they have. They also saw the dragon that hurt you, but most of the town are terrified of angering a dragon. I try to make my appearances scarce, too, or fly at night, or otherwise the humans will hire a pair of hunters to try and kill me. Humans have a nasty aftertaste just like reapers."
Sebastian paused, turning to make sure his charge was doing alright. The path was much steeper here, and he worried for the lungs of the tiny human.
"Enough of that, lets save our breath for the climb, little one." With that, they continued their climb in peaceful silence, interrupted only by the sounds of the mountain wildlife all around them.
William paused, kneeling down to inspect the tracks on the dirt path. The footprints were so obvious, well aligned and easily tracked. Either this man wasn't used to being followed, or wanted to be followed. Somehow, he doubted it was the former.
This creature wanted them to find him.
But why?
William turned his gaze towards the mountain, ignoring Grell's complaining of the dirt ruining his pants.
What was waiting for them, up in that mysterious forest?
That's the end of this chapter!
In this au, Grell and William are still reapers, but in a slightly altered way. They don't work off of lists, and are largely solitary and rarely work in groups. They travel the world, keeping the balance whichever way they can. They take care of problems like overpopulation, the need of an apex predator, even guarding wildlife and forests to let nature recover and flourish again. Basically, glorified nature guardians. They also control ghosts and such by harvesting souls and ushering them into the afterlife, y'know, like a reaper?
Sebastian is a dragon, obviously, who can take the shape of a human (as well as other animals) and is considered a very old dragon. He was there when the species were almost all killed, making him the last living dragon from that age. He took Ciel in after another dragon killed his family, and later on this dragon will be revealed to be Angela (dun dun dun) but she'll be very different from the type of dragon Sebastian is.
Claude and Hannah are also dragons, as are the triplets. Tanaka won't make an actual appearance here, but he used to work for the Phantomhives and actually knows Ciel is living with Sebastian. As an elder who survived a dragon attack, a lot of travelers go to him for information or advice. He tends to give them false details so that Sebastian and Ciel aren't put in danger.
Our favorite servants live on the mountain and are sworn to secrecy by Sebastian. Bard and Meyrin live together and are both hunters, while Finny is a nature spirit that they found in their garden when he was a tiny sprout. He and Ciel in this are close friends, as close as they can be anyway.
Agni and Soma are a surprise you'll have to wait for. :)