A Kingly Dragon

You rouse from your bed of dried vegetation and onto your feet, shaking the morning dew off from your scales and plumes. It's still early enough that it's still morning twilight, but it's still light enough from the sun nearing the horizon for you to make out the jungle around you. You trudge forward, towards a bluff not far from your resting place, one that you chose for the commanding view it gives over your realm. You can already start to make out its contours in the dim light: of thick, jungled lowlands which run alongside the sea to the west. The territory that you reign over as king and take from as you please.

It is a place with large ferns and vines that grow amongst tall trees, flecked with clearings where larger prey sometimes gathers. You cannot see them past the canopy of treetops from your vantage point, but you know full well they are waiting for you to take. The thick undergrowth that bogs down many others that live in your territory is but a minor nuisance for your bulk and height to crash through, and their density provides cover for even a hunter of your size to sneak up on your quarry.

While you are still quite young as a king, this territory did not come easily after you struck out to make a claim for yourself. With tooth and claw, you fought for this forest to reign over, vanquishing all rivals that dared to stand in your way.

The only source of discontent that you have is that you have yet to find a mate, but it's spring and the next mating season is just around the corner. Your territory is one where food is bountiful and the weather is never bitter in cold, with your den sitting in an easily defensible place. You doubt you will be kept waiting for long to find a mate who will accept your advances, and soon enough you will have heirs for your realm.

But those are considerations for another day. Now, you have more immediate matters to tend to. The best time to go hunting for prey is while they're still unalert and can be taken unawares. Why, your own mother spoke of proverbs about how fortune favored Tyrantrum who were early to rise. It's wisdom that has served you well, and today will be no exception. As such, you turn inland towards the east to gauge the light coming over the horizon.

From how bright it looks, it is still about half an hour until the sun properly rise. As long as you keep a brisk pace, you should be able to find prey from your realm to take well before they shake off their morning drowsiness.

You begin to head off for a rocky path down to the coastal lowlands and turn west, when you notice a bright star in the sky. It's one that has appeared only recently, which you first noticed about three days ago while looking towards the northeast. Every night since the one when you first noticed it, it has moved a little further towards the southwest and grown a little brighter.

But this is the first time you can recall seeing it so close to sunrise, let alone visibly moving with your own eyes.

The star inches along for the southwest slowly, when all of a sudden, it picks up speed and zips over the horizon, much like how an Archeops might dive out of a tree while on the hunt. Maybe your eyes are playing tricks on you, but you could've sworn the star grew visibly brighter for a brief moment before it vanished.

Perhaps it is one of the moving stars that can sometimes be in the sky when it's less bright. But if it is such a star, it's certainly a most peculiar one. Those stars, whether coming and going in the twinkling of an eye, or drifting in the sky for many nights, have tails that follow them in their wake. By contrast, the one you just saw was barely a dot.

Your mind turns back to myths that your mother told you, about how some those stars in the sky are themselves Pokémon. Ones that have great power and unknowable ways. Could that have falling star have been one of their younglings? It's a most unimpressive one if so from its lack of a tail. A runt among stars, you muse to yourself.

Your stomach growls, which prompts you to turn your gaze from the path of the star-runt and back to the tail going down into the lowlands. You are reminded that time is burning if you wish to hunt while still having the element of surprise.

You raise your snout to sniff the air and feel the wind blow against it and your feathers. You pick up the smells of your realm in spring, and note that the wind is coming in from the north—headed inland from the sea.

Good. Now you know what direction to approach from to best cover your scent as you go off on your hunt.

Half an hour later, the sun is now starting to poke over the horizon and you have found your target: a Bastiodon herd that settled to rest the night in a jungle clearing. You can only remain so quiet with your size, but the first of their numbers have just barely roused and your distance helps make up for it.

You creep forward closer and closer to the treeline, trying to size up the members of their herd. One of the Shieldon would be easy to dispatch, but a poor reward for your efforts. A Bastiodon would keep you filled for multiple meals, but it will require you to fell one before their comrades can close rank. Either way, your hunt will have the best odds of success if your prey fall into confusion or panic…

…and you have just the means to make them do so in the early morning light.

You crouch and let out a bellowing roar, the racket startling the herd awake as you lunge in with fangs bared into the middle of the clearing. All about you, the Bastiodon and their young scatter with cries of panic, your eyes falling on a Bastiodon stumbling onto his feet who freezes up after seeing you.

The Bastiodon's mouth flops open in shock and he pulls his tail in towards his legs as he flinches. You gather that his innards have sickened in fright, but you're not one to snub easy prey. You charge the stunned creature with your jaws open wide, aiming to slip past his armored head, when you hear a bellowing cry. A crushing blow rams you from the side and knocks you off your feet. You scrabble up with a wheeze and briefly see the fear-sick Bastiodon turn and flee, when you spot the culprit just as you get up: another Bastiodon holding her head down to block your way. She shakes it to mime a charge, just as a pair of her comrades hurriedly lumber to her side.

She is attempting to rally their numbers, to band them together into a living wall of armored, shield-like heads that will punish any attempt to take prey from those that hide among them with powerful blows. Allowing too many challenges of the sort to stand unanswered as king risks inviting rivals from afar; as such, you must see to it that her attempt to stand her ground is shown to her fellows to be a mortal mistake.

You stomp the ground and make it tremble. Small cracks sprout in the dirt and make the three Bastiodon lose their footing. You charge forward as the lead Bastiodon stumbles up and attempts to charge you as you near. You jump ahead out of the way as she blows past you, and your tail comes alive with flecks of blue, fiery light that dances about it.

You swing it around and into the charging Bastiodon with a crushing blow, knocking her off her feet and sending her flopping stunned onto her side. You carry on briefly and run at the other two Bastiodon. They lose their nerve and frantically stumble back from you in a hasty attempt to retreat.

All as you had planned.

You wheel about mid-stride and lunge at the Bastiodon who is still recovering from your Dragon Tail, knocking her down and sinking your fangs into the side of her neck. She shrieks in pain as your bite breaks hide, and she thrashes as your strong jaws hold her in their grip. Before long, her strength gives out in your grasp and you let go, leaving her lying there dazed with blood trickling out, just faintly clinging to life.

You turn and spit up scales onto the ground, looking at your quarry's allies behind you. Their will to fight is gone, and they both panic and flee, the clearing filling with frantic cries that fade as the rest of their herd abandons their fallen comrade and you are left to pant and catch your breath.

You take a moment to size over your prey. It was a hunt harder-fought than most others in your past, and had you not taken swift action, the Bastiodon herd could've very well forced you to limp away empty-jawed. But nevertheless, you have emerged victorious. And before you dispatch your prey, as the king of your realm, it is only proper that you ensure that all those who dwell in it know their place.

You place a foot onto the Bastiodon's body and throw your head back, bellowing out your triumph. A cry that would chill the blood of even the tallest Aurorus. One that tells of how you are king of this forest and your might has brought you victory once again. A claim of rightful reign over this place, and a call for any who hear it to come and challenge you if they dare.

That would normally be the end of things and you'd move on to finishing off your prey, but today, your roar trails off in your throat as you see a fiery light shoot across the sky. It streaks in from the still-dim southwestern corner of the horizon, and it trails smoke in its wake. Another light appears, and then a third, a fourth, as the sky grows thicker and thicker with those strange fires from above.

One of them trails down towards the ground a little ways off towards the north. It lands with a dull thump in the distance and distant figures take to the air. It is then that you see a plume of smoke starting to curl up above the treetops from its direction.

Before you can wonder to yourself what the fire from the sky was, the ground abruptly shakes and lurches under your feet much like it did with your Earthquake, except this time, it's far stronger. It knocks you off of the felled Bastiodon and you fall onto your side. You cry out briefly and fight against harsh tremors to get back onto your feet as the shaking continues and nearby trees start toppling to the ground. Frightened shrieks ring out from the forest in all directions, and the ground near your feet starts to visibly crack.

… Is this the doing of another Tyrantrum? You can't explain the sky-fire, but this tremor is much like the ones you wield while hunting. You struggle to keep your balance against the shaking and look around, snarling and loudly demanding the culprit to show himself. This is your forest and you are its king, you are confident in your own might and don't fear any challenger.

Your demands are answered by a flash of heat and a loud thud that makes you stumble to the ground from a concussive wave and blast of dislodged dirt. You look off towards the opposite end of the clearing and see that the trees which were once there are now tangled splinters, with them and their nearby ones still standing now awash in a curtain of flame.

You don't know if this is the work of a challenger, but you've seen enough to know that whoever wields this sky-fire has strength far beyond your own. A flash of panic comes over you, and you turn and bolt from the clearing as fast as your legs and the churning earth underneath will let you.

The trees shake all about you and you hear others crash to earth unseen. A brief glance upwards reveals a flock of Archeops hurriedly taking flight, while cries and screams ring out from closer to the ground. Ones which come from Pokémon that you count as prey and rival alike.

You come to a smaller gap in the jungle, cast a glimpse off towards your den where you hope to find shelter, only to freeze at what you see: there is smoke curling up from its direction. Part of the bluff around where your den is then collapses from the quake in a cloud of dust, right as another ball of sky-fire zooms past it.

Something is very wrong right now, and you're not sure if any Pokémon would be capable of doing all this. You briefly recount legends you've heard of where the earth would wake up and spew fire and ash out in all directions from openings in the ground. The sky-fire reminds you of that, except they're coming from somewhere beyond the sea, from well beyond the horizon.

That's when it occurs to you that the sky-fire all seems to be coming from the southwest.

From the very same direction that the star-runt fell past the horizon half an hour ago.

You snap to attention as a tree falls and grazes your shoulder, and you bellow out in pain. You wrack your mind for any possible shelter that you can turn to, when you remember that there is a river nearby. It's shallow enough for you to ford by walking, while broad enough that it should be an effective shelter from fire or crumbling earth.

It's the only hope that you have right now.

You take off running back through the forest, stumbling ahead and glancing off from trunk to trunk from the tremors. Against your kingly nature, you let out a startled yelp as a smaller ball of sky-fire slices through the canopy right in front of you and sets the branches in its wake ablaze.

You screw your eyes shut and force yourself forward as embers fall against your hide, opening them again and looking skywards once you feel the heat and smoke pass. What you find makes them shrink in alarm. All across the sky above you, little beads of sky-fire now fall to the ground like hail, striking leaves overhead as others burn through and fall to the ground in a molten rain.

Perhaps you're being superstitious or jumping to conclusions, but in your gut, something tells you that this is because of the star-runt. Did it do this to your forest? Did it somehow know about the way you slighted it?

Something digs into your flank and burning pain follows. You scream in agony and bolt ahead as the smell of something burning lingers with you. You don't know what sort of territory you will rule as king after all of this, but at this point, you're more concerned with merely keeping your head on your shoulders.

You hear running water, and much to your relief, you see the river up ahead. With every ounce of your remaining strength, you fight against the pain in your flank and run ahead for the water's safety. You burst from the cover of the treeline and feel the riverbank's silt under your toes.

Then there's a flash of heat from beside you and a deafening blast. A crushing wave in the air and searing heat along your side comes afterwards, when you pitch forward into the river before everything goes black.

As you come to, the first thing you feel is the river's water all around your body along with silt intermixed with glassy beads. Then you cough and water comes up from your lungs. Your vision is muddy at first and your breathing is shaky as aches and pains rack just about every part of your body you can think of.

The ground is still shaking now, just as strong as you remembered it when you blacked out. You smell smoke and as your vision clears up, you see that you are lying in a shallower part of the river. As you weakly turn your head, you see that both of the river's banks are aflame as far as your eyes can see. Embers swirl up into the air from them, while the sky-fire continues coming down from beyond a smoky curtain, one too thick to make out what time of day it is.

You try to move your right leg and grimace after feeling a flash of pain shoot through it. Your breaths come haggard and hoarse, and you weakly turn your head back towards your flank. All up and down it, your hide is blackened with ugly burns and much of your plumage is charred down to its quills.

You feel a whimper build in your throat but fight it back. You are the king of this forest. Even while fleeing, even while wounded, kings still have a level of dignity to maintain and do not whimper.

You try to stand up, but the pain in your right leg won't let you. You hear sizzling and see that the smaller beads of sky-fire are still falling, with some hitting places in the river nearby and hissing as they are extinguished. You look past and see various shapes slumped over in and around the water. The one nearest to you is an Aerodactyl, lying partly crumpled in the water with their wings splayed out and their head resting just above the surface. There are burnt holes in their wings' membranes and their eyes are closed. You can't tell whether or not they're still breathing from your distance.

It then occurs to you that you don't hear screams anymore. Just the sound of burning fire, faint thuds in the distance, and a dull roar that lingers in the background.

You turn your head towards the dull roar as you realize that it's coming from the direction of the sea. There, from the light of the fire, you can make out a black-colored wall approaching, taller than the burning trees around you.

You see a trunk get caught up in it, roll, and suddenly go dark. It then occurs to you that what the black wall is:

It's the sea. Coming straight towards you and sweeping away everything in its path.

This time, you don't hold back the whimper in your throat, and lower your head to brace for the end. There is nothing more you can do now. If this destruction is indeed the star-runt's doing, it has felled you and all your realm.

And like a victorious king, it has every right to claim it all.

The next thing you know, water surges over your body and sweeps you up. You tumble about in it as your nostrils go under the surface and feel hard objects strike your body from all directions.

One of them hits your head, and everything goes black a second time.

You're waking up again. There's liquid all around your body and as you crack your eyes open, you see hazy and indistinct shapes and lights above and below you through some sort of fluid that has an orangish tint. You stir in a panic to try and get air, when it occurs to you that you're somehow still breathing and that something is clamped tightly over your snout. You can't clearly make out your body or its injuries right now aside from hazy glimpses of dark-colored limbs and a tail.

The shapes in the fluid move around as two tall ones that dwarf you come to the front and stop. They shift about slightly, and there's gurgling noises from below. The fluid drains and you drift down with it, until you feel cold metal brush against your hide. You lay there, breathing in and out as you blink the liquid out of your eyes and the world around you starts to become clearer in your vision.

You're lying in a chamber of some sort: metal on the bottom, a metal ceiling on top, with some sort of clear substance between them that makes it look almost like you're in the hollow of some sort of strange shell or log. You feel lingering beads of fluid drip down your scales and look down and see they are brown. Your memory is hazy, but you vaguely remembered that they were a very different color than this before you woke up, even if their current state feels distantly familiar to you.

"The revival process is complete. It should be fine to disconnect him now."

There are voices you can't understand coming from outside the tube when a woosh rings out and it retracts. You see lights from above and reflexively whimper. Even in this strange place, the sky-fire is still here to torment you and finish you off. You cringe and curl up, bracing for the end.

"Easy, easy. You're alright."

You yelp as you feel tugs on your snout and keep your eyes screwed shut as something lifts your body up. There's warmth from above but it's not scorching. You blink and crack your eyes open, and as you look down, you see some strange, soft white covering swaddling you. Along with a pair of limbs that are giant relative to your body which hold you up from below.

Your breaths grow shallow in a panic. You're being carried off by a predator, a fear you haven't had to worry about since you were very young. You struggle against the object muzzling your snout and flail your limbs and squirm as the strange limbs fight to hold you still. You try to break free when suddenly something moves against your back and strokes slowly. Your breathing calms, and you move your head to peek past the white covering.

There's some sort of strange, gangly creature with a loose, white pelt and a fur-tuft looking down at you. One that comes down to the sides of a strange head without visible scales, or feathers, or even additional fur aside from a couple patches over the creature's brows. The creature's mouth curls up at its ends, and it speaks in a soft and cooing tone.

"There, there. You're okay now. Let's get you cleaned up."

You don't know what it is telling you, but something about its voice feels strangely reassuring. Your legs touch a surface that flexes under your weight, and much to your surprise, your right leg doesn't hurt anymore. The white covering holds you in place and suddenly it moves all up and down your scales. You fidget and try to call out in protest as it occurs to you that it's wiping away the fluid. It lets go, as another creature in a white pelt comes forward, reared up to a height that looks positively gigantic. Its head-fur looks shorter, and it has fur along the bottom of its mouth that reminds you of the beard of feathers under your jaw you vaguely remembered having before you woke up again. There's a set of strange rings about its eyes that rest on long stalks coming from what you presume to be a pair of horns on the side of its head.

It glances you over briefly, before it turns to the other and pushes the strange covering up and down your scales. It chuckles, and speaks up with strange, dissonant vocalizations you can't make heads or tails of.

"Sure looks different from that Jaw Fossil we found him as. Not bad for a Pokémon that spent millions of years stuck in sediment that used to be at the bottom of a sea, if you ask me."

Its hands go for your muzzle and you feel the pressure on your snout slacken, as it pulls the white covering away from your eyes. With your jaws now freed, you lunge and clamp down on the covering that keeps poking and prodding at your body, and vigorously shake it as you attempt to prove to it that you are a king and will not tolerate it toying with you as it pleases.

It's warm and chewy, but gives no shrieks of pain or reply to your growls. So it's not alive, perhaps it's a hide of some sort? You pause and look about your surroundings and see you're in some sort of strange cave. The surface that gives way underfoot when you step on it is green and feels soft but firm to the touch. To the sides are peculiar cave walls which look unnaturally straight, and the cave floor does as well with strange hatch-like patterns in its rock. Even the ceiling is weirdly straight, with strange lights embedded in them that lack the normal warmth of sunlight.

You stare around bewildered, when the long-tuft cups its fingers under your chin and strokes you.

"Welcome to our world, little guy. It's not quite being king of the jungle, but we're glad you're here in it."

You blink and settle in on the counter as the white-pelted creatures drift off, casting glances at you as they talk from further off in the room. You're not sure what on earth just happened, or if those things you thought were memories of that forest you ruled burning and being overtaken by the black waves were a nightmare of some sort. You also don't know whether you are even safe right now. After all, the white-pelts are much larger than you, and took you from the strange tube to your present ledge as they pleased.

… You decide to test the order of this strange new world you've woken in. To determine who is its rightful ruler. And as such, you stand up, throwing your head back with a mighty roar.

… It's smaller and less impressive than you remembered it being, but it makes both the white pelts on their two legs stiffen up and instantly turn to look at you. The one with the long tuft hurries over and places a blue berry in front of you. It pats you again, though this time its motions are more guarded and careful. As if it were chastened and put into place.

The white pelt drifts off again as you lower your jaws and tear into the berry, chewing over its flesh as a satisfied grin creeps over your mouth.

Even in this body that isn't as fearsome as the one you remembered, even in this strange place among strange creatures larger than you that you know nothing about, you recognize as clear as day from the way they reacted as to who its rightful ruler is.

You are. They yielded to you, and they know that you are their king.