Atop a mountain-range of treasures he lay, an enormous, catastrophe-causing dragon. His body larger than all but the largest hill of treasure within his cove, his golden scales more grand than the gold beneath him, his body more beautiful and fearsome than the most masterful of sculptures within his trove; he easily outshone all his treasures.

…Is what someone would have seen if they gazed upon him a day before.

Today, the planet had suddenly gained a second moon. Only a second afterwards, the world had turned into hell. The sky changed, from green to maroon; the dirt became the color of ash, the air began to smell of rot.

Within a minute, almost everything Apophis could see, not from atop his trove but from atop the tallest mountain, was dead. The grand jungle that surrounded his trove, buried deep underground, withered, rotted and died; trees more ancient than even him, gone in an instant.

The loss of the trees and their wisdom stung; in comparison, the rest of the flora and fauna within the jungle, including the orc tribes, meant nothing to him.

Rage built up within Apophis’ heart, but there was naught to direct his fury unto. He roared with tremendous might, so powerful and filled with his rage that he was almost certain that whatever had done this would cancel their spell and flee before he could tear them to shreds.

But, after seven solid seconds of shaking the skies and the earth with his voice alone, he began to feel it; something in the air, sinking past his scales and into his flesh.

Apophis tried to push it out using his Aether, but no matter what method he tried to implement, his Aether slipped past it, not bothering it in the slightest.

After several seconds, it had burrowed several feet into his body, and Apophis was beginning to feel weaker. His skull seemed to be stopping it from intruding into his brain, luckily. However, more urgent than even that, he noticed that the jungle was alive again… but not with the creatures he knew, tolerated and hated.

Abominations, lacking Aether and Ether alike, stood dozens of feet tall, tearing towards him with tremendous speed powered by muscle alone.

What had been wolves were now twelve-foot-tall, six-legged, covered in a mix of scales, tumors and fur, with three tiny wings poking out of seemingly random parts of its body- its forehead, its belly and its tail.

What had been orcs were now more akin to ogres, but hulking, sagging and covered in tumors.

What had been a tree was now a towering monstrosity of muscle and tendons and veins and veins, all covered in wood.

There had to be hundreds of thousands of the abominations, and Apophis simply could not afford to waste his time to deal with them. He flapped his powerful wings, rising into the air, far out of their reach, and rapidly made his way back to his hoard.

But, as the minutes crawled by, Apophis found nothing in his hoard that could help him. He consumed the Ether cores of phoenixes, the Aether cores of hydras, the most valuable elixirs, all by the dozens, but none did anything more than slow the air-poison’s spread through his body.

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After half an hour, Apophis completely lost the ability to move. His legs were paralyzed, but the vital parts of his body were still fine; the poison in the air had yet to reach them.

He had only a while left at most, and he knew it. He became more certain of it when he began to hear the cries of the magicless abominations miles away. And so, Apophis began to take measures he had never expected to be forced to take.

Using his Ether, Apophis lifted a golden coin from amongst his hoard. It was only the size of a human’s palm, but radiated a sense of divine power that no other treasure he had ever seen could rival.

Apophis pressed the coin against his scales, and through them, infused a tiny bit of Aether, mixed with his will, into it. With a resounding ‘Crack!’ that seemed to shake his entire cove, one of the most powerful artifacts he had ever laid eyes upon, snapped.

‘How has this happened? Who summoned this great calamity?’ Apophis- or Apep, as the Trees called him- wondered, but the thought that anything could summon this calamity stirred enough amusement within him that his chest heaved out a snort that rapidly degraded into rasping coughs.

Within an hour of the catastrophe, curled up on the highest peak of his grandest mountain of treasure, was no longer a dragon, but a pale, Etherless, Aetherless, abomination.

After thirty-two centuries, seven decades and three years, Apophis, renowned as Gaia’s Nemesis and the World’s Destroyer, one of the three Ancient Dragons who were equal to the gods, was slain- along with the rest of the world, of course.

***

The sensation of death was easy to describe. It was terrifying and painful, among many other things. The sensation of being dead was not so easy to describe, however.

His mind was neither destroyed nor intact, and the only thing he could remember of it all was darkness beyond what even the most eldritch of horrors could create.

‘…Remember?’ He suddenly realized.

He… was thinking.

All at once, the many sensations of being alive struck him like a truck. He could feel the sensation of bile building in his throat, but it did nothing to stop him. His eyes snapped open, and a wave of confusion rose up above the rest of the many sensations.

Around him were the shattered remnants of an egg, and around that was a human-made room. Its walls were made of a gray metal, and what seemed to be a mirror was laid in the wall. In it, he got a brief glance of what he was before everything came crashing down upon him all at once, and a pool of bile lay at his feet.

Even after there was nothing left within his stomach, his body continued to try, and it hurt. Tears filled his eyes, and somewhere deep in the back of his mind, a sense of disgust- not at the vomit, but at the tears in his eyes- filled him.

Once he was finished with that, he briefly regained his wits before taking another look at his reflection.

He was a hatchling. The same corner of his mind that had been disgusted by the tears in his eyes was confused by this, but he didn’t really mind.

He was the size of a large dog, his scales a deep, beautiful gold. His wings were frail, small and underdeveloped; clearly unfit for flight, and his eyes were a vivid scarlet.

Those very same eyes suddenly narrowed as his ears twitched, picking up on the very faint sound of… something, on the other side of the wall.

Suddenly, the questions, such as why he remembered dying and being dead, but nothing from before that, seemed pointless.

He was hungry, and all that filled him was an instinctive desire to hunt. Without hesitation, he threw himself at the mirror; slamming his hundred-pound self into it and viciously raking it with his claws… and then letting out a piercing squeal and falling backwards as currents of electricity ran through his body.

Sounds were suddenly projected into the room, but he did not understand them. Moreover, even if he had, he would have been in no mood to listen to them.

If he had paid more attention through the pain, however, he would have realized that the sounds were distinctly human.