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Wels found himself thinking about flying. The sky was so open from his spot on the hills, not yet obstructed by the towering shapes of the shopping district. To his back was the snowy mountain, a wonderful sight, just not from the ground.
The server also ran flight through elytra. Now, several people have been progressing insanely fast. But no one had challenged the end except for Iskall, and even he had only returned with no spare elytra. And then he turned off his comm for the last week. So no one could fly, basically.
Wels could, if he really wanted to. He had wings of his own, just not any elytra. Those were artificial wings, made of stolen wings of dead dragons. They were effective, but they needed rockets to fly and enough strength to last in flight.
Wels was a dragon.
Keyword ‘was.’ Wels, like many of the other hermits, was not entirely human. Most were plain half and half: Grian for example was half bird, Jevin was half slime, Beef was half bull, Doc was …. well best not to try and figure out what doc was.
Wels was a dragon. One hundred percent. But he was also a dragon shapeshifter. He had a human form and a dragon form. Simple as that. He either looked like a human or looked like a dragon. Except, none of the hermits knew he was a shapeshifter.
Again, some of the other hermits were shapeshifters. Xisuma was a polymorph. Stress was fae. Keralis was definitely a shapeshifter but Wels couldn’t figure out what he shifted to. And there were probably a few others. Point is- Wels wasn’t the only one.
So…why didn’t any of the hermits know? Short story short, it involved Xisuma meeting Wels the human and then never really asking about preexisting species or otherwise. And possibly Wels not really thinking to correct someone this far into his relationship with the other hermits. In the shortest way possible: Wels was too polite to correct people when they thought he was human.
In his defense, it wasn’t hurting anyone. It wasn’t hurting him, it wasn’t hurting any of the other hermits. It was just his little secret. He could fly when he wanted to when he got his hands on an elytra, which was usually within a week. He didn’t particularly miss the oversized body or the fire breath or the horns too much. It made building difficult and food harder to sustain.
Dragons, in case you didn’t know, were dangerous. The Ender dragon is something any explorer is familiar with. It destroys anything in its path and feeds off of the power of the end crystals. It breathes purple fire that can be scooped up into bottles of dragon’s breath. Its wings beat so hard that it can launch a fully armored man a thousand feet away with just a single touch. They hunt relentlessly. No matter how far you run, if you’ve slighted them, they will not rest until they find and kill you, unless you kill it first.
Wels was the same. In a way. He wasn’t territorial like the Ender dragon. His fire wasn’t purple like the Ender dragon. He didn’t heal from End Crystals like the Ender dragon. And he wasn’t a jerk like the Ender dragon. He still crushed overworld blocks under foot if he wasn’t careful and he was large enough to swat the hermits down like ants. He breathed white fire that could be collected into bottles, usually repurposed as light sources in his old home.
So Wels preferred to remain human. It was easier to get around. He could make friends with the horses now- even though they were still skittish around him. He could actually sleep in a bed that had a blanket to cover his whole body.
Lately though, Wels found himself missing flight. He was tired of waiting for someone to give him an elytra, and he missed being . . . well, himself.
He stood out on his porch, staring out over the sunlit plains of spawn town. Scar’s tree swayed gently in the valley wind and Xisuma’s half finished towers looked like sticks poking out of the stone. For what felt like the first time in decades, Wels felt homesick.
He missed what he had with his brothers and sisters. He missed the races he used to have up in the mountains. His mother dropping a mouthful of meat for them to stuff their faces with. His father dragging his face in the water to scoop up dozens of salmon and cod. He missed his tree that had bark rough enough and roots sturdy enough to scratch that one spot on his back he couldn’t reach. He missed his old cave, decorated with pots of his own fire and boulders pasted together with clay and mud.
Wels closed his eyes, resting his arms and his chin on the railing of the balcony. The memories were all fading. It was sad to think about, Wels tried not to. After all, he’d found a good place. The hermits were so kind, so funny. They became a family to him.
Grief ruined the beauty of the sunset. Wels opened his misty eyes as the sun crawled lower into the sky. How strange, something he thought he’d made his peace with . . . it still hurt.
Maybe he should fly. Flying always made him feel better. Wels wiped a hand under his eyes, catching the tears before they fell.
Yes, he should fly.
Wels reached into his pocket and dug out his comm. Only four other people were on: Jevin, Doc, Scar and Impulse. All of them weren’t at spawn and Doc was probably afk. Good, good.
[Welsknight: nobody sleep please]
[Goodtimewithscar: :( ]
[Jevin: k]
The sky began to bleed, melting from blue to purple. Wels stood up and walked downstairs. He went as slowly as he could, careful not to stumble with the nostalgic pit that had solidified in his gut. He stopped in the open plain in front of his house. The sun beamed down. It seemed to slow down just for him, as if it too knew how special this moment was for him.
Red washed over the valley as the sun’s white eye slid down below the mountain.
The moon rose in return and Wels took a deep breath in. As the silver light touched his back he felt his entire body tingle, urging him to shift. Now.
What did it feel like?
It felt like a lot of things at once. That was the only way Wels could describe it. It felt like breathing. It felt like swimming. It felt like a fast wind rushing by him. It felt like he was falling. Running. Diving. It felt like everything good in the world rushed by him, bumping him in all directions- carrying him upwards, up and up until he could finally open his eyes again under the full light of the moon.
Euphoria. That was the name of this feeling.
He missed this feeling so much. He sighed aloud, sinking down to all fours. The dirt crumbled into ditches and his breath billowed from his jaws in clouds of glittering smoke. His claws dug into the dirt, sinking into the soil with the long breath of relief. His wings spread, stretching with that strain that he had been holding onto for years. The wind didn’t feel so cold now and his breath back in filled his bellows with crisp icy air.
Why didn’t he do this sooner.
Wels blinked, staring up at the moon. It looked plainly on, teasing with its shimmer amongst the stars. The night sky was beautiful as always, decorated with the glitter that he’d rarely seen since the day he’d joined the hermits. He reached his long neck up, letting the loose feathers on his crown drape backwards against his head. The sky beckoned for him. The clouds parted right over his head, haloed in the moonlight.
Wels grinned, mouth full of fangs and a forked tongue. He raised his wings and gave them a small flap. The gust lifted his front paws off of the ground and he chuckled- a sound that rumbled in his throat like a purr. The tingling from the shift was gone, quickly replaced by the burning fire of anticipation. Wels reared onto his hind legs with another strong flap of his wings. The great sails held him airborne for a moment longer this time.
Flowers and bits of grass flew everywhere as he dropped back down to all fours. He couldn’t care about his ruined garden or the landscape outside of his house. He could fix it later. He had a sky to chase. He crouched down, wiggling his hindquarters like he was a child, foolishly believing it would propel him higher.
With all of his might, he leapt into the air. His wings beat the air with power so strong that the grass crumbled under his feet. And he climbed through the air, rising rapidly with each flap of his wings. Within seconds he cleared the top of the mountain and soared straight into the clouds.
He threw his head back, shrieking his delight into the wind.
His roar was nothing like the Ender Dragon. The Ender Dragon bellowed and roared. Wels roared like a song. His roar started low and grew into a sharp note that rang for miles. Depending on the surroundings, it would echo back like a chorus. It was a little rusty, sore from his throat not taking this shape for so long. But it was still there- just as beautiful as it always was. The mountain sang back to him, lost to his tailwinds.
Wels shot above the clouds, twisting onto his back as his wings stalled. He hovered there for a moment, just him alone with the moon above the island of clouds. She smiled at him, he thought. She smiled as he paused, letting himself free fall back towards the land of clouds.
He twisted in midair and unfurled his wings. He caught himself in the air and rebounded to the side. He held strong as his weight caught up with him and sailed forward with his belly skimming the tops of the clouds. His wings sliced through the fluffy tops, scattering them like cotton balls. He laughed aloud, twisting again to dive back below the cloud cover.
The hermitcraft server really did look beautiful at night. Even from all the way up here, he could see Scar’s tree glittering with the hanging lamps and the diamond pillars reaching up into the sky. Wels dove further, keeping his wings loosely pinned to his back. The thin membrane between the spokes of his wings flapped and his horns whistled at the speed of the wind. He dropped like a stone, falling faster and faster towards Xisuma’s unfinished building and the crater of dead earth.
His wings snapped open and he shot to the side, roaring at the exhilaration. He arrowed between the pillars of birch and sandstone, rolling over himself to dodge the pile of stone. He went faster, gaining speed as he flew towards the shopping district. The diamond pillars looked ethereal in the silver moon, each sparkling ore glowing like the stars.
He arched between them, weaving with precise movements and unwavering confidence. It took skill to fly with such grace when you were as large as a dragon. It was like he’d never stopped flying- he remembered. After all this time he remembered. He pushed himself back up to higher altitude, swooping past False’s sleeping eagle and the hanging pie. He climbed with the mountain, beating his wings and stirring up the snow. He dragged a claw up the side, covering his paw in white powder.
He sang as he crested the peak diving back down into the bowl on the other side. The song bounced back, rustling the leaves and knocking the giant mushrooms together. The trees raced by him, grabbing at the tips of his wings with their gnarled branches and dark leaves. Mobs flickered through the brambles- little spots of color in the darkness. He could hear them groan and click of surprise, some even brave enough to shoot at him. He blasted past a creeper on a snowbank, knocking the poor thing clear off of its feet. Wels laughed as it landed head first into the powder, little legs kicking- futile- out of the snow.
He pulled up, rising well above the trees. And he stopped there, gliding in slow circles around the bowl. His racing heart slowed and he finally let himself have enough space to think. Up here the air was cold, clearing his head in a way that he hadn’t felt all season. Or any season.
It reminded him of home.
Wels fell silent. The wind too, was completely quiet as he glided. The moon made the snow look like it was glowing blue. His shadow passed over them, shivering as it passed over the slopes and ridges.
His home in the mountains didn’t have snow. It was low enough and warm enough to just feel chilly during winter. It was covered in giant trees not native to this land. They were strong enough to stand up to him and his siblings climbing them day in and day out, but still weak to the human ax. There were rocks too, big rocks warmed by hours in the sun. What else was there?
Wels keened. His roar was a song, his grief was an avalanche. The sound hurt to make just as much as it hurt to feel. What else had he forgotten? How long has it been? The weight of decades seemed to finally register and the ache in his bones from flying so hard finally sank into his flesh. Wels turned his head upwards, flying back up and over the side of the mountain bowl.
He needed a break from the hermit lands. This was too important to him. He banked to the left, heading off towards the southern border of spawn town. Home called to him like a siren’s song. He didn’t know if he was even going in the right direction, but he had to try.
The others would understand.
[Welsknight has logged off]
[Goodtimewithscar: ????]
[Jevin: bro wanted a dramatic sunset]
[Jevin: smh]
[Goodtimewithscar was shot by Skeleton]
[impulse: LOL]