Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Chapter 1
Before Berk, before the Vikings, before Humanity itself, was a vast expanse of time. This Expanse was known as the Cenozoic, and before that was the Mesezoic, and before that were other eras. If you're reading this, you probably know about the Dragons already. Some the Size of a Chihuahua, others big enough to be confused for an island.
Dragons, of course, came from somewhere. We can make pretty good inferences, obviously, about where they broke off and how they did so. Some say they broke off from Dinosaurs, others from Pterosaurs or Crocodilians. This almost certainly comes from an early paper about them being written, where they were compared to those creatures, but do not be mistaken, for Dragons are their own beings entirely.
The Best we can tell, Dragons began to properly splinter off 305 Million years ago, during the Final Days of the Carboniferous. The Point Zero Ancestor of 98% of all Dragons isn't fully clear at this point, but it's likely to be a Lizard or Semi-Aquatic Amphibian Creature. Most people by now do generally agree the ancestor couldn't fly, but that gliding was possible for it.
The Forests of the Carboniferous were in their final days. Across the world, vast wildfires engulfed much of the wet and swampy landscape, the strange yet glorious trees toppled to the ground as flames raced up their sides. Amongst the flames, the mostly tiny creatures made their attempts at escape. Massive Dragonflys raced through the air, the massive insects that dominated the world in their final throes.
Among the trees was a single, Lizardlike Animal. It was covered in colorful scales, and from its back thrust small, leaflike wings. They were attached in a similar manner to Coelurosauravus, which wouldn't appear for millions of years. Small Spikes lined its back, and its eyes were wide. It wasn't very intelligent, but it was smart enough to know fear. One of the trees nearby collapsed, sending flame and embers up towards it. The Base of the tree it was standing on caught fire, the flames quickly reaching up thanks to the oxygen rich air. The Little Animal looked back down, then back up at the safe area infront of it.
Suddenly there was a cracking sound as parts of the branch it was on began to quickly catch fire, the little animal, seeing no other choice, jumped off. Its small wings extended, and it successfully glided away from the branch just before it fell into the mass of flames below. It kept gliding for a hundred or so yards, before landing on the safer ground, before scampering off to put more distance between itself and the flames.
The Little creature ran for a couple hundred yards before spotting a Large Burrow between the rocks and crawling in. It didn't look back at the massive, advancing fire, the huge mass of smoke that stretched on seemingly forever into the distance. The Small Creature seemingly didn't want anything to do with the raging flames, and perhaps that was a smart move, as they approached they began to burn the ground outside the burrow. Had it stayed closer to the entrance, it might have been cooked, but instead it remained asleep as the world outside turned to ash.
When it emerged, the land outside had been completely scorched. The Trees had been reduced to Charred wood, with some of the husks being toppled over onto the ground. Some of the embers still smoldered, and a desolate, dusty, smoky atmosphere had settled on the land. The Creature looked around, the distant ocean was filled with debris, the rivers turned into muddy, ashen canals. It looked beyond the burrow, the fires still raged in the distance, with the sun being a dim, blocked out disk. The Sky was not blue, and instead seemed to almost be dead, rotten, with its color gone. The Little animal began to scamper towards the nearest water source, but shied away when it saw that the pond had been covered in mud, dirtied water and pieces of burned debris.
It kept looking around, before reaching the river which it had used so often. There were no more natural predators around, they had either fled or been extinguished by the fire. When it approached the river, however, the little animal could see that it was hardly better than the pond, and that massive log-like pieces of the forest floated past.
Although it wasn't desperate yet, the creature could tell this would be trouble later on. It began to look for sources of prey, it climbed a burned part of a tree, the top had fallen off, but it was tall enough for it to get a good view of the nearby forest when it jumped and glided off. It looked around, trying to find any possible prey, and it was able to see a small lizard on the ground. It dove after it, catching it off guard and ensnaring it in its jaws. It walked back into its burrow and ate its meal, safe from the horrors of the dead forest outside.
That Particular animal would live to see another day, and many more days after that. Across the world, the story repeated itself, the Carboniferous, in all its glory, was coming to its end. The Massive, Lush Forests that made up the world, with their swamplands, became rare. The World was dying if anything, and as many species went extinct, others prospered. In Particular, one such species was the little guy we just focused on, the Drakon Primum, which was the one of the last common ancestors of the majority of the world's dragon species. Drakon Primum was only a bit bigger than a Human Hand, a Pathetic Species even compared to the terrible terror, but for the time it was revolutionary. One of the first non-insect gliding animals, one that would grow to spawn one of the most revolutionary and controversial branches of animals in history.
However, they wouldn't be the only animals to always rule the skies, as the Carboniferous ended, the species evolved to grow bigger, a tad bit smarter, and would face the Brave new world, one which would give spawn to other animals for the dragons to compete with.
NEXT UP: EARLY PERMIAN