There are many who wish to be an object of worship, to be seen as a higher being, a god even, to the lesser masses.

  They're goddamned idiots that's what they are.

  But I have to admit, they're not entirely wrong to want some of what I've got. My life did, somewhat, improve when I impressed the magnificence of my greatness upon the feeble humans that inhabited the edge of the forest I called my territory. Really the best part was that my scales regained their gleaming silver sheen that reflected the sunlight and made me almost seem like a radiant, heavenly being.

  The not so good part was, of course, the fact that my humans were complete idiots.

  My eye opened and the man cleaning my horn almost shit his pants. Had he done that, I would've had him banished never to return to my lair in his life, I'm not about to put up with the disgusting smell of human waste. I could tell he froze when my slit pupil focused on him, I could see the fear course through his body, and my eyes reflecting off of his.

  "The Great One is displeased, begone with you!"

  The original sacrifice had become something called a 'Dragon Priestess'. The title made sense. The existence of it, not so much. At some point they had decided that since I am not a raging, rampaging monster, but I'm still a living and breathing force of nature like other dragons, I must therefore be a higher existence, a greater being. Divine, even.

  I turned a blind eye to their antics because they brought me food, they cleaned me when I was too lazy to, and they kept the pests too small and weak to bother dealing with myself away from my glade. Hell, they'd even started building a proper shrine around it.

  The muscular dark skinned dude in a loincloth that had been waxing my horn turned around and fled, so fast that I saw things I'd rather not as he ran.

  The priestess, who'd been the one to kick him out, took a few steps in front of me and huffed, banging a gnarled chunk of burnt wood, a single branch that had survived a snort of flame from one of my nostrils, against the flattened rocks that the tribe of human idiots had set up in the form of a path from their village to my lair.

  "Useless, the lot of them!" she shouted. "Louts! Layabouts!" she continued. "If he displeased you Lord Dragon then we will offer him up to appease-"

  I unfolded my arms and rose to my full height, towering over the puny human. "I'm going," I growled out.

  I was having enough of worship for the day. The fruit is nice, the cleaning's nice, but really, they could be so overbearing.

  Her eyes widened. "Have we-"

  My wings unfurled and then spread, the gust of wind knocking the self proclaimed priestess on her butt, her staff falling from her hand, my tail whipping out and breaking the sound barrier as the movement came to an end with a mighty crack. My legs bent, my knees actually tingled a little from the effort, I'd spent the last couple weeks asleep and I needed to stretch my wings really badly.

  Taking to the sky, I paid little attention to the aftershocks of my launch, quickly breaching the cloud cover of the skies.

  The weather didn't bother me, though I could tell the storm was large and electric. In fact, the electricity itself, the bolts of lightning, kinda tickled a little as the energy struck me. The most annoying part was the sounds of rolling thunder echoing within my inner ear.

  So much so that I decided, fuck it, too annoying to deal with.

  Rearing my head and gathering my power, I chose in the moment not to breathe fire, but frost instead, sapping the heat from my breath weapon and pushing out a frozen, high speed wind that rapidly cooled the air and the clouds around me, turning what had been a thick gray and black blanket of clouds into a wall of water and then swiftly ice, falling in great chunks as it was cooled entirely too quickly.

  Ah.

  Fuck me sideways. That's gonna fall on the village isn't it?

  Motherfucker. I can't complain about them being dumb if I go and do something even dumber than anything they do not moments afterwards. The laws of physics are bullshit and they should stop in order to benefit me, but unfortunately they wouldn't do that on their own.

  Accelerating I began to move, following up my first breath weapon with another, moving faster as the world around me got slower, blasting my fire breath into the formations of frozen water all around me, melting it again, but not going so long that it vaporized again. Last thing I wanted was to make the storm worse.

  We'll pretend that wasn't exactly what I did, even though that was exactly what I did.

  Fucking bullshit, how does the climate even work!?

  Trying to equalize things was just making it worse! I kept blasting my breath into the sky over and over again, alternating fire and ice, and flying in circles, and somehow, all of these attempts at clearing up the storm only created an even bigger storm and a goddamn tornado. How did I make a tornado? I wasn't flying that fast, and it didn't even form in the middle of where I was flying.

  You know what fuck it.

  We're going with plan B. Trying to science this hasn't been working.

  So we're going to go with the dumbest choice imaginable. I gathered as much power as I could and switched from the more traditional cone of fire or frost breath weapon to just pouring my energy out in a single powerful beam of white lightning, pure destructive energy firing in a straight line towards where the biggest part of the storm was forming, the tornado, and surprisingly, it connected!

  Wait.

  Connected?

  With what?

  That's supposed to just be air right?

  Oh.

  It's exploding.

  HOLY FUCKING SHIT IT'S EXPLODING!

  The light from my own breath weapon was so blindingly bright that I saw spots for a good few moments after it cleared, and, thankfully, a bright blue sky and a radiant sun greeted me.

  Also, there was something there. Hey, is that another dragon? It's kinda black, uhh, maybe not black? It looks charred?

  Oh. Shit. I hit a dragon. I flew towards the dragon, but by the time I reached it, it was already dropping. It was dead. There was no movement in its body beyond its writhing as the last electrical impulses of its body failed.

  Ah.

  Dammit.

  I could've met someone like me. Someone who I could speak to, someone who wouldn't be a simpering worshipper.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  ...

  That said...

  Roasted dragon smells kinda... really good.

  I followed the smell down to the forest and spread my wings just before I hit the ground. This didn't have the effect of harmlessly stopping my dive bomb, instead, because physics didn't just stop even though that would've been useful, the equal and opposite reaction to me suddenly stopping my momentum was a wave of wind that decimated a large area of trees.

  I hit the ground and looked upon my handiwork. The dragon's scales were broken and scorched. I thought I had possibly blasted its arms off, but it actually didn't have any. A wyvern, then? I suppose that makes me a Wyrm. Hm.

  What a shame.

  As I was pondering what to do, and getting increasingly more tempted to just eat the fucker, the humans from the village arrived.

  "Lord DRagon! You've protected us once again! Slaying one of the Evilkind!!"

  Oh, great, the priestess came with them. You know, this girl, she's something else. I turned to face her, wishing that my face had the capacity for expression that a human's did. I didn't have the ability to roll my eyes the way I really wanted to.

  Whatever.

  "Humans. Clean this up," I said, "separate the meat from the carcass and bring it as an offering. Cook half of it, and put the rest in salt," I said. "Use the rest of this carcass however you wish."

  "Salt? Great dragon, we do not possess enough to preserve such a catch!"

  I sighed.

  "Fine. Then find a large enough cave. I will freeze it. You will preserve the meat there," I said.

  "... I do not understand, how would that prevent meat from spoiling?" the priestess asked, as the humans gathered behind her.

  Oh. Right. Primitive humans. "Cold prevents meat from rotting," I spoke. "The tiny beings that decompose the meat can't live if it's too cold," I said.

  "Tiny beings?"

  Riiiiight. Why would they know about any of that?

  God fucking dammit, what kind of mess have I got myself into. "Just do as I say," I spoke, "lest you wish to invoke my temper upon yourself!"

  "Yes, great dragon! We shall do as Lord Dragon commands!"

  I was getting the strange sensation that my brain was translating two different words into basically the same thing, which felt weird because I could almost feel the different inflection. I almost miss having a flatter face, because I've found that between the shape of my claws and that of my face, I no longer have the capacity to facepalm.

  A real shame.

  With that done, I sat and pondered what to do, until the humans returned, told me where the cave they found that was large enough was. I then froze it, it was deep enough that the ice would probably last them a couple seasons to be honest, and then because I really wanted to eat the dragon meat that smelled delicious, I took the charred carcass to their village.

  By the next day, the meat was drained of blood, cut into chunks, and cooked. Juicy as fuck, delicious beyond measure, and best of all, it gave me a jolt of energy like you wouldn't believe.

  My lesser kin are delicious.

  Actually, I shouldn't consider them kin. They're as close to me as a bug is to an elephant. Probably. Yeah, for sure.

  I might be underestimating the things going on around me. That said, as I devoured the wyvern and chased it with clean water for a change and some fruit as a dessert, I pondered, and thought, and thought some more. That storm... might not have been my fault? That Wyvern could've been causing it.

  It seems like the tribesmen are assuming I noticed the Wyvern and that my attempts to get rid of the storm were actually me fighting it. I won't disabuse them of that notion, that's just convenient to me, and stops them from thinking I was being a moron.

  So that just leaves wondering why there was a Wyvern in the middle of a tornado in a storm of my own creation. Was it coming to attack me? Did it notice me and want to have a chat? Was it friendly? Was it an enemy? Did it really matter?

  I settled to sleep while thinking on it, and weeks later I was awakened by the priestess who had brought me a tribute of fruit and-

  "What in blazes is this?" I said, my tone as icy as my breath. I noticed it was snowing, surprisingly.

  The priestess was walking at the front of a procession. They had cut a path now, into the forest. There were stalls. There were people in varying clothing styles. Some with different skin tones. Various facial features. Some were wearing very ornate clothes. They all spoke weirdly, the syntax of their sentences was a little different, my brain took a few moments to adapt.

  They-

  They were holding a festival. They were holding a festival with diplomats from other tribes. On my goddamn lair. They were using my goddamn lair as some sort of town hall or some shit. I opened my eyes, I glared at them and rose to the full height of my magnificent form, and-

  "O Lord Dragon, these folks have come to you to render homage and offer their tribute to you for slaying the evil Storm Wyvern that had been plaguing these lands!"

  She turned behind herself and gestured with that stupid burnt stick she used as a staff to the procession behind her, much of it was food from places other than the direct immediacy of my lair, and, most importantly...

  "Is that a giant cushion..?" I asked.

  "Yes!" the priestess responded.

  "... proceed."

  I let them put it in the center of my lair, and sat on it.

  They get this one. Just this one time, I'll allow them to get away with this silly nonsense.

  ...

  "To celebrate your great victory in such a harrowing battle we've decided that this will be the day in which we found the Great Dragon Alliance, starting with the founding of our capital, Argentum!"

  This... feels like it's about to get even sillier. Fuck it, I'm going back to sleep, and making this future me's problem.

  ...

  I wouldn't wake up until several weeks after that.

  And, hey, past me, fuck you for that by the way.

  They were already starting to build shit right next to me!

  "Ohhh! Lord Dragon, you're awake! We've prepared a tribute for you, sourced from the fruits you enjoyed most from last time, and the rest of the Storm Wyvern!"

  I really needed to go and do something before I started getting super fat. Stupid, excessively overachieving humans, stop making me lazy!