Awakened

Dinner

Eventually the portal dried off, and the blaze kindly relit it with a touch. Cross and Epic didn't stay after that. They had come out of concern for someone that honestly scared them a little, and now just wanted some space from whatever chaos seemed attracted to their group.
No one blamed them.

The dragon, however, stayed. He seemed to have resolved himself to despite regularly spooking at random things. Admittedly, it was fairly cute how he puffed up like a frightened cat.
Cute until one thought of why a dragon was afraid.
Naturally nothing was as large or dangerous as a dragon… apparently save for the old withers.

The trio had taken to mildly pestering Dream for more information, and with time, the dragon obliged.
Withers had indeed been big. Very big. Frighteningly so. They were as skeletal as the three themselves were, with the ability to manipulate aspects of magic only some dragons were proficient in. They used the sand that was themselves to create temporary structures or objects that could not break, because they simply changed shape instead.
Their skulls resembled dragons, and could breathe fires hotter and whiter than any seen before- like lightning itself.
And in the beginning, they really were simply mindless tools of destruction.

It was hard to press for more after that, not with how jumpy it made the already anxious dragon.
So they moved on as best they could, Horror trying to finish his home as Dust went on to experiment with copper. The enderman was actually thinking of maybe building himself a tall place out of the stuff.. which seemed weird, because that was likely to attract a lot of lightning.

Despite that, Dust was starting to lay a wide foundation off to the side of the village, fascinated by the metal.
It wasn't long until Horror was finished with his small mansion, with only one issue: it was much too small to fit a dragon in.
A small oversight, but who could have expected the possibility? He hadn't wanted a grandiose place like Blue, who could actually fit Dream in his halls. The dragon had literally walked in, sniffed around, and decided he preferred to enter through the back balcony.

As finished as his brick house may be, Horror still chose to keep going. The ground beyond the stony crags he'd built upon was largely flat for quite some distance, and it seemed there were only a few small fields in the village for growing, with animal pens small and scattered throughout it.
He took it upon himself to create a bigger farm.

This, Killer was unexpectedly helpful with. He always kept seeds around, never having a particular reason but willing to spare them to start up more crops.
He used mostly granite in the walls, mainly because everyone had collected it in excess from various mines. Most of them were in caves under what was definitely at least a freshwater ocean. He stopped calling it a lake when he spotted dolphins leaping in and out of the water. Horror liked them, they drove off the drowned.

Surprisingly, Cross eventually came back, Epic at his side. The pair couldn't resist their curiosity for very long, coming back only to be a little surprised they hadn't been torn apart by chaos yet.
A little insulting, but understandable knowing the impression they had left.

Horror had taken the time to offer them a chocolate cheesecake and some mead he'd been slowly fermenting- with difficulty. He'd found that mead was hard to get right.
He'd mostly made it after hearing about Cross having his own, and surprisingly the piglin gave him a weirdly purple cheesecake right back, drizzled in caramel instead of chocolate sauce.

One brief discussion later, and Horror learned a lot of interesting things. The purple cake was more tart and slightly textured, which was well balanced by the smooth caramel. Apparently it was made with the sweet “nectar” of some kind of obsidian and with cheese made from the milk of those giant boars, hoglins.