Awakened

Destroyer

((This will gut you. Emotionally. Near the end, that is. Most of this long chapter is VERY dramatic.))

He was perched in a particularly tall tree overlooking the gated compound outside the village, tail draped across several branches as he rested his skull in his crossed arms across a larger branch. His coat was splayed out across the twigs while he watched the goatlin thing chatting with Dream. The dragon was laying upright, though the tiny raptor thing was tucked under his wing, head resting on the ground to watch.

Error was suspicious of the bipedal antlered goat with green fur, but so far she seemed only to be talking. It was a shame he couldn't hear what she was saying, as she was lifting up a wobbling sphere of water from the hot tub with an oddly greenish magic. It might've been slightly cyan, like an aqua color.

Dream shuffled around, looking at the water. Because it was away from him, Error couldn't tell what face he was making, though the backpinned ears were a slight hint.
No one else ever seemed to take their tasks seriously around here. Always so trusting of each other.
As if that fucking witch didn't screw them over only barely a month ago.
It pissed him off.

Though he felt rather tainted himself to be involved with them. The village was disruptive to the natural world around it, a world that was only a shadow of what it once was. Error rather thought it was the beginning of the end for real this time. They'd develop too far before the dimensions could recover and destroy them completely. Nothing left.
It was like he was sinning against existence by allowing it to stand.

But.. Blue didn't.. feel evil. Or selfish. Or even ignorant. If anything, he was frustratingly kind and patient. Every single time Error expected him to.. be like a Creator, he just.. wasn't. The only thing Blue seemed to have in common with them at all was an odd desire to leave a mark on the world. And it wasn't through grand monuments or a city made only by him or draining an ocean or leveling a forest into empty land or whatever.
He just wanted to build homes for the villagers that looked nice.
And it honestly annoyed Error.

Because what the hell was he supposed to do about that? He couldn't just tear down tiny buildings that weren't even visible from the other side of the low hill Dream's compound was built on. That felt.. well it just felt cruel, really.

But he was supposed to be cruel. He was a world destroying Wither, for crying out loud! He was a tool of devastation that reduced jungles to ash, mountains to dust, cities to rubble, dragons and Creators to red smears- yet he was perched in a tree, stalking a dragon. Barely taller than a Creator himself.
Error didn't really know what he was doing.

The Withers usually told him that he needed to raze the place to the ground while he still could, and bury it so the land around might recover faster… but there were a lot of trees and flowers in the village. A lot of beehives, too. The bees really liked the abundance of flowers. There were more birds around due to the surplus of insects, and he was beginning to hear frogs near the pond a little past the compound in the evenings. Cross’s pond was even starting to attract dragonflies, though not many fish with all the axolotls in it. He.. didn't want to destroy that just to get rid of the buildings.

Besides. The Remnant had told him that the inclusion of all that diversity was good, and he should let them grow. The Remnant believed they wouldn't go down the same path.
Just.. everyone else in the sand thought otherwise..
Couldn't even get a clear answer.

There were spheres of water lifting out of the hot tub via a more yellow magic now, Dream visibly focused even from this distance. Not that it was very far, the tree was really only a dozen feet from the outer wall anyway. Still, Error couldn't help but be fascinated by it. He knew that was the sort of thing Withers could originally do, seen Blue learn the ability and become remarkably proficient at it, but.. had no idea dragons could do it. He honestly didn't know all that much about dragons at all. Just what they looked like, really. He didn't even know that much about his own kind when he was still sand himself.