Disclaimer: I don't own Fairy Tail.

Okay, this is an idea I've been playing around with for a while, and thought I'd try out. To my knowledge, there isn't a fanfic like this up yet, so hopefully it's something that somebody else besides me would be interested in reading.

Warning to the readers, though: This fanfic will have AU/AR material in it. It will still largely follow the plotline from the anime/manga, but I will be taking quite a few liberties as the author to change things/make shit up - mostly in the dragon department.

BASIC IDEA: Natsu isn't really what he seems.

This will just be a very short prologue, kind of just to test the waters.

Born of Dragons
A Fairy Tail AU fanfic

Prologue
The Hatchling

How long had it been since he had last seen anybody worthy of his presence?

The others of his kind had flown off long ago, off to hide in their own little areas that offered them the best chances for food and survival.

And he, like an idiot, had chosen a forest, where there was no fire to fill his belly, no flames to quench his thirst. All he had was meat which, while delicious in its own right, was nowhere near as satisfying as a good forest fire.

But if he set the forest on fire one more time in an attempt to somehow produce flames he could actually eat, the locals would probably get pissed and try to get the forest "exercised of it's demons" again.

Honestly. Were humans so stupid they didn't know a dragon when they saw one?

Of course, he never really let the humans see him. He wasn't an idiot. He knew who had been at fault for the rapid decline of the dragon race, chased to near extinction. He knew the reason his kind had become a mere myth after just a century or so of absence.

Humans, and their greed and lust for power.

It really made him angry.

Angry enough to subconsciously set the tree to his left on fire. Whoops.

After carefully stamping out the forest fire-in-the-making - one he couldn't eat, damn it - he continued on his way, wings tucked in tight, head and shoulders held low.

It still amazed him that he, the mighty Igneel, had been reduced to nothing more than a slinking alley dog, sustaining himself on the scraps of humanity and desperately attempting to stay out of the sight of the two-legged beings in what was, to him, an eye-blink of time.

He really should have just flown away to a volcano like Atlas had suggested. The bastard.

Too late now.

Still, sometimes he toyed with the idea of taking flight, stretching wings that had, for so long, not tasted the cool breezes of the wind. It would be a simple thing, to fly again, but with potentially dangerous consequences. But the potential rewards very nearly outweighed the risks.

The dragon race was dying out, balancing on the edges of collapse and extinction. He couldn't remember the last time an egg had hatched safely, let alone a female become pregnant. The last eggs had been lost over a century ago, smashed apart by the Old Dragon Slayers, the Original Dragon Slayers, in search of defenseless dragonlings and their powerful hearts. After that, the dragons left had been too few and far between to make an attempt to produce any more eggs, all dragons near enough to one another to make the attempt either not of the correct biological gender, or not near enough in element. Igneel himself knew he had used to live near a Water Dragon female, but knew that any relationship between each other would not produce any offspring. He had not heard from her for a few decades, anyhow. Perhaps she, too, had been killed, long-since dead and gone.

He huffed out a sigh. He, the mighty Igneel, was moping. No, he wasn't going to deny it. He was by no means young - by the standards of the humans, dragons, or any other creature - and he still remembered when dragons had been as numerous in the skies as the birds were themselves.

Until the Old Dragon Slayers had discovered just how powerful a dragon's heart could really be.

Igneel could hear even now the hysterical sobs of dragonlings, pulled from the corpses of the mothers or ripped, underdeveloped, from the shards of their smashed eggs. Could hear them wail with pain and fear as their hearts were torn from their chests, still beating, life still coursing through their veins even as the knife bit into their soft scales...

No, wait. That wasn't a dream. That was an actual cry he had heard, an actual scream.

And even though it sounded decidedly human, he was off like a rocket, bounding through the forest and not caring how many creatures he trampled. The ground itself shook as Igneel, King of the Fire Dragons, once again claimed a purpose, even if it was just for a few moments.

Humans were almost pitifully small when compared to him. A full-sized human could fit in his mouth with almost no problem. Hardly even a snack. However, the five bandits he nearly crushed in his rush to reach the sound of the wail would make a decent snack, should he catch them all.

One bare of his teeth and a vicious snarl, and the five humans were tearing off through the undergrowth, terrified shrieks and calls for their mothers flying from tongues that usually spouted such confident and vulgar things.

Igneel briefly entertained the idea of giving chase, hunting down the bandits swiftly and turning them into his next midday snack, but one choked sob and he knew he had found the source of the little cry that had spurred him into action.

And little it was.

Very, very little.

Curled at his feet, a fraction of a scale away from being impaled by a claw, was a little human hatchling, no older than four winters at best. He was a little thing, about as big as one of his talons - small, even for a four-year-old human. His hair was unruly, matted, and pink, like the sky surrounding a setting sun in the midst of summer. Dirt and blood caked his little naked body, leaving barely a patch of skin uncovered.

Who would leave their child so far out in the forest, where demons were said to roam?

But one sniff and Igneel knew that no parent had left their child here. The child was wild-born, perhaps never having lived in human civilization. This area of the forest, however small, had been the child's territory, and once intruded upon by the bandits, had been defended.

Up until the point where a bandit had driven a knife into the poor child's shoulder, of course, which had been the reasons for the cries that had brought Igneel charging in.

Even still the knife stuck out from the boy's shoulder, the way he was curled on his side causing the handle to press into his dirty cheek.

For a while, Igneel stood there, unsure what to do. He didn't really have experience with humans, and definitely had no knowledge on how to handle a small one that did not know the kindness of a mother or father. A singular twitch on Igneel's part sent the child flying into a defensive crouch, a wild snarl silently twisting his face, his eyes such a dark green they were hardly discernible from the black of his sharp pupils. He made no move to try and utilize the blade in his shoulder as a weapon, instead leaving it there in favor of bringing up hands with jagged nails as his means of defense.

Did the little thing mean to fight him to protect his territory? A brave thought on the child's part, but a stupid one. Could he not see that Igneel was larger and stronger than he? Or was the child, raised away from any type of influence whatsoever, incapable of using logic?

A twig snapped behind the child, perhaps stepped on by a deer, but the sound was all that was needed for the child to scramble behind one of Igneel's legs, peeking out from behind with a teeth-bared growl.

And that is when Igneel was finally able to sense it, in such close proximity to the boy. Only then was he able to smell it under the layers of grime that smeared his skin.

'A child of Boltra? And of Combusreel?' Igneel twisted his neck to peer at the boy in bewilderment. 'A crossbreed?' He had never before seen one, only heard of them from the stories of old. He was under the impression that any crossbreed born would be sacrificed, whether through outright killing or throwing into the wild to-

...oh.

That would make sense, if everything hadn't been made so needlessly complicated so long ago.

Igneel stepped away from the child, who once again seemed to realize that Igneel was there. And there went the growl again, a wordless threat to Igneel that the child would fight for his territory.

Instead of presenting any sort of challenge to the boy, Igneel turned and began to make his way back through the path he had torn through the trees. Now that the bandits had seen him, they were sure to go back and warn the nearest village. This forest was no longer safe for him.

Finding a new one without being spotted was sure to prove tedious.

Igneel could hear the pitter-patter of bare feet on dirt within moments of leaving the boy's territory. Oh, that wouldn't do. Stealth would be the first thing that he would teach the little hatchling. No pupil of Igneel should make such a racket when walking uncontested on dirt.

But the hatchling was following,that much Igneel knew. He had been sure the boy would follow, instincts pulling the hatchling towards the towering Fire Dragon. Being correct, no matter how sure it had been in the first place, still stroked Igneel's ego nicely. But ego-stroking could be saved for later. Until then, he had new home to find, and a hatchling to look out for.

After all, monsters were drawn towards other monsters, and no matter how wild-raised the hatchling was, no matter how scary and big the red behemoth was, his instincts demanded that he follow.

And so he did.

Prrrrrrologue.

I've been playing Infamous: Second Son for the past like three hours and now I really want to write a fic for that, too. What the hell.