Five weeks later, inside a large rather luxurious stable, a dragon was born. Confused and disoriented, he looked around at the group of expectant looking faces staring at him. He paused, and mewed questioningly. The nameless dragon was confused, he had not expected his voice to sound like that. It wanted to say “Hello?”

“It's black,” Leonard said puzzled, “metallic black.” He whispered in shock, thinking of the strange metallic wasp inside a bottle that adorned a shelf in his office, the dragon was the same color as that wasp.

“Should I feed it?” The nervous boy asked. The duke’s son, Eric, was a handsome lad, blond haired, blue eyed, he looked like a stereotypical nobleman, except his strikingly pretty boyish face was clouded in fear. Eric struggled to master his apprehension. At the age of ten, he was quite brave to be facing a dragon hatchling armed with razor sharp teeth and claws.

Eric was holding a platter of steaks so that he could try to gain the dragon’s favor. Dragons tended to impress on the first person to feed them. It was an important part of the domestication process.

“Yes son, go ahead, other than the color, it looks quite normal,” The Duke said with more confidence that he felt. The duke looked at the mage, “Leonard will protect you, right?” He asked pointedly, reminding the mage of his main duty. Determining what the strange coloration meant was a question for later.

“Of course sir,” Leonard agreed, but inwardly he was worried. Was there some sort of magic contagion? Was it dangerous to touch this dragon? Had the wasp done something to the dragon, and if so, would touching the dragon be enough to do something to Eric? Leonard fretted, but didn’t want to scare the boy, who was clearly barely holding on to his courage. Instead he discreetly reinforced the magic shielding he’d placed on the boy. It would block any attempt from the dragon to bite or scratch.

The nameless dragon tilted his head in puzzlement. He understood that these people were humans, and that they were talking, but he had no idea what they were saying. Also, he’d discovered why he couldn’t speak normally himself; He wasn’t human. This was wrong, wasn’t it? Shouldn’t he be human?

A voice spoke in his head. The voice observed. 

The dragon looked down at his “hands”, large clawed appendages with long fingers that allowed him to claw his enemies, manipulate objects while sitting on his haunches, as he was now, or run on all four limbs. He had no thumbs, but he was built to claw or grasp things like a cat, with bone structure that allowed him to rotate his wrists to examine the pads of his palm.

What was that voice in his head? the nameless dragon wondered.

The voice changed a bit as it spoke the last part, becoming less metallic, more human sounding.

Somehow, the process made the dragon’s own mind feel clearer, and the strange feeling that it should be human faded away. Where had that strange feeling come from?

The voice of the entity who’d identified itself as Idea muttered to itself within the confines of the dragon head.

The dragon sniffed the air, noticing the smell of raw meat, and instantly, he was ravenous. Gingerly, the nameless dragon took a thick raw steak from a nervous looking boy who was holding out a plate while trembling in fear. Grasping the meat was difficult with his awkward thumbless grip. Instead he ended up skewering it with his sharp claws and chewing on it carefully with his teeth. It was delicious, taking a bigger bite, he ate another piece. Finishing his first steak he daintily grabbed another from the now calmer boy, bowing his head briefly in wordless thanks. Where had that gesture come from, the dragon wondered, feeling as if the impulse to bow had come from an external source.

the strange voice whispered in the dragon’s head. The dragon was puzzled by the fact that he could actually understand what the voice was saying despite having never heard speech before. The words were not the same language as that of the humans around it, but it understood that they too were using speech of some sort. Why could the dragon understand the mental whispers, but not the spoken words? The dragon had no reason to wonder if it was normal to hear voices in one’s head.

The machine voice suggested, this time clearly speaking to the dragon. The dragon snorted, thinking to himself that he would be useful to know what the humans were saying, but he had no way of encouraging them to speak.

“It’s bloody oddly behaved,” Ashe muttered. The Duke had hired him to stay and help raise the dragon for a few months, a task that mostly involved offering advice and helping with the hunting that would be needed when the dragon grew older.

To be paid so much for so little had appealed to Ashe, and after a falling out with one of his teammates who had rejected his advances… well a little time apart from the rest of his team might be a good idea to let things calm down. He’d join them again later.

Dragon newborns were little more than wild beasts, the boy had been right to be scared, Ashe reflected. He’d not be eager to feed a small ravenous predator himself, and he was a grown man trained to deal with dragons. This dragon almost seemed polite, and that was very strange.

Inwardly every adult watching the newborn dragon would agree. The dragon was behaving quite well, far better than could be expected. The dragon didn’t even react when Eric nervously reached out to pet it.

The hatchling tolerated this quite well, with no visible reaction to the boy’s action. Instead the dragon was now examining his bloodstained claws with a displeased expression. He had eaten quite daintfully, without the usual bloody savagery that could be expected. In a quick scurry that startled everyone, the dragon rushed over to a bucket full of water and stared down at his own reflection.

What was the dragon thinking, most everyone watching asked themselves, and it was a strange question to be asking in this situation. Newborn dragons shouldn’t act smart enough to encourage that sort of question.

Shockingly, after admiring itself in the bucket, it picked up the bucket in both claws and drank from it by holding it up to its lips. No one had ever seen a dragon do that. They usually dipped their face into water to drink, they did not lift the container to their face. After it had drunk it’s fill, it then did something even more bizarre, it washed its claws by dipping them into the water and swirling them about. It was very deliberate and unmistakable, a very human behavior.

“Did it just wash its hands?” Leonard said, shocked, “This is a very unusual dragon,” he added, summing up what every adult was thinking.

The dragon looked up at Leonard with a puzzled expression. What did all these people want with him? The nameless dragon wondered. So far no one seemed inclined to hurt it and they had prepared food and water for him, so his needs were met. The dragon listened to the mental whisper.

Idea, for its part, was uncertain what to do. The programming that should be guiding it’s actions was damaged, leaving only the prime directive to explore. Idea was not programmed to take control of a host capable of its own thoughts; it had been programmed to take control of a much smaller brain. Originally, Idea was based on a design that was meant to be used by humans. With damaged programming, the cybernetic nano swarm inside the dragon had reverted to its old patterns, falling into a supplemental rather than control configuration. Instead of taking over, it had mostly just enhanced the intelligence of the dragon, as it would have if used inside a human embryo. Could Idea guide the dragon, without taking over, and still fulfil its prime directive, it wondered.

In the early stages of the infiltration, Idea had attempted to use the dragon’s brain as a secondary processor, building elaborate circuitry all throughout the brain, enhancing it’s function and offloading fuzzy logic routines into the highly plastic tissue. This had been done because on their own, the nanobots were not enough to achieve AI status. They had been programmed to use a bird’s brain to supplement their limited processor capacity. But Idea hadn’t properly finished the job, resulting in two separate minds instead of the one mind it had been originally intended to create.

Eric was actually the first one to recover from surprise and cautiously approach the dragon again. Compared to what he’d been told to expect, this well behaved dragon was much less scary than what he’d feared. The dragon turned to look at him with intelligent eyes when he approached but did nothing threatening. He reached out to pet the soft leathery skin of the dragon, and to his surprise, this time, the dragon leaned into it.

The dragon was itchy. His skin felt dry and uncomfortable, and rather than try to scratch himself with his sharp claws, he carefully guided the gentle hands of the boy to reach the most itchy parts of his skin by adjusting his stance like a cat seeking proper grooming from a clueless human. He closed his eyes in satisfaction as the boy found a rough patch of flaky skin near the tiny horns on his head and rubbed it gently.