Thunder rolled across a bright blue sky.

Oh, that was odd. Could thunder occur without a storm?

Explosions peppered the side of the mountain, shaking it to the core.

That explained it. There was no thunder; something else was happening.

Two figures flashed through the air, colliding with each other repeatedly within seconds. One was struck down to the ground with a great boom. The other rushed to follow, a gleaming object held aloft, bringing with it bright flames that rose to meet the clouds.

Clash after clash rang out, and the mountainside slowly succumbed to the assault. A smoldering crater appeared at the summit. Within the crater sat a rock.

The rock was surprised to observe this. After all, most rocks aren’t aware of themselves. At least the rock thought so. It could only vaguely remember what happened before everything started rumbling and exploding.

This wasn’t too bad. Knowing and thinking things seemed like it could be... fun? Yeah, fun.

It eagerly began observing everything in its surroundings.

Hm... there wasn’t much, and the rock hadn’t ever seen anything before. Just an enormous glassy crater and itself. Oh well, this was still a novel experience. It could see its own reflection! A ruddy brown blob with rough edges. In other words, a fairly typical rock.

Pleased nonetheless, it settled down to wait. And wait... and wait... and wait...

Luckily patience wasn’t an issue for rocks, the rock thought. And the ground was nice and warm. Very cozy.

Oh! Something was happening. The ground was getting warmer, and shakier.

That was odd. Could explosions happen without—

The ground underneath it split apart, spewing lava high into the sky.

Neat.

The rock began falling. It was moving! Down the sides of the fissure it bounced, eventually landing in a stream of magma.

It wondered if it would melt. More out of curiosity than fear of death, mind, because why should a rock fear nonexistence? Regardless, would melting even remove its powers of observation?

The rock would never find an answer to this question, since it didn’t melt. It wasn’t even a little squishy.

So it looked around. Magma... magma... magma...

The rock felt... disappointed. Two new places to explore and both ended up being rather monotonous. What a waste. It continued looking anyways.

Swirls of molten rock carried it to what felt like a large pool, although the rock couldn’t be sure since it was floating in the middle of the magma. Eventually it drifted to the bottom.

Time to exercise some patience.

Over the course of the next several hundred years (the rock simply knew this much time had passed) a few disturbances occurred. The rock figured that it was sitting in what was now a volcano, and that said volcano was rather active. It wished it could see it from the outside; it still remembered the initial eruption. That had been nice to watch.

The pool of magma shook. Perhaps another eruption? But no, the magma wasn’t flowing anywhere.

Suddenly something snatched the rock. Up, up, up it went until it was out! Ah, so that’s what the interior of a volcano looks like. But what had picked it up?

A dragon, apparently.

Neat.

Dragons liked to hoard things, the rock noted, sitting on the edge of said hoard. Items filled swathes of shelves carved into the side of the volcano, spiraling up from most durable (closest to the lava) to least durable (near the top). The rock wondered why it had been placed below the obviously ancient and valuable objects. It was level with the lava, resting in a divot on a small outcropping. Very warm and cozy.

The rock deduced that this was a nice dragon, to have put it where it was most comfortable and could see so many things.

Alas, now was the time to ogle! And ogle the rock did, studying every object from the lava up, until it couldn't make out the details anymore. That alone took it fifty years' worth of time. Yeesh, dragons loved stuff. And the rock had seen the dragon stashing even more things out of sight! It was pretty content, though, since there was so much to observe, including the dragon itself whenever it came down to nap. The dragon favored an alcove on the opposite side of the lava from the rock, giving the rock a full view of its shiny red scales.

During the millennium spent with the dragon, the volcano didn't erupt once, likely because of the dragon’s influence. In that time the rock wondered why it knew what basic things were. It was seeing so many things for the first time, but could name most of them and ponder the underlying principles of a few more. It even knew that thinking about the nature of its knowledge was called philosophy.

Meh, it probably wasn't important.

On the three hundred and sixty-six thousand, two hundred and fortieth day since the dragon picked it up, the rock heard a boom. Then several more, and the sound of thunder. Something was fighting!

A huge mass of blood and scales splashed down into the lava, splattering bits of molten rock all throughout the hoard.

Ah, so the dragon was fighting something. And losing.

The dragon roared in defiance, calling on energy deep beneath the volcano, but was interrupted by a beam of white light from above. The light skewered the dragon. Too little too late— the volcano began to shake violently. Voices screamed out in fear as the volcano had its largest eruption since the rock fell into it.

Up, up, up the rock was flung, until it cleared the lip of the volcano, allowing the rock to see for miles. Rich forest on rolling hills surrounded the volcano in a carpet of vibrant green. The rock spotted birds gliding over the treetops, along with a handful of robed humans flying away at absurd speed. They were going almost as fast as the rock was.

Oh! It passed them.

The rock broke a tree in half on its way down, digging a furrow into the ground. Ash and other rocks filled the sky. The rock had a decent view of the volcano expelling a mountain’s worth of lava in the distance.

Human voices were screaming about the volcano again, but now one was closer and yelling about some once in a lifetime find. The rock was busy watching the volcano so it didn’t pay too much attention.

Suddenly the world went black. Well, mostly black. There were a lot of objects sitting in the blackness with the rock.

The rock recognized this as another collection. One that was much smaller than the dragon’s— not even a tenth— filled with much less valuable items. Still, the rock appreciated the entertainment, though it would have preferred to see the totality of the eruption first.

Not even a month had passed before the rock was yanked out of the black space. How rude! It wasn’t done studying things yet!

It found itself sitting on a table between two humans. One was leaning in and staring intensely at it, a sentiment the rock could understand. Wait, why it? It was just a rock.

The rock spied its reflection on the fancy crystal table. Oh, that was why. The rock was now a vivid red with glowing yellow seams, like lava. Cool!

During the two human’s discussion on the pricing of something, the rock took the time to look around the room. There were a few interesting objects, like the table it sat on, but the rock was thrust back into the darkness before any real ogling could be done.

Now it was in a different darkness, with waaaaay nicer stuff than the last one. Another month passed before the rock was interrupted. Again.

Nobody the rock had met yet seemed to appreciate the good things in life, except maybe the dragon. The dragon certainly didn’t treat it like this!

Complaints aside, the rock was now placed on another table, which was on a stage, which was in front of a rather large crowd of people. Shouts rang back and forth about prices again.

Wait! The rock knew what this was. It was an auction. And the item for sale... was the rock?

Odd. Sure, most people found gems to be valuable, but not rocks. Even cool lava-rocks. Right?

The auctioneer called out the final price. Wow! The amount was more than the number of objects the rock had ever seen! (The total was now up to 52,743,623 individual objects studied and catalogued)

The auctioneer had also called the rock a fire source. As in an elemental source? But those were ultra-rare natural occurrences!

It was just surprise after surprise for the rock.

Another brief cycle of void-hands-void-hands passed before the rock found itself in the possession of a craftsman. A very skilled craftsman, by the looks of his other possessions, with a very hot furnace that he used to work on the rock.

The craftsman chipped and pressed and molded the rock. Strangely, the rock never felt like it was losing pieces of itself. It only felt like it was being compressed. It took the craftsman six months to finish the rock’s final form. The rock could tell that it had been shaped to look like a coiled dragon, with little scales and claws and everything.

Now that was just silly. It was a rock, not a dragon! It had seen an actual dragon and plenty of rocks; it would know.

No matter. There were more pressing concerns to attend to, like where it would find itself next, and what new things it would observe.

A few days later the rock was passed to what would be its first real owner of many.

The rock spent thousands upon thousands of years accompanying different people, each drawing from its store of fire energy. It was sure that each of those adventures were harrowing and of dire consequence to the person whose hands held it, but the rock treated them more as tourist outings after a while. Nothing had been proven capable of scratching the rock, much less destroying it, not that the rock would have minded much anyways.

The rock learned a lot in that time, in part from its companions. Some companions were brave, some were smart, some left the rock alone in their pocket void for a couple centuries before dying so it didn’t know. One figured out how to fly super-duper-ultra-fast with the rock, while another stared at it for thirty years straight (the rock resolved not to be judgmental about it). One even used the rock to level eight cities and two small countries in quick succession for vengeance. That had been a sight.

And now, its most recent companion had found himself overwhelmed with enemies, and had obliterated absolutely everything in his corner of the world using the rock’s fire source.

If the rock knew how to control its energy outside of itself, it would have slapped that idiot across the face with a fiery hand at some point. He was one in a long line of dumb companions.

Every dark cloud had its silver lining, the rock thought as it looked around. The only things the rock could see were itself and a glassy crater. How nostalgic. This time was different, however.

The rock unfurled itself and wiggled its stony limbs. There was one advantage to being shaped like a dragon: the rock knew how dragons walked. It’d been working on this trick for the last few millennia. Now, with nobody around, it could go explore by itself.

It scampered off. With such a tiny body, getting anywhere would take a long time. But that was fine; rocks were very patient, after all.