Things were so much simpler when people believed that old Yellowstone Park would blow up into a Super volcano, at least humanity would have stood a better chance at surviving that.  The world as it stands is much worse off than if a giant super volcano roared to life.

Worse because we thought they didn't exist, they were just myths; stories from an older era that mankind had forgotten. I remember bedtime stories as a child about them, how fierce they could be. Then there were movies making them out to be fun loving friends, how wrong that idea was. The great forgotten enemy of man had awoken in the 2020's when I was still a child thinking such creatures could be my friend.

What creatures do you ask? Why dragons of course, they apparently had been slumbering for a millennia; we don't know why. Though when they woke up, that everyone will remember. The funny thing was, it was Yellowstone that had everyone's attention. People thought it was going to blow because the lava was active and quakes had started.

The truth was, within that lava slept a Fire Dragon. They were named as such because they can tolerate intense heat, even healing or growing due to it. Fraking in the late 20th and early 21st centuries caused earthquakes. Those earthquakes changed how lava moved  waking the sleeping Fire dragons, and as they woke their cousins also woke.

The first to appear was the Fire one who had slept below Yellowstone, near the lava tubes of the great caldera.  It burst from one of the lakes in the Park and started burning human cities. The military tried to kill it, even managed to do mortal damage to it. Then it discovered a nuclear power plant, and burrowed into the energy source. The scientists thought it was eating the power. It was a close guess, while that one was healing others woke and started terrorizing human built cities. The luckiest people lived in small rural communities or found old fallout shelters to hide out in during the initial onslaught.

In one year the human population of the world went from a few billion to a few hundred thousand scattered about. Human cities didn't exist anymore, Fire Dragon's turned nuclear plants into nests. One Earth Dragon created a land bridge between the America's and Europe, but it was a trap for escaping humans that the dragons used to pick off easy meals.

Then it was discovered what happened to fire dragon's in a nuclear plant when the first came back out of the one it crawled into. Stupidly the humans had left it alone to heal thinking they had bested it. When it came out it was twice the size as it was when it had gone inside it, and it's fire breath was now radioactive.  It was now renamed for the intense power it received to Solar Dragon, they also had all their colors bleached out to white.  On the plus side there was no longer any nuclear fuel at that site, but anything that dragon now flamed was radioactive.

It took seven years before that dragon was taken down, and it was done by me when I turned nineteen. It seems my lineage from way in the past included dragon hunters, so I had a innate talent for killing Dragons. At least I learned now why they fascinated me so now. It only took one shot from an arrow to kill the Great Solar dragon,(termed Great due to it's size) but it was finally dead. The military commander whom was with me when it happened asked me how I knew where to shoot it. I told him I didn't know, so after the commander found a way to communicate with remaining military members across the world; I was flown all over the world. Why? To take out the other Solar dragons, they were the biggest threat to humanity.

The other dragons could be dealt with on a case by case basis, but those Solar ones; they became nuclear bombs with wings. We didn't want them reproducing, no matter how much the remaining scientists wanted to examine them. Interestingly, the fire dragons all went into a coma like state when they enter the reactors until they absorb all the fuel in the facility. So luckily we got to most of them while they still slept, while they changed.   Also on the good side, the 'remains' of these dragons were not radioactive. It seems only their weapon 'gland' could make anything radioactive, and it was a process.

When the Solar dragons were dead, and we did find one nest of four eggs that we smashed; I was done with killing. I knew I needed to keep my abilities for those in need, but I wasn't going to just kill the dragons because they existed. Maybe if my brother had survived the first Dragon's fire he would be out there wiping their species from the world. I couldn't, I promised the commander if someone called upon me I would aid them. However I was leaving to find a home to live a quiet life, maybe I would train people to defend themselves against dragons. I wasn't going to slaughter them however.

The commander oddly let me go, with a gift; but he let me go. Now I am traveling across the world looking for a good place to build a good defensible home for the group that I travel with. A group of survivors who just want to live and survive, and not become dragon food.