Wish

What are we all in the end, but puppets to the minds of writers?
Theme song

Week 0 ((Starrun)). Staff start sending cryptic messages. So do the deities. Wow, Tidelord's back soon, right? New lore? New modern? New ancient? But the messages are too vague to know for sure.

Week 1((Starrun)). UserUserson is grinding in Coli. Suddenly, the Bumble in the Training Fields drops... the Imperial scroll. UserUserson checks the database. Nothing. They check the front page for updates. Nothing. They file a ticket to Support. Immediately, they get a responce. It says only two words.
"do it."
Now, UserUserson is not a forum person, but they rush immediately to spread the word. "Haha, good photoshop!" - forum chants. Nobody believes poor UserUserson, so in their anger, they slap the Imperial on their progen, a fae named GenericDragon.
The forums are in awe.

Week 2((Starrun)). It's been everywhere. Users all over start getting Imperial scrolls as often as Coli apparel on a good grind. Economy is in shambles. Some people are showered with riches. Some barely have enough cash for food. In just a single week, Flight Rising was separated into two factions - the scrollers and the non-scrollers. Imperials breed like crazy. Imperial scrolls plummet in value, but it's still not enough to support economy.
Then, Roundsey goes live with her newest Raffle! Yay, people think, perhaps the staff will have stuffed something into the prize pool to let the scrollers come down...
...it's 99 booleans, 99 golden idols, 99 bone fiends..
and 99. Accursed. Imperial scrolls.
The forums are an outrage. Poor UserUserson is comprehending what they had started, for they are the first scroller. GenericDragon still sits in their lair. Gen 1 Imperial. Full basic. Proudly glaring at them with their smug Imperial stare.

Week 3((Starrun)). A banner appears on the first page. Tidelord is back! UserUserson is delighted, but the forums surely are not. Everyone is grumpily posting something like "Maybe you should fix the economy first..." or "REMOVE THE IMPERIAL SCROLLS!!!". The Suggestions forum is overflowing with ideas on how to postpone the event until Imperials are eradicated.
That is when UserUserson decides to check out other deities.
They are gone.
Their usual lair pages return errors.
All festival announcements are gone. Except for Wavecrest Saturnalia.
Water flight is dominating.
The forums are wild. Water flight members are now universally hated. Many leave it, out of shame, but many join, for the dom bonuses can at least do something for the shattering economy, breaking under the weight of the new familiars. It doesn't do much. The scrollers, the only ones who have managed to amass the treasure to move, are most of the Water Flight now.
The staff finally comes to say something.
"Do not fear! A new event is coming shortly!"
Nobody is happy.

Week 4((Starrun and Skyfrost)). It's been a full month since Flight Rising began to deteriorate. Most non-scrollers have quit. So have some scrollers - what's the fun in a game when you have achieved everything? The three who have managed to get a hold of the KS familiar stacks are nicknamed The Three and revered by the forums.
In fact, there isn't much going on in the forums. Most of them are dead - nobody wants to discuss Flight Rising or trade for rare items when scrollers can already afford the world. Or, in fact, when The Three are holding sway of all things that still hold any value.
UserUserson checks the front page for some hope of fixing this.
Suddenly, a new event is announced.
"Time to spice up the game! The Ultimate Dom Slam is now live!" - the announcement reads. An all-flight dom battle, coordinated by the staff, is out.
Nobody reacts. They know Water will win anyway.
That was, until Firage appeared in the Forums.
The Dragon Auction Forums.
No announcement, no mod speeches. Just Firage poofing there.
Prices skyrocketed.
Firage was sold for an (un)godly 1000 Imperial Scrolls.
The buyer, User ABCDEFG is bombarded with requests and offers for Firage.

Week 5((Starrun)). Water did win, in fact. Though this surprised no one, almost the entirety of the Flight Rising population has moved to the Tidelord's domain. The other flights are now dead, only inactive players and non-scrollers who didn't get gifts from their generous scroller buddies remaining to play.
UserUserson checks their lair for their past comfort fae GenericDragon. Now, he serves as a grim reminder of how it all started...
Except he doesn't. He's not in his lair at all. None of UserUserson's dragons are.
Instead, some random dragons who all seem to have come from inactive lairs sit in his own...
...along with Tidelord, his maw agape menacingly.
Astounded, UserUserson rushes to the other deities. They are back, but their own lairs each house a single random dragon or two. Instead, the dragon gods are scattered across random users' profiles, some landing in The Three's lairs too.
The Arcanist is exalted as a joke.
The Flameforger is sold on the Auction house for 1 treasure.
The Earthshaker lands in an inactive player's lair.
The Icewarden, The Stormcatcher and The Shadowbinder are in The Three's lairs. Auctions prices for them skyrocket.
The Windsinger is hopping from lair to lair. People in the forums are vaguely entertained by using him as a travel dragon. Some people still remember the lore.
The Plaguebringer is in someone's Coli team.
The Gladekeeper is exchanged for 100 Imperial scrolls. Whoever sells her curses themselves for not adding more digits.
The Tidelord sits in UserUserson's lair, maw open in an unheard cry. For help? Or for mocking the userbase, perhaps?

Curiously, UserUserson checks The Lightweaver, who sits in someone's lair, undisturbed. In her tooltip, they read.

"The Imperials were a mistake that must be rectified."

Week 5 1/2:
((xxvi))
Adventure Mode.

A new update is released. One of the oldest ideas the devs had for Flight Rising; Adventure Mode. A new NPC is added to the Trading Post; Avarice's Adventuring Altar. Players can either send their dragons on a free-roam quest, or a story quest; free-roam quests turn up random loot, while story quests give specific loot.

New items are released as quest rewards. Apparel, genes, familiars, trinkets, materials, you name it. The higher level your dragon, the better the rewards, supposedly.

Players immediately start sending their decked-out level 25s on quests, only to turn up almost worthless rewards. There's some complaints about this, to which the devs say the best rewards are as rare as Eliminates.

Most are placated by this answer, but some are still unsatisfied, especially The Three; they want these new items now. Other, nicer users tell The Three to just grind for them.

~transition to everyone's favorite confused newbie~

Curiosity is among the first players to see the announcement. They immediately go and send out their coliseum team on a 2 hour free-roam quest; food is one of the guaranteed rewards, and they need that so doing a quest couldn't hurt.

Two hours later, Curiosity's level 5 quest team returns from the quest. Clicking on the 'Claim Rewards' button yields three things; a piece of shiny-star apparel, 5 Leatherback Sea Turtles, and a special eye type vial.

Curiosity posts about the rewards on the forums and is immediately flooded with offers; two Imperial scrolls, a million treasure, ten million treasure, a Light Sprite. After the offers are denied, almost everyone that offered immediately went to level a team to five and send it out; if a newbie had such good luck, wouldn't the veteran players have it too?

Two hours once again pass, and only a few of the players get anything good. Even then, it's nothing compared to Curiosity's luck.

Deciding to try their luck again, the newbie sends out their team on a 5 hour free-roam quest. Once the time is up, they receive their rewards; a new familiar, 5 Buzzwing Vampires, and another eye vial.

Then Avarice's Adventuring Altar vanishes. Trying to go to their page results in a 404 error. Even the devs are confused; it's as if the code for Adventure Mode was completely erased.

A cryptic announcement appears minutes later.


This stirs up speculation; maybe it's a new site-wide event? Does this 'RNGness' have something do to with Lorebreaker?

But no one can be sure. RNGness isn't a player or dragon, as far as anyone can find.

Eventually things go back to the new 'normal', and people eventually forget all about the mysterious circumstances of the feature that existed for less than a day.

The name RNGness was familiar, but he did not remember where he had heard it before. UserUserson waited a long time. Nothing happened. He was bored, and decided to start grinding in the Sandswept Delta. The first pack was 3 Storm Seekers. UserUserson eliminated the birds, and a Storm Seeker dropped. He gave the familiar to one of his dragons, Aqua. Strangely, the familiar was already named "FORBIDDEN". UserUserson immediately filed a ticket to Support. In response, he got a CR with a purple Imperial named Ghede in it. He accepted the trade. After all, it was impolite to hold a dragon in Crossroads. Ghede already had a broadcast message. Return my pet... That was even stranger than before, but he had a strange, irresistible urge to slap the Storm Seeker onto Ghede just for the heck of it. Finally, he did it. He tried to bond with the familiar, but it resulted in a 403 page. He filed a Support ticket again. When he pressed "Submit", he was redirected to Ghede's page. The broadcast, this time, said Now my mate... Then he was redirected to the page of another Imperial. This one was for sale. UserUserson clicked "Buy." The next day, they were on a nest together. The cooldowns were apparently glitched, and the "Hatch" button could already be pressed. UserUserson hatched the nest, then filed a third ticket to Support. The baby Imperial had disappeared from his lair. After 6 days, the Imperial appeared in UserUserson's lair again, this time fully grown. An unnamed hatchling could be seen on his offspring list. UserUserson was very wary by this time. He clicked on the link to investigate.
Parents
Unnamed
Wish

Wish...
WISH?!

UserUserson was frantic, spreading the word around the forums, trying to put in a ticket to Support. The response? A message from seemingly nobody.

"Nobody can help you now. Nobody can help this place. This is only the beginning."



Week 6 and 7((Skyfrost)):
There was no warning.
Somehow, miraculously, the deities revert back to their old lairs.
The Staff posts a single announcement.
"Today is the start of the Final Dominance."
Nothing more.
The Forums are filled with questions and wonders.
Luckily, one mod was kind enough to answer.
"This is not a battle. This is a war. Losing deities will be killed on sight."
No one believed them.
That was, until week one ended.
Fire was in last place.
The Flamecaller was immediately deleted.
Along with every single Fire dragon.
Seeing their lair pages reveal only one thing:
"The Fire has been extinguished."
Full. On. Panic.
Never had a deity died before. The Flights were in chaos.
They scrambled to exalt dragons to their deities before it was too late.
The next to fall was the Earthshaker.
Every single Earth dragon was deleted, with one message where they used to remain:
"The Pillar has broken."
Windsinger lost next.
"The Tornado has stopped."
Lightweaver put up a strong fight, but ultimately lost the battle.
"The Light has been Forgotten."
Nature Flight stayed dominant for a few days, but couldn't keep up the pace.
"The Growth has been exterminated."
Arcane Flight still had great numbers but still lost in the end.
"The Knowledge has been lost."
Shadow Flight fought tooth and nail, but in the end lost to the greater numbers of Water.
"The Shadows have been banished."
Lightning held strong for a few more days before succumbing to their fate.
"The Thunder has been chained."
Ice lost soon after.
"The Ice has melted."
Plague's victory was nearly in reach before Water flight snatched it away.
"The Infection has been purged."
In the end, only one flight survived.
Water.
...
The mods were laughing at us all.


Week 7 1/2:

((Credit: Cattafang))

After the silence and chaos, the devs finally post an update. Is it a reset? The return of the deities? Literally anything that could undo this sorrowful end to flight rising?

No. It’s another map update.

While UserPerson resists checking at first, scared of the sorry state of Sornieth, they eventually find themselves clicking on the World Map. What they saw made their jaw drop in shock and confusion.

Sornieth was now flooded with water, a sign of the Water flight finally having taken over Sornieth.
The Ashfall Waste was mostly extinguished and dark rock, while the Southern Icefield had mostly melted under the seawater.
The Tangled Wood could barely be seen, sunken so far underwater, while the Sunbeam Ruins was just barely under the water’s surface.
The Shifting Expanse had streaks of lightning occasionally coming out of it while the Scarred Wasteland was covered in a murky pink-red cloud of liquid.
The Viridian Labrynth’s Behemoth was drowned and dying along with the rest of it’s greenery, the Starfall Isles’ Cristalspines were quickly being weathered and broken by the sea along with the Observatory looking like at any second it would snap off its hill, and the bamboo of the Windswept Plateau was broken, floating throughout the submerged Sornieth.
Dragonhome seemed to be weathered down almost completely by the seas, with the Pillar being a thin shell of its former self.
Glitches and static occasionally appeared on the map, a grim sign of Her takeover.

UserPerson quickly closed out the page, feeling distraught by the world. It seemed like it was all their fault. If only they hadn’t changed GenericDragon into an Imp. If only the mods didn’t have the ultimate Dominance event. If only they had never picked up that accursed Imperial Scroll.


Week 8: Water Flight is the sole flight remaining, and the users have no choice but to move Flights. The Tidelord sits again in UserUserson's lair, maw gaping open in a mocking laugh.
The mods do not reply except in a new lore entry.
"In the End, Water drowned them all."
There is a 32 page battle describing the epic war in which 10 of the deities fell, but no one has the heart to read it.
The site is already breaking apart.
As everything goes to sleep, an ancient deity awakes.
Naomi.
The Glitch, the Error.
The dragon who should not exist.
The next day when UserUserson logs on, they find something strange.
The deities are back.
No announcement, no new lore.
Just one message on their profile.
"Error 25342"
...
What?
Confused, UserUserson goes back to their lair, only to discover a shocking surprise.
Naomi.
The fae had replaced every single dragon in their lair, except the Tidelord.
As UserUserson goes to the forums to check, they discover that everyone has been affected.
Every single dragon has been replaced with Naomi.
The mods are flooded with error reports.
However, they remain silent as the site rots all around them.
The end was nearing.

Week 9((Credit: xxvi))
The end of Flight Rising is nearing.

Chaos is rampant; the Tidelord has taken over all of FR, Naomi has returned in the form of almost every dragon on-site, and users are leaving every hour.

Then, among the entropy, five dragons appear in one of the still-active accounts. One Coatl, four Bogsneaks, each one purple. An uproar immediately starts; everyone wants dragons that don't look like Naomi, but the user refuses. They say these dragons are special to them, and they'd never sell them for anything, especially the adult Bogsneak, Lorebreaker.

Then the owner goes inactive, and Lorebreaker vanishes from their lair. She reappears in some random user's lair, then moves before any sales can be made. This happens multiple times, until Lorebreaker disappears completely.

Then a short, cryptic announcement pops up;

It's currently 10:00 exactly, FR time. The remaining players start frantically screenshotting their lairs or favorite threads, pasting their lore into documents, but it's not enough time.

At 10:26, Flight Rising time, the site vanishes. Attempts to reach anyplace on the site turn up 404 errors.

Flight Rising is gone.


Week 10- 13: ((Zephara))
Flight rising was gone. The former players are in shock. Some think this might be a joke, but no matter how many times they search for the site, all that comes up is an Error 404 message. The days turn into weeks, and eventually everyone resigns themselves to this new, harsh reality.

It’s been a month since the deletion of Flight rising. UserUserson decides, just for kicks, to look up the site. A blank screen. Figures.

After a few seconds, however, an imperial baby pops up. UserUserson blinks. This has to be a dream.

It’s not. A string of text appears underneath the dragon.


I am the Prophetess. I fortold of The End at the very beginning of Flight rising itself. For seven years I tried to tell the dragons of Sornieth. I tried to prevent the coming catastrophe. But none, not even the deities would listen. They thought Flight rising would endure. The End is the result of their own folly. Though it pains me to see the destruction of my home, I am gratified. The eleven flights reaped the consequences of their arrogance. For the rest of my being I will revel in the knowledge that in their final days, every dragon, every deity, realized they should never have ignored the Prophetess.
UserUserson blinks in confusion.
Who was this?
Their question was answered.
"I am the Prophetess of the Lorebreaker. The glorious creation of the Goddess to end us all."
The screen went black.

Week 14((KiranaWolfe6)):
UserUserson is messaging everyone they know from Flight Rising.
'Its not true' they said. 'We haven't been able to get into FR for days.'
UserUserson is angry. Nobody believes them.
When they turn on their device to possibly have a chat with one of their friends, they see the Prophetess.
Screenshot
The words appear below them. They frantically screenshot the Prophetess.
When they tell their Discord server. they start screaming.
'HOW' COMM0NPLACE types.
'UR LYING' abc123 replies. Most of the comments are along those lines.
UserUserson swears. Curiosity types the following:
'I believe u'
UserUserson is glad somebody believes them.

Week 15
((AncientMushroom))

For the following days after the sightings of The Prophetess, the few who believed UserUserson check back on the blank website, each of them skeptical of the reliability of the image. Some would look back at the screenshot in Discord and compare it to the abyss-like screen they saw. One particularly curious person went to great lengths of trying to find clues, adding numbers after the URL code, enhancing the lighting of the website's black screen, refreshing for hours on end. The only successful attempt from this anonymous helper was them looking into the source code of the website. Only a single line could be found.

With the new discovery being posted into the Discord, the small group of people who believed in the new deity-like dragons that caused the end of the website went to the website over and over again. One user by the name of Leafrat27 reported that they had found a single character in the top left of the screen. Others that were frantic to figure out the true meaning behind the cryptic activity the past week. Only three others shortly reported the same thing, the characters found spelt out the word,

As UserUseron refreshed the page for the final time this week, a pair of shimmering blue eyes could be seen.

Week 15 1/2((xxvi))
After not thinking about it for ages, Curiosity decided to try and log onto Flight Rising (or whatever it is i can't remember-). Typing in their account credentials, they entered their account only to find it... almost completely empty. Not even a Naomi haunted their lair; the only dragon was an innocent-looking Imperial hatchling, seeming to be Earth element.

But that was impossible, the Earth flight didn't exist anymore. Curiosity looked closer at the little Imp; its name showed up as Chronos, and it was only a few hours old. Upon clicking its profile, Curiosity could see its eyes were grey. Not greyish-brown, or green, or blue; just grey.

Even Unusual Earth eyes looked the slightest bit brown; was Chronos glitched? Curiosity posted in the Bug Report forums about it, but their post was deleted within minutes.

That's strange... Curiosity thought. No one else is on... how? Going back to their lair, they stared at Chronos for a moment before giving him a familiar.

The moment they clicked off the familiar screen, the page refreshed. Instead of the Maren Warlock Curi had given Chronos, a Bone Fiend sat next to the Imperial.

A message appeared in Chronos' bio.

Hello, human.

Curiosity stared for a moment. A dragon like the Lorebreaker?

Before they could do anything to respond, the page closed. Attempting to reopen FR resulted in another 404 error. Replacing the 'report this message' request, however, was a string of code.

Curi screenshotted the page and sent it to the Discord. In minutes, the code had been translated; it was one simple word.

Interesting.

Week 16: ((xxvi))
After a while of radio silence, the hype for a new Flight Rising died down. People decided it wasn't worth getting their hopes up for something that might not even happen.

Curiosity, on the other hand, became even more expectant the longer the silence became. They felt like it was building up to something even bigger than anyone imagined, and the dragon Chronos would have a part in it.

Every now and then, the player would try and access Flight Rising; they wanted to see the familiar site again.

But the site was always a 404 error or blank screen, and Curiosity began to lose hope. Maybe Flight Rising was gone for good this time.

~

Late one night, Curiosity and UserUserson were chatting via Discord. During the conversation Flight Rising came up, and Curi mentioned Chronos; they'd been wondering if the element-less Imperial had anything to do with the degradation of the site.

Userson was understandably skeptical; how could a dragon have survived the Naomi plague, or have no element? And what was the Lorebreaker?
Curiosity, of course, had no answers; they were as lost as the other player.

Out of boredom, Userson opened their browser and went to Flight Rising. It looked like the normal site, except Userson was already logged in... to Curiosity's account.

Opening the account's lair, the player noticed it was empty except for one dragon, an Imperial named Chronos. Now fully-grown, the Imperial was sitting there, his energy bar empty.

After messaging a confused Curiosity, Userson tried to feed Chronos.

Glancing at Chronos again, Userson noticed his energy was full. Odd, but not very. Then they were booted off of the account, and Flight Rising once again became a black screen, with a single line of text.

After screenshotting the message, Userson posted it to the Discord. This time Curiosity backed them up, saying they saw a message too. Most didn't believe the pair; it all seemed like one big hoax.

Oh, how wrong they were.

Week 17((Aphantasia))
After the discovery, the discord server was revived a certain amount as the new development was mentioned on the server. People were sceptical of course, but someone had a new discovery, and were able to screenshot it. A single image that replaced the usual 404 page. Three imperial sillouettes on a pedestal. A few people took the image and inspected it. The image circulated around for a while, until a user that seemed not to even be part of the server (as no roles could be assigned. They couldn't be kicked, banned, or anything. They didn't even appear on the user list) posted. It was the same image, but with the two imperials on the left and right a different color: The left was a deep wine, the other a dark violet. The caption along with the image was a single word: Interesting.
The server erupted into chaos. The new image was fussed around with by the artists, and there was success. A few strange characters on each pedestal. On the pink one, عشق. On the black, عداوة, and on the violet جمال. And once again was silence. People tried going back to Flight Rising for more clues. And suddenly, the user from before posted again. "الحب والجمال والكراهية. مزيج جميل، لا?" Another clue, but no one could tell what it said....


Week 20((Aphantasia))

A few days after the message, FR suddenly reopened. A message on the front page from the staff read:
UserUserson was confused. It was almost as if nothing had happened.
Almost.
He was suddenly in the Ice Flight.
And he had a ping from the Icewarden.
UserUserson looked at the post in shock, and posted it to the discord, which was aflame with activity and screenshots. He posted his and continually refreshed the page after checking his lair and his friends' lairs. They didn't have any of them.

It was an hour before someone commented.


He couldn't read the username, as it was glitched beyond recognition. Clicking it brought him to a 404 page.

There was nothing past that. He waited with dread and anticipation for what was to come after posting the screenshot of the response....

Week 21:((Credit: Lunarduo))
UserUserson got a PM. He looked at the name, it was glitched, but readable:
FrostHeart.
UserUserson tried clicking on the name, but no avail. It just led to the error 404 page. Then, he read the message:



UserUserson got confused. Who was this person? He tried clicking on the dragon, but again, error 404. He went to the forums, witch were filled with reports and screenshots of the PM.

UserUserson looked at the PM again, and noticed that the dress FrostHeart was wearing was definitely a Sylvan dress, but it was some strange in-between color of the silver Sylvan dress and the ocean Sylvan dress, witch did not exist. Was the dress glitched as well?

Then, UserUserson went grinding. But, first battle in, he noticed something disturbing. That luna mith was crying. he quickly beat it, and continued. But every enemy in the training fields was sobbing. After a bit of grinding, UserUserson went to the other venues. Every enemy was crying.

After grinding, UserUserson got a ping, witch said "Frostheart mentioned you in ERROR: FORUM NOT FOUND" Again, the name was glitched but readable. UserUserson clicked on the link, and it brought him to a single thread with no posts but FrostHeart's.




Credit: XXVI


Credit: Skyfrost