The first time he'd ever seen a human had been when two crouched men fell through one of his cave walls. 

The fall had been a long one, and he'd gone over to sniff the men, see if they were still alive. 

He wasn't the largest hellhound there was, but apparently his small but muscular form had been enough to scare the man. He didn't quite know how the other man had seen him in the darkness, with his coat being a charcoal black, but he would later realize it was due to the omnipresent glow of the fur along his spine, where the magic for his fire simmered, kept his whole body warm even in the damp chill of the cave. 

"Monster!" One of the men wheezed, his leg bent funny underneath him.

He cowered back, the man's voice painfully loud in a place that was used to only gentle whispers, simpering whines and the soft swish of paw and fur on stone. Gingerly, he shifted form, willing his spine to keep glowing to be able to see with his lesser human vision. He crept toward the wounded man, the other smelling of death if his awkwardly bent neck didn't already give him away, keeping a distance between them.

"I'm not going to hurt you." He said, trying to raise his voice, but keep it calm and soothing, soft. "Is your leg broken?"

"No! Stay away from me!" He screeched, trying to move on impulse, then screaming in agony as pain flared up white-hot in his shin. 

"No, no, don't move." He tried to soothe the man, staying away. "Is there someone at the end of your tunnel I can go get to help you?"

"No! Stay away from us! All of us! Demon!"

He moved quietly over to the hole, sniffing it. "Helhound, actually. I'm a hellhound."

The man's terrified and pained screaming eventually did call someone else down, but what he hadn't expected was for them to come down with these long things in their hands, point them at him and hurt him. 

Betrayed for his efforts, he shifted back to his hound form and dashed deeper into the cave system to clean and treat his wounds. The new men gave chase, lodging hot (which usually didn't bother him) metal into his muscles. They dogged him until he reached what was once his antechamber of smooth, dark rock, but was now torn apart by a massive, terrible, gleaming machine with jagged silver teeth more vicious than the pointed things on the end of the mens' sticks. 

He dodged around them, startling more of these newer new men, and dashed as fast he could up their tunnels, weaving through the rough atrocities against the rock until he came to a yellow mechanism leading vertically up to what he assumed was sunlight above. But he couldn't work the contraption in his current form, assuming he could understand how as a human, and he was significantly more vulnerable in his bare skin. 

"Got ya now, you filthy beast." One of the men snarled. He raised his hackles in return, teeth gleaming crimson in the lamplight. "C'mon then, you dirty animal, attack me."

He growled, rankled enough to let the control over his fire slip. His whole coat burst into flame, then, as they bauked, he yowled and his fire jumped from him.

He'd been proud of what he'd done then, escaped with his life in tact and the men dead, ashes not to be distingushed from one person to another. He wasn't so much now, with the benefit of hindsight. He'd killed terrified miners only down there to do a job. Perhaps they had attacked him with bayonets, but to them, he deserved the terror and the reaction and, having lived amongst them now, understood why they would think that way. 

To be fair, there was still many of the Ethereal races that liked to terrorize, especially the younglings. But not all of them felt that way. Had he never been forced out of his caves, he would likely have never left. He had his dark rocks and his magma pools and he was fine. His family would come to visit sometimes, so would suitors, though he was never very interested in those. Sometimes, when he was huddled in a forest or an abandoned building, curled around himself in hound form to keep himself warm through desolate winters, he severely missed his old caves. He'd heard of it collapsing about ten years after he'd run from it, but he didn't know if that would be enough to keep the humans out of it for long. He didn't want to risk going back, since Hunters dogged all of the places where Ethereal races had once been. But he'd missed it, the warmth he felt there and sometimes his soul yearned to go back, but he couldn't. He wasn't willing to compromise himself or his family, who lived under Rome and were already careful of being so close to the Vatican. No, he could deal with a few measly months of cold if they were safe. 

But, in times like this, he wondered if that wouldn't have been the better option. Instead of trying to help that miner, if he had only dove into his magma and travelled back to his family, stayed there with them. His blood, thick and sizzling, a little florescent in the darkness of the city alley, was drippling onto the concrete. With the sear marks it left behind, it wouldn't be hard to find him, for sure. Each time he tried to move, however, the bullet holes in him stretched and tore even more. 

"I didn't even do anything." He whispered, tears sliding down his cheeks. "I've never done anything."

As much as he'd like his last moments to be braver ones, the Hunters turning into his alley with dark smiles that looked more fiendish than his hound form's snarl, he knew he was going to die. It didn't matter if they got satisfaction out of seeing him weak and disheartened - he wouldn't be around to deal with the repercussions. They were likely going to cut off his head, then cut his body apart, throw his remains into a sewer or bring him back as a trophy. Hellhounds were some of the more common of the races, so it wouldn't be a massive victory, but it would be a prize, and he knew that's what they wanted. They could have let him be. He wasn't being disruptive, even by human standards. He had been standing at a food truck, his stomach really interested in getting some of the squid tempura that had been dogging the square all day and making his mouth water. To be honest, he wasn't even sure how they'd found him - there was nothing inhuman about his human form, no strange lights or markings. Maybe how his hair was blonde except for the inch above the roots? Oh well, it didn't matter much now. They would kill him, and he would die thinking about how waiting to eat was his only regret. He closed his eyes, head down, as they approached, his posture submissive in the hopes they would make it fast. 

Now, he didn't know what death smelt like, because his eyes were still closed, but clean salt and sea, along with the wait hint of fertile soil, sunlight and restful darkness probably weren't it. Distantly, like he could hear it across worlds and oceans, there was an old Ethereal rest song being sung. His soul seemed to sense that it wasn't some memory of his bearer, rather that of a seafaring creature, a Mer or a Siren. 

Probably a Siren. He thought. Mer don't have such lovely voices. Their pride is in their colours. 

Even though he knew it was sirensong, he allowed himself to get lost in it, humming the lyrics and tune back at the distant ringing, content in the childish peace it brought him. Darkness swept through his subconscious, blanketing him in soothing nothingness and allowing his mind to slow down, his body to relax into a sensation that felt like dozing in a sunlight meadow. The singing got stronger and awareness slipped from him.

It didn't feel like that much longer before he came awake again, but the sensation of fingers running through his hair was definitely a new one. He opened his eyes, his first time wanting to since he'd been evicted from his caves, and looked up at a thin, lanky man with thick black hair. The man seemed to reallize his wakefulness and looked down at him, purple eyes flucuating to blackness then into lavender as he smiled. 

"Welcome back to the waking world, hellhound." He pet him again. "I'm Jiyong. Or G-Dragon. Whichever you prefer."

"My birthname is Yongbae. The name given to me at maturity is Taeyang."

"Taeyang, then." Jiyong pet him with a sympathetic smile. "Don't worry now. You're safe here. These people saved me, too."

"Hunters?"

"Yeah." Jiyong shuddered, purpled scales appearing around his eyes before they vanished again. "Shot me out of the sky. I don't know why. Hell, it was humans that gave me my name."

He felt like that was a story he would ask the dragon about once they were actually friends, if that would ever happen. 

Suddenly, a dryad popped into his vision, his hair-grass a thick and healthy earthen brown. "Good to see you awake! When Daesung found you, we weren't sure you were going to live. Didn't look like you wanted to. Your injuries were less severe than they looked, though, so you're fine now. I'm Seungri."

"Taeyang. Who's Daesung?"

"He's the Siren that brought you here." A velvety dark voice washed into the room, then a man covered neck to toe. He smiled softly at the hellhound, Seungri moving out of the way so he could his hand over his forehead. "I'm Seunghyun. You can call me TOP, if you'd prefer. You're in my home in Incheon right now where you're welcome to stay, but if you'd prefer to leave, you're able to. I, personally, like this house and this city much better than Seoul."

"Are there food trucks here?"

Seunghyun laughed. "Yes, there are. Though I daresay Daesung makes pretty good squid tempura too."

"Wha-"

"You were mumbling about it in your sleep." Seungri beamed. 

"Do you think you'll stay?" Jiyong asked. "I didn't have a home before this either, so I can promise you it's really nice here. Way better than being alone."

"Tempura. Then I'll decide."

There was a ringing laugh from the kitchen that made his heart skip a beat and an equally beautiful voice that called. "Come on then!"

I have one last chapter idea, but I'm iffy on whether I'll actually write it. Comment and tell me what you think.