"...Des vei avu!" Shuma's voice rang out like an anvil strike. The air around her boiled, warping from the heat. Her eyes shone with a cold, fanatical light. A sphere of purest energy – a dazzling golden orb humming with inhuman power – shot from the tip of her staff straight at the center of the dragon's forehead.
"Heh..." A condescending hiss sounded. The tail, thick and muscular, lazily swatted, as if swatting a mosquito. It met the sphere an instant before impact. The orb, batted away like a ball, whistled past the head and slammed into the wall. Fsh-zhah! Twenty centimeters of granite turned into a molten, hissing, bubbling puddle.
Shuma froze, her mouth agape in silent shock. But the battle continued.
The Baron and Kant, like two enraged but pathetic goats before a bull, charged from two sides. The dragon merely sighed, wearily.
It waved a paw at the Baron – not an attack, but a movement full of boredom. The Baron managed to duck, feeling the wind from the blow whistle over his head. With a wild cry, he drove his sword into the monster's nearest leg. The blade cut through the flabby flesh... and stuck fast up to the hilt.
"Wh-what?!" he exhaled, trying to pull it free.
BAM! A powerful gust of wind, caused by nothing more than the dragon's exhale, knocked the Baron off his feet like a feather. He tumbled head over heels into a nearby crevice.
The warrior was less fortunate. The dragon turned its beak towards him and puffed. Not a fiery whirlwind, just a breath – which immediately ignited into magical flame, white-blue and incredibly hot. The man fell screaming into a nearby pit, pinned by a wall of unbearable heat, making no attempt to escape.
Vzhuukh!
Lyn's strike came from the shadows, like a ghost of vengeance. The blade flashed, aimed at the tendon on a hind leg – a precise, professional, millimeter-perfect strike.
A strike that should have immobilized the target. But...
Pretty damn weak, Saigo thought, observing from his hideout. He'd singled out the dragonslayer for a reason.
'Brave? Unquestionably. Experienced? Evident from his movements. But strength... natural or trained power was catastrophically lacking in those wiry arms.'
His blade, though it hit true, merely scratched the thick hide, leaving a thin, bleeding line instead of a deep wound. Wit and courage were fighting titanic flesh... and losing resoundingly. The dragon didn't even flinch from the blow, its eye just sliding towards Lyn with an expression of bored curiosity.
Lyn didn't retreat. His blade bit into the dragon's flabby hide again and again – scratches on dead skin, no deeper.
'Bitch. Time for trumps then.' A tiny vial with a boiling scarlet contents was pulled from his belt. Without a second thought, the man lobbed it at the dragon's leg and wisely ducked into a nearby pit.
BAM!
An explosion shook the cave. The dragon swayed like a mountain in a quake, but held its ground. And in that moment – VZHUUKH!
The mage, Shuma, finished her incantation. A stream of pure, whitish energy shot from her staff towards the fiery eye.
"...Es bita ex!" the winged one's voice quickly uttered, cutting through the silence, growing louder. The space around its bulk shimmered. A semi-transparent sphere flared before the dragon – and dissolved into shimmering dust, absorbing the charge entirely.
"Damn it!" the Baron exhaled, scrambling out of the crevice. He gripped his sword hilt and raised it overhead. The blade trembled, the edge glowing red-hot.
Vzhuukh! A thrust that fell ten meters short of its target – flickered, elongating into a superheated needle of magical air.
The Baron laughed – hysterically, not believing his eyes. His trump card, the "Spark Blade," left only a thin, smoking breach in the scales. A drop of black blood oozed down the blue skin. That was it...
"Hmm..." the dragon twisted its beak. "That stings, you know."
"Fall back!" Lyn yelled and lunged away.
Vshoosh!
The tail, studded with spikes, swept him off his feet like a rag doll. The dragonslayer's body was dragged across the stones and hurled against the wall. It stayed there, a silent mask of horror on its face – the man was dead.
"Damn it!" Shuma shrieked, furiously tracing a new circle in the air. Runes flared with a crimson light.
"Not so fast," the dragon hissed. Its gaze fell upon the girl – and Shuma froze.
"Des mak exepushe..." the last syllable stuck in her throat. Cold, icy, piercing to the bone.
She felt something hard, and feeling her throat with her hand understood - icicles, her whole body was studded with them like a hedgehog with its needles. Realizing this – she collapsed as if cut down.
Kant leaped from the shadow of a boulder, trying to save someone. An experienced veteran, but against a dragon – useless. He surged forward.
A paw with dagger-claws closed around him in one motion. The metal of his armor creaked, enduring immense pressure.
"Nice shiny things," the dragon grumbled. Its claws flared with black flame. "But nothing more!"
VZHUUKH!
The points passed through armor and flesh like a knife through butter. The shreds of Kant's body slapped against the stone.
The dragon turned its beak, scanning the cave:
"Who's left...?"
"Hey! Stop, where are you going?! Ha-ha-ha!" The Baron was running for the exit, trembling with fear like a frightened gopher.
– GRAA! – A wave of dragon flame, unleashed almost casually, quickly caught up to him, licking at his heels.
"I'll make it!" he muttered to himself. A turn – there it was, salvation!
Piu! He tripped, fell. The last thing he saw, lifting his head, was him. In a niche by the wall, in a half-mask and dark clothes, a stranger clutching a pebble in his hand.
The Baron didn't see the face, but knew – that beneath it hid a sincere smile. A mockery of his downfall.
"BITCH!" the Baron roared. "I won't forgive! I'll kill you all! I'll kil..."
Flame engulfed him, cutting off the scream. Only the crackle of bones and the smell of burning remained.
Saigo watched as the mad Baron's soul found its pitiful rest in the flames and began to ponder.
'Even if they hadn't been a circus led by a psycho...' the thought slid like a cold snake. '...they still wouldn't have had enough power. Or coordination.' The dragon's wounds were superficial, as he'd suspected. Negligible for such a behemoth.
But the beast itself... The beast was astounding. Yes, there were weaknesses – that very theatricality, the contempt for the opponent. But the strength... It was monstrous, at the very least hard to describe.
Its arsenal contained three schools of magic. With a mastery level of at least a Senior Mage, since it didn't need to incant aloud. The barrier showed command of other disciplines too, albeit in simplified forms. Its physicality was – undoubtedly impressive, unsurprising given its size.
'Hmm. How to put you down quickly?'
While Saigo analyzed, the dragon methodically gathered the "harvest." Deft claws stripped the armor from Kant and Lyn.
Crunch. Crunch. Meat crunched in its maw, yielding the sweet aroma of an easy victory.
"Dragonslayer... a bit tough. And the warrior was undercooked," it grumbled, grabbing Shuma. She suddenly twitched in its grasp, emerging from the icy stupor into agony.
"Hmm? So you're still alive?" The eye narrowed. "Remarkable vitality."
The ice binding her melted, revealing terrible wounds. But her lips moved, whispering through a rasp: "Vite bomadi max..."
Her body flared from within. Flesh cracked, glowing with a hellish white light. It began to expand rapidly.
'What the hell...' Saigo had time to think.
BAMMM!
Not an explosion – a cataclysm. The shockwave slammed Saigo into the rock. The cave shook to its foundations. The sound – monstrous, like the strike of a giant bronze bell right against the ears – seared his hearing, leaving only a deafening white noise behind. Dust, stone, debris – everything mixed in a hellish whirlwind.
When the dust settled, the scene was apocalyptic. The dragon stood, drenched in a sticky substance of blood, shreds of flesh, and entrails.
The claws on the paw that had held the mage were broken off. The flesh on it was charred, hissing, and smoking. Skin and scales – almost none remained, meat and bone visible in places.
"GHAAAAA!" The roar was full of inhuman rage and pain. "FILTHY HUMAN! HOW DARE YOU?!"
It shook its head, flinging off the bloody sludge from its eye. Its gaze fell on the wounded paw. Rage immediately gave way to a cold, predatory assessment of the damage.
"...Will take long to heal," it said quieter, with icy annoyance. "A pity. And I had... plans for it."
With a crash resembling a cave-in, it collapsed onto its belly. Strength remained – but regeneration required rest and preferably sleep.
And in that sleep... lurked an unbearable curiosity. One corner of its maw twitched in a semblance of a grin. 'I await your actions, unnamed guest. Do not disappoint me.'
Saigo clenched the vial of "Poison of a Thousand Flowers" in his pocket. The icy glass burned his fingers. 'Even if it doesn't kill, the pain... will be hellish.' He guaranteed that. And he waited patiently for the dragon's breathing to become deeper, more even.
For the monster to sink into the illusion of safety and oblivion, so he could finish it once and for all.