The two guards stand at a massively wide perimeter, walking circles around us at a distance. Okay Reggie, plan this out. You need a strategy. Don’t let Kozzurth’s bulk fool you, she might be able to Flight of Dragons this. Wait, pop culture from Earth? Again? Wait, the reference isn’t even right, is it? Ugh, stop getting distracted! Right, right right right. The acid storm clouds are a bit higher here, so she can get a couple hundred feet of distance. I think that’s still within range of some of the staff’s spells. Although, if she stands up to her full height, and flies even a few dozen meters off the ground, she’ll easily be within range of the storm’s constant lightning strikes. I wonder if she’s immune to those.
Okay, so, anyway, Kozzurth may be able to fly, so let’s just assume she’ll take wing immediately, wanting to take advantage of her ranged attacks and mobility. Whether or not she thinks I’m any threat in melee, it would be the wise thing to do, making it easier to dodge any of my ranged attacks, and preventing all of my melee attacks. Actually, let’s use the embiggening magic right away as the battle starts, making my melee threat seem greater than it is. Then drop the spell immediately to be less of a target after she’s taken wing. She’ll probably sweep the area with breath attacks. I’ll be dodging as many as I can, but she’ll be swapping and trying out each of her elements whenever she realizes one hasn’t killed me, when I finally get caught by any given element’s blast. I’ll need to figure out which of the spells in the staff will be best at damaging dragon’s wings mid-flight. Honestly either the ice storm spell, or the spell that ends magic, if it takes magic to keep Kozzurth aloft. We sadly have to make an assumption here, and assume that we can ground her. Otherwise she’ll probably see that one of her elements is at least wearing me down somewhat, and just keep blasting me with that from the air.
Once she’s grounded, she’s actually more dangerous and deadly, since she’ll have already realized her breath attacks don’t work on me. I’ll be relying on the danger wraps to guide me through reacting to any claw swipes, wing buffets, tail smacks, or biting lunges. Oof, I don’t like not being able to plan more specifically for those. Regardless, I have to assume I’ll be dodging them, scoring minor blows. If at any point Kozzurth’s mouth is open wide enough to enter without being chopped to bits, I’ll dive in and destroy her from the inside. Constantly be keeping her maw within range of the danger wraps to sense if she leaves such an opening. If there’s never an opening, I’ll probably be aiming for her throat and her eyes, trying to reach her brain from the outside. I’ll probably have to keep up a single spell from the staff to keep Kozzurth grounded. Hm, so I can’t count on it to do my damage for me. Anyway, since she’s supposedly a master of at least three of the elements that I can conjure from the staff, possibly the only three, it wouldn’t help much anyway. Well, again, not sure if lightning would work. She doesn’t seem all that concerned with the clouds overhead.
Alright, let’s assume I take a puncture wound to my right lung, as I seem to do in nearly every gorram battle, and sometimes during random occurrences outside of battles. Can I do anything about it? I can’t use my inventory magic to patch it up mid-fight. Hm, lean into it. Use the internal electrokinesis that I’ve been able to keep running to dull the pain. It’s so hard to maintain a dual focus on that while doing other things and thinking other thoughts. She’ll start to favor attacks towards my supposedly weak side, not knowing it’s my ruse, she’ll make more mistakes, grant me more openings. I just have to hope that I can penetrate Kozzurth’s hide and deal enough damage during those openings, before I die of blood loss. Or, you know, get eaten or eviscerated by Kozzurth.
Alright, good enough plan. Haha. A plan where I assume I’ll be impaled through my right lung is good enough? Oh how low my standards are, haha. Anyway, let’s get to it. Start casting. I double my own size, which would still only be up to the shin, maybe the knee, of one of the smaller Colossi like Meredith.
Kozzurth looks entirely unimpressed, which, I mean, fair. She actually sits on her haunches, and I can see musculature and organs in her throat shifting around as she prepares an element to destroy me with. She doesn’t think she even has to take flight. Well, there goes that half of the plan. Let’s shrink back down then. Kozzurth is grinning, probably assuming my magic was an ultra-short-lived temporary boost in power.
I’m walking a slow circle around Kozzurth while she seems to be building a larger and larger breath blast, easily turning her head to keep me in its radius as she keeps her face low to the ground, cutting off most possible corners I could run to. I’m probably not going to be able to dodge this. I don’t want to just rush a dragon though. Okay, if she hits me with acid, or a storm of physical ice shards, I’m probably done for. There’s a tiny chance I might survive a while during a storm of acid breath. Of her breath attacks, I’m most leary of her cold though because I don’t know if it’s tangible shards, or a cooling, heat-sucking frost like opening a canister of compressed gasses to cool the area. The second one wouldn’t bother me too much. Fire and frost? Probably livable. Acid and spikes of ice? Probably not. So, I’ve got about a two in four chance of her hitting me with an easily survivable attack, either fire or frost. I’ve got the same odds of her destroying me on this opening salvo though, with acid or ice shards. Ugh, fifty fifty survival rate within the first few seconds of the fight.
I love you Teuila. I hope your fight goes smoothly. Mine may end in a loss in the next few seconds. Phew, brace for impact, enhance my electrokinesis along my nerve endings to reduce the upcoming pain, just in case we survive.
Kozzurth chose fire? Fire of all elements? Hahaha. Maybe she thought she’d be cooking me as a snack. The other two probably would have ruined my meat. The wonderful thing, for me, about a hostile dragon’s breath attack is, well, no matter which element, it’s voluminous enough to obscure the very target it’s meant to be killing. Perhaps less so with lightning, but still some obscurity for certain. Fire might be a mixed bag if I casted a silhouette through the flame. This flame is far too bright and voluminous for that however.
Anyway, I really didn’t expect the fight to be over so quickly. Kozzurth had spent so long charging her breath that it’s a massive cone of flame exploding outwards. Hm, of course it did vaporize my new nightclothes. I can jokingly assert that she’ll pay for that.
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The force of Kozzurth’s own breath attack causes her maw to open to its widest possible angle. I simply walk through the fire towards the epicenter of the blast, her face. Now that I’m here in front of her, unable to see her, and her unable to see me, I’m able to at least sense everything about her teeth and face with my danger wraps. I coil the muscles in my legs for as quick a leap as I can muster. Now, I’m diving into Kozzurth’s open maw, and I’ll be slashing around wildly until I can see the muddy world below through her throat. I can actually holster the staff and wield two daggers, Taylynn’s, and a Valkyrie dagger that’s always attached to the armor whenever it’s donned, since it’s a part of the belt.
The first thing’s I’ll take care of will be the laryngeal muscles or whatever that might be able to gag reflex squeeze me out of her throat. I leap horizontally In place, spinning, focusing most of my force downward, until I’m essentially lodged in her throat with my legs wrapped around some shredded muscle tissue. I’m slashing and striking again and again for what feels like minutes. It almost looks like Taylynn’s dagger cuts in front of where I’m slashing, like the air it passes through becomes sharp and cuts my intended target before it arrives. Weird hallucination. Finally I see it, the murky gloom that is Rayileklia’s open air.
Kozzurth can’t even stop the sack from expelling further continuous flame, or hasn’t realized yet that it’s not harming me, even as I’ve partially severed her head. The shower of blood that gushes forth washes the otherwise murky gray of everything in a stark crimson as far as I can see in the current gloom when I peak my head out through the hole I’ve made. Whoops, better finish the job. She claws at her throat, actually widening the hole for me as she tries to fish me out from inside her. Wow, that sentence in my internal monologue. Just. Wow. Luni would have a friggin’ field day. Oh, right, pay attention. Hoy! Ooopf. Whew, okay, the top of her talon just kind of bonked me a bit, while accidentally ripping out even more of her own throat.
Her tongue is lashing about, but I’m down near the epiglottis anyway. Should I sever it just in case? It’s, well, kind of really really big. It took me minutes of slicing to get through a couple feet of her neck. Should I, I don’t know, just sit here on the back of it, sawing her tongue off? Hell that sounds gruesome. I’ll just stab it a few times, maybe that will calm it down. Ugh, pleh, bleh, pluf, blogh, argh. Some of it went in my mouth. Not sure if it was more blood, or saliva. Ugh, note to self, don’t stab tongues when you’re inside the mouth containing that tongue. Whatever it was was incredibly hot, it burned a bit going down as I accidentally swallowed it. But, yay massive thermal resistance passive skill. I really hope accidentally ingesting that doesn’t come back to haunt me later. Ugh, it probably will, especially since I’ve now thought about it.
As Kozzurth the Nocturnal begins to hopefully die, she hisses a last few words. As usual, most are indecipherable to me. There does appear to be a proper noun in there though, something like Turzin, Turzinch, Terzin, Terzinch, Tzin, Tzeench, something along those lines. It’s really hard to understand her normal speech, let alone her dying breaths, especially while I’m standing on her tongue. I do my best to stab upwards, hopefully at least prodding a brain stem, if not outright shanking her brain.
I’m not risking having some stupid magical healing ritual or something bring this turd back to life. I finish beheading Kozzurth from the inside, gruesome as this may be. I’ll destroy this at the earliest possible convenience. I think Teuila can handle it being tied to the b--, oh wait, the backpack is back at Keeley’s. Ugh. Well, she can probably just haul it, well, maybe drag it in the mud. She’s strong enough, even though it’s absolutely massive. I guess the Colossi can keep the body as a source of dragon blood for a short while, until Kozzurth’s corpse is dessicated anyway. Not even Teuila could lug that thing around.
Tiago is going to have a field day with this thing on so many levels. He’ll probably tease me about my earlier visceral reaction to being called a dragon slayer. He’ll probably have a very stern “I told you so” for George. Lastly, he might be able to get some sort of alchemical or medical reagents from this. I mean, a dragon’s head. Seriously. About the only thing more potent in lore is probably its heart. Though I’ve a feeling if I try to rip that out and drag it back to The Brook, I’ll start an all-out war. The head’s symbolic, the heart is a crass victor’s trophy, and contains some of the blood they’ve been basing their society around. Plus, I want the head destroyed so no one can do any funny business re-attaching it and reviving the body. Not even the Aasimovians in some sort of, I don’t know, revenge zombification. More likely they’d do it as a way to honor the ancestors that were already eaten. Maybe some day long in the future, they’d even drop multiple souls into Kozzurth’s body if they succeed at the great work in that scenario. I’m not going to let that scenario play out though. Far too risky.
Okay, just in case. Just in case. There’s one thing I need to try. I amble around Kozzurth’s body for a minute, until I’m where I think a heart should be. While here, I fight to pry off a scale. I’m tempted to use the staff to blow a hole in her torso, but then I’d risk damaging it. After a fair bit longer than I was hoping to spend, I expose the softer flesh beneath her hardened scales, and begin carving my way inwards, hoping to find her heart. Ugh, bluh, blech, phtooey, ptew, ew ew. I’m getting so much, I don’t know, sinew and blood or just, viscera and stuff in my mouth, ugh. Oh whew, finally. There it is. The organ is pulsating lightly as its temperature changes to meet that of the outside air. Closing my eyes, begging the darkness residing behind their lids, I reach out to place my hands upon it, and beg the power within the heart to open a portal to Can’Z’aas.
Glancing around, it’s fairly apparent nothing happened. Yeah, I didn’t think it would be that easy. Still, we need to try just about everything. Mostly. I don’t want us to risk ourselves too frequently on long-shot ideas though. We can save those until we’re out of other options. Wait, does the heart look a lot smaller all of a sudden? When did it shrink? Eh, must be from coming into contact with the chilly air or something or other.
One of the guards meets up with the other, and they exchange looks of disbelief. I walk back to Kozzurth’s head and climb atop it once more. Looking at the stunned guards, standing on the nose of the severed head of their fallen lord, I call up to them, “Oy, you two. Honorable duel, I won mine, yeah? How’s Teuila doing? Also, like, your lord is dead, so no more of that extortion crap. Got it?”
The two aim their weapons at me, so I aim mine right back. There’s tension in the air. Do I seriously have to friggin murder every gorram stupid ahole around, for people to stop doing evil crap!? Fine, my greatest sin? Wrath be thy name, I unleash you. Just as I prepare to wage battle against these two idiots, there’s a polite cough from behind me. Far too small and quiet to be Kozzurth, thank heavens. I take a step back, and, once within my range, my danger wrap’s senses tell me who it is.