a boy and a dragon

Lee.

I was in the dream-space. Whatever was happening to me in the outside world, I felt somewhat giddy. Who should I see today? The Old King on his throne, unmoving, unchanging, his deep, black eyes staring at the horizon and whispering knowledge of long ago? Should I go to the Stormy Hills, where Silverhaired dreams and listen as her breath comes in and comes out? Spar with morose Gregory, his broken wings hidden under his cloak? Talk politics with the Presidential Mother over her cookies?

But, alas! My humble forest shivered and I was taken to another realm in the dream-space, more precisely, just outside the Temple—actually a Nihonjin shrine situated on the foothold of blue-green hills and flanked by two ever-blooming cherry trees perpetually carpeting the place with a blanket of pink.

Tendrils of mist came out of the Temple, gathering at the front and forming into the shape of a person: a young, Nihonjin girl dressed similarly to a Shinto priestess, with jet-black hair flowing down her back and snow-white skin that glistened under the starlight. She was called Alfar, because she reminded you of the old stories about elves. And her voice was alluring: “Spectre…” She looked at me with her big, amber eyes and with a hand covering her mouth. “You startled me,” she said, and behind her hair: her long, elven ears twitched. It looked very cute.

“I just arrived, actually…” I told her. I took a deep breath and focused on my body. Either I was dead or unconscious. Perhaps, my physical body was under a similarly dead or unconscious dragon. I wanted to know, but I did not want to open my real eyes for fear of never dreaming again. Is it sad that I had a crush on a figment of my imagination?

Alfar walked down the shrine-steps, a cloud trailing right behind her, but she seemed to have just floated on her own. She then waved a hand and a short-legged table appeared, resting on the petal-covered grass bed. "Would you like some tea?" Two earthenware cups of tea appeared on the table's surface, clear, greenish liquid inside them both. She then knelt in a seiza, her—I surmised long—legs beneath her thighs. I wonder what they felt like.

A teacup floated and moved as if drunk from. "Don't mind if I do," a voice said from nowhere, until the space above us warped, and landing on the table on his feet was a young man wearing a suit, the teacup in his hand. He had dark, brown skin and slicked, black hair, and on his wide forehead, two black, slender horns stuck out, curving upwards at the tips. If you added a finely trimmed goatee, all that was left was a tail and a pitchfork, and he would be the stereotypical Devil—not that he would disagree though. "Is lovely tea you got miss Alfar..." He winked a dark-brown eye at the elf-eared girl.

"Ifreet!" shouted Alfar. "I should gut you where you stand." She was still kneeling in position, but the cloud shifting behind her was now in small chunks having clumped into floating shards of ice that were shivering slightly, seemingly in anger. Her face was red, the beauty mark on the upper side of her left cheek contrasting greatly, and her eyes were closed and she kept taking deep breaths as if willing him to go away.

Ifreet looked at me, an annoying smirk on his face. "Aha. She looks pissed," he said. "I better hurry off, before she calls up a blizzard on my ass." He laughed and with that the Devil stand-in vanished into smoke, and the teacup landed gently on the table.

I smiled wrly and sat down by the table across from Alfar, reaching out for the half-drunk teacup and taking a sip. "The man was right though, it is deliciously lovely." I gave her my most winning-est smile, coaxing out a brief giggle, calming her down. The crystals of frost around her, now melting back into one. "Thank you, Spectre," she said. "But it looks like its time to wake up." And her eyes sparkled like snowflakes glinting off a winter sun. And the world shimmered into non-existence.

And I opened my 'real' eyes.

***

I felt the roughness of leaves and branches below me. It seemed that I had landed on a tree. I didn't see any sign of the dragon, except for the mangled remains of several, felled trees and the scorched earth with said beast sprawled in the middle, its wings draped around it like broken masts with tangled sails. It seemed to me that the dragon threw a fireball on the ground to better soften its landing—how that works is a mystery to me.

I tried to get a general feel of my body and was dismayed to find out that a good chunk of my right forearm was ripped off almost down to the bone—perhaps Taal tried to grab me when I fell, accidentally or intentionally, shearing a bit of flesh. My whole body was hurting like hell and my vision was hazy—a misfortune considering it was still night. I climbed down the tree using only my legs and one arm, dropping off surprisingly lightly. I clutched my right arm, the sensation of the bone through thin, mangled muscle making me shiver. I stopped, wiping the blood of my pants. Now, what was I supposed to do, after climbing down the tree? Fight a dragon? If only that were a viable option... I was lucky enough that my wounds weren't bleeding profusely and I was conscious.

rumble. then the dragon stirred. Its broken wings opened slowly and with apparent effort, it rose up on its legs with its tail stilled for balance. And when it was stable, Taal roared and I felt its pain and its anger—there was no way it was going to let me escape if it saw me. Its claws glowed a scorching white and similarly colored lines formed on its arm and legs, trailing upwards like a lit blaze following a lengthy fuse. A pulse of faint dragon-fire exploded outwards with the dragon as its epicenter.

I brought my arms up, wincing at the pain it gave, as the dragon-fire rushed towards me. And when it met my skin, I felt warm again and the magic vanished, and to my shock, my right arm was covered in some transparent, golden energy and the wound quickly repaired itself,as well as clearing my vision somewhat.

Then, Taal let out a grumbling noise almost sounding eerily like laughter. "I found you," it said, twisting itself around to get a better look at me, locking fire-red eyes with mine. "And I shall end you, valyinum," it declared. At the very least it made a decision as to what I was. Why'd I have to light up like a Christmas tree?

I looked around me and saw only trees and mountains under the cover of night. If I ran, I would only be delaying my death, but if I don't, I'd basically be just handing over myself... there was only one, hopelessly stupid option: to fight. I took out a knife that was sheated on my right leg. It wasn't an ordinary knife, it had some enchantments done by yours truly, though I find it pointless anyway when confronted with a dragon. Sadly, while I was thinking of ways to not get killed, I almost was as I was thrown a good distance away, whipped by a large tail, landing with my back on the surface of some boulder that just happened to be there. fuck that hurts.

Stolen story; please report.

Taal laughed. "Is this the might of the fabled valyinum? The dragonslayers of myth?" it roared and I saw that it's right arm was little more than a stub of burnt flesh, bleeding a bit with glistening dragon-blood. "I should have squashed you when I saw you!" Its broken wings spread, leathery membrane ripped and torn and riddled with holes.

My knife was gone and my mind was calculating double-time when I saw on the ground, here and there, small and large puddles of shiny dragon-blood. An impulse seized me that I would devour the essence of the blood, whatever that meant. But I wanted to anyway, a primal urge taking hold of my mind. A surge of power welled up inside me. And shockingly to me and the dragon, I became faster and almost in an instant, my left foot was now in the nearest blood-puddle, and I felt its energy crawling up my leg, merging with what unknown power was left and spreading throughout my body. The blood-puddle was nothing more than a blood-puddle. I was now empowered, perhaps I can kill a dragon now, I do not know, but I was itching to try.

And almost naturally, I threw a fireball towards the dragon out of my mouth. Taal tried to move away but its left wing was struck and it caught on fire. The insides of my mouth and the surface of my tongue were slightly singed, but they healed just as quickly as they were burnt. "Whelp!" the dragon screamed in audible pain. My body was feeling jittery. I jumped up high and threw a fireball, but the dragon tilted its neck away. I dove towards it, driving a fist into its side. The scales grazed my knuckles, tearing a bit of skin off. I leapt quickly, missing its tail-whip by a hair's breadth.

Taal breathed a stream of fire at me. I rolled to the side, lightly evading it. I stood up, dusted the dirt off my pants and followed up with another fireball, but this time Taal did not dodge, instead the dragon breathed out a larger, more potent flame now coloured black, completely devouring mine. I was stupid to have even thought this could become easier.

I flung my arms up to block myself against the oncoming torrent of flame. The fire licked my skin, and I felt it scald and blister, then melting away, next my muscles seemed to burst and boil but they melted away. The mana was too much to be absorbed. I could feel the heat on my bones, literally. And luckily, the fire ended before my bones turned to ash.

I dropped my arms, letting the sludge of hot, liquid muscle and skin drip to the ground, and the remnants of smoke drift away. That fire clearly exceeded Third-Thier magic. And it hurt as much as it should like molten metal was poured onto your skin. My arms were regenerating but not at the almost instantaneous speed it did a while ago. The true flames of Taal were too much. It had drained much of my strength, and luckily for me, the dragon was equally exhausted as well.

The dragon was slouching, its relatively good wing drooping beside it. "I would have never believed a human," it started, "would survive the wrath of an unshamahn..." It was now breathing as raggedly as me. "I shall concede to my arrogance, but you will die here by my fury!"

I had heard in passing (or in dreaming) that dragons possessed the ability to shift into several forms—each form held the qualities of a particular species that once or still ruled the planet (how that is decided is left for mortal imagination), and so far, I had thought it untrue and ridiculous, I mean, what reason would any dragon have to forgo their natural bodies? Weren't they the sleeping giants of this world already?

But, the dragon in front of me, shrank, its wings curling in on it. From its skin, black mist seeped out, covering it like a cocoon of smoke. The cocoon pulsed, expanding and contracting, shaping itself into some humanoid form. And finally, the mist parted.

What should have been a black dragon was replaced by a statuesque, young woman of alabaster skin but her right arm was missing, only a black patch where arm met shoulder remained. Her eyes were serpent's eyes of crimson and her hair was the fiery orange of magma, completely visible even in the dimness of night with only a spattering of dragon-fire here and there to reveal her wonder. Her face was sharp, lips black as granite and she was beautiful. And she was naked. Verily so.

She looked at her fingers, flexing them, turning this way and that. "You humans have such fragile fingers," she said and her voice was edged with displeasure, as if perplexed as to why humanity currently stood at the pinnacle of this world with such fragile fingers. Slowly, she walked towards me, the swaying of her hips like a hypnotist's pendulum, drawing me in. "You humans have so lecherous eyes." Thin wisps of fire started to surround her, dressing her in a robe of flames that oddly and greatly accentuated her curves.

I whipped an arm at her direction and a fireball flew out, but it struck an invisible barrier and was destroyed into little sparks. "It seems being human is good for something," she said before abruptly stopping in her tracks and looking at the sky.

Above us, great amounts of mana were rushing in. I looked at the human-shaped dragon wearing fire, then at a blur and then, an explosion of pain erupted in my chest. "I wonder what that was?" And she appeared, her arm sticking out of my chest, just below the heart. Her voice was sweet up close, though. And her arm felt soft even though it made a hole in my body.

She flicked her arm, bringing me to the side and throwing me very far away and hitting another large rock. I fell on my side and the hole in my chest knitted itself slowly. I was losing a lot of blood...

Around me, I heard a faint buzzing that grew larger and larger, and the footsteps of a beautiful dragoness in the form of a human dressed in fire coming closer. I blacked out.

***

---note---

sorry for the late update. Life is a bitch.

and I suck at fight scenes.

And many thanks for reading!!!