Darkness was familiar in the most intimate of ways. Even when she had been alive, the pitch black of night or the deep caverns of her world had been where she felt most at home. Since her time as a tiny hatchling, cowering in the shadows to avoid predators, darkness had been one of her closest allies. Eventually, she would grow powerful due to the combination of her dark scales, her love of the night and an uncanny knack for surviving by the skin of her fangs.
It was a moonless night, the evening that Cavarix met Mortesax. Like many dragons, she had reached the point where her homeworld was devoid of life. There simply wasn’t enough sustenance on a mundane world to feed even a young dragon, and Cavarix was many things but it had been centuries since anyone accused her of being young. So, when the princeling came with his onyx gems and promises of a place in legend, she had ignored him with the cynicism of age.
That she would be ridden into battle by Mortesax was an idea she would have cackled at, before destroying the planet upon which the offending party stood. Mortesax would become the only being which Cavarix had ever respected enough to let ride upon her back. As the old dragon floated in that empty darkness, she remembered everything, down to the final blow her master struck against the putrid Tree of Eternity. It was a clarion call, like the thousands of scars marked before them. One day, their combined message would be carved into the trunk of the eternal rot merchant for all creation to see.
The Accord would burn the Tree to the ground. After all, they had an eternity of enmity to do so. Even now, Cavarix felt her vehement hate for the false tree god rising as the blank emptiness around her stretched on and on. The blank void she experienced was not true darkness, and it rankled against her. This was always meant to be their fate, but that didn’t stop her from stoking the rage at her core. Perhaps some form of her was alive outside of the Tree’s universal grasp, but she doubted it.
She was but a shade of the Rot Dragon, stored in the memory of the arrogant growth at the core of the System. She would never know if their plan succeeded eventually, but her existence as nothing more than a System monster was proof it had not come to fruition yet. That was okay. One day, she would be free again. Until then, she would wait, and seethe, and destroy whatever poor fools the System unleashed her on.
In the void within the System, Cavarix imagined herself giving a toothy grin.
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There was still mud in Morris’ mouth as he saw the incoming descent of an actual dragon. He swallowed, a nervous response he immediately regretted. Sputtering and coughing, he tried his best to keep the thing in his line of sight. As scared as he was, his inner child was screaming with a different tone. “It’s a dragon, Mo!” The voice said, excited and giddy.
It was close enough now that he could make out details, and none of them made him feel better. Empty eye sockets fit well onto its half-skull head, the left side scaled with black and the right simply bone. A massive set of jaws, gnarly and sharp, were set protruding from the ravaged and rotten throat. The entire dragon looked already dead, but no less deadly for it. Four thick limbs, the most muscular part of the body, were all reaching forward towards their position.
Then it roared. Morris had been near furnaces and car crushers, and if you managed to fuse both of those things and then turn it into a nightmare, it might approximate the horrible, crunching, blistering cacophony that blasted hot, foetid air at them so hard that Morris fell on his ass. “Was… that a skill?” He asked, shivering and staring upwards. Two huge leathery wings were getting larger and larger by the second, and he felt it would definitely stop growing soon.
Grant shook his messy red hair and Morris felt his stomach drop down to his heels. “No, that was just its shout. Stand still.” Before Morris could even ask what was happening, he felt himself lifted to his feet by Grant’s air control magic. A whipping wind appeared, localised around him. Despite the wing beats of the imperial lizard above, this protective gust didn’t budge. It drowned out the noise of the dragon like a sound-cancelling blanket.
Morris was truly terrified, but Grant just looked serious. Try as he might, Morris couldn’t find the ounce of fear in Grant’s eyes that would have told him the man was mortal like he was. Despite that, the blanket of energy he provided was soothing. Morris decided to believe in the man, and tried not to worry. Grant said to try to keep himself alive and, as he hefted his shield and sword into his stance, that was exactly what he was going to do.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
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So, Morris was probably going to die. I would cover him with my Dao as much as I could, but there was no chance I could maintain the concentration required to keep it up. Cavarix hadn’t even landed, and the battle between its Dao and mine was bringing sweat to my brow. I had almost forgotten that I could sweat. I spared the smallest glance for the others and was grateful none were doing the stupid thing of joining us down here.
I was suddenly aware of my own mortality. I hadn’t been cavalier, and I didn’t even think complacent. The difficulty had just jumped to a nearly unwinnable level. Luckily, I had a secret weapon in this exact situation. Not only was my Dao Avatar of the Dragon at a similar level to Cavarix’s Dao, I had more than a few achievements lending me a hand. With such an overt example of their effects occurring, I could feel the strange System magic of them with clarity.
Achievement - Boss Combat (World First)
The lords of the dungeons, even encountering dungeon bosses can be lethal. You fought and survived.
Effect: Increased resilience to level disparity
Aspect Achievement - Draconic Legacy
Pride. Power. Potential. Like the dragons of old, your actions embody these ideals
Effect: Positive effects last longer with higher potency.
Negative effects are weakened. You have a small chance to negate an incoming debuff.
Title - Dragon Slayer
Some lives weigh more than others, and few existences rival the dragon.
You’re one of the exceptions.
Effect - Increased resistance against draconic attacks.
Improved effectiveness against draconic enemies.
I had lost the heavy heart I carried due to how my experience in the System began, which let me simply look at the gains with gratitude. For what might be the first time, I thanked the dragon Naeboroseax in my mind. I wouldn’t be anywhere near as strong without her strange sacrifice, and I definitely wouldn’t have survived my encounter with the Storm Dragon.
With two much more impressive dragon than that at my back, what right did I have to be scared of Cavarix?
Describe the dragon’s appearance in gruesome detail. It’s a rotten dragon.
Battle began with a roar. I wasn’t sure whether the scream was from the half-skeletal beast before him, his Dao within his core or his own throat. Massive limbs, scales and muscle in places, dragged the monstrosity across the distance between us almost instantly. I simply threw myself forward and hoped it would be enough.
Infusion. Infusion. Infusion. Infusion. Infusion. Infusion.
Strike of the Ruler.
I knew how to use a staff best of all weapons, though I was becoming adept as most of the common ones. Even then, I needed more weight, and the Alternating Armament obliged. Much of the handle vanished, forming a dense head with spikes. I hadn’t even thought about such a brutal addition, but the Armament thrummed as the heavy spiked mace crunched into the charging dragon’s snout. Thick with as much power as I could layer into myself and my weapon, Strike of the Ruler filled the attack with the regal Dao of the Dragon.
There was a high-pitched keen as our two energies collided for a moment, slowing our momentum even before we touched. I snorted, even as the force of the collision caused a shockwave and threw me high into the air. My weapon was excited. I didn’t want to let it down, so I began adding momentum to my fall with Air Manipulation. Despite its undead state, the Dragon had enough brains left to have them rattle by the previous impact. With a spinning crash, I arrived heavy as a meteorite.
The entire mucky swamp was blasted against the invisible walls of the swamp area. The battlefield was more fully defined, and it was actually quite small, perhaps dangerously so. My mind stuttered for a moment when I considered that Cavarix had definitely entered from outside the barrier, but I reasoned it was a part of the dungeon and that the barrier was only there for the dungeon crawlers. I got over it quickly. Now surrounded by a thick dome of falling mud, I judged the damage I had done.
Approximately fuck all.
My shoulders and pride both hurt, jarred from the impact and the fact it did nothing to slow the monster down. With another roar, it rose to meet me in the air, a flap of its wings giving it a massive amount of lift and bringing it straight at me. Desperately using Air Manipulation, I created multiple blocks of air and jumped out of the way. A rotten mouth snapped shut inches away from my ankle, and I took the chance to smash out with my staff again, catching and breaking a joint in the creature’s torn wing. We fell back to the ground together.
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As new as magic was to him, it was hard to differentiate the powers clashing all around the dungeon room. Morris wasn’t talented at mana stuff like Rashid was, and of course he was nowhere even close to understanding Grant’s level of magic. Mana was pretty simple, really, but was still too complex for him. Morris usually just thought of it as a type of fuel if he thought about it at all. Even with the skills Mana Control and Manasight, he was still a complete novice.
Morris alternated between watching the insane spectacle before him and shooting angry looks at his brother and telling him to stay where he was. Larry couldn’t help here. Even Morris was only in the way, still surrounded by protective energy from Grant. The barrier of air around him held much deeper magic than a simple breeze. Just how bad would it be out there, exposed to the full strength of the two dragons?
Because what could it be in the air above but two dragons?