Chapter 88 - Slay the Dragon

The scourge-touched dragon that used to be Myss opened its mouth, working the jaw back and forth experimentally. Black, tar-like drool oozed between its teeth and slapped onto the concrete rocks below. Her empty, soulless eyes, jittered in their sockets, seeming to move from one spot to the next without rhyme or reason, focusing and unfocusing at random. That is, until her gaze landed on me.

Then she was all about me.

Just like all the other scourge, she lost her mind when she got a good look at Ralqir’s only human. Multiple holes in her neck bubbled and whistled as she tilted her head back and let loose a deafening howl. Her ruined throat morphed the vocalization into something more like an oncoming train.

Myss took a single, clumsy step forward, followed by another, a wave of black goo splashing off her body as she got her sizable mass out of the pit.

“Uh- Tiba?!” I called again, a little uncertainty creeping into my voice. I forced myself to look away from the dragon and back toward the wall of smoke and fire. Nothing. In the distance, booming footsteps rampaged, presumably amongst the scourge. Way in the distance…

Bole cleared his throat at my side.

I turned sheepishly toward the others. “Okay, so we’re fighting a dragon. Any ideas?”

We all started backing up together, getting our distance from the dragon and the oppressive stench of the scourge goo.

Myss slid down the wall of rubble like a disgusting penguin, landing in a heap at the bottom before staggering drunkenly to her feet.

“Don’t let her speak,” Sissa suggested. “Her magic is language. Like mine.”

“I’ve never heard a scourge speak,” I replied. “Don’t think it can.”

“Like ours, Sis. Magic like ours,” Samila added. “I’m not sure, but I think I can help here.”

Sissa stopped abruptly and grabbed Samila by the shoulder. “What? What happened?”

“Got my first word watching Myss fight. Dropped me like a sack of produce,” Samila replied, unable to keep the proud grin from her face.

Sissa gasped and pulled her sister up in a tight hug. “You did it. I told you you’d do it.”

“Stop. Stoooop!” Samila protested with a nervous laugh, wriggling to get out of the embrace before elbowing Sissa in the stomach. “You’re gonna get me killed before I can use it. I need a minute”

“Go. Do what you have to do,” Sissa told her, giving her a little shove in the arm.

Samila grinned as she passed me. “Don’t die before seeing this,” she said.

“Uh. Sure. I’ll do my best,” I said, watching her as she limped toward the edge of the battlefield, almost right next to the wall of fire. I shot a questioning look over at Sissa.

“She found her Duty and Mercy,” she said. “It’s a concept that resonates with her soul and- Well, it’s a dragon thing. You wouldn’t understand.”

Geddon rolled his neck and shoulders and waved Organ Grinder through an experimental figure eight, finishing with a full throttle engine burst that sent the sword’s teeth spinning.

“I’ve always wanted to fight a real dragon,” he said before glancing over at Sissa. “No offense.”

Sissa spared a moment to give him the death stare to end all death stares.

“Well, she’s fast. I know that. Or at least she was before dying,” I offered if only to keep the conversation on track. “Lots of teeth. The tail works like a whip. Think the scourge is still getting used to the new body, though. She almost looks drunk.”

“That won’t last,” Bole added. “You can see she’s already finding her feet. Then we’ll have a right pissed off undead god of old on our hands.”

He was right. Myss was up on all fours again, bones popping audibly as she stretched and shook herself after her fall.

“Wouldn’t be sporting unless we waited for her to get full control of her faculties, would it?” Geddon said, looking to the rest of us for confirmation.

“I’m not feeling very sporting, Geddon,” Sissa replied. “Go!”

“Hahahaha!” Geddon laughed gleefully as he bounded forward, once again leading our charge. His long legs shot him far ahead of the rest of us and closed the gap between him and the dragon a full five seconds faster.

He drew first blood.

The scourge-touched dragon reared up and bared its teeth, taking a long, lazy swipe with one of its claws, but Geddon dropped into a slide that took him feet first under the attack, terminating in a half crouched thrust that put the blade of Organ Grinder directly into Myss’ armpit. Black blood spewed from the wound and down onto Geddon’s body, covering him. Unfortunately, it also blinded him to the next attack. Myss’ tail whipped around from behind and lashed against the wounded area with the thick of its side. The blow slammed into Geddon’s back and flattened him to the ground, hard.

Sissa, Bole, and I entered the fight together.

Trix too, apparently, from somewhere out of sight. His rifle was already cycling through rounds almost too quickly to count, stippling a line of accurate needle fire across the dragon’s face. He must have found a good spot somewhere.

Actually, no. Trix was in front of us, leading us, bounding forward on all fours, only pausing to lift his rifle and shoot. No, wait, he was on my shoulder. The sound of the gun was deafening this close.

“Duty and mercy!” Sissa shouted from my left, and I felt the signature increase in my physical and mental capabilities.

I raised my arm cannon and snapped off a shot. I aimed for the back of the dragon where the tail met the legs in hopes of crippling her without dousing us all in plasma, but Myss moved at the last second, a quick shifting of her weight to bring her tail back in line with the rest of her body that made my shot a near miss. The resulting explosion caught her in the hip and peeled some of her thick skin and made her stumble slightly but was otherwise ineffective.

A huge claw slammed down in front of me, directly on top of Trix. Meanwhile, Trix leaped in from the side, scrabbling onto the back of Myss’ claw and clambering up her elbow. The Trix on my shoulder answered with a well placed shot into the dragon’s mouth, which elicited a sudden involuntary shake of the monster’s head.

Wait.

“Trix?”

“Can’t talk now. This takes effort,” Trix muttered in my ear as he squeezed off three more rounds. The other Trixes, and there were an absolute ton of them now, fanned out and were all doing the same from a multitude of different angles. It was a whole mercenary company of tiny fox people waving their rifles in the air and shooting their dragon in the face. Others crawled up Myss’ tail and into her back, firing wildly and skittering around like squirrels on amphetamines.

Myss swatted them down, bit them with her teeth, squashed them with her feet, but there were always more.

“Wait, so. Trix, are you-”

“Yes, I am very real. Please don’t get me killed,” Trix grunted. His rifle barked again, and Myss flinched back as one of her eyes was perforated.

I joined in with my machine pistol. As I aimed down the sights, Death Eye didn’t give me a damned thing, no glowing weak points to shoot, not even a glimmer. So, as I was wont to do, I went for quantity over quality.

*PRRRRRRRRRRRT*

I emptied the mag in the general location of Myss’ face, dropping the mag once I heard the click of the action locking open. Trix made a disgusted noise above my head.

“Shut up, fuzzball. You started shooting like three weeks ago,” I said.

“That makes it even worse, you know that, don’t you?” Trix replied. The nerve of this little fox man.

Next to Trix’s marksmanship, I was pathetic, but my bullets were way, way bigger. My rounds that hit tore through Myss’ hide or rent holes in the roof of her mouth and out the back of her throat.

Apparently, that was too close to the mark for the scourge. Myss whipped her head out of sight and tucked it behind one of her wings as her tail whipped around in a sweep meant to catch us all in one motion. I tried to track the head with my aim, but by the time I could get off a shot, I was forced to duck out of the way. The displaced air wooshed overhead and blew my hair down over my eyes., while Trix sheltered in the crook where my shoulder met my neck.

Before I was even cognizant that we’d lived through the first attack, the dragon’s tail whipped out blindly again. This time, I was barely able to throw myself down to get myself and Trix out of the way in time. The air became a hurricane as the tail passed overhead over and over again.

Trix tumbled from my shoulders and into the dirt with a gasp, and the illusory copies of him faded from existence.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I’ll be fine,” Trix said, reaching up to scratch at his scalp. “A little shaky but fine.”

Sissa and Bole hadn’t been idle. As Myss was blindly flailing with her tail, the two of them emerged from underneath the dragon dragging Geddon behind them. He wasn’t moving, his head lolling to the side, and his massive knuckles dragging the dirt. The man still had Organ Grinder clutched in his hand, though, carving a winding trail from where he’d fallen. When the three got close to us, Geddon groaned to let us all know he was still alive.

“So, was it everything you hoped for, big guy?” Sissa asked, winded from having to sprint-drag a man three times her weight.

“Uuuuugh.” Was Geddon’s reply.

“Trix, do what he needs,” Sissa ordered. Then she was on her feet and back in the fight. She got low, waited for Myss’ tail to swipe over her head, then broke into a weaving charge that tucked her under Myss’ body yet again.

Bole, cursing, followed in the dragonkin’s wake only to break off and shout to get Myss’ attention. Meanwhile, I did my best to keep the monster's head down. I’d much rather fight a blind dragon than the alternative. My bullets raked across her wing where I figured her head was, but the skin there was made of tough stuff. Only a few of my direct hits penetrated, and they didn’t do much after.

Scourge-Touched Ancient Red Dragon takes 22 damage. (55 base, -36 resist, +3 Knife in the Dark)(Piercing)

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Scourge-Touched Ancient Red Dragon takes 23 damage. (57 base, -37 resist, +3 Knife in the Dark)(Piercing)

Scourge-Touched Ancient Red Dragon takes 18 damage. (51 base, -36 resist, +3 Knife in the Dark)(Piercing)

“Reborn from ashes!”

The shout came loud and clear, Samila’s voice. She sounded different, her tenor fuller triumphant, more complete than I’d ever heard, though I couldn’t explain why I felt that way. She stood tall at the edge of our perimeter, well back from the fight, her arms outstretched and her face turned towards the sky.

Her words rang in the air, suspended on invisible wires between each molecule, reverberated through the world like someone had just discovered the musical chord that shattered all creation like a wine glass.

*FWOOSH*

Every fire I’d set on the entire battlefield, the legion of scourge, the dead wood, the leaves, the bark of the trees, all of it was extinguished in that exact instant, and the things that had been burning were now nothing but ash. Then the air rushed inward, or, more accurately, was sucked toward the epicenter of the spell: Samila. The cloud of ash hit her like an oncoming tidal wave, crashing into itself and sending massive plumes of obscuring dust skyward.

“Ryan!” Was all the warning Sissa could give me as she took a two handed swing at the front of Myss’ leg. It must have cut through the tendon, because the limb buckled and failed to hold the dragon’s weight. That didn’t stop her though. Myss flapped her wings to stabilize herself and dove for me.

Myss must have sensed something was going on or that all the people with the guns were distracted. She howled that freight train howl and shot forward as fast as her new body would carry her, leading with her teeth.

“OOH AHH! OOH AHH! OOH AHH!” A legion of unseen voices echoed her.

Myss’ toothy maw filled my entire field of view.

*FOOP*

A plasma bomb exploded in her face.

Scourge-Touched Ancient Red Dragon takes 170 damage. (Fire) (390 base, -220 resist)

I knew it wasn’t enough to kill her. The fire did, however, blind her long enough for me to grab Trix and Geddon and evade. The snapping dragon maw came down where we once were half a breath behind us. Said maw was still on fire but far, far less affected than I would have liked.

*WHAM*

Something big and gray slammed into the dragon’s neck from above. Bone cracked as a lot of kinetic force was transferred to just below the base of Myss’ skull. The figure was a blur, a vague impression of charcoal wings, a horned head, muscular limbs, and bright, shining sword and shield. The blade thrust down into Myss’ flesh and twisted before being withdrawn. Black blood geysered from the wound, while Myss shuddered, writhing as her nerve signals no longer wanted to travel the way they should have.

Myss slashed blindly at the new presence, attempting to dislodge it, which the figure caught on its shield, a strong, aluminum alloy one I’d definitely seen before in my workshop. Unable to hit with her claws, Myss bucked and threw her head back in a surprising demonstration of speed, flinging the ashen figure up into the air and out of sight.

“Trix!”

“I know!” He squeaked, climbing up onto Geddon’s arm and closing his eyes.

The big man came out of his stupor with another groan. His eyes fluttered, and his mouth drooped open, but he was most certainly awake.

“Geddon! We’re still in this fight!” I shouted in his face. When he didn’t respond I gave him a good slap with my prosthesis.

That got his attention. Geddon shook his head and blinked, seeming to finally realize where he was. “Right,” he said. He lifted his hand, seemingly surprised to find his sword still there. “Right!”

Then he staggered to his feet and charged. He didn’t even hesitate.

Overhead, the ashen gray figure was back. She swooped in on leathery wings and slashed at Myss’ throat, behind her head, at the base of her wings, over and over.

Oh yes, I could tell it was a she now that I got a good look at it. “She” was the spitting image of a very upsized, very gray Samila… naked but for the sword and shield she carried. She flew through the air like she’d been born to it with all the grace of an aerialist and the power of a falling star. Her sword flashed in lightning fast patterns of violence, and her body moved with such exacting precision, it was all the dead god could do to keep up with her.

Organ Grinder revved, and Geddon limped back into position under Myss’ body, almost exactly where he’d made his incision before. Gone was all his form. He was barely on his feet as it was. Instead, he hacked at Myss’ leg like it was a tree trunk, dodging stomps and chasing after it as the dragon engaged Samila overhead.

Myss bled from so many wounds now the ground was black with blood, but she just wasn’t going down.

Things turned bad quickly.

In a move no one had expected, Myss, with a singular flap of her wings, took to the air, fast as a bullet, flying far overhead only stopping once she brushed up against the branches of the canopy. Then she tucked her wings and came down again in an explosive display of power that used her mass to its utmost.

Everyone in the immediate area was blasted with a wave of earth and wind. The shockwave hit me, sending me tumbling over the ground before smacking into something hard and unpleasantly hot. My breath left me in a whoosh.

From inside the dust cloud that used to be the battlefield, Myss roared. A claw extended and struck Samila from the sky, swatting her down into the dirt like a bug. She hit the ground hard.

The scourge cheered their champion as she took the upper hand.

“OOH AHH! OOH AHH! OOH AHH!” A thousand sets of vocal chords chanted in unison. Something out there exploded with the sound of thunder and crackling electricity. Gunshots cracked as scourge poked at our perimeter.

Another flap of Myss’ wings dispelled the dust cloud, and she landed nimbly on her feet once more. She loomed over Samila, jaws set wide.

Oh no.

My armor, the thing I’d been flung into, was expended as far as ammo was concerned, but-

I hit the release on the forearm gauntlet, slipped it on. It was heavy, but not nearly so heavy as the whole set. I flexed my fingers and sent a mana charge into the wrist blade, hoping the Triggers had some juice in them still.

*VRRRRRRRR*

The blade began to spin, faster and faster. I concentrated and sent a big jolt through the circuitry, hoping a bit bled into the components I needed.

*BOOM* an explosion rocked Myss’ flank and sent her reeling.

I blinked. That… wasn’t one of mine.

A hand grasped my shoulder from behind. “Not yet, son,” a voice said in my ear.

I spun, wide eyed, the blade in my hand coming up to-

Jassin? Bishop Kolash? Garret?

No. No. It couldn’t be.

My hand found its way up to Jassin’s, feeling to see if it was real. He smiled that skeletal smile of his, the strangeness of it countered by the warmth in his eyes. The hand he wasn’t he wasn’t using to touch me was extended and glowed with a complex, rotating sphere of blue symbols.

“Unbelievable,” he remarked with a slight shake of his head.

A bead of sweat dribbled down the man’s face.

Bishop Kolash had his staff high up in the air and gurgled some kind of incantation. A golden fog billowed out of his chest and spread itself over the battlefield. It surrounded me, soaked into my skin, warming me and relaxing muscles I hadn’t realized were tense. My burns cooled, and my multitude of cuts felt instantly better.

Jassin shook his head and looked at the bishop reproachfully. “I told you to warn me when you do that. You’re lucky my spell was already done.”

“BWORP. You will live,” he said. “And now so will they.” He pointed back toward where the dragon was bent over Samila’s ashen body, its jaws inches from her face but moving no closer. I squinted.

Frozen. Myss was frozen there as blue light danced around her entire body. Samila, however, was in the process of wriggling out from underneath, equally as surprised to be alive. The rest of my friends were getting to their feet as well.

“OOH AHH! OOH AHH! OOH AHH!” Countless soldiers shouted their cadence call as they marched in neat formations, engaging with the enemy. Spears stabbed through scourge flesh. Glowing spell beams shot into the scourge’s ranks and knocked them to the ground. The front rank took up positions, thrust, reset, advanced. Some kind of catapult ordinance sailed overhead and landed in the thick of the enemy, bursting open and sending lightning bolts in all directions.

“OOH AHH! OOH AHH! OOH AHH!”

They’d come. Jassin had come through, exactly as he said he would. A laugh of utter disbelief bubbled up from my core.

My friends joined us, limping, tired but alive. Samila brought up the rear. As she approached, her ashen body went stiff as a statue, cracked and fell apart, dissolving into fine dust before dumping her out onto the ground.

Mercifully, her dignity was still intact. She was in her armor still, unlike what it seemed in her other form.

Sissa and I, after a second of stunned silence, rushed forward to help her up.

“Holy hell, Sam,” Sissa said. “That was what you learned?”

Samila shook like a leaf, trembling in a cold only she could feel, unable to speak, but she nodded.

“Rrgg,” Jassin grunted. “It is about to break free. Prepare yourselves. Its other selves are about to collide with this timeline and cause a paraclastic surge.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Bole asked, rubbing at his almost fully healed face. The Bishop’s magic was working like a charm.

The strain was becoming more pronounced on Jassin’s face. “I have forcefully dispersed its place in the timeline, but the blockage being swept away is an inevitability. The old one’s past is currently working to right its present, and the amount of causal energy will be immense for a being of this caliber.”

“What?” Bole asked again.

“She’s going to come out of this spell a lot stronger,” Trix said. “Wounds healed. Maybe a bit more lucid.”

“While we’re worn down,” Sissa finished. “It’s going to take an army to stop her.”

We had one of those now, I guessed, but then there would be casualties. We’d had to pull multiple things from our collective asses to just live through the first round, and I wasn’t about to take that gamble again.

Not even one.

I exchanged a look with Jassin, questions passing between us, which Jassin didn’t even realize he had answered for me.

Yes, he’d hold on for as long as he could. No, he couldn’t do anything to stop me.

I flexed my gauntlet, spinning the blade back up to full speed and charged.

The shocked voices of my friends chased me, hands reached out to grab me, but I was too quick. They were too exhausted. I was too, of course, but I knew this was my moment to give.

And I gave it all. I pumped my legs with all my might, my blade construct spinning at my side. I passed the pools of black blood, the broken earth where the dragon had split open the world, the crater where Samila had landed.

Myss’ muscles spasmed. Her head jerked to the side suddenly, too fast to follow, or maybe it had always been there. The blue energy that encased her sparked violently then died. Her flesh knit in front of me, her eye she’d lost regenerated, sucking up the liquid that had been leaking from it and sealing itself with a pop. Her claws flexed with monstrous strength, cracking the ground.

The phantom heat was back. My skin burned, froze. My face was pressed onto a stove and encased in ice all at once. Memories of fire flashed through my mind and swept away all other thoughts…

Except one.

I bent my legs and leaped as far and as high as I could, my gauntleted fist rocketing forward. The spinning blade bit into the flesh of the dead god, slicing, mangling. Through scales and meat, parting the fibrous muscle, swimming through gallons of blood.

I began to fall, but I took hold of what I could with my prosthetic to keep myself in place.

Iron Grip [0.1 MP/sec]

Anchor kicked in once the System thought I was climbing.

I held on. I held on and pressed my fist deeper into the monster, further and further, an inch at a time.

*WHAM*

Something smacked into me from behind, smashing my face into the bloody scales. I was spared the worst of it, though. Anchor was doing the impossible, a straight 30% mitigation to all force acting against me. Good. I needed to do the impossible.

HP [77/309]

*WHAM*

Another blow from behind. I experienced the unique sensation of my spine snapping.

Status gained: Broken bone. (Spine)

Status gained: Paralysis. (Partial)

HP [34/309]

I was so close, up to my bicep in dragon flesh.

Come on. Come on. Please.

With a sickening pop, my blade punctured the chest cavity (or what I hoped was the chest cavity), and I was suddenly shoulder deep in Myss’ body. Wet, warm scourge blood oozed out of the wound and down my chest, and I felt some type of organ pressing against the palm of my hand.

Myss hissed and brought her head down to look me in the eye, to take in my broken form, our last moment together before the end. If I didn’t know any better, I would have said she looked pleased, an emotion I was sure the scourge was incapable of just a moment ago.

Her mouth opened once more exposing rows of blackened teeth.

“Light and gods of old,” I sighed, feeling like I was emptying my lungs for the last time. “Just die already.”

Then, I summoned my exploding brightsteel blade all the way inside Myss’ body.