The day Tacchimel took her first step out of the cave, Jillsen took interest on what happened below his clouds once more. A negligent father, he was. Greedy as many dragons are, and as disinterested in the children as one I know a bit too well.

From his throne of clouds, he observed the beastkin goddess for some time each day while she grew up. Jillsen found it amusing, to see her behave both like cat and man at the same time. And just like cats, she matured faster than men do. By the tender age of five years, she had become the most beautiful adult woman on the whole world, the one that made mortals long for her blessing and lesser gods pray for her attention. Seeing this, Saho did what any decent deity of old is expected to do, and arranged a marriage with his own daughter, a decade or two down the line (Dude no, please, I was cheering for you).

Seeing this, Jillsen went mad with rage. He sent down thunder to lash out against the land, he breathed a heavy fire that became meteorites as it descended through in the skies. That insolent non-primal! Saho, a creation that had sinned against his own maker, dared take away his toy for his egoistical leisure? It was unacceptable.

That night, dragons heard the divine call and descended all over human villages, enthused with the promise of riches the god had offered for the firstborn daughters of men. Some dragons died during what they called “The doll selection”, but the losses of men were far greater.

This imprudent action angered Saho to the point he forgot about the wedding for the time being, and raided men to destroy the dear forests of his mother to procure enough wood, materials to make a ladder that would reach the dragon god’s throne. A hundred thousand men worked tirelessly for ten thousand days and nights to bring forth the vision of his god and preserver.

And when the ladder was about to be concluded, Jillsen became aware of it, and while Saho and his workers rested, he sent his strongest and stealthiest son to kidnap young and stupid Tacchimel.

Saho woke up when he heard his daughter and future wife (Methinks the family tree of the average deity always ends up having a single bough) scream. He was swift, he pursued the dragon and, before it could take flight, Saho grabbed it by his tail. With great difficulty, and barehanded, Saho climbed on the bucking reptile. For an hour or two they struggled in the air, the man wrestling with the dragon, trying to get a hold of his neck without falling. Eventually, Jillsen’s son got weary and sore, for he was struggling against both father and daughter, and the latter had claw and teeth capable of piercing a dragon’s skin.

Considering his mission failed, and knowing himself dead as soon as his progenitor learned of it, Jillsen’s favorite launched himself against the stony ground headfirst, with his nightmarish mouth full of the sharpest teeth on all of creation impaling Tacchimel.

Despite his best efforts, Saho lost his grasp and fell away, away, with the impact rendering him unconscious for a few minutes. After recovering his conscience and taking in his surroundings, the God desperately searched for the dragon’s body, and he did found it. And on his maw, bleeding all over the dark grey rocks, already shattering with cracks that extended from her abdominal wounds, lay the upper half of Tacchimel. Connected to her legs only by a few sinews, she lay with the stare lost in the thunderous skies, mouth open, lips beginning to shed light like his grandfather’s had, years ago.

Saho kissed his daughter one last time, on the lips, as she collapsed into dust. That night was fateful for the beastkin, that being a new and unstable concept, they still couldn’t sustain existence without the aid of a patron, and reverted back to either animal or men when Tacchimel became undone. Not a wolfman or a lynx woman remained wandering around Bengia. And not a beast or man could console Saho as he heaved the dead dragon in direction to the nearest town.

Hadn’t he had taken it all from him? hadn’t Jillsen acted in the wrongest of ways against both him and his creation? Didn’t the dragon god deserve to be brought to justice? With those questions echoing in his mind, he shaped the bones, teeth and claws of Jillsen’s favorite into a blade, and he baptized it Jillsen’s bane. Not that sword of yours, of course, but a prototype, the first weapon fabricated with the sole intent of vanquishing a dragon.

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Using his hatred, the new weapon born from it and the ladder the faithful built for him, Saho climbed relentlessly, soon reaching the realm of storm, cloud and cold where the dragon god inhabited and watched over the world.

Each of his steps aroused the cackling thunder as he drew closer and closer to the gargantuan throne of the ruler of the skies. One of Jillsen’s eyes, it is said, was bigger than the tallest of men. One of his exhalations could topple down a forest of sequoias. Over the obverse of his forepaw you could erect a palace to shame those from the most profligate of nobles.

Like a wall of gold, sapphire and silver the dragon approached the god of men.

“I take you don’t come to offer your apologies nor your pardon,” he mocked the little, despicable, broken god of men.

“You killed my beloved, Jillsen,” he declared, advancing towards his titanic adversary.

“And you led to the death of my favorite son. But is it not welcome for deities like us, the destruction of the object of desire? One less rope pulling us down, Saho. More time to create and undo, to be the perfect gods we are supposed to be.”

Then Saho raised Jillsen’s Bane and addressed the dragon. “This sword is unfinished, only with your blood it can be completed. And this is a task I don’t intend to leave unconcluded.”

“So be it, Saho. Let men have a god no more!”

And they clashed, they fought like a dragon ought to fight a man. Saho, as small as he was, parried a couple of scratches from the god of dragons, jumped to the sides to avoid being crushed by the longest of tails or obliterated by the hottest of lightning bolts. Together they danced for hours, with Jillsen’s breath sundering the land, creating barren valleys where it struck, and the clash of sword and claw causing avalanches, taking down the birds that flew on those early skies and making the earth tremble terrified of the battle that made the clouds revolt and cry and gather in hurricanes, like fish in a school, just to seek safety.

In the second day of uninterrupted battle, Saho felt his movements becoming clumsier, heavier, slower. Weariness was starting to get the best of the god, and the dragon still fought tirelessly. Saho needed to end the battle, and he needed to do so fast. So, taking a page from the book of Jillsen’s favorite, considering himself already dead by Jillsen’s claw or teeth, the god of men launched a suicide attack. He raced above cloud and lightning, kicking off a bolt of Jillsen’s breath attack to launch himself high into the air, Jillsen’s Bane ready to strike, aiming right for the dragon god’s gigantic skull. But Saho misjudged his jump, and Jillsen didn’t misjudge his bite.

It feels weird, Pawn, when a dragon laughs while holding you between his jaws. With one of his fangs piercing your chest, with your blood and their saliva mixing to become the metals men today extract out of the earth to kill both each other and lesser, careless dragons. Seeing he had begun to shatter already, and trying to not fall unconscious due to Jillsen’s brutal shaking, Saho grabbed Jillsen’s bane and stabbed the dragon’s palate with it. Despite that, Jillsen, sure of his victory, kept laughing.

However, the sword, infused with hatred, felt itself at home among the flesh of the dragon. And it dug, and dug, and dug, making it into Jillsen’s main blood vessels, eventually.

Saho shattered not knowing it for sure, merely hoping that his creation would find a way to the heart of the dragon god. And it did. For days on end Jillsen screamed in pain as the sword made its merciless way through his body, destroying organs, blood vessels and muscles there where it passed by. Jillsen amputated his own foreleg by biting it, hoping to get the sword out, but like a parasitical worm Jillsen’s Bane squirmed its way into the torso. A few hours later, prey to the pain, Jillsen cursed Saho and all of his children, all of humanity. He swore them and dragons would never find peace, that, with his death, Saho had damned the weakest of both species to disappear. In Jillsen’s opinion, that was humans. Finally, the clouds lost cohesion and the dying god fell to the earth, being set ablaze by friction, shattering on impact, spreading the most divine of fragments all over the face of Bengia. The only thing that remained in the crater when the dust settled and the fire died out was a bloodied, mangled blade of bone encased in rusting metal. Jillsen’s Bane, an equalizer, Saho’s last gift to his dear humanity.

Nobody knows what happened with this, the original sword. Some say it lays on the bottom of the sea, some say that it shattered, and every dragon slaying weapon has a fragment of it as its very soul, a fragment of the undying hatred of Saho for Jillsen. That is the origin of the dragon god fragments, anyway, and of the name of the divine sword you wield. That’s why Jillsenbane seeks dragon hearts, for it relives the trauma that caused the death of the god from whose ashes it was built from.