The enormous rabbit soared towards Jack like a furry spectre of carnage.

It had been a good life. Not without its low points, mind you. A lot of them. But he’d also had a loving wife and gotten to see two generations come up behind him. Good people, too, every one of them. It was a better life than most folks lived, and he felt a bit ashamed that at that moment, he couldn’t help but wish it lasted a smidge longer. Just enough to see his family settled before he moved on to whatever came next. But he’d known for years that death was right around the corner, so he accepted his fate; at peace with what was about to happen.

Although he was a bit curious about why his Tome had called him lucky.

The woods to Jack’s right exploded in a shower of splinters as something truly massive erupted from the undergrowth. It slammed into the side of the feaster bunny and sent it tumbling into a nearby clearing in a screaming mass of fur and scales. Jack scrambled to his feet and backed towards the trees, unable to tear his eyes away from the sight of the two titans in pitched battle. He dropped to a crouch and half hid, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave just yet.

“It can’t be…” he muttered. Then again, it probably was. They had to exist in a place like this.

Nochd appeared on the ground next to Jack, wearing some kind of frilly peasant’s dress, like you’d see in a period piece set in the 1800s. The god knelt with his legs demurely off to the side like he was at a goddamned picnic

“What are we looking at?” Nochd asked, squinting at the battle. “Oh! This should be good.”

“I’ll say,” Jack agreed, mouth wide open.

The thing fighting the feaster bunny was huge. More than twice the size of its opponent, not including the long neck and tail. Hell, the thing’s massive head, with its frill of horns and long, tooth-filled mouth, was almost half the size of the rabbit. The only part of the creature’s body not covered in thick, pangolin-like scales were the membranes of its huge, bat-like wings, while the deep, rust colour of its scales almost made it look unhealthy.

Altogether, there was little doubt what Jack was looking at.

“That’s a damn dragon, ain’t it?”

“Indeed,” Nochd said.

“Is it sick?” Jack asked. “That colour looks off.”

Nochd was uncharacteristically silent, causing Jack to look at the god suspiciously.

Something was up. Jack looked closer at the scene in front of him. This was basically a street fight on a gigantic scale, and after watching the battle from an objective viewpoint, he came to a disturbing conclusion.

“Damn. That dragon’s losing, ain’t it?”

It was undeniable. There was a tremendous quantity of blood on the battlefield, but an uncomfortably large amount of it came from a massive gash on the dragon’s belly where the feaster bunny had raked the dragon with its hind claws. Furthermore, the rabbit had gotten its teeth clamped onto the dragon’s neck, although its meters-long incisors couldn’t puncture the scales. The dragon wasn’t going easy, though, and it grabbed the bunny with its teeth, hurling it at a tree. The toss had the rabbit moving at a bone-breaking velocity, but it somehow managed to twist around in midair so that it impacted the trunk with its hind legs extended, allowing it to cushion the impact and drop harmlessly into the dirt.

The whole display got Jack’s blood boiling, though Nochd’s reaction was more placid.

“That feaster bunny seems to be holding its own,” the god noted.

“It ain’t holding nothing,” Jack growled, pointing at the dragon. “That damn lizard is throwing the fight.”

It wasn’t entirely accurate, and Jack knew it, but the outcome was the same. Whenever the combatants engaged, the dragon was listless, with only perfunctory intensity to its attacks. Its sheer size and natural advantages should have been enough to slay the feaster bunny easily, but it had no killer instinct. It was as though the great beast had lost all will to live.

“Can’t believe that dragon is gonna get killed by some hopped-up rabbit,” Jack said, shaking his head.

“Yes, it would truly be a shame,” Nochd agreed. “Still, it will be quite breathtaking to see what the feaster bunny turns into.”

Jack gave the annoying god a side-eyed glare. “What does that mean? And no cryptic crap, either.”

Nochd sighed. “When you kill things, you get experience,” the god explained. “When you get experience, you grow in power. Some animals also have benchmarks where they evolve into new forms. Feaster bunnies are one such creature, though I don’t think one has ever reached their final evolution. The experience costs would be prohibitive.”

Jack looked at the battle in a new light. “I’m guessing that killing a dragon is worth a lot of experience?”

“More than you can comprehend,” Nochd agreed. “For a mundane creature like a feaster bunny, a dragon of that age should be virtually unkillable.”

“Sure doesn’t seem unkillable to me,” Jack groused.

“I must say I agree. Normally her magic could slay the feaster bunny with a thought, but for some reason she is doing this the old-fashioned way. How odd. Perhaps that is why she looks so…diminished. A healthy dragon is much more impressive than this.”

Jack wasn’t sure how much more impressive a dragon needed to be, but he had to admit that her performance was underwhelming. The feaster bunny was giving as good as it got, and all Jack could picture while watching the battle was the carnage the feaster bunny had inflicted on the goblin tribe. “How much damage you think that rabbit could do to a place like Plymouth if it reached that last evolution?”

“You mean Palmyre?” Nochd said nonchalantly. “Oh, it would raze the city, most certainly. The Palmyrians are probably the ones who sent the dragon.”

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Goddamnit!

Well, if you couldn’t do something yourself, the next best thing was to get someone to do it for you. Too bad Jack wasn’t the most delicate negotiator in the world.

Stepping from behind the tree, Jack strolled into the clearing. Taking a deep breath, he channelled his inner drill sergeant and bellowed, “What kind of pathetic excuse for a fight is this!”

Even though the dragon was locked in combat, he could feel the great beast’s attention shift towards him. The effortless way she split her focus was a subtle but effective way of showing that, despite all of her physical weapons, the dragon’s mind would always be its greatest threat.

That was good, because it was damn near impossible to taunt someone who was too dumb to have an ego.

“Where I come from, we have legends about dragons!” Jack shouted, his words barely audible above the battle’s ruckus. “They’re these magnificent things. The pinnacle of the entire pantheon. A legend among legends. You wanted a badass in your story? You made them a dragon! Then I walk in here and what do I see? A DRAGON LOSING TO A GODDAMNED RABBIT! You know what rabbits are to us? They’re dinner! Little girls keep them as pets!”

He shook his head. “Bah. I can’t look at this. You’re no legendary creature. You’re pathetic.”

Then he turned and walked away.

Jack got three steps before a loud crunch sounded behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the dragon standing square to him, the feaster bunny dangling in the air with its head crushed between the dragon’s jaws. The enormous beast tossed the corpse to the side and walked toward Jack, radiating an aura of menace.

Aw, crap.

He knew it was pointless to run—hell, he’d known this was coming before he even opened his mouth—so he simply stood there as the dragon drew closer. The massive beast was less than ten metres away when it stopped to stare at Jack ominously.

Opening its mouth, the dragon let out a roar that reverberated through Jack’s organs.

“YOU WOULD KNOW PATHETIC? HERE, LET ME SHOW YOU.”

The dragon’s massive tail swung through the air, slamming into Jack and sending him flying through the forest as his body smashed through tree after tree, cutting into saplings like a machete until he finally exploded through a rotten stump and slammed into the trunk of a full-grown hemlock, dropping to the ground with a thud.

A piece of paper fluttered down and landed on Jack’s face.

Condition “BROKEN BONES (MULTIPLE)” resisted (Well-Aged)

Condition “NERVE DAMAGE (PARALYZED)” resisted (Well-Aged)

Condition “BRAIN DEGENERATION” resisted (Well-Aged)

Condition “LACERATIONS” resisted (Well-Aged)

Jack’s brain raced as he tried to comprehend what had happened. This was the second time he took a hit that should have killed him. It didn’t make sense.

How? he thought, his mind parsing through all the possible answers. How am I still alive? His brain whirred, but try as he might, he couldn’t fathom how he was still alive.

Then something occurred to him.

Calling his Tome into being, Jack re-read the description of his Well-Aged Trait. One line stood out:

This Trait renders you immune from any negative effects associated with old age.

Jack stared at the wording.

“You gotta be kidding me,” he muttered.

Not, “…any negative effects of old age,” but “…any negative effects associated with old age.” In his impatience to get rid of Jack, the lawyer hadn’t ensured that his verbiage restricted the effects purely to aging. Instead, it made him immune to anything merely related to old age, whether a product of aging or not.

Suddenly it all made sense. Osteoporosis? Unbreakable bones. Dementia? No more brain damage. Thin skin? He was uncuttable.

Holy hell, am I invulnerable?

Jack sat up and looked around, stunned by the damage he’d done to the forest. Not only was there a clear path cut through the undergrowth demarking his flight from the clearing, but his final resting spot was also marked by a pile of wood chips and a cracked tree. Hell, if it weren’t for his Well-Aged Trait, he probably would have been cut in two by the dragon’s tail.

Jack tried to get to his feet, only to immediately stagger as a savage pain ran through his insides.

Nope, not invulnerable.

He took one step and vomited up a pool of blood.

“Aw crap.”

Something was definitely wrong, and while there wasn’t exactly a doctor handy, Jack did know of one way to find out what was wrong.

Summoning the old war journal that was his Tome, Jack flipped to the Conditions section. The new additions didn’t paint a pretty picture.

CONDITIONS

Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm: Stage 6 (Fatal) – IMMUNE

Hungry: Stage 1 (-1 CON)

Internal Bleeding: Stage 5 (14:21 remaining to acceleration)

Ruptured Kidney – Right: Stage 4 (-4 CON, -2 STR)

Ruptured Kidney – Left: Stage 3 (-3 CON, -1 STR)

Ruptured Spleen: Stage 4 (-6 CON, -6 END, -3 STR, -4 INT)

Torn Muscles – Back: Stage 3 (-2 STR, -1 END)

Torn Muscles – Neck: Stage 3 (-2 STR, -1 END)

*Accelerating conditions will move up a stage based on a timer if not arrested by outside influence.

That explained why Jack felt like hell. He’d never even heard of an abdominal aortic aneurysm and had no idea why his Well-Aged Trait had protected him from it, but he’d be dead already if it hadn’t. As for all that internal bleeding, well, apparently that wasn’t associated closely enough with aging to count. And from the looks of things, there were plenty of sources of bleeding to go around.

Jack scowled and looked back along his flight path. If he was going to die, he was at least going to give that dragon what-for first.

As it turned out, Jack had flown a lot farther than he realized. Every step came in a stilted hobble, but eventually he managed to drag himself back to the clearing. When he got there, he found the dragon chewing listlessly on a hunk of feaster bunny. Its eyes were glassy as it stared into the distance.

“What is it with sucker punches on this planet?” Jack said with a grimace, his lips flecked with blood. “Not that a fair fight would’ve worked out in my favour, but it’s the principle of the thing.”

The dragon paused its chewing, swallowed, and looked at Jack.

“Curious,” she said, her voice a low rumble that caused the leaves to shake on the trees. “Are you some sort of mage, able to cast powerful shields? I do not smell magic upon you.”

She leaned closer and sniffed him. “A Legend then. Perhaps that makes sense. But merely a human.”

“What’s wrong with being a human?” Jack snapped back.

Despite a face made up of horn and plated scale, the dragon somehow managed a withering gaze. Jack returned the look with a scowl, though a fair bit of that was probably due to the intense pain permeating his insides.

“Yeah, I know folks here don’t think too highly of humans, but I just took a hit from a dragon and came back to have a chat, so I ain’t completely useless.”

The dragon cocked her head. “Perhaps I did dismiss you too quickly.” She inspected him curiously. “In fact….”

It took a moment for Jack to place the look on the dragon’s face, but when he did, he shook his head as vigorously as he could manage.

“Hell no,” he said. “Whatever you’re thinkin’, I’m not your guy.”

“Why, whatever are you talking about,” the dragon asked innocently.

“You’re not foolin’ me,” he said, still shaking his head. “I’ve seen that exact expression on my wife’s face too many times to count. One second, she’s giving me that look; the next, I’m spending all my Saturdays for a month building us a new bathroom. You’ve got something you want me to do, and I ain’t doing it. I got a family to get to.”

“I can be very persuasive.”

“That’s what my wife would say. Don’t think her methods are gonna work for you.”

“You’d be surprised what magic can do.”

“Ain’t interested,” he said to the dragon. “Besides, from what that loony god says, your magic mojo is on the fritz.”

The dragon’s eyes narrowed. “Loony god?”