Before Jawrule could finish his lunge, Caeden had already formshifted and even activated Speed Form. The old dragon was a gargantuan beast of a creature. Caeden could never hope to withstand the power he could output. But, with a missing leg and only one eye, Caeden might be able to outmaneuver him. But he would have to be-

A talon the size of Caeden's arm slammed down where he had been an instant ago. Ok, so he's not that slow. Caeden thought to himself as his desperate lunge turned into a roll. I need to be faster. Then he looked back as he leaped to his feet and began running full tilt around Jawrule's side. His scales had a few weak patches where he had been scarred. Those would be the spots to hit.

But before Caeden could think of attacking, he had to ask. "Why are you attacking me? I know shrouded have hurt you, hurt your people and those you care about. But none of that was me! I have my own problems with the Central Authority. Just because I'm shrouded doesn't make me your enemy!"

Honestly, Caeden understood Jawrule's pain. He could empathize. He didn't want this fight. It was pointless and did nothing for either of them. Caeden's death wouldn't even qualify as revenge for Jawrule's suffering, and Caeden would gain nothing but the animosity of other dragons going forward.

"Ha!" Jawrule snorted, snapping his jaws just behind Caeden. His enhanced speed was barely enough to stay ahead. "You think I care about that? You are shrouded. That is more than enough for me to kill you. What other reason could I possibly need?"

"Rose Garden." Caeden formed a wave of thorns, throwing several of them into Jawrule's face and causing the dragon to flinch back. At the same time, he forced more Physical Enhancement into his legs and jumped back. It was an inefficient and costly use of shroud, but he was desperate to create some space before he was eaten. "What do you mean, 'that's enough'? I've done nothing to you or your people. I didn't choose to be born shrouded. How can you blame me for the things that happened to you at the hands of people who have nothing to do with me?"

Caeden used Rose Garden several more times in rapid succession. If there was ever a fight where he was going to need all the shroud he could get, it was this one. His reserves emptied out as the air above them filled with thousands of thorns. Immediately, Caeden's reserves began to shoot back up. At the same time, while Jawrule was destroying the last of the half-dozen thorns Caeden had sent to harass him, Caeden pulled out Forged infinity and dialed into the weapon he would need. The dial spun to 051, and Caeden slapped his palms together around his shrouded weapon. Immediately, both fists were coated in armored gauntlets.

Caeden would have to crack the sapphire dragon's scales before he could do any real damage. Cutting or piercing attacks wouldn't work on anything other than Jawrule's eye, which the old dragon was no doubt aware of. Any attack the dragon landed would be devastating, a fact Jawrule was likely also aware of. Caeden would have to be one step ahead of the dragon, or he would lose in an instant.

Luckily, Caeden had spent the last two weeks fighting dragon-shaped monsters essentially non-stop. There were obvious differences. The false-dragons were built to fight dragons, and those resistances to dragon claws, fangs, and breath attacks had made them weak to everything Caeden could do. Jawrule had no such weaknesses. In fact, the only reason Caeden wasn't already dead in the face of the fully-grown dragon was because his previously inflicted injuries made the massive brick of a dragon just a hair slower than Caeden at his fastest.

Jawrule's teeth slammed together an inch from Caeden again as he continued to barely miss his attacks. Caeden continued to dodge toward his blinded left side, making it harder for the dragon to track him. The sapphire behemoth grunted in frustration. "You're a quick little shit; I'll give you that. As for your supposed 'innocence,' you're shrouded. The sins of the father carry to the son, and the sins of your race rest with you. As far as I care, every last one of you can burn and die. I don't care whether or not you did anything. You're just as guilty."

"That's bullshit!" Caeden spat back, firing a released thorn at Jawrule's eye to throw off his next claw swipe enough to tuck beneath the attack. "Every group of people has done horrible things at one point or another! If you blame everyone for the actions of the few, then no one deserves to live!"

"Our actions were justified!" Jawtule shot back. "Your people were coming to destroy us! We just wanted to live!"

Caeden realized he was becoming more invested in this conversation than he should. But at this point, he didn't care. His blood pounded in his ears, and constantly inching away from death was not helping. He just couldn't believe what he was hearing. "So that's it then?!" Caeden ducked in close, slamming a gauntleted fist into scarred scales. In fact, he blasted out three hits in rapid succession before dodging another bite.

"Someone did horrible things to you, so you get to do horrible things back?! What kind of world is that? An eye for an eye makes the world blind!" He leaped onto Jawtule's back, raising his fists high and slamming them both down onto another scar. He heard a small cracking sound and felt the old dragon buck, throwing him in the air.

"I WOULD GLADLY GO BLIND IF IT MEANT THE SHROUDED DIED WITH ME!" Jawrule roared. "YOU SHOULD ALL SUFFER FOR WHAT HAPPENED TO HER!"

He lunged into the air, following Caeden faster than he could react. Caeden desperately called over thorns to push him out of the way, but he was only partially successful. Several of Jawrule's teeth caught his left leg, shredding up the muscle and cracking his tibia. Raw pain flared up in Caeden's mind, adding to the growing fire burning up his thoughts. Caeden slammed into the ground hard, jostling his leg further.

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"This is what you deserve." Jawrule gloated, seeing Caeden's blood in the sand. "All of you should suffer and die a painful, inglorious death. This is right."

Caeden was not an angry person. He liked to think he could empathize with most people and come to an understanding. He knew sometimes fighting was inevitable, but hoped to resolve any conflict with words when he could. Hearing Jawrule's words, that part of Caeden fell quiet, and a burning, bloody light took over.

Caeden broke.

"OH, so it's fine to do whatever you want since someone else hurt you?!" He screamed. Sharp wrapped around his broken and bloody leg, holding it together as he dodged over Jawrule's bite, a fist slamming into his empty socket and drawing a roar of pain from the dragon.

"So you can blow them up or kill their parents or maim their uncle or threaten their lives just because someone hurt you!" Caeden's thoughts spun out, connecting and smashing together. "But that's fine because you've been hurt and oppressed! Any bystanders are collateral damage! It's ok to hurt them, even if they never did anything to you!"

In a moment of clarity, Caeden unresolved emotions about everything that had happened to him in the last six months, everything that had happened to him since he was a nine-year-old boy staring at his parent's bloody bodies, resolved itself into something he could process just a little bit better. Something that made just a bit more sense to him.

"What are you talking-auggh!" Jawrule's confused question was cut off as Forged Infinity shifted forms without Caeden having to touch a single button. From one moment to the next, he went from wearing twin gauntlets to holding a four-foot katana. Another instant, and he had shoved all his anger and frustration into Sharp and blasted out a Blade Wave that was a deeper red than he had ever produced on his own. It was somehow halfway between his normal shroud and the strange purplish-red that he had made when his shroud overloaded.

The blade slammed into the cracked scales on Jawrule's back, cracking them further with a single scale shattering and forcing shrapnel into the sapphire dragon's exposed scar tissue.

"Rose Garden." Caeden activated his mnemonic, pushing more shroud through it than normal. Some was wasted, but it still doubled the number of thorns it produced. Then he did it again and again. Soon he was flooded with Sharp, his reserves rapidly overflowing. He had more thons out now than the last time his reserve nearly ruptured, but Caeden didn't care.

"But you're even worse!" Caeden screamed at Jawrule, flinging out more intensified Blade Waves. "At least the Revolution is trying to make the world a better place, even if their goals and methods are fucking garbage. But you don't have even that!"

Another Blade Wave struck the same spot as before, shattering another scale. Once again, Jawrule roared in pain before lunging at Caeden. This time, he didn't run away. Instead, he manifested a massive amount of Sharp around his unoccupied hand in a spiral and thrust it down Jawrule's throat.

The dragon reacted quickly, snapping his jaws shut before the entire mass of Sharp could make it into his mouth, shattering the manifestation in half. Regardless, the rest still traveled down his throat. Blood leaked from between his scaly lips. Caeden's attack hadn't killed any of Jawrule's momentum, though, so his snout slammed into Caeden at speed. His raised arm snapped like a twig, taking his left arm out of the fight. Now, Caeden left arm and leg were both broken.

Jawrule coughed. "You thought you could take out my breath, didn't you? Fear not, young shrouded. My encounter with your military took more than just my eye and leg. I have not had my breath for millennia."

"No," Caeden wheezed, using stands of Sharp to pick himself up as his leg could no longer support him. "I just didn't want to listen to you anymore. You are the worst of them all. You don't even care about helping your own people or even improving your life. You just want to hurt people because you were hurt, and you don't care who or why. You're fucking scum, and I regret ever listening to a single word from you." He spat, arm dangling limply. "Now, I've had enough."

Caeden had been buying time with his little speech more than he actually thought his words would reach the old dragon. Jawrule was a mass of hate and rage without purpose or meaning; Caeden could see that clearly after his own short-lived breakdown. He was still blindingly; at Jawrule, at the Revolution, and at the Central Authority, he had always been. But before that, rage had made him feel guilty for not understanding the pain of others, so he buried it and hid it away.

But now, his thoughts had changed. His anger was something he could live with now. Because Caeden had realized, wrong actions for the right reasons didn't make those actions any less wrong, and he was not a monster for his anger over the wrongs that had been done to him and those he cared about. Instead, that anger could be the fuel that let him reject those actions and seek a better path. One where despicable acts and collateral damage weren't the only way to make the world a better place.

"I thought you were a victim, but you're not. The second you decided that you didn't need a reason to hurt others was the same moment you became exactly the same kind of callous, petty evil that the shrouded who hurt you and your people were. They hurt you and dragonkind simply because they were strong enough to do so, and now here you are, doing the exact same thing to me. You're not better than them because you've been hurt more; you're just more injured." Caeden spoke slowly and evenly, staring into Jawrule's draconic eye.

"You think your empty words will make me repent? Let you live?" Jawtule asked.

"No, I know you're beyond caring, and that's sad. But I can't save or help someone who doesn't want it. No, I just needed time for this." Caeden whipped his katana above his head, Sharp and Physical Enhancement manifesting around his body until Caeden was surrounded in the image of a red, gold, and purple tiger.

"King Tiger roared at the beast who had plagued his every step and cried out, 'THIS IS YOUR END!'"

"NO!" Jawrule lunged, but it was too late. Caeden had been building more and more Sharp, moving to and surpassing the amount that had nearly killed him before. But he wasn't going to risk using anything less than his absolute best.

"King Tiger, One hundred and eleventh technique."

{Heaven Splitting Slash}

Caeden's katana fell inches from the sapphire dragon's open jaws.

A line of dark purple light, nearly black, appeared along Caeden's blade, extending out through Jawrule and into the distance. The light flared, a line of raw power extending up in the air, bisecting the dragon's body. At the same time, Caeden felt his hold over the Sharp left in his soul, still more than his reserve was meant to hold. Caeden had failed to force all his power into the attack. That failure was enough in his injured state. Something in his soul broke, and Sharp came flooding out.

Caeden's vision flickered and faded, but before he passed out from the soul injury, he saw Cat atop her Brute, charging toward him. Then he saw nothing.