Jonathan Tillman, Level 51 Son of Flame
Tilly pushed through the mists, the sensation completely different now that he was wearing his Draconic Emissary armor set.
Previously, the mists had flowed around him, offering him no resistance and no sense of progress. Now, he could feel them parting before him, drawing him into something and away from something else. Curious, he tried to reach out with his soul sense, but as soon as he had the thought to check, a twinge in his core warned him against the action and he withdrew.
His quiet steps echoed strangely, the sound moving differently as it pushed forward ahead of his path, swirling in eddies around him instead of radiating out in waves. Then as suddenly as it had begun, the sensation passed, and the mists began to thin, revealing a ridge just ahead marking the end of the incline that Tilly had been jogging up.
“Nothing left to say, Whelp?” A voice from above the ridge pounded against Tilly’s chest, painfully jarring his damaged soul. Even though the question had not been aimed at him, the aftershocks of its weight were still enough to almost knock the breath from Tilly’s lungs.
He stumbled as quietly as he could in surprise and tried not to cough as he poked his head above the ridge, the mists fully clear at this point. The top of the mountain was completely flat, forming an almost perfect circle with a diameter that looked like it reached almost half a mile.
Sitting at its center was a dragon that dwarfed Brokenridge in both size and girth. Where Tilly’s companion was cut in the fashion of an apex predator at the top of their game, the dragon taking up the center of this unnatural formation was rotund with rolls of skin and fat crowding every joint of the creature's body. Its scales looked thick but also had a waxy, aged appearance that reminded Tilly of a reptile that had been taxidermied.
Piles of enormous bones surrounded what could only be the dragon king as he sat atop a structure formed from the largest pieces. Glowing red text was burnt into many of the visible pieces of the structure of fused bone, and after a few seconds of observation, Tilly realized it was a primal-looking throne. It had taken him a moment to figure it out due to the basic form of the structure having been crafted for a quadruped instead of a bipedal humanoid. It looked more like a stage with a peaked back that loomed behind its occupant. At its top, sitting in a housing of bone at the tip of several large rib bones above the dragon's huge head was a sky-blue jewel. As Tilly watched, it seemed to rotate slowly, even though it was held fast in the bone structure.
His eyes lingered on the jewel as its significance continued to unfold before him, blowing through his mind like a breeze. His mind suddenly felt invigorated and his body experienced an almost electric jolt of energy as he finally recognized it. He had been so worried about keeping Brokenridge alive that he had almost forgotten about the quest he had received from the Sovereign Crystal.
That was it… the last requirement his Faction needed to upgrade. Well, that and somehow defeating the dragon king himself, someone Brokenridge had referred to as Longtooth. Tilly hadn’t known if it was the dragon’s real name or a slight about his appearance, but seeing the king now, Tilly figured it was probably the former. There was plenty of fuel there besides teeth if Brokenridge had been looking for inspiration.
The throne’s occupant aside, Tilly was awed by the level of complexity displayed in the flow of magic between the jewel, the throne, and the mountain. It used the Scorch inscribed bone to somehow contain the Facet while harnessing some of its energy as a focus to produce some powerful effects.
‘Bet that’s where these mists came from.’ he thought, crouching low as he crawled over the edge and began to creep forward, attempting to get a full picture of the situation before him. Thankfully, the enormous dragon king was facing almost the opposite direction, focusing still on the object of his interrogation. The fact that he was still making demands at all meant that Brokenridge was still alive, but Tilly hadn’t yet caught sight of him through the piles of bones.
“Insolence it is… Very well, take your time and hold your silence, I will stand vigil to the folly of youth,” the king growled out.
Tilly thought furiously, sweat beading on his brow as he fidgeted with his drawn hatchets… He had made it this far, now he just had to figure out how to change the dynamic somehow. He moved laterally at a glacial pace, attempting to get eyes on Brokenridge before committing to a specific course of action.
Just as Brokenridge’s tail came into view behind what Tilly realized was the ancient remains of another dragon, the sound of a long sniff caused Tilly to freeze, wincing as his eyes darted to his left and found the corpulent dragon staring right at him.
‘Shit’
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The dragon’s eyes didn’t narrow in suspicion, nor did he even twitch in surprise… rather the creature's bony brow rose in the vaguest expression of interest before turning back toward Brokenridge, “What is this, Whelp? Your pet?” he asked.
Tilly refused to take his eyes off the dragon king now that he knew he had been discovered, but he did spot a tiny twitch of the tail out of his periphery and heard a deep chuckle as Brokenridge replied, “Yes, I suppose he is. Good of you to join us… pet.”
Even with his life hanging by a thread… Tilly still had to fight down the sigh that his companion's arrogance tried to force from him. Instead, deciding to fight fire with fire, he straightened up and looped his hatchets flashily, palming the vial of siren’s tears under the cover of the movement.
“That's funny coming from the helpless prisoner I’m here to rescue...”
The dragon king reared back his head and laughed, the sound so deep that it rattled some of the huge bones scattered around the mountaintop. Taking the free distraction, Tilly’s eyes rapidly scanned his surroundings once more, desperately searching for some hint of what his next action should be.
He still couldn’t see all of Brokenrige’s body, but he did catch sight of more lines of Scorch crawling in circles on the ground surrounding the supine dragon. And there was something else… Some feeling of stillness locking down Brokenrige in an unnatural way. Tilly could tell he was being held in place, but the supernatural mechanisms at work were beyond him-
Then an idea struck,
‘This guy doesn’t look like he's gotten up in a thousand years… He is surrounded by what I assume were other challengers who met the same fate Brokenridge is supposed to meet… and he had done it all without moving from that cozy spot at the top of this mountain. Is it because he didn’t have to, or because he couldn’t?’
“I haven’t laughed that hard in an Epoch!” the king belched, releasing a gout of purplish flame, “But, of course, such disrespect cannot go unpunished,” he finished, eyes narrowing on Tilly as he released a blast of Aura that felt heavier than the mountain they were standing on.
“Now, BOW BEFORE ME.” He growled, his words slamming into Tilly along with the full brunt of his Will.
Tilly barely had time to grunt before he was hit with the metaphysical tsunami of the dragon king’s soul, and despite the warning Erash had given him, he could not just fold before it. In the split second before the agony hit, Tilly saw his chance and took a gamble.
Baring his teeth in a rictus smile, he clamped his jaws shut, biting down on the scream that tried to rise in his throat as he pushed back against the force of the dragon king's dominance with his aura. Multiple titles slid into place, undergirded by the arrogance provided for him by his armor set as the power of his soul exploded out of him to the detriment of his wounded core.
He would not bow.
A tearing sensation ripped through his center as he pushed back, parting the sea of the dragon king’s might with a snarl. Something like a distant roar echoed through the spiritual confrontation as [Savage Dominion] took effect, causing the dragon’s aural pressure to stutter for a moment before retreating entirely. Shock showed on his face as his slitted eyes dilated and his jowls pulled back in a snarl of their own.
Suddenly absent of the pressure he had been pushing against, Tilly struggled not to stumble. Releasing his own aura, it collapsed back into his soul, fractured and flickering.
“What are you?” The dragon king growled again, this time eyeing Tilly, and then their surroundings, much more warily. “What trick is this, Whelp? What have you brought here?”
Brokenridge remained still, lying before the throne. But that didn’t stop him from beginning to chuckle again, “I told you. He is my pet- Why? Is that fear I smell on you, Sire?” He added, with a loud sniff.
The dragon king shot an annoyed gout of smoke toward his prisoner, not taking his eyes off Tilly as the Scorch in the throne around him began to glow. Tilly had to act before he took back the initiative.
Ignoring the fresh harvest of pain that the aural conflict had reaped in his soul, Tilly unclenched his teeth. “Wait! Before this comes to blows, I have something to offer in exchange for Brokenridge’s freedom,” he called. Then, not waiting for the dragon to answer, Tilly held his breath and popped the top on the vial.
Almost instantaneously the dragon king’s eyes shifted from Tilly’s face to his hand and Brokenridge started twitching madly on the ground.
“How could you possibly-”
“BROODMOTHER-” Brokenridge interrupted with a desperate roar, unable to turn to see what Tilly held but struggling desperately nonetheless.
“Silence, Whelp!” The dragon king bellowed, the Scorch all around him flaring along with his words and cutting off the desperate dragon’s cry like a TV put on mute. Tilly could see the rolls of fat and skin folded upon his claws jiggling with need as the muscles beneath twitched eagerly. Whatever he imagined… he wanted it badly.
“You know not what you hold, human. Now, give it to me immediately and perhaps I will let you live,” he growled, actually allowing a string of drool to slip over his bottom lip.
“No… I don’t think I will.” Tilly said glibly, judiciously using some of the air he had stored in his lungs. Watching carefully, he moved his hand to the right and left. Fully under the item’s effect, the dragon king’s gaze moved along with the motions. Unconsciously, he was slowly shifting from a fully seated position to a sort of half-crouch.
‘I hope this works…’
“Come now, human.” The dragon king continued, entranced, “You have no use for such a trinket, whoever gave it to you was a fool. If you hand it to me, I will deal with you generously.”
“Or-” Tilly answered, tossing the vial up in the air and catching it, his lungs beginning to burn, “Not,” He finished with a yell, whipping around in a pitcher's throw, launching the vial into the mists and down the mountain.
“NOOOO!” The gargantuan specimen of his species roared, exploding from his perch in a rattling crack of bone. Tilly was shocked as the dragon king blinked past him, seeming to be able to move almost as fast as Brokenridge himself, despite the huge girth.
The complicated enchantment of Scorch and bone that surrounded Brokenridge flashed and went inert, and Tilly's shock broke into a smile, “Well, that went better than I expected.”
“Silence, fool. This has only just begun!” Brokenridge interrupted, shoving to his feet and scanning the skies, still obscured by mists.
Tilly hadn’t been expecting a thank you or anything, but this was a li-
A growl burst up from downslope, layered with so much Authority that the ground beneath Tilly's feet trembled as the mists directly down the mountain parted, revealing a very large, very pissed-off dragon.