Jarod gathered his wits. "Defensive magic now!" he boomed. "As much as you can! All of it!"

To the credit of his troops, they managed to shake off their terror, and magic bloomed to life around him. Glowing circles of mystical energy formed in the air above them as spell after spell took shape and bent the world to their collective will.

Protect.

Shield.

Defend.

The words echoed through his soul, and hope stirred within him. They could do this. The dragon might be huge, but it was only a single creature. They were a hundred of the kingdom's finest. Not all of them were proper mages, but a decent number of them could wield magic of the third and fourth order. All of their efforts combined should be roughly equivalent to a fifth-order defensive spell, and a fifth-order defensive spell was strong enough to withstand a barrage from a siege mage.

This could work. Their defensive magic would keep them alive, and the dragon would be forced to close in because everyone knew that dragons could only deploy their breath attack for a limited time before they had to wait for it to recharge. The dragon was huge, but that meant it would be slow and clumsy. If he could just dodge when it lashed out, he could win because he carried one of the kingdom's treasure with him, a sword from the Sixth Age.

The sword had supposedly belonged to a noble from that bygone era, and the king had given it to him to help him better serve the kingdom's interests. It was imbued with magic that the kingdom's mages and smiths could not replicate, and it was capable of cutting through even enchanted steel with ease. Jarod had tested it against the scales of the dragon that the kingdom had killed. It had taken some effort, but the blade had still been able to pierce through them.

"Take heart!" Jarod boomed as he drew the sword and held it aloft. "Once the dragon exhausts itself trying to break through our defences, I will strike it down!"

His troops cheered, and Jarod reached for the magic woven into the sword and added it to the panoply of defensive spells above them. The blade shone with an eerie blue light, and the strength of the defensive spells more than tripled. With this, their defence might even qualify as a lower-level spell of the sixth order.

"Do you worst, dragon!" he cried. "For you face the kingdom's finest!"

----------------------------------------

Doomwing studied the pathetic mishmash of defensive spells below him and fought the urge to sigh. Really? They were going to try to fight off his fire breath with a bunch of third- and fourth-order spells? That was honestly just insulting. Sure, all of the spell together added up to something in the neighbourhood of the fifth-order, and that little stick their leader was waving around boosted them up to maybe the sixth-order, but that was it.

And it wasn't nearly enough.

A sixth-order spell was the sort of thing Doomwing's parents had used to wake him up back when he'd been a hatchling. He had always loved to sleep on top of his hoard, back when he'd been small enough to not crush it beneath his bulk. Rather than waste their time dragging him off it, they'd simply fired off a spell or two. It hadn't really hurt, but it had been annoying enough to wake him up. His mother had been particularly fond of reversing gravity, which would leave him scrambling to cast counter magic before his hoard floated away.

He missed her and his father. Damn those fools from the First Age. He and his kind had been dragged into their mess, and so few of them had managed to survive it. At least they'd done better than the First Gods. The dragons had been decimated, but not a single one of the First Gods had made it to the Second Age. Good riddance to most of them, but a few of them had been worthy of respect and friendship. Ah, Dion.. what a great drinking buddy he'd been, even if Doomwing's parents had never approved of him.

It would have been trivially easy to simply blow the soldiers away, but he wanted to know what the people of this age were capable of. Humans might seem weak and pitiful, but he'd met plenty of them over the years who'd been able to rise above their humble origins. Some had been his enemies. Some had been allies. And a rare few had been his friends. Part of him was glad they were all dead because if this was what humanity had been reduced to, they would have died all over again out of sheer embarrassment.

The inferno in his mouth dwindled until it was little more than a candle flame, but even that was enough to light up the night sky. The bolt of fire struck the array of defensive spells and cracked it the same way a sledgehammer would have cracked an egg. The subsequent detonation had enough force behind it to tear a mile-wide crater in the earth while instantly vaporising every scrap of flesh and mundane metal in its area of effect.

As the cloud of smoke cleared and the rain of molten rock ceased, only the leader of the soldiers remained alive. Unlike a hatchling, Doomwing could control his flame. Sparing a single person was easy enough for someone who had spent millennia honing their control. The fool looked around at the devastation and then back to the sword he held. It was a trinket, the sort of ceremonial toy one of his old friends would have given to a noble who had displeased him as a way of gently reminding them of their responsibility to not be an idiot. Apparently, however, the people of this age had forgotten so much that even the toys of the previous age were now worthy of respect.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Humans. So quick to forget. But perhaps he was being unreasonable. A human was lucky to live eighty years. A thousand years must be a barely comprehensible span of time to them. To him? He counted millennia the way humans counted years.

"That was all of your power, right, dragon?" The human waved his toy around. "You may have slain my troops, but I will avenge them! I will -"

Doomwing rolled his eyes and landed with a thump. The human barely kept his footing and then charged toward him, gathering what paltry energies he could in an attempt to make a heroic final stand. The tiniest sliver of Doomwing's magic shattered the blade and bound the human in place.

"The only reason you're still alive," Doomwing drawled. "Is because I want to know more about who you serve."

The man glared as best he could. Either he was very brave or very stupid. Probably both. "I will tell you nothing, dragon."

"You will tell me everything." Doomwing's eyes narrowed. He would need to concentrate for this. He was not as adept in mind-manipulating magic as some of his old friends. Oh, he could peer into the minds of others, even tear information from them if they resisted. But his was not a gentle touch. No. When he reached into the minds of others, particularly those as weak as this human, they had a tendency to die horribly.

This human would be no exception.

As Doomwing began to peer into the human's memories, blood began to pour from the human's eyes, nose, and mouth. Doomwing chuckled. Ah, Marcus would have found this amusing. The ancient vampire had always liked to poke fun at Doomwing's inability to peer into people's minds without melting their brains, especially since Marcus was far more adept at it. Bah. Marcus was a vampire. Of course, he was better at peering into people's minds. It was part and parcel of being a vampire, right there with the bloodsucking, the brooding, and the hedonistic lifestyle that involved wearing far too much black leather.

"Gah!" Jarod began to wail, and Doomwing cast a silencing spell over him. That sort of high-pitched screaming was annoying.

Doomwing focused on the information he was pulling from Jarod's mind. The man had apparently been a highly ranked captain in his kingdom's forces, and he had the trust and favour of his king. That same king wanted to expand his territory by taking land from his neighbours. The kingdom had managed to defeat a dragon a while ago, so the king had come to the conclusion that seizing some of Doomwing's land was a viable option.

Idiot.

The dragon they'd slain had been a young, vainglorious fool, the sort of reptile who focused only on expanding their hoard instead of honing their power, wisdom, and cunning. Doomwing had met - and killed - plenty of fools like that over the years. They had things backward. Having a hoard didn't make them powerful and worthy of respect. No. Becoming powerful and worthy of respect was the best way to get and keep a suitably impressive hoard.

He'd have to educate this king and his kingdom on what a real dragon was like, and he'd have to see if all the other dragons of this Age were so pathetic. If they were, he might have to stay awake a bit longer because clearly something had gone wrong if a dragon who was a mere five hundred feet long thought he was invincible.

Still, he couldn't help but be irritated by the king's name and the title he claimed.

Doomwing ceased delving into Jarod's mind as the man's mouth opened and closed. Impressive. Despite his brain leaking out of his skull, the man was trying to speak. He might have been a fool, but Doomwing could respect that sort of determination. He dispelled the silencing magic and allowed the man to speak his last words.

"You..." Jarod bared his teeth in a snarl. "You have no idea of the fate that awaits you, dragon. High King Elerion will slay you himself! He is destined to rule over this world! He will unite the kingdoms of men once more and -"

That little spark of irritation Doomwing felt turned into a bonfire.

"Be silent!" Doomwing boomed. "Your king is unworthy of that name and that title!" He snarled, and fire kindled in his jaws once more. Memories came to him unbidden of a human with eyes like adamant and a soul like the sun. "I knew the last High King, and I was there when Elerion the Valiant fell! His armour was rent in a hundred places, his blessed sword was broken, and he was crippled and blinded! Yet still he fought, crushing the foes he could reach with his bare hands and piling high the bodies of his enemies until they had to climb hills of their dead to reach him! It took the Catastrophe of the Sixth Age herself to slay him, and even then, he managed to wound her before he fell! Your king is nothing more than an up-jumped brigand, and I truly hope that his lineage has nothing to do with my old friend's, for the shame of it would haunt him even in the afterlife!"

Doomwing took a deep, calming breath and then sighed. His anger had gotten the better of him, and the force of his words had reduced Jarod to pulp.

"Never mind." Doomwing gave a low rumble. "I should seek out the other villages and make sure there are no more soldiers left. After that... yes. I'll have to help them get back on their feet. Then I can deal with that pretender king." His lips curled into a very wide, very toothy smile. "It's been a while since I've razed a kingdom. It should be fun, and maybe they'll have some decent loot." He paused. "I should contact Marcus. He should still be around unless that fool managed to get himself killed somehow. It'll be like old times."