“And then he buggered off as soon as you appeared, and, well, here we are.”

If the dragon was remotely impressed with my tale, its face gave no indication. Although, I’m not sure what expertise I’m claiming in this area. For all I know, it was giving it the full “Oh.My.God!” with its eyes throughout my story, and I was just missing the subtleties of draconic micro-expressions.

“What a crock of shit.” Or maybe not.

“Sorry?”

“You’re telling me that, not only is Merlin dead, but that you are the only possible cultivator in all the realms he felt could help him ‘save the world.’ And that, knowing how weak you are, he thought the best way for you to advance was to bring you here?”

“Yes.”

“Bollocks.”

“Look, I don’t know what else to tell you. Do you think I would be making this up?”

“Did Merlin tell you what happened to the last couple, I think it was five actually, of his apprentices he bought to me here?”

“He didn’t mention it, no.”

In much the manner that Merlin pulled me into his memories, the dragon suddenly did the same thing and showed me, in graphic detail, what it did to those poor souls. It was a horrific storybook collection I’m going to call ‘Five Go to Dragon’s Castle and Get Brutally Pounded by a Giant Lizard.’

“These were some of the most advanced practitioners of the age. Merlin had even forsaken his own cultivation to allow them access to enough Qi to advance, and he’d personally tutored them in different methods of facing me. And not one of them lasted more than a few minutes before going up in flames. You expect me to believe that he plucked you from the back end of nowhere on a super-secret mission of huge importance and then brought you here to face me without so much of a shield spell?”

The horse-sized dragon was getting quite up in my face now. It seemed super pissed off at the very idea that I was there to fight it. I had a friend, let’s call her Michelle (for that is her name), who considered herself a stone-cold 10/10. She applied for all those terrible reality shows like ‘Love Island’ and ‘Take Me Out’ and generally thought an awful lot of herself. If anyone she deemed ‘unworthy’ even so much as glanced her way, she’d kick off in much the same way as the dragon was here: a real ‘know your place and be pleased to breathe the same oxygen as me, Elephant man’ energy about her.

I understood I was hardly Sorceror Supreme material, but I couldn’t help but feel a touch hurt by its visceral anger at the ideal I could even think about challenging it. Also, I didn’t particularly appreciate being made to feel a kinship with the host of Darrens and Deans that Michelle sent away with a flea in their mishappen ears.

Then something occurred to me. In all the visions of battles with the other apprentices - and the awful, awful slaughter that was at each of their conclusions - the dragon was in its colossal, town-sized form.

None of the others had faced this smaller version.

”I don’t know what you think you’re playing at coming here with such a crappy story, but I don’t buy it for a second. Merlin’s up to something, and as soon as I figure it out, there will be a wailing and gnashing of teeth the like of which the world has not witnessed in centuries.” It butted its head aggressively against my chest once more. I was really getting quite fed up with this attitude. “If he thinks sending me a baby cultivator with barely a drop of Qi and not a single technique to its name for a snack is going to make up for all those efforts to try and steal my horde, he has another thing coming. First, I’m going to -”

The dragon realised I had my arm raised. “What are you doing?”

“I just wanted to correct something you said.”

“You what!?!” I had the impression not many people interrupted this dragon. It did not seem keen on the experience. Again, a bit like Michelle.

“You said something that’s not quite right.”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

“You have a few seconds left to live. What are you blithering on about?”

“How you described me. It’s not quite right.”

“Do you think I care? You’re nothing more than -”

“I understand. Take all the invective as read. I just wanted to make sure we are all on the same page.”

The dragon opened its mouth and took in a huge breath. I could see right down its throat to where flames had started to creep upwards.

“You see, this Ron does have one pretty useful technique . . .”

In the air, I heard glass shatter and the opening bars of “I won’t do what you tell me” boomed out across the sky.

My fists glowed bright purple as I opened a [Can of Whoopass] on a dragon.

*

Fun fact, the neck of a giraffe has the same number of bones in it as a human. Apparently, a dragon is much similar.

I mention this because, as my technique was completed and I crashed the dragon’s head into the top of my shoulder, the force exerted appeared to be too much for the small number of bones that were supporting such a long neck.

What I’m saying is that [Can of Whoopass] tore the dragon’s head from the rest of its body.

I’m not sure which of us was the more surprised - I mean, obviously, it was the now decapitated dragon - but I was pretty damn shocked by the outcome too.

I stood there, agog, for a few moments, holding the head like some sort of post-modern Hamlet. The torso slumped to the floor, pumping out waves of sludgy green blood as if the dragon’s heart simply refused to believe what had just happened.

Considering the dragon had spoken with the voice of James Dean, it felt pretty ironic it ended up just being a disembodied head. Or, actually, that was not ironic at all, was it? Damn you, Alanis Morissette and your misleading of a generation as to the meaning of basic linguistic terms.

I love it when a plan comes together.

I didn’t quite have it in me to answer Merlin immediately. There was so much adrenaline racing around my body that I needed to gulp in several large breaths before even beginning to think to formulate a response.

Oh, look at Mr I’ve-Turned-all-Your-Apprentices-into-Charcoal. Who’s laughing now?

“Merlin -”

Didn’t see that coming, did you? Nope. Thought you’d got one over on Merlin, didn’t you? All that swanking about. All that bragging to the other spirit beasts. But I play the long game. Even dead, I turned out to be too crafty for you, right?

“Merlin -”

Two hundred years I’ve been bringing my apprentices here, and I finally got you. With the worst of the lot and without my physical body even being here. Head torn right off your shoulders by a non-entity of a cultivator. How humiliating for you.

I threw the head to the floor and put my hands on my hips. “Did you just use me as bait to settle an old score?”

There was a pause.

Not exactly. I think you’d describe what we did here as sandbagging. We lured the dragon into thinking you were a tragically weak specimen through - you know - you being wholly inadequate. Then, when its guard was down and it was back to normal size, you got to use your trump card and said goodnight, Mr Dragon. It was a great plan which you carried off flawlessly, my dear.

“But crucially, Big M, this was not a plan I had any idea about.”

Well, no. The dragon needed to see your genuinely pathetic display when it first appeared. They’re very good at reading emotions, and it was only because you were so guilelessly useless that it made itself vulnerable to you—a brilliant, brilliant plan, if I say so myself.

“And if it had simply blasted me the second it appeared?”

Cultivating is all about risk and reward, my dear. Faint heart never won fair lady. Necessity is the mother of taking chances.

“If the chance is me being eaten by a dragon, it’s probably polite we talk about that first!”

For someone who was dead yesterday and seemed pretty happy to return to that state, you are moaning an awful lot about being in mortal danger.

That bought me up short. Merlin was quite right. When had I made the transition from not caring one way or another about being alive to feeling indignant at having my, second, life put in danger?

Merlin took advantage of the pause to press his advantage.

If you learn one lesson under my tutelage, my dear, it is that the ends always justify the means. Always. No one ever cares about how the sausages are made; they just want them on their plate first thing in the morning. We need you to get stronger. Quickly. We’ve spent considerable time shoring up your foundations, but now we need to see some real growth. There is no better way to do so than defeating and consuming a spirit beast: particularly one as old and as wily as this one. It’s why I kept bringing my apprentices here. I hoped one would be able to take that next step. But none of them managed it, no matter how strong or how well I prepared them. But you? You took its head at the first time of asking.

I wanted to shout and stamp my foot. I wanted to rail against how unfair Merlin had been, how irresponsible. I wanted to slap his smug, satisfied face and scream and scream until he went deaf.

But it was not just him being a voice in my head that halted that desire. It was the glowing light that suddenly started leaking out from the chest of the dragon’s body.

It was a colour I had never seen before. To try to draw comparisons with words seems somewhat redundant, but the best I can do is to say it was the colour of overwhelming strength. It pulsed and writhed in the air, seemingly looking for a new home.

Now, this is very important. You need to gather that Qi – can you remember how you did it with the wolf, my dear? Excellent. However, you need to do so exceptionally carefully. Breathe it in. But do so slowly. It is absolutely vital that you don’t take in more than you can handle in one go or –

So, of course, I inhaled the whole lot in one snort.