Fighting Fire with Fire

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. In fact Yost Valley had never had one sighting until now. Kaloyan knew this better than anyone, and he made sure to tell this to the bedraggled man at the Inn spinning tales of a ferocious beast. He spluttered on and on about it laying waste to villages throughout Yost for the last several weeks. Kaloyan had told the man in no uncertain terms that he must be mistaken. He assumed this traveler had had too much to drink. When the man began to describe the dragon’s proportions, and power, Kaloyan had had no problem telling the man that he was a thoroughbred halfwit. A dragon of such proportions would have attracted attention long ago. Yost was in the borderlands, so news of their villages rarely reached the main hubs of civilization, but the dragon he was describing would have been around for hundreds of years. Folklore, songs, local art, all of it would have been present if there had been a monster in their midst. Even if the dragon had been reclusive. Dragons had to hunt and fly. A dragon of this size would not have gone unnoticed. And yet here he was, dripping in sweat, and full plate armor in the countryside that had been charred to ash, villages wasted and livestock devoured. He was standing, at the border of a forest that had been razed to the ground a few miles away from a town he was trying to protect. And even though Yost had never seen or heard rumors of a dragon, here, towering before him was a dragon 60 feet high. It stalked him snarling and spewing smoke. In awe he acknowledged it was the most fearsome dragon he had yet beheld. And he had beheld many.

This dragon was a female Razorback of colossal size, whose copper scales gleamed so brightly, he could make himself out in the reflection. There were hundreds of him dancing and shifting with every move he made. He fought the urge to look, as it made his head swim. Instead he watched her eyes. Those pale pale blue eyes, with gold and black pupils intently staring him down. She moved sinuously and with great agility for such a behemoth beast. He had been startled at how quick she had been as she was lunging at him, skittering, and even snaking her body around him, trying to coil around him. She hadn’t managed it yet. She hadn’t managed it because his mother had trained him to look in your opponents eyes. The key to sustainable defense was to watch your attackers' eyes. Especially when in combat with dragons. No matter how ferocious, or feral, the pupils would dilate or shrink right before it made its move. His mother had drilled it into him, after running him again and again in combat practice. Kaloyan had been thoroughly thrashed by his warrior mother on more than one occasion by her legendary fighting skills. He was alive right now, panting and sweating because his mother, his glorious, tenacious mother had made sure it was a lesson he would never forget. He still remembered the aches and bruises that were the result of him forgetting to keep his focus on her eyes when they practiced.

It was because of his mother they were even in this part of the world. She had been missing for 3 years. It was not unusual for her to be about her work for prolonged periods of time, but it was clear something had happened. She had been resolving blood rights in the Krell mountain range when she vanished. They thought at first she had been called to more urgent work, but it soon became apparent that she had disappeared. He had been traveling near Yost on his way to the Krell mountains in search of her when tales reached his ears. Tales of the new dragon which at first he didn’t believe. When people heard that Kaloyan was traveling nearby, they had sent several members of the Village council as a sad excuse of an envoy. The spokesman had begged him into this detour to save the valley from absolute destruction. Though, surprised that the tales of the bedraggled man did in fact have clout, he was convinced it was a young, unseasoned dragon. When Kaloyan had clapped eyes on this fully grown dragon, he knew this would be the worst he had ever fought by the way she leered at him. All battles were won in the gaze. Her eyes were cold and ruthless. But if he was to anticipate any of her mistakes, he would have to stare into that fell gaze. It was the animal’s ‘tell’, he supposed. A term his Uncle Davies would say when they played the unusual card games from his homeland. Every combat was like this, because no matter how ruthless or deceptive the opponent- the body never lies. A dragon's genetics were rooted in the foundations of this world, a dwindling archaic race from which many sprung from. So as their wiring had trickled eons into eons, they were no exception to this rule. Kaloyan felt sweat run down his spine as he fixed his gaze to hers. He was bruised and bleeding, with a thigh muscle spasm that threatened to give way. But still, he stared her down, waiting as she dared him to blink. To take his focus away, to make him cower. In a split second he saw the black in her pupil overtake the gold and only then did he shift his eyes to her haunches where he saw her coil before she lunged, teeth snapping, followed by a swing of that battering ram of a tail. He dodged both those lethal spikes and her gaping maw, but the tail landed less than 5 feet away, and the tremors it sent through the earth knocked him to his knees. He got back up but barely missed the horns that rimmed the crown of her head coming in for a spiral swing. He was alive, but was he going to be able to keep this up much longer? He had grounded her earlier in the fight, by crippling one of her wings. He could see the internal hemorrhaging through the crepe translucent leathery wing. She would probably never fly again. Kaloyan had great esteem for dragons and it wounded him to see this one, a mammoth jewel of such beasts disfigured. But it was clear that this dragon would fight to the death. There would be no compromise. He had known when he came to confront this dragon that something was wrong.

All dragons could communicate, though how, was often determined by their age, color and specific set of abilities. Some, newer to this world, could speak in the tongue of humans. Some dragons chose to speak within the mind, sharing with you their thoughts. And the oldest, the ancients, had less in the way of formalized language. Instead they would share their thoughts through the senses; a primal but effective method. Kaloyan had experienced it once, and as the dragon imprinted on his senses he felt the world awaken within him. It was one of his most cherished memories, even though it had cost him sorely in battle to earn that communication. All dragons expected combat when encountered. It was their way. A way he had been taught to honor and revere. It was through combat that dragons would deem you worthy of communication. Yet here in this charred valley, the fighting had worn on and on. Well past the usual point of establishing dominance and hierarchy. No, something was badly wrong.

Dragons, he knew, were regarded as the most intelligent of all wild creatures, though their intelligence manifested differently than humans. This deep copper devil he was charged to rein in had given no signs of higher intelligence. She was lethal, but unpolished, and battled with poor etiquette. The rules in dueling a dragon were subtle, but concrete. To abandon them meant to jeopardize your honor as a dragon. If there was one thing that ran as deep as their heritage it was their pride. It felt as though he was seeing the difference in this battle compared to dozens of others like he would notice the difference between a domesticated cat and a feral one. They looked the same, moved the same, but their mannerisms interacting were in utter conflict.

The dragon buffeted him with her remaining good wing, and he managed to roll out of the way. He was tired. It had been nearly four hours of combat. He needed to end this now. Before he could think the tail came down again too fast for him to move out of his path and he cringed as he brought up his shield. Each spike was no less than 6 feet long, and the crushing power behind it could blast a hole through a stone keep. The impact fell onto his shield, but the shield held, thrumming into a resonance that nearly deafened him. He braced as the shield absorbed the kinetic energy from the blow and the shield turned piping hot, as burnt orange as her glorious scales.

She was no ordinary dragon, but then he was certainly no ordinary man. And he had an unusual gift. It was how he had crippled her wing, and now she had given him the power to strike her again. He didn’t have a dragon's strength, but he could use hers. His shield could absorb power, both magical and physical with a fraction of the impact. It still hurt as if bricks were slamming into his arms. But he would survive it. He walked off the battlefield often with an arm bruised and swollen, but still he survived and dished back all that had been delivered. So as that spiked tail slammed into him he channeled that arcane power and did something only he could do. In as much power as she smashed into him with, he could invert into his own weaponry. As her tail rebounded he arched his sword and sent a volley of swords, hundreds of perfect illusions of his own sword into her flanks. Many bounced off of those mirror scales, but still many found purchase driving in between the openings between scales, and the softer plating in her chest and abdomen. The dragon howled in rage and pain. Cobalt blue blood oozed from the wounds and the ground sizzled and steamed where it hit. As her maw bellowed, a flame of broiling gold shot into the heavens raining down fire. He ducked under his shield, as he saw her whip that cascading flame his way.

He heard screams from several hundred feet away. Idiot villagers who were there to watch the spectacle. He had known they were there, and had tried to dissuade them from coming. But still he glanced over to make sure they were unharmed, as embers rained from the sky . He looked over more specifically because he was trying to spot one person in particular. Not a villager, but his brother Kaan. It seemed as though the screams from the villagers were more in fright than pain. They were fine and still out of range. He groaned under the weight of raw fire power entering his shield. It was perhaps the last time he could absorb such power. This shield had its limits. It had bounds as to how much power it could absorb before he recalibrated it. Finally his eyes met Kaan’s cerulean blue eyes, that no human eyes could make out from that far. He had been the only child in their family to inherit his mothers blue eyes. His brother was not as skilled a fighter as he, but he knew his every move, and knew the fight would end shortly one way or the other. Kaloyan’s brother nodded as if confirming he was at his limits and if he didn’t end this now, he wouldn’t be capable of ending it at all. Kaan clasped his forehand in the grip that signified Kaloyan’s fighting sobriquet. A salute to his fighting power and trademark magic.

They called him The War Forge. He was able to transform his weaponry into whatever power he was dealt. He was unmatched and unrivaled. But he had never intended to take on this dragon. He was here as a courtesy, to save these people as his parents would expect. As the world expected of him, as it was his duty. His bloodlines were bound to the magical planes that encompassed this world to wield the layers of its juggernaut power. Their lives were in effect forfeit as they were to sacrifice their desires to duty and order. Even if it meant laying down their lives. Which with how this fight was proceeding may not be far off. But he would be damned to lose this battle and be robbed of helping restore balance to the magical world because of a dragon. His family was in charge of managing the rifts, the pathways that fed magical worlds into one another, or into voids where magic could not exist at all. They sealed and kept the portals intact. His mother was the gatekeeper. Her royal blood was the conduit for all magic in this realm. Much of that ran in his veins, and his siblings. She had gone missing on one of her routine checks at the northern edge of the continent, and she had never come home. Rumors of dark sorcerers, necromancy and slave herders where beginning to be whispered around the land. Far more was at stake than a dragon and a few hundred villagers. But he knew it would be her wish to not abandon them in their acute need. And while the world needed his mother for what she could do, he simply missed his mother. He would not yield to this serpent or any other foe til he saw her again.

He could feel the pent up power of that fire roaring within his shield. He didn’t know how, but it just kept coming with no outlet for him to channel it yet as the dragon continued to cascade Hell upon him. He cried out in agony as he felt his bones fracture from the magnitude of the force the shield was absorbing. He would not die here, not like this. As this thought surfaced, that vivid blue blood from the dragon began to puddle around his boots and Kaloyan yelped as it ate away at his shoe and burned the skin inside. Kaan was right. If he didn’t act now he was going to perish. He wasn’t sure exactly what would take him first, the acid of her blood or his War Forge shield figuratively turning into an anvil to crush him beneath that much absorbed power. He actually had no idea what would happen if the shield reached its limits. He didn’t even know what the limits of this shield were. He saw the edge of her tail, not far from him and for once stationary.

With the shield still propped above him he awkwardly began sprinting toward her tail, readying the final weapon she had unwittingly given him. He heard and felt before he saw the light of the fire disappear that she had stopped blasting him with it. He was close now, but as she saw him sprinting he knew she would assail him before he could get there. He took some of the power in his own veins and felt for the current of magic that was always present around him and used it to jolt. This was not one of his finer magical abilities, and he often neglected it as such. But as slipshod as it was, it was what he needed as he vanished and appeared 20 feet closer, then again til he was 10 feet closer, until he was sprinting up her tail. She was winding to snap at him, but stopped and shuddered in debilitating agony as the final weapon he was forging materialized in his hands, imbued with the pyroclastic power of her own flame. A brilliant firelance, that he dragged behind him as he sprinted up her spine. She was paralyzed as he severed her nerves and cleaved her in two from tail to nape. Silence filled the valley as the dragon swayed. Kaloyans fire lance dissipated, and with his free and unbroken arm he held on to one of the many spines protruding from the ridge of her scaled back and felt the wind rushing up as the immense beast collapsed to the ground, the earth rushing to meet them.

A roar of approval came from the villagers on the distant hill, but Kaloyan bowed his head in sorrow. She had been magnificent. He had never seen a dragon of such colossal size, or power. She must have been more ancient than any known to their family. Though he often battled with dragons, he had never finished one. He had deep fostered relations with many of the dragon clan, and sometimes understood their culture better than his own. It was in reverie that he held onto that spine and bowed his head and wept. Kaloyan was not a man of tears. He was a man of high passion and he didn’t just dish out weaponry to match on the battlefield. He had a barbed tongue and a temper that got him in more than enough trouble. He would match you in any argument and rarely turned to distinguishing the flames. He would match your fire till he burned you out first. His father, a calm and cool man called him a Volcano. Kaloyan was charismatic, charming, boisterous, pleasant and sometimes volatile, like a volcano erupting. Life was wonderful at its slopes, until something happened. But even as intense as he was, it was rare for him to cry.

He brushed his tears away and looked around at the destruction around him. Off in the distance he saw Kaan leading the Villagers as they came to see the great feat. Kaloyan heaved an agitated sigh. They would pilfer and harvest everything out of this dragon. They would carve her up for meat and make armor and trinkets from her scales, bottle up her blood for acid, and hock her teeth and spines to exotic dealers throughout the countryside. As this thought ran through his mind he cursed the peasants that lived here. As soon as he had done so he could almost hear his ever logical little sister, Leila contradict his ire. He could imagine how she would chastise him.

‘Oh Kal, really why must you be so obtuse? The dragon has lived out its life for centuries, maybe eons and in the process desecrated their crops and forest. Now what will they eat? Where will they get their lumber and their wild game? I’m sure their livestock has been affected too. It’s not enough that the dragon should simply die- you’ve saved them from immediate destruction, but thankfully now these people will have another way to make up for their losses. Now they won’t starve.’

Leila was usually the voice of reason in his head when he had none of his own. Still he scowled.

Suddenly, and without warning the spine he was perched on rumbled and gave way and he went tumbling down the scale neck of the dragon landing in that acidic blood, and sizzling his side and thigh in the landing. Swearing vehemently, he scrambled back up onto one of its haunches and peered over its flank to see what had caused such a collapse. As he peered over the edge he saw something that made his blood run cold. A cavity had become exposed as the spine began to disintegrate. There lying face down in a leather tunic, breeches and boots with a slice that ran the length of her spine was a full grown woman. Time held him in suspension as he processed what he already knew, then he started roaring for his brother.

‘Kaan! Kaan!’ He saw in the distance that Kaan held a hand up to keep the villagers from moving any further.

‘Kaan, I need you!’ He screamed near hysterics.

Kaan was far better at Jolting, and zipped to Kaloyan’s side within a few seconds.

‘Are you hurt?’

Kaloyan wasn’t sure what had made him realize, the clothing, the pale skin, the dark hair or the pair of Katana blades strewn beside her. Kaan, his younger brother, but the calmer of the two turned his eyes to where Kayolans now ashen face was staring down into the hollow.

He gripped onto Kal’s arm.

‘How is this possible?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘What have you done?’ Kaan demanded.

‘Can you heal her?’ Kaloyan said through clenched teeth.

‘I’ve never healed something this extensive. I don’t know. I don’t know if I can do it.’ Kaan said, gripping the hair near his temples. ‘You certainly delivered this time Kal.’ Kaan spat at him before he climbed into the dragon’s carcass. ‘How could you not know what you were fighting?’

‘I have no idea! There was no sign of shifting!’ Kal yelled back, ‘But I’m asking you to heal her. I can’t. You know I can’t.’

Kaan’s hands were already working around the woman’s back, trying to seal the gaping wound as he snapped back,

‘I’m well aware, Kal. All you ever do is obliterate everything in your path.’

Kaloyan stood rooted watching his brother work with a power that had been gifted to every member of their family except him. He couldn’t heal. It was the signature trait of his fathers side of the family. Everyone could heal. Everyone except Kaloyan. And while it had been a sore spot growing up, Kal had relished his own unique power that no one in the family, save for him possessed: Magical Transference. But now as he looked down on the broken body, as he realized why something was wrong about this particular dragon he would have traded that power in a heartbeat if he could have that healing gift his eldest brother was so adept at. Even with his brother's refined gift it would take a miracle to undo the damage the fire lance had done.

In a calmer, detached voice Kaan said,

‘You’d better keep the villagers from getting any closer. If they see this, it could undermine the last half century of work.’ Kaloyan nodded, and turned to dash into the jolt that would propel him within seconds to the crowd. He could keep them here, at least for a while. Even if she couldn’t be saved, he could at the very least save her reputation and the legacy she had built. He could hold together for her the world she had saved. He couldn’t let these common simpletons see that the monster he had slain was in fact the one woman who had pulled this world out of chaos. He couldn’t let them see her lying in such ruin. He couldn’t let them see one of the few people who could match his fire and passion twain by her own son's hand. He would keep them here to protect his mother, if only he was protecting her in name.