Chaos Dragon II

Page buffed up his arms and tried to shoot an arrow at it but the scales on the tips of the wings beat it off.

Black finally finished building up a skill, his Eye of Gravity, to push the dragon away, but it hardly nudged the dragon at all while Zeeth had to cling to the floor with all his might not to be pushed away with the force of a diving dragon counteracting him. He then focused on Gror's lightning sword, sending that at the dragon instead of the dragon itself. It singled the scales and dug into it's back, but the dragon didn't stop, it merely glanced in the direction where the burning sword came from, locking Zeeth and Gror as its next targets.

The dragon stopped just before Meda, a strong blast of wind and Black mist washing over him. He fell to the ground, looking scared but relieved that he wasn't dead yet. But the dragon suddenly landed again, it's a right foot right on top of Meda. Blood spurt out from under its foot, a single hand-rolled to them. When the dragon lifted its foot, Meda was flattened into the ground, at half the width he was before. But he slowly pushed himself up and turned his broken neck to them, his eyes squashed and replaced by hazy black and purple lights. The hand jumped back to be replaced with the body, the only part of him that wasn't flattened.

He climbed back up, the other merchants and children watching from a distance. He could hear their screams of terror at the dragon's appearance and Meda being crushed.

Zeeth was shocked at the death, he didn't usually have anyone die in a battle before. The dragons might be just too much, and this was an old, decrepit dragon too. The dragon inhaled deeply, sucking in the air from around them, and let out a long, loud roar of accomplishment at crushing Meda. Watching the dragon inhale, he suddenly remembered something. He didn't need to kill it from the outside, what if he could destroy it from the inside?

The dragon was old and probably didn't have good control over its mana, knowledge of the mana through a body isn't something he thought dragons would learn.

He shot himself up into the air with the help of greystone and water and shot his ice bow, connecting a line of ice from his left arm to the dragon. He trickled more water to the line of ice, firing a few more from the bow and sliding down the ice poles. The dragon swayed around, breaking off the ends and chunks of ice he was on, but he just shot some more out and adjusted his position until he was securely on the dragon's head.

It inhaled deeply again, getting ready to shoot out more mist.

"Zeeth, get away!" Gror yelled, "it's going to fire another blast!"

But Zeeth had his plan thought out. He quickly pulled out the Fluctu Potion from the spatial bag on his wrist and uncorked it, throwing the cork and emptying the entire bottle into the dragon's mouth.

"Aah, such a waste. Oh well, this was a life or death situation. I did buy it with only some information and experiments." he said, on top of the dragon's snout, standing over its mouth.

The dragon suddenly began choking and writhing, throwing Zeeth off. He landed on the floor next to Page and Gror, all the other carcasses had fallen to the floor limply.

"Was-was that a Fluctu Potion? Where did you get such a thing?? Wait, was that from Rolas?" Page asked, disbelief riddled across his face.

Gror was just as stunned, "what did you just do? Why is it choking??"

"I used a Fluctu Potion. If it doesn't have good control over its mana, it will die. The ultimate gamble. If it lives, we will die for sure." he explained nonchalantly.

"But it's a dragon, they don't have good control of their mana...right?" Gror said.

"No, that's a misconception. Dragons don't use their mana like we do, while we channel mana from around us through our body to use and change its properties in the body, a dragon collects mana and stores it within itself, using the time to change the mana so that it is more favorable for itself when it needs it. So a Fluctu Potion would simply add to that pile of collected mana, they would need to have enough room for the potion and to stir it evenly within itself while changing the attributes of the potion. It is an old dragon and it seems to be rather full of mana, so I think it'll die from this."

As he finished speaking, the dragon finished writhing. its scales were healing themselves, its eyes were turning a nice shade of black once again, the injured leg was healing back up. It roared happily at its recovery, swinging its head and ready to attack once again.

"Wait, it's happy! Do you think I can calm it down enough to tame it?" Zeeth asked hopefully.

Page jumped back warily and said, "no, of course not! Did you see how old that dragon was? Its beliefs and thoughts are solidified, it won't accept a new master, it's not capable of linking that potion to you wanting to help it! Besides, look at the gem on its forehead! It's clearly a type of compass gem, it is leading the dragon somewhere, most likely to destroy something! It has a master, it won't think of you as a new one."

They looked at the gem with the hazy purple fog around it in its forehead but they had to look away because even more skeletons had risen from the ground, these seemed to come from even deeper in the ground. Some of the creatures he didn't even recognize, he just knew they had to be destroyed.

But just as he balled up another magma ball and a ball of water, the skeletons fell and the rocks crumbled out, falling like sand. The dragon was standing still, staring up at the sky. It opened its mouth, inhaling for another attack, but instead, blood shot out like a fountain. A large cut slit its long throat from jaw to stomach. Another slashed across its stomach horizontally, cutting all around the dragon. Another burst its eyes and the dragon dropped to the floor. Its stomach heaved for a minute before it stopped. Its mana stopped oozing from the body and heat escaped from its mouth creating steam.

"It-it's dead?" Gror asked, suspiciously.

"We will have to check," Page said, heading to the carcass. The glossy, perfect-looking scales shone in the bright moonlight, its healed leg hung limply on the floor. He picked up a piece of ice that came from Zeeths battle and poked the heels of the dragon. He hopped onto its belly, poking around.

He finally got to the bottom of the head and said, "if it doesn't wake up now, it is dead."

And he held the ice with both hands, lifted up, and swung down as hard as he could at the line between the head and neck. The entire dragon flinched a little, all of its limbs jostling around. They all leaped back a little in dreadful surprise, thinking it woke up again, but relief washed over them like a warm blanket when the dragon didn't move any more.

"It...really is dead! We killed an old Chaos Dragon!!"

'Chaos Dragon?' Black said, 'back in my day it was Death Dragon, the worst of all dragons. Oh well, the time changes.'

"YEAAHHH!!"

They were all celebrating, clapping, and cheering, but the three of them all remembered at nearly the same time, Meda's body. It was lying in a pool of Meda's blood, crushed and hopeless. There was no way to tell who it was, the only thing that remained intact was his sword, which was pressed deeply into his chest and dug a pillow-like shape into him.

Zeeth picked up the hand that fell off, now that the dragon's magic wasn't holding the hand back to the broken body.

The merchants cautiously came to them from the carriage, seeing Page poking the dragon and cheering, thinking the battle had ended happily.

When Page solemnly held up Meda's body, Meta instantly dropped to his knees, tears welling up in his eyes. The rest of the group stared at the body, shocked and appalled. Silent tears trickled down their faces, kids' eyes were blocked from the body while people hugged Meta and each other, trying to console each other.

Page pulled out a bag from his spatial bag and covered the body with it, doing all this in the silence of the dead night. He folded the back around the body and set it in a thin, makeshift coffin made from a thin, foldable material.

"We will need to report this to the Hunters Association. I'm sure they will compensate you heavily, having lost his life in a battle against a Chaos Dragon." Page told him quietly.