“Come on you overgrown lizard! I’ve built campfires that spewed out more fire than you! Is this how you’ll avenge your brother?!” Jason taunted Sarre as he banged the hilt of sword against his shield, letting each strike resound like a gong. His taunts were greeted by angry, volcanic bursts of flames and roars from Sarre.
While Jason ran along the burnt ground dodging Sarre’s fire, Quil launched his own volley of deep blue flames down from the sky, keeping up a barrier between Sarre and Jason that glowed an eerie mix of purples from the blue, orange and red flames. Again Sarre roared out, no longer about to speak but still furious he had been unable to catch his prey again and attempted to fly off. Quil pummeled him once more with another bout of blue fire, with one blast missing its mark, nearly catching Jason and knocking him to the ground.
“Watch it you overgrown bat!” Jason yelled out at Quil while he forced himself back up with a strained grunt. He could tell the weight of his armor and the growing length of the battle were finally starting to take their toll.
Jason had lost track of time, but it had been at least thirty minutes since he had agreed to help Quil and sent his men off to evacuate the nearby towns. The once calm, moonlit night and thriving, golden fields had turned into a blazing warzone. Bright orange and blue fire had razed the hillsides, the grass turned to ashes and the sandy dirt melted down into molten glass. Even the surrounding trees and landscape that had avoided being caught in the battle took in the light from two dragons’ flames, creating what Jason imagined hell would look like.
It didn’t help that the crisp night air was now congested with scathing heat and sulfuric smoke and ash, making Jason desperate for cool or even just somewhat cleaner air to breath. Otherwise, the only thing that prevented him from being roasted alive was his blackened Torvis armor. Anything else would have melted onto him by now, if not immediately incinerated.
“You would be wise to keep your insults directed at Sarre or I’ll decide I have no need of your help bug,” Quil warned, unaware that Jason was reaching his limits with Jason unwilling to yield to them.
Thanks to Jason keeping Sarre’s attention and Quil battering him to the ground from above, together they had managed to contain Sarre, hoping help would come soon as he continued to devolve further into a feral beast. It was another thing that Jason added to the list to ask Quil and the other dragons about, along with dragbeasts, the dragons’ Torvis as well as the cure. That was if he lived through this encounter and hopefully Sarre as well, but it became increasingly apparent that there was little time left.
Almost all of Sarre’s thick, unique armor had crumbled off and turned to dust. Both of his secondary wings had shriveled up and the other two had deteriorated along with the rest of his body into what every other feral dragon he had fought looked like. Whatever this affliction was, it was not taking its time to take hold and made Jason wonder how much time left the Monarch had to get here.
To Jason, his only loyalty was to gaining the cure to this disease and ridding Avonous of it once and for all. But there was a small part of him that hoped there was an actual alliance between himself and Quil that could lead to an official alliance with the non-feral dragons. That peace with them was more than a legend.
Another blast of angry orange fire sprang out through the blockade of Quil’s blue flames, hastily followed by a long clawed forearm that tried to grasp the weary knight before it swiftly drew back behind the flames with a long howl of pain.
“Nice try Sarre, but I don’t think that blue is really your color!” Jason teased again. He had noticed that while Sarre was immune to his own orange flames, the blue flames from Quil caused him immense pain but no physical harm. He also hoped Sarre wouldn’t figure this out and push on through the wall ending its protection.
Another bombardment of blue flames rained down along with another howl of pain from Sarre before he went silent, no other sounds or movement aside from heavy, labored gasps of air. Jason hoped this meant that Sarre was too tired to continue his assault and would resign until the Monarch arrived to, hopefully, cure him.
With his shield still held up Jason kneeled down, taking advantage of Sarre’s the brief break in the battle to catch his own breath and prepare for the next assault when he noticed that part of his shield had been sliced through and it was no longer the deep raven’s black it had just been minutes ago. Instead, it was a dead, cold gray.
“What the?”
“Look out!”
But Quil’s warning came too late. Sarre’s ragged jaws shot out through the wall of flames, opened wide and posed to snap up Jason in a single bite. Jason just barely flung himself to the side and out of Sarre’s shark-like teeth only to be met by the dragon’s scythe-like claws. They gave off a spine-chilling grating noise as they tore clean through Jason’s armor like parchment and shredded the flesh of his torso and finished as the longest one caught the edge of his helmet and flung it off his head. Sarre’s strike tossed Jason into the air before jaggedly rolling across the ground and landing him on his back on top of the melted stone that had been the road before he screamed out in pain. The armor, so famed for protecting against everything and anything that a dragon had to offer had for the very first time, failed.
“No, no,” he moaned, “It can’t…I can’t…” but he could already feel something dark writhing inside him, clouding his thoughts and immobilizing his body. A dragon might be able to last long enough to be cured, but once the disease took hold in a human, in him, there would be barely enough time for him to say goodbye before Jason the human was no more. And with a direct hit like that, he might not even live long enough to be cured or turn. There was nothing left he could do while he watched the smoke from the burning ground rise around him into what would have been a clear, starry night. Time seemed to stop as he felt each thunderous blast of Quil’s fire hit the ground, sending flashes of light through the dry, ashen air.
“Knight! Human! You must get up! It is almost over! Menus and a Monarch are on the horizon. Human!” Quil called out, sounding panicked, but Jason continued to slip away piece by piece, wishing he had at least told Quil his name while the sights and sounds around him began to blur together. Two heavy thuds hit the ground, Sarre let out a squeal and Quil urgently spoke with Menus and a new voice that must have been the Monarch.
“What has happened here since Menus left? Why is there a human here?” the Monarch demanded, in a clear, commanding tone that was feminine and almost ethereal.
“Sarre has finally been immobilized with many thanks to the human knight. He chose to aid me and spare Sarre instead of slaying him so he could be saved from the madness. I hadn’t realized he had grown so weak and he fell to Sarre’s claws. I was unable to protect him as I had promised,” Quil spoke with remorse and hung his head low, distressed that he had been unable to protect something as fragile and fierce as Jason had proven to be.
“He’s not dead yet, but either the injury or madness will take him soon. Much sooner than Sarre,” the Monarch observed.
“Then we should let him pass on as himself at the very least for helping save Sarre,” Menus replied somberly.
“…No, I can still save him as well. Watch over Sarre. I must act quickly,” the Monarch ordered.
“High Matriarch, I don’t mean to question you-,” Quil began before she silenced him.
“Then don’t. He chose to give his life to save Sarre, a creature he was raised and trained to hunt and hate. He has proven himself more than worthy,” she firmly commanded.
“Yes, Your Highness,” Quil conceded, his tail and wings twitching out of nervousness for the Matriarch he had helped raise himself.
With swift, determined steps the High Matriarch walked over to Jason, each one becoming softer until they made almost no sound aside from a light crunch and the added sound of heavy cloth dragging against the bruised terrain. It was not more than a few seconds before her tall, graceful figure loomed over Jason that even in his rapidly declining state he was still able to register a look of shock on his face at the High Matriarch’s form.
Her form was not human, dragon or even dragbeast. Instead, she stood upon two long and lean, yet strongly built dragon-like hind legs and feet. Her torso’s frame was lean in build, yet sturdy, along with her arms that ended with five-fingered, clawed hands. She even wore an expensive, royal looking gown made of thick, silken cloth colored sky blue with crisp, silver swirls and jewelry embedded throughout it. While her head was similar to a regular dragon’s, her snout was noticeably shorter and her head’s shape and horns closer to that of a stag’s rather than a lizard. Finally, her skin was covered with silver-blue scales that he could swear were glowing with their own soft light. But Jason didn’t have any more energy to think about the way she looked.
With a quick, fluid movement she knelt down next to Jason and propped his head up with what Jason assumed was her tail that must have been hidden beneath her gown. Wasting no time she removed his damaged chest guard, let it clatter at his side and focused on carefully removing the bloodied, torn clothing he wore beneath it to tend to the gashes that Sarre had given him.
While Jason could not see the extent of his injuries, the Matriarch now doubted if she would be able to save him. Gray scales had already started spreading out from around the gashes, his blood was turning from red to black and it was clear that the injury would not be what took him. She stared deep into his eyes, hoping to see that there was enough of him left inside to save for what she planned to do. Even with the thickening fog in his mind, Jason could tell she wanted to help him and that she had placed him before Sarre. But her doubt was obvious too. He didn’t blame her and tried to tell her to let him pass with a pleading stare for a merciful end.
“No, there is enough,” she quietly spoke to herself. Carefully she pierced her own fire sack and let a few drops of its liquid coat the tip of her claw, hoping this was the right choice.
If the affliction had not been so far along in Jason, she would have only had to breathe the golden liquid into a fine mist onto the wound and into his lungs to heal him and grant him immunity from the madness. It was an immunity that only dragon Monarchs carried within their fire and that only they could pass along. But the infection was beyond that point and now only pure, unaltered dragon’s fire would cure him. With great care, she took her claw coated in the liquid fire and gently spread it along each of the three gashes and the small nick on his chin from where his helmet had been removed.
The Matriarch hadn’t even finished coating the first gash when the gray scales began to retreat, the oozing, black blood hardened and turned into a smooth, golden scab as known as dragon’s amber. It was only a few moments before Jason was able to move again and the clouded, dark, twisting sensation of the madness completely vanished.
After taking a few careful breaths, Jason cautiously sat up on his own as the Matriarch slowly pulled back to give him space. Gently he probed at the golden scars with his fingers expecting them to be sore and hard. Instead, they felt and moved just like the rest of his skin with no trace of pain. Relief spread across his face as he turned his attention to the High Matriarch, “Thank you, Your…Your Highness?” He wasn’t entirely sure how to actually address dragon royalty or dragons at all for that matter.
“You may formally thank me later. Right now I must attend to Sarre before the madness can progress any further,” she replied in a matter-of-fact tone, transformed into her natural dragon form and proceeded to attend to Sarre. Her dragon form was similar to her human form except she would be awe strikingly majestic to any human who saw her as four silver wings that were a cross between a bird’s and a bat’s flourished out of her backside and silver armor inlaid with graceful swirls and teal gems now donned her skin, including what he would describe as a faceguard on her head and snout.
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