Explorer of Edregon

As giant ballistae bolts rained down on and around the dragon, many of them even managing to smash into its gigantic form and splash acid all over it, the monster roared, flaring out all four of its wings and causing darkness to fall across the land. The dragon had to be roughly six or seven stories tall.

Its wingspan was easily twice that.

One of the two smaller wings lower down on its back looked too damaged to unfurl correctly, eaten away with acid bolts and wounded from the central cannon, but the other three were almost entirely untouched. With a powerful, massive flap, the dragon lifted off the ground, shooting up into the sky and practically blotting out the sun as it hovered over all of them. The monster was large enough that if it were to simply drift over Terra and stop flapping, it could wipe out an entire quarter of the town simply as it crash-landed on top of everyone. Vin didn’t care how durable Witherson’s buildings were, there wasn’t a chance in hell they would survive against something like that crashing into them.

The dragon flapped up above them, its gigantic eyes narrowing as smoke began slipping from the corners of its mouth again. This time, it didn’t waste its energy going for Vin.

The dragon had eyes only for Spur.

Thankfully, Spur wasn’t blind, and he turned, shouting at everyone around him. “Get out of here, now! Run!”

Other than Mai, everyone around him did just that, turning and fleeing as fast as their legs could carry them. Spur and Mai remained locked in place, watching the dragon as it opened its mouth and took in a deep breath. Another giant geyser of flame blasted out of the dragon’s mouth, this one coming straight down from the heavens like some sort of divine judgement.

While Mai cowered slightly, she refused to leave the command center for the battle, and Spur didn’t so much as flinch. The Commander of Terra and its Strategist stood their ground as they faced their approaching doom head-on, waiting for the inevitable. But at the last possible moment, there was a flash of purple, and Lumel popped into existence between them. Grabbing the two of them, she barely managed to get out in time, vanishing seemingly at the same moment the fire washed over where they’d been standing. Vin didn’t even have time to shout, and he flinched as Lumel popped into existence directly beside him, her face red and flushed just from the proximity to the fire.

“Wow… I actually thought I was going to die,” Spur muttered, staring with wide eyes at the spot he’d been standing in moments ago as the fire continued raining down. “I’m dead serious, I had my whole life flash before my eyes and everything. Man, I regret that brief stint where I tried roller derby.”

“Damn it, Spur, now is not the time!” Vin snapped, smacking the Commander across the back of the head with his golem arm and causing the man to jump.

“Ow! Use your other hand next time, that hurt!”

“Mai, what do we do?” Lumel asked, turning toward the Strategist. Mai seemed to be taking her near death far better than Spur, as if she’d anticipated Lumel would save them and hadn’t doubted the pulmon for a second.

“Scule’s poison is definitely having an effect. Honestly, it’s probably the only reason this thing hasn’t killed half of Terra by now,” she said, her pupils narrowing and dilating unnervingly as she kept staring at the dragon. “But it’s not enough. Our best bet is to finish it off with a second shot from the central cannon, but that means we need to survive long enough for them to finish prepping it for another shot. And we’ll need to bring the dragon back to the ground first. The cannon takes too long to aim, we’ll never hit a flying target.”

“Alright… how exactly do we do that?” Vin asked, having a bad feeling about where this was going. By this point, the dragon had finished unleashing its flames down on Spur, and it was busy roaring into the sky as it continued flapping its wings.

Sure enough, his bad feeling proved to be quite justified. In response to his question, Mai turned to him, her eyes snapping back to normal as she looked at him from top to bottom, her lips forming a thin line.

“…How accurate are you with your gravity magic? Can you get up there and onto the dragon?”

“What?!” Lumel asked, looking at the Strategist like she was insane. “What in the world would he do up there?!”

“Unless we can ground the dragon, we can’t beat it,” Mai said, turning and pointing up at the dragon as it finished roaring. “We need to take its wings out of commission. Our ballistae aren’t designed to fire straight up, which means Vin’s our only option. You don’t have to kill it, all I need you to do is get it to land. You do that much, and we’ll take care of the rest.”

“Even if I could pull that off, what happens if the thing falls straight down and crushes everyone?” Vin asked, his face pale as he imagined dropping the dragon directly into the heart of Terra.

“Try to not do that,” Mai said, shoving him toward the dragon. “Hurry, before it decides to fire again!”

Vin spared one last glance at Lumel, noting the look of worry on her face as he prepared himself. Somehow, that overt concern for him gave him the strength he needed, and he smiled, putting on a brave face for her.

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“Hey, at least I don’t need to go inside this one, right?” he asked, laughing as she made a weird face and shook her head. “I’ll be right back, don’t worry!”

“Just be careful,” she said, giving him a quick kiss before stepping back.

“When am I ever not?” Vin asked, before flipping his gravity on its head and launching himself straight at the dragon.

At this point, Vin had managed to recover the majority of his mana, which was good, because he had a feeling he was going to need most of it. As he fell toward the gaping maw of the dragon, the monster narrowed its eyes at him and began screeching, the noise like a physical blow to his head that Vin struggled to shake off.

Before he could fully regain his focus, the dragon’s tail lashed out, the giant protrusion on a direct collision course to smash him out of the air. Muttering under his breath, Vin cast Enhance Gravity on himself, sending him falling even faster at the dragon and narrowly dodging the swinging tail as he picked up speed. He somehow knew that if he attempted to slow down and land on the dragon ‘normally’, it would either bite him in half or knock him out of the sky. No, if he wanted to take down the dragon, he was going to have to do it in style.

Falling faster than gravity would normally allow, Vin cast one more spell while he screamed up toward the dragon, pulling his magic blade out of another dimension as he prepared himself. Slamming directly into his target sword-point first, Vin punched straight through the thick leather of the dragon’s wings, his sword easily slicing through the wing and creating an opening for his streamlined body to burst through right after. As he continued flying past the dragon, the monster roared yet again, the sound shaking the very teeth in Vin’s head as he shot by. Gripping his sword in hand, Vin canceled Redirect Gravity, flipping his orientation back to normal before plummeting down toward the dragon once more.

The monster proved that it did have some uncanny level of intelligence, as it seemed to understand his plan almost instantly. Rather than allow Vin to continue punching holes in its wing again and again, the colossal, seven-story-tall dragon tried to dodge, doing its best to flap out of the way and strike at him with its tail a second time. This time, Vin dodged the tail by arresting his speed, all but halting in midair with Slow Fall and letting the tail swing by underneath him before switching back to Redirect Gravity and Enhance Gravity, adjusting his angle so that he speared straight through the dragon’s wing just like the first time.

The next minute was the slowest, probably most dangerous one in Vin’s entire life. Again and again Vin played chicken with the dragon, halting and enhancing his speed almost at random to dodge the monster’s deadly tail or snapping jaws before punching a new hole in its large wing and flipping his gravity around to do so again.

It was only thanks to his new Friend of Mana Capstone that he was able to stay in the air for so long, the ability allowing him to draw on the surrounding mana from the thousands of terrified people watching his fight from down below, and even the epic monster itself. Rage and fear alike filtered through his mana pool, the mana giving him untold flavors and experiences that he did his best to ignore as he danced along deadly a tightrope. Every blow he struck against the dragon threatened to be his last, as while he needed to land his attacks who-even-knew how many times, the dragon just needed to land its own twice.

And sure enough, it was only a matter of time before it got lucky.

From the beginning, Vin had targeted the large wing on the side of the dragon that the damaged smaller wing was on. If he could just injure the big one enough, he assumed the dragon wouldn’t be able to flap on its left anymore, and ideally would plummet that direction, away from town as it fell. The issue of course was that with Vin going after the same wing time and time again, and always aiming for a portion that was still undamaged, the number of potential spots for him to attack grew fewer with each successful strike. Somehow, the dragon figured all this out as well, and as Vin plummeted through the air, aiming to cut his fourteenth gash through the wing, it struck.

Spotting the tail coming, Vin tried to speed up and dodge it, but the dragon anticipated that. The tail rocketed forward much faster than it had started, and Vin didn’t even have time to close his eyes before a wrecking ball of flesh and bone smashed into his front and blasted from the sky like a true meteor. Crashing into the earth hard enough to create a giant furrow, there was a brilliant flash of golden light as his divine boon triggered, and Vin gasped, staring up at the sight of the dragon as it turned and tried to dive at him.

Vin had a horrifying flashback to the sight of the colossal Worldeater flying through the sky up at him as the dragon shot down, its huge bulk aimed directly for his tiny body. But as its wings flared out to arrest its speed and allow it to land on him, the leathery membrane of the dragon’s wing that Vin had spent the last minute tearing apart finally tore and snapped completely, sending the epic monster careening into the ground barely fifty feet away from him with enough force that another section of the already damaged second wall collapsed in the distance.

Using his staff, Vin forced himself to his feet, staring up at the dragon as it shook itself out of its stun. Its giant, torn-up wing was bent and hung at a bad angle. Its small wing was in no better shape. One of its front legs had been mangled beyond repair, its body was covered in acid burns, and it was suffering from who knew how many gallons of Scule’s deadly poison.

Yet through all of that, the dragon roared, bringing its full, gigantic frame to bear as it reared back and stared down at Vin. Even through all the damage it had suffered, it was still probably capable of wiping out an entire army without too much trouble.

In response to the dragon’s challenge, Vin threw his own arms out open wide, his glowing, grand staff in one hand and his pulsing, magic sword in the other. He was alone, exhausted, and down a divine boon, which meant his next death would be his last, but he refused to back down when he was the lone thing standing between the dragon and the total destruction of Terra and all its inhabitants.

The two apex, magical predators of Edregon stared at one another for a single, tense moment that seemed to stretch out longer than possible as they prepared for what could only be their final clash. Then, before either could do so much as move a single muscle, there was a distant explosion from the center of town.

Followed by a three-foot-wide ball of solid metal smashing through the side of the epic monster’s head, killing it instantly.