V2Ch104-The Great Dragon
As Tybalt stood staring at the dragon that hovered in the distance, he had a bad feeling he knew what the great monster was looking for.
He felt an instinctive urge to run back down the alley and hide, but he also couldn’t move.
He stood transfixed, legs like jelly, as the creature searched - Tybalt felt certain somehow - for him.
For the first time in his life, in response to danger, the necromancer did nothing. Could do nothing.
His jaw hung open. His body trembled from head to toe. But he couldn’t simply turn and run. He didn’t know if it was some skill, or just a sensation paralyzing him.
This feeling, when the necromancer looked back, would stick out to him as the defining element of the initial encounter. The helplessness of the mouse before the cat, or a baby chick before a fox.
The helplessness of prey in front of a vastly superior predator.
He swallowed. That little movement, reflexive, seemed to bring him back to life. His body was still functioning. He could move. He just had to force it.
One thing at a time, he thought.
Even if he couldn’t win a fight against a dragon, there were things he could do to help himself survive.
He shrunk his mana signature inside his body, dampening it to make himself harder to identify. Tybalt had been forced to think a lot more about mana control ever since he became a necromancer. If the dragon truly was looking for him for some reason, Tybalt wouldn’t make it easier to find him. His mana was the only thing that differentiated him from these other humans. The quantity and quality were naturally very different from those who didn’t have a mage class. Well, the bone armor set him apart, too, but that should be hard to notice from a distance, especially in the dying light and with Tybalt’s body partly concealed within an alley.
The monster’s eyes seemed to land on him.
Then they kept going.
The necromancer let out a long, unsteady breath. He felt a little bit of distance open up between himself and the threat. Fortune seemed to have smiled on him. He could think again.
His first thought was, Fuck me, this is bad.
More helpfully, a moment later: Is it going to burn the town?
That was what dragons did in the legends Tybalt had heard of. They destroyed whatever they wanted to, killed anyone who was in their way, took what they wanted, did as they pleased - because the most powerful dragons were essentially invincible. They were like gods given flesh and set loose in the world.
Tybalt shook his head. Legends were legends. He had to deal with reality. He collected himself enough to issue an order.
“All undead outside of Whadesport, begin leading the living away from the port.”
That much, at least, he knew to do. This town was undoubtedly about to become a disaster area.
The zombies and skeletons that Tybalt sensed within the town were a lost cause. Any activity by them might draw attention to him or would at least likely get the creatures themselves destroyed. If he was lucky, he might recover some from the ashes of the ruins of this place once the monster had vented its wrath. Perhaps they would even have absorbed some of that legendary dragon flame, the way some of his skeletons had been affected by Mariella’s flames.
Such ashes could perhaps be usable in constructing a new creature. Tybalt was willing to be creative.
But there was little that his ordinary undead could do to fight a beast like this one. One look was enough to tell him that much. There was no point in throwing their weight onto the dragon. Tybalt would only watch it handle that easily and then throw it off with a shrug.
After what felt like an eternity - but was really only a few seconds - Tybalt made himself move. He pulled his head back into the alleyway, finally out of the creature’s line of sight. Only then, once he was a little safer, did he realize his pulse was pounding, his whole body covered in sweat, his mana churning and seething against the restraint he’d imposed, fighting to get out.
Shit.
And it wasn’t all fear doing this to him.
The necromancer searched his heart. Was a part of him actually excited by the prospect of a face-off with the monster? The instinctive part that was directly connected to his mana, perhaps.
Ridiculous. How would I even fight that thing?
But the mind was a problem-solving machine. As soon as the question was asked, he wanted to solve it. He had a few skills that could possibly do something… right? There was a legend or two of people actually killing dragons, though this thing seemed a bit bigger than those beasts had been.
He shook his head.
“Edwig, check out the surroundings,” Tybalt silently ordered. “Let me know what the dragon is doing, and be ready to make an immediate retreat if the monster starts to get closer to us.”
“Yes, master.”
The necromancer didn’t want to risk losing the mummy by making him look around, but he wanted information. Sending a Beastking was better than sticking his own neck out. Ultimately, Tybalt was the only irreplaceable individual in the undead army.
Edwig used Underworld Motion to disappear through one of the houses - they were made of earthen materials, and stone and earthen materials were all permeable for his skill - leaving Tybalt alone with his thoughts.
Why is it here? Why now? Is it really after me specifically, or am I being paranoid? How can I take some advantage of this situation?
Before he could reach any resolution, he heard the sound of screams, along with something more subtle.
It took him a beat to recognize the sound of rushing flames. That was why people were screaming. The monster had begun its work, breathing fire onto the buildings around it.
So it is here to destroy the place, he thought feverishly. I have to get out now!
In his mind’s eye, he could already see what would happen next.
People would begin to panic and stampede like stupid animals, making navigating the streets impossible.
Shit!
For that brief moment, as he imagined the town falling into chaos, he’d lost some of the discipline he had been imposing on himself. He had inadvertently released a little of his hold over his mana.
It was only for a second, but he noticed how the energy within him spiked.
At the same time that he recognized this, Tybalt sensed two of his undead within the town disappear.
Had the dragon targeted them somehow, or had the monster’s wanton destruction just coincided with their location?
Before he could consider an answer, the necromancer felt the ground quake.
Then the earth shook again. And again.
The dragon had landed, and now it was walking.
It had landed close to him, from the sounds of it.
“Master, it’s coming your way!” Edwig sent urgently.
It had detected him, and now it was coming to investigate. That damned energy spike. He must look like the most interesting prey in the town.
“Come get me!” Tybalt replied instantly. “Back underground!”
A moment later, the massive head of the dragon - looking, with its size and shape, a bit like a great pyramid moving through the air, yet crowned with horns like towers - blotted out the sky above the alleyway.
“I found you,” uttered a deep, male voice that made the air hum with every syllable. A single glowing yellow eye stared down at the necromancer from the side of its head that he could see. A feeling of immense power reverberated through Tybalt’s body at hearing the voice from such close proximity.
Shit shit shit… Wait, it can talk?
Some legends spoke of draconic intelligence, while others presented them as mindless beasts. Apparently the latter were inaccurate.
That wasn’t important just then.
“Edwig, where the fuck are you?”
“Right here.”
The telepathic voice came from just behind him, and then Tybalt felt the mummy grab him from around the back.
The two began melting into the ground using Underworld Motion, and Tybalt heard the dragon let out a rumble of annoyance.
“You will not escape so easily.”
This time, to his horror, Tybalt heard the voice inside his head as well as out loud. The last thing he saw before the earth separated himself and the mummy from the dragon was energy rapidly gathering in its throat and mouth. The necromancer didn’t need to guess what that was.
Dragon’s fire. It was about to use that… and it’s after me specifically. Fuck!
Another little part of his brain observed the movement of the creature’s mana clinically, trying to analyze it. There was a magical component to this ability.
But only a small part of Tybalt considered that.
With the ground between himself and the dragon, the necromancer felt the pressure of the dragon’s presence ease somewhat. He could think and move freely again. He devoted most of that attention to trying to find a means of escape.
As they descended, he quickly reached out telepathically to one of his more distant servants.
“Harald, are you still with Dero? I need you to tell her to come to my location.”
And to save my ass, please, he thought.
“No, master, we separated a few minutes ago,” the wight knight replied instantly. “I do not know where she is now. I believe she was returning to your location.”
Fuck!
Edwig and Tybalt dropped into the tunnel below the town, and the necromancer sent a quick message to the other undead nearby.
“Any undead near Dero that can speak, tell her I’m in danger! Send her to me if you can!”
Only the dark elf had the mobility to get him out of this situation. He needed distance to come up with a plan beyond running.
As Tybalt tried to think, the roof of the tunnel began to glow above him. His eyes widened. Stone and sand somehow burned to nothing, leaving not even ash. Mariella could do something like this, slowly and at great expense in mana. A dragon’s breath was apparently fiercer.
Shit!
In the fraction of a second that he had, Tybalt acted. He threw himself to the side just before the flames burned through and scorched the ground where he had been standing.
Rather than move along the path of least resistance, like normal fire, and chase Tybalt and Edwig down both sides of the tunnel, the flames kept going straight, burning through the ground in a line from its point of origin.
That seems like it should be impossible. But so was burning through the earth and sand.
The flames dug slightly deeper, then dissipated.
Edwig darted across the smoking hole where the flames had just been - the impossible fire had separated him from Tybalt - and then a giant, scaled claw smashed through the opening the flames had created.
Like a child’s hand lifting a clod of dirt, the giant claw yanked up the entire stone roof of the tunnel, along with the sand above it, exposing Tybalt and the mummy to the night air in an instant.
Seriously? You’re that determined to get me? Or… it’s that easy…
At the same moment that the mummy reached the necromancer, the giant reptilian head and neck came into full view through the opening. For the first time, Tybalt noticed that there was a tiny rider on the dragon’s neck. A humanoid figure. Then the dragon tilted its head again, hiding the rider from view.
The necromancer didn’t have much time to think about who would be riding the back of a dragon.
“You,” rumbled the dragon, pointing the tip of a single, lance-like claw directly at Tybalt. “You are the source of this plague!”
Is that what this was about?
“Master, I can take you away through the soil again,” Edwig said through their bond.
But after a fraction of a second, Tybalt answered the dragon instead of the mummy.
“I am!” Tybalt exclaimed loudly. He had the feeling that lying was the wrong call. He didn’t want to run again either. Not unless talking failed. The creature had already dug through the ground to reach him, and it had clearly detected his mana before. Escape might be impossible. “It’s my plague, but listen, I need it. My friends and I are waging war against the Kingdom. The Nietian Royal Army kills innocent beastfolk men, women, and children every year, and they’re trying to render them extinct. This is our best tool to win the fight!”
“You… are a human,” the dragon observed.
That doesn’t stop me from doing what’s right, was what Tybalt wanted to say. But he instinctively knew that bullshit wouldn’t fly here.
“I’m still on the side of the beastfolk,” he replied instead. “There are people I care about among them, and the Kingdom wasn’t that good to me either.”
“Are you willing to go without the use of this weapon?” the dragon asked, staring down at him steadily, those glowing eyes piercing. “Disease as a magic spell is beyond this world’s experience with warfare. It could kill tens or hundreds of millions! Even assuming that was not your intent, it would be a disaster if it were to happen.”
“I…”
Forego the use of magical diseases completely? I’d have no use for one of my two classes. Maybe I could stop using this specific plague, but… I don’t think he’d accept that. Shit, maybe I could lie to it after all.
“Be ready to get me out of here, Edwig.”
“Yes, master.”
“I could,” the necromancer said. “We should discuss conditions. Reach an agreement. You’re a wise, moderate… being. I can see that much. I don’t need this plague to defeat the Kingdom. You could help me come up with a better plan that respects the rights of humans and beastfolk.”
That’s what my ethics class with Balthus called them, right? The “rights” of other people?
The dragon looked hard into Tybalt’s eyes. It felt like a great intelligence saw through him. Then the great beast’s expression soured noticeably. The dragon shook his head.
“I… do not believe you,” he intoned in that great, terrible voice. “I am sorry… but I believe you must die, so that others of your kind may live without fear of the disaster you represent.”
Tybalt saw a burst of energy surge up the monster’s neck as it rapidly charged another burst of fire breath.
Damn it!