Any Last Words?
Ah—ngh.
I can't breathe. A scream rips its way out and gets swallowed back down. I want to vomit, but it surges the wrong way and only circles in my throat. Are my eyes even open? I can't tell. It's black. Black enough that not a single point of light gets in. I've seen this landscape plenty of times. As a concept. As a physical thing.
What am I supposed to do? Take revenge. For Dad, who died wronged.
"When you're desperate."
The Darkness whispers. It was counsel thick with worry and care—and still.
"Become a dragon."
The temptation was vicious.
Thump. My heart flails with no rhythm at all, as if something is inside it. Thump. Something I can't name sprints the length of my blood. Human blood, red and redder still, stains itself black.
"Kh—hak!"
My whole body explodes. My spine bows like a drawn bow. Thump, thump, thump. The blasts find a bounce and pick up speed. The world dyes itself black-red. Consciousness stretches out past itself—not a human consciousness, but the consciousness of some higher-order creature.
There was a tree. Enormous. Vast beyond vast. From the tree comes a greed that never ends: the heartbroken ache of wanting to eat and being unable to, and a greed that hates its own hunger. I'm afraid. And yet that eternal tyranny was well worth learning.
I am a dragon. A creature that pursues greed without limit. Even if ruin waits at the end of it, I must not stop.
"Kraaaaa!!!"
Human skin vanishes beneath scales. Goat horns push out on either side of the head, and the snout stretches long. The body swells the way a balloon swells, huge; the clothes can't bear the size and tear to ribbons. From the hips, a lizard tail is born.
Ecstasy. I stamp the limits of humankind to pieces underfoot. Savoring the new strength, I rise, slow. The mound of earth that had been crushing me from above is laughable. To think the old me was pinned under something like this—I was miserably weak.
I can see the sky. I can smell clean air. And I can see the enemy who made me into this: a tiny, tiny human, sweat on the brow, shedding a green radiance. So very like an insect.
In this place, I alone am sovereign!!!
I loose a roar of joy. Storm clouds flee. Even Nature is afraid of me. Only the last step remains. Kill that human. Burn everything here. To announce my birth to the world, could there be a finer address?
Yes. That's all it takes.
The Darkness curved into a smile, and pleasure lived inside the arc of it.
Boom! The black dragon hurled its massive body. More than twenty meters of its own scales became a slide, and I went down them smooth as a roller coaster dropping. The wind guided me; I rolled sideways and out of the line. The dragon, trampling everything that stood in its straight path, didn't get far before it drove its face into a building.
Rumble. The hospital folded like a screen of dry reeds. One whole face of the box was simply gone.
"Good thing it's a building nobody was using..."
If it hadn't been, this would have been a massacre. The black dragon braced itself and rose. The building, turned into a prop on the spot, couldn't take the weight and came down again—not so much falling as being crushed flat.
"Krrrrr!"
Whatever it was unhappy about, it blasted a snort of hot breath. Its haunches twitched and twitched.
"Something's off..."
It moved like a beast. Was the mind gone, or was this the side effect of becoming a black dragon? Either way, it didn't look bad for me. It won't hold. I didn't know when this body of mine would give out. I might die in the space of a flinch.
"Krrk!"
While I was still thinking, the black dragon finally shifted its hindquarters. Killing intent brimmed in its eyes and overflowed—so much I almost imagined the golden pupils flushing red. I swallowed without meaning to. It had definitely been the same human, transformed. Even so, I felt the gulf between species. Will a hit even work?
It had to. I couldn't turn that monster loose in the streets. If even a scrap of human reason were left, maybe. If it was a beast and nothing more or less than a beast, the slightest spark would scorch this whole district to ash. So before that happened—
"I'll kill it."
Scrabbling. Ugly, if I had to be.
I hauled the earth up. Ground that had already collapsed opened its mouth beneath the black dragon.
"Krrk?!"
Realistically, there were few ways to kill a bulk that huge. Smash the heart, or take the head off—and I didn't have that kind of power now. The one thing I could manage was burying it alive. If the bastard was a living thing, a stomach packed with dirt ought to kill it. And if I couldn't— then I die.
Wham!
"Kuaaaaa!!!"
Half-sunk in the pit, the black dragon thrashed. A fountain of blood burst from my arm. All I was trying to do was shove a pile of earth down its throat, and the tantrum was ridiculous.
"Swallow it! Please!!!"
It whipped its head from side to side, and nothing about this was easy. Had live burial been the wrong call? Should I have thought of another way? More strength went in. Nothing came of it. Nature, which had been showing me the way all this time, went silent. In that sudden loneliness, the strength drained out of me.
"──────!!!"
In the slack of that moment, the dragon threw its head up. Not red light—a wave of black light poured out between its teeth. At the sight of that destruction, I moved on instinct and forced the dragon's head down.
An instant later—
KWAHHHHHH!!!
A true dragon's breath split everything apart.
Eeeeeee—
My ears hurt. Am I actually alive? My mind kept sinking and surfacing. Damn it. Get up. I said get up. I spent a threadbare scrap of will. The earth at my back swelled and propped me into a sitting position, and when my head tried to drop on its own, I caught a tree stem and hauled myself up by the hair. The sight I barely managed to face was wretched.
A huge hole had opened in the ground. A black hole, crackling as it burned. I couldn't even begin to guess the depth. How am I alive? I couldn't remember. I saw the fire... and then... I turned most of the force downward. A quake had brought down every building around here, and whatever else had been standing, but it seemed I'd kept my life.
Thud. A shadow fell. I rolled only my eyes upward, and the dragon was blocking the sun.
The dragon was silent.
Drip. Something fell in front of my face and made a small dark-red pool. The dragon wasn't whole either—maybe because the breath had burst from its own mouth. The flesh of its cheeks was blown out, and through the holes in its jaw I could see the roof of its mouth. And what good did that do me? Nasty piece of work...
"Krrrrrrr..."
The dragon growled. Spit ran from my mouth. The searing pain of taking that breath, and the price of Life, arrived late. My breathing was guttering out. A little. Just a very little...
Pathetic. Maybe because I didn't want to die, I crawled toward what was forbidden. I ought to die, and I couldn't. I should already have died several times over. Was the world going easy on me because I was a Child of Nature? I really didn't know.
Once I could move my neck, the sounds around me came in. Police cars, screams, sobbing, shouts, rage. The wind carried sound—every sound it could bring me. Someone dying under a building. A medic doing chest compressions. A child who could only cry. A man trampling other people so he could live. A hero yelling. Even in the middle of this horror, the one I couldn't stop thinking about was Mom. Did that make me selfish?
"Hey."
My ruined voice spat spit.
"This what you wanted?"
The black dragon rolled an eye.
"I said, is this what you wanted?"
I faced the black dragon straight on. In the warped gaze, a mind showed through.
"...Re, venge, krk! If that's... what it... takes..."
The dragon groaned and breathed smoke. Its vocal cords must have been ruined; static clung to the voice.
"...I... can become... any... thing...!"
"Cut the bullshit!!!"
I hacked.
"Fuuuuuck. Revenge is fucking— fuck...!"
I was angry at myself, who couldn't stop one piece of garbage like this. I disgusted myself, who'd watched only the fight and failed to protect anyone. I felt hollow: I'd staked my life and done nothing. Has Dad always fought in places like this? And always brought it to a good end? It was so goddamn hard.
No. It had always been hard. I'd only just dipped a hand in, and I'd already failed in spectacular fashion.
"Last words...?"
The dragon asked. Its pupils contracted, then dilated. That side wasn't right either. Something was wrong with it. Had to be.
"I'll ask... one last... time..."
The dragon lifted a foreleg.
"Your last words?"
Tears came before I knew it. I wanted Mom. I wanted Dad. But... But—!
"Eat a dick."
"Fine."
It heard me perfectly. A low hum gathered.
Boom!
"...!?"
"You son of a bitch..."
I swallowed my tears and laughed.
"If you were gonna kill me, you should've done it faster...!"
"...!"
I wrung out every last scrap of strength. Before I went, one hit was enough. One single hit. I called it up—a back vast as a mountain. The man who had become the transcendent of Life. The Guardian I was meant to reach for...!
I knocked the foot aside. I saw the black dragon, thrown. Is this how you use it...? I laid the last of my Life over my skin and forced a dying body to run. My vision slowed. The black dragon's movements turned sluggish. Is this what Dad sees?
I only reached it once it was time to die. Before I knew it, I kicked off the ground. Between one instant and the next, I was at the black dragon's brow. The pupils blew wide, and a thin thread of feeling showed through them. It was fear.
A savage shockwave burst, and the black dragon's head snapped around. With the dragon toppling backward behind me, I closed my eyes.
...Hope I didn't die.
Me, obviously.
Along with a strange weightlessness, consciousness cut out.