Caught
It came on without warning.
Before he knew it, Dan Miryu had fallen back dozens of paces.
"What...?"
Something was wrong with Dan Miryong. A moment ago the boy had been pouring out rage and hatred in unbroken streams, and then, between one instant and the next, he drew every bit of it back in. Head bowed, still as a dead mouse, he did not so much as twitch.
Dan Miryu nearly let himself believe the fight was over. The muscles locked tight beneath the skin told him it was not.
Caught between one choice and the next, he watched Dan Miryong lift his head, saw those eyes, and swallowed his breath.
"Who are you."
It was the only question that fit, and he threw it at whoever now wore Dan Miryong's shape.
"Haaaaaah......"
Someone let out a long breath. The sound of it was deep and dark, as if it echoed from the throat of a cave.
Hsssssss.
Stone the breath touched smoked and slumped into melt. A gray liquid no word could define ran down the face of the rock. Dan Miryu looked at his feet. Whatever someone had exhaled lay across the ground like fog.
Hiss. Hiss.
Even Life could not hold against that breath, and was driven back. A colorless respiration cut into the green wave.
"......Not a bad body, this."
It was instinct. The instant the voice reached him, Dan Miryu attacked. A kick honed to a single streak of light drove in.
Crack.
Caught. His face hardened as he stared at the leg stopped, lightly, in one hand. Whoever held it lifted a corner of his mouth, pleased by the sight.
"Mortal. Did you ask who I am?"
Shraaaak.
Dragon wings tore free through the shoulder blades and spread. Steeped in blood-red, they were nothing like Dan Miryong's: far larger, far grander, heavy with a majesty that could have covered the sky. The body swelled. The snout became a crocodile's, the chest hardened into a rampart, and the eyes were daubed entirely in gold, with greed without end swimming in the pupils.
Thud!
What had been a small human body, now a dragon, looked down at Dan Miryu.
Fafnir spoke his name. The dome of Life cracked and shed fragments. Dan Miryu slapped his trembling knees.
"One mountain after another."
He had only meant to deal with a nephew whose name he did not even know, and a dragon out of myth had sprung loose instead. His sins ran deeper than the abyss.
Fafnir flicked a long tongue and tasted air steeped in Life.
Greed overflowed. The desire that the world was his poured out without a shred of doubt.
Dan Miryu met his gaze.
"Ask, then."
Fafnir did not care for the flat, unbothered reply. A worthless thing, and instead of groveling it stood there with its head high.
The breath he had loosed before becoming a dragon turned into a blade and went for Dan Miryu's ankles. Dan Miryu stamped it out. A strange light gathered in Fafnir's eyes.
"Was that the question?"
Fwoosh.
Flame burst from Fafnir's throat.
The evil dragon's breath erupted.
A ruin beyond any comparison to Dan Miryong's filled the dome.
In a single stroke, every trace of the civilization humans had built was erased. Ash packed the sky, then drifted down in a thin, wandering fall.
Fafnir raised a foreleg.
Bang!!!
Dan Miryu came down like a driven nail onto it. Crrk. A scale the size of a man cracked.
He blocked it...?
The arrogance had been so naked that it ought to have worked. Wasn't this the sort that always let its guard down?
Whoosh!
Fafnir swung his arm as if shaking off a gnat. Dan Miryu sprinted along it.
Huuuuup!!!
Fafnir drew breath in, and the wind-up ran longer than the breath before. Dan Miryu flinched.
I have to stop it...!
The air of the earth was sucked into the dragon's nostrils.
If that pours out, the wall won't hold!
He kicked off in a rush. The scale under his feet shattered and became a foothold, and in the next instant he was under the jaw, a breath from the throat, when Fafnir's pupil caught him. The breath that had seemed ready to erupt was simply gone.
A feint...!
Thud!!!
A hand the size of a building slammed into him dead-on. Dan Miryu was driven into the wall of Life.
"Guh—!"
The impact made him vomit blood. This was not mere pain. It felt as if the whole store of vitality his body held had been shaved away.
Fafnir clicked his tongue, disappointed. Dan Miryu pulled free of the wall and wiped the blood away.
"You're rather different from the first impression..."
A gaze steeped in greed and arrogance wavered.
Enough time had passed for a lizard who had known nothing but treasure to come to his senses. He was still arrogant. He still loved treasure. But caution had taken root inside him.
"Wasn't it over when Sigurd killed you?"
Fwoosh.
Fafnir's vast body burned with rage. Sticky, damp air took the place of Life.
"And who is he?"
Fafnir forced down the fear rising from his very soul.
Thud!
As if to drive that fear out, he took one step toward Dan Miryu.
A dragon's claw leveled at Dan Miryu's throat.
"And if I hand it over, what will you do with me?"
"Ha..."
For a moment, Dan Miryu was relieved. He had worried what he would do if the dragon proved different from that first impression. Looking at him now, there was nothing to worry about at all.
"I never thought I'd be the one to slay a dragon."
Fafnir doubted his own ears for a moment. In that span, his chest crumpled inward.
The dragon's bulk was driven back dozens of meters. The instant pain folded him over, his jaw was kicked up.
"I'm sorry. I still have a great deal to say to that boy."
Something alien pressed against the bridge of the snout. Golden eyes found the foreign thing standing on his nose. Dan Miryu greeted him with that particular smile of his.
"Uninvited guests should see themselves out."
"Hraaaaaah!!!"
From biceps to triceps to the muscles of the forearm, his body drank in Life and turned it into strength. Lats and trapezius climbed; the erectors along the spine braced them. Muscle tore through Dan Miryu's clothes and showed itself, and when that strength truly came into play, the dragon was hauled along like a child.
Had this human become a god of strength?!
A body of several hundred tons rose, slowly. Wings flapped in pity. Arms flailed and raked at the man. None of it mattered. There was only a slight sway. Another's hands had lifted the dragon.
"Krah!!!"
With a short gathering of breath, the dragon flew into the sky.
BOOOOOOM!!!
Air shoved at his back. He had been thrown, at the least, past the speed of sound, and green light clung to that speed and followed.
"Hoo."
In a world slowing down, Fafnir watched a terrible energy gather upon a single human.
He wasn't even using his full strength against me...?
Shame and humiliation threatened to tear his mind apart. He had thought, deep in the Mindscape, that he had taken the man's full measure. Fafnir had been ignorant. Ignorant that the human before him was the one and only one Life had chosen. Ignorant that he had split his strength on purpose, careful that the aftermath not reach the world outside.
Life's Guardian was not fool enough to take his ease against a myth. For all his experience counted, the evil dragon let his guard down, as he always had. That difference decided the fight.
The transcendent of Life descended.
Fafnir thrashed in desperation. How—how had he been brought back? And he was to go this emptily?
Were they not the same blood?!
"Sorry. Even if he dies, I can bring him back."
The thrashing was pressed down and stepped on. The transcendent of Life had no intention of leaving this dull lizard alive. Every trace of Life in the severed space vanished. Now Life shone only in the transcendent's hand. Condensed, and condensed again, it drove toward the dragon's heart.
A scream that begged to live rang out, and the barrier shattered. Blue sky announced the blessing of victory.
Dan Miryu caught the young man's body as it fell. Dan Miryong's eyes were shut tight.
"It's over."
He swept a hand across his chest. The tension let go all at once, and the strength left his body. Even for a transcendent, putting that dragon down had been a heavy thing. That mind and body should be spent was, in a way, only natural.
Tap.
Dan Miryong did not miss the opening.
The necklace fell.
Shunk!!!
A hole opened in Dan Miryu's chest.