Dragon-king
Dragon-king
The words hung in the air, almost lazy. His hand followed—pale, so pale it nearly vanished from sight.
Even Aslan's heightened senses couldn't follow the arc. Luck burned hot and raw inside him, screaming a warning. The speed was such that a single moment's distraction would prove fatal.
Not that alertness alone would save him. He wrenched hammer and shield out simultaneously and brought them up to block.
The instant they met the strike, both were gone. The hammer tore apart into molten slag. The shield detonated outward like a bomb. Through the wreckage, he glimpsed claws—slowed just enough for the eye to register.
Behind those claws, shock waves erupted from every knuckle of every finger. Then the acceleration triggered again—faster than sight. Aslan saw his own death waiting a breath away and twisted his body, whipping Wings of Stymphalos into the gap.
Thunder Call!
He forced reinforcement into his legs at the same moment, kicked off the floor, and threw his center of gravity backward.
—!
A spherical shock wave bloomed. The thunder's own roar was swallowed by the pursuing sound-burst. As his body rocketed backward on the Thunder Call, Stymphalos's wings came apart, vomiting feathers by the hundreds.
Boom. Boom. Cr-cr-crash.
He plowed into the ground three times before he finally stopped. The featherfall swirling around him proved the damage had been severe, despite having launched himself back to open distance.
Blood welled up thick in his mouth. Before he could spit it free, a crushing wave of heat swept over him—heat fierce enough to blacken and melt the air itself.
Aslan regained his feet and looked up.
He saw the Dragon-king's jaws spread wide, a sphere already formed, a Breath attack screaming toward him.
This was not a dragon's Breath.
It looked more like a lance shaped from a solar flare.
A straight-line Breath. A direct hit would kill him. Luck raged. The flames would engulf him the same way—this will be your fate too, it drove into his mind.
Aslan gripped his Blood Sword and murmured aloud while echoing the words inside.
"Purity."
Shadow Flip.
At his feet, the shadow was already bleaching away in the blaze of that overwhelming heat. It vanished entirely. And an impossibly white longsword carved two impossible arcs.
A cross-cut, intercepting the Breath. The moment the strike landed, agony ripped through his wrist as though the joint had simply ceased to exist.
The blade did not break. Purity did not break.
But that was all.
His body was hurled backward. He smashed through the palace wall and hurtled into the open air beyond.
Thud. Crash. A grinding roar of stone, then a final bone-jarring slam. He hit the ground, hit a wall, the wall disintegrated, and he tumbled and rolled until the brutal momentum bled off just outside the palace.
Clang.
"Kh... hrrk—!"
His breath caught on the blood flooding his throat. He spat out a mouthful of it and stood gasping, lips glistening crimson.
The impact damage—walls, ground—Stymphalos's wings had dispersed most of that. But the wrist that had blocked the Breath barely responded at all now.
He pushed himself upright, unsteady, and stared through the hole his body had punched through the palace.
A presence was walking toward him from within that breach. Luck screamed in answer—louder than it ever had for any priest he had faced before.
Hard enough to make every previous priest seem trivial.
He forced his thoughts into order.
The Heart-Piercing thrust—the technique that had never failed to penetrate anything—had been stopped cold.
The Breath was not a dragon's Breath. It was a variety of plasma that felt closer to high science than to any magic.
And that acceleration through shock waves—no other evil god's priest fought like that.
Aslan looked at the Dragon-king, now standing before him, and spoke.
"You... are you a high priest of the Predator?"
The Dragon-king halted mid-step.
There could be no more absolute confirmation.
"How long..." Aslan's voice was low. "How long have you been posing as the Dragon-king?"
The dust settled, and the Dragon-king's face became clear.
Gone was the weary benevolence it had worn moments before.
Now it held a warrior's eyes burning with fierce radiance.
The eyes of a fighter who has recognized a true opponent and hauled his guard to its highest peak.
"Posing."
The word spread through the hanging dust and the groans of the shattered palace.
The thing wearing the Dragon-king's form lifted one claw, studying it as if to conceal its own wariness.
A crack marred the nail. A hairline fissure, produced in the moment hammer met scales.
A crack that would vanish with a sharp breath blown across it. The Dragon-king turned his hand over, confirmed the fissure was gone, and spoke again.
"Posing, was it..."
And he laughed.
A low, grating chuckle. Aslan met it with a glare and drew one of the short spears slung across his back. The Dragon Hunter's spear.
His remaining armaments: Bolren's Storm Sword, the twin spears, Seobsaeng, the Blood Sword, and roughly a quarter of Stymphalos's wings left intact.
None of it was good. A single exchange had already cost him two weapons.
That kind of attack power wasn't normal.
As his guard climbed to its absolute height, the Dragon-king tilted his head.
"Do you imagine this body is not the Dragon-king but merely a high priest?"
Aslan's brow furrowed at the words. Then he felt it—a gathering presence closing in from all sides.
Dragon-kin. They were converging on the palace. More enemies? He clicked his tongue, and the Dragon-king's benign smile twisted slightly.
"The palace was only recently repaired... a pity. Now I shall have to break it all over again."
The twisted smile was laced with self-derision.
Genuine regret, and at the same time, a bitter mockery aimed at himself.
Hearing it, Aslan found it impossible to believe these were the words and manner of an impostor high priest.
This was a man who regretted having to destroy what he himself had built.
Aslan's suspicion flickered. The Dragon-king spoke before it could fully form.
"Posing as the Dragon-king. Those words you just spoke—they strike me as absurd."
"You..."
"A thousand years."
The words fell heavy, and the dust thinned. The Dragon-king's body bared itself fully. The black scales covering his exposed torso were not an ordinary black.
They were a darkness that seemed to drink in light.
That ink-dark Dragon-king smiled.
"For a thousand years, there has been no Dragon-king other than this body. Which would make me the true Dragon-king, would it not?"
The worst possible case—far beyond what Aslan had imagined. He leveled his stance, glaring. The Dragon-king laughed at what he saw.
Aslan read that regret and spoke.
"You're abandoning a position you held for a thousand years because I alone discovered you?"
A fair question. At least, in Aslan's mind it was.
But the Dragon-king did not see it that way. He made a short noise—Hm?—then gave a dismissive snort.
"'You alone'?"
He laughed. The deep, resonant laugh was followed by words perfectly clear.
"Absurd. Is that not an egregious underestimation of yourself?"
As he spoke, the Dragon-king raised an arm that had been hanging loose. He clenched his fist, then spread his fingers, as though gripping something invisible.
A metallic crackle sounded—clk-clk, krr-krr. The fist was not normal. Every scale covering his body was metal. This was proof.
Cold sweat ran down Aslan's back as he watched. A high priest—not some lesser creature from the Three Evils, but a genuine, fully realized high priest. He had never faced one before.
Yet he understood.
The Dragon-king was wary of him.
Aslan steadied his breathing and asked.
"Did the Predator order this?"
"No. This is my judgment alone."
A clear, open laugh. The Dragon-king's expression was as vivid as Harod's once had been.
"At my age, one acquires a certain ability. The ability to gauge who is dangerous and who is not—and if so, just how dangerous. I have looked upon countless souls with that ability. Countless souls. And yet they all fall into five categories."
The Dragon-king closed his eyes and counted on his fingers.
"A worthy opponent. A dangerous individual. A contemptible foe. A madman."
Four fingers folded down. A single index finger remained, pointed directly at Aslan.
"And a great hero who might change the world."
When the Dragon-king's eyes opened again, they held a wariness burning deep.
"Is it strange that I am wary of you?"
He lowered the hand, clenched his fist, and spread his fingers again.
"Twelve years ago you appeared on this continent out of nowhere. You survived. You slaughtered hundreds of priests. You tore apart thousands of beasts. You walked out of every battlefield alive. A genuine monster."
Wariness blazed up raw, and golden eyes locked onto Aslan with a scorching light.
"Is it truly so strange, to be wary of such a monster?"
He smiled benevolently, as if to conceal the wariness. Beneath that smile, the guarded readiness waiting for a counterblow felt like a longsword poised and ready.
Sharp. Lethal.
A deep sense of disadvantage settled over Aslan as he held his stance. The Dragon-king's smile faded.
"I will not be careless. I will not underestimate you."
Clack. He clenched his fist, and the sound of grinding metal followed.
"You."
Both fists clenched, and a hum of vibration ran through his forearms.
"Aslan."
Those fists rose into guard, and the dreadful sound of interlocking metal sent a shiver racing up Aslan's spine. He let out a ragged breath. The Dragon-king spoke flatly.
"You are, of my thousand-year reign... the greatest threat."
A high priest is different from a priest. A high priest is a god's right hand. A true demigod capable of twisting the world alone.
"So I shall declare it. Here and now."
He raised both fists toward Aslan. His torso squared fully forward. His tail pressed flat to the ground.
It was the traditional martial art of the dragon-kin—the same Harod had once demonstrated at Olpasbet.
An unnamed style. A stance passed down for over a millennium. The Dragon-king settled into it and made his declaration.
"I will kill you. With everything I have."
And the stance alone brought a pressure that stole his breath.
Woooooooom!
Chasing that pressure came a sound like a turbine spinning up.
The noise pouring out of the Dragon-king forced Aslan to swallow hard and grip his sword.
The hilt felt sticky with the cold sweat running down his hand.