H - 4: You Are Just in My Way (Patreon)

There was nothing like a jolt of pure, animal terror to ground a fellow after an out-of-body experience.

Kaln froze exactly like a rabbit, momentarily ceasing even to breathe, as a flood of stress hormones absolutely cleansed his system of any lingering transcendental dissociation; his last cogent memory of having ascended so far beyond himself was a lingering and rapidly-fading insight into exactly what those microdoses of biological chemicals were and how they worked, and then even that had vanished.  Leaving him just a frozen mammal in the gaze of an apex predator.

Atraximos unfolded himself without hurry, every motion as smooth as if planned in advance, and as sinuously elegant as a dance.  The dragon rose to his feet, uncoiling his tail and raising his serpentine neck to gaze down at Kaln from its incredible maximum height, nearly grazing the ceiling of the enormous vault.  His wings snapped fully open, sending a gust of air whispering around the entire room and back, then folded them once more along his ridged spine.

“Tis the prime benefit of a carefully-cultivated reputation,” said the dragon in a surprisingly smooth and cultured baritone that resonated through the very floor with the sheer power of his enormous lungs, “that one’s time is seldom wasted by the unworthy, for those lacking courage and imagination dare not trespass in this of all domains.  I hope most earnestly that you do not disappoint.  Do strive to entertain me in your last moments, little thief.”

He was talking?  They were going to talk?

Just like that, Kaln snapped out of it, able to plant a foot on familiar ground.  Even under the pressure of life and death, talking was something he could do.

“Your pardon, good sir,” he replied, straightening up only to bow as courteously as he was able.  “Both for the intrusion, and the correction.  I have not stolen anything of yours, nor was it my intention to.”

“Lies.”  The dragon sounded…amused?  At any rate, he wasn’t attacking.  Yet.  “Dismally uncreative lies, albeit gracefully stated.”

“Would you care to check my pockets?  I’m even willing to donate all their contents by way of apology, though…  It, ah, seems like my loose change and hardtack wouldn’t be a worthwhile addition to this collection.”

Atraximos leaned his head forward, narrowing his crimson eyes, and Kaln managed, by exerting every iota of his willpower, not to flinch.  Despite his enormous size, the dragon was clear across the even more enormous room and that relatively small shift hadn’t brought him anywhere close to chomping range.  Yet.  In fact, Kaln belatedly realized that the beast wasn’t staring at him, but past him and above his head.

“Aha. I was more correct than I dared hope.  So, little thief, you have divined a use for my Timegate.  This may in fact be of some value to me.  Tell me, what have you contrived to have that esoteric contraption do?”

Kaln risked taking his eyes off the monster for the split-second it took to flick them toward the Timekeeper arch and back.  The clocks were all reset, still pointing to noon; of his shadow crystal there remained no sign, though the transparent housing in which he had placed it was now marred by scorch marks.  Despite what he had irrationally half-expected, the dragon did not lunge across the room during that one eyeblink.

“With the greatest possible respect?  I don’t think you would believe me if I told you.”

Atraximos’s lips curled up, and it was uncanny how easily Kaln could read every nuance of his expression, as condescendingly smug as it was amused.

“We are neither of us going anywhere, thief.  You might as well indulge me.”

“The truth, then?”  He hesitated, then shrugged.  It wasn’t as if he understood any of this well enough to concoct a convincing lie.  “I…have no idea.”

The dragon snorted.  “And you thought I would find that hard to believe?  This tale grows less intriguing, not more.  Verily, any who are wise and learned enough to both know the contents of my hoard and covet the use of my treasures would dare not approach my domain save through the use of some witless cat’s paw.  Give me the name of your master, little thief.  I would know with whom I have actual grievance.”

He did not consider even for a moment trying to protect the Entity.  That damned thing had not only put him in this situation—as deadly as it was absurd—but had stubbornly refused to tell him what it actually wanted from him.  It had swooped in at his lowest and darkest moment to build up his hopes with absurd promises; it wasn’t as if Kaln didn’t know how fringe religions and crime rings recruited, and he would never have trusted that shifty thing long enough for it to really wrap him around its tendrils had the alternative at the time not been death in prison.

“I don’t know its name,” he answered without hesitation.  “It refused to say.  It’s some kind of spectral…shadow being that follows me around.  It seems to know a great deal, especially about where various rare treasures are hidden and how to get at them.  Not that it was willing to come in here with me.  Trolls and even devils it would mess with, but apparently not dragons.”

“Well, you are a disappointment, little thief,” Atraximos said with disdain.  “Nothing but the expendable tool of what sounds, at best,some mildly interesting puppeteer.  A covetous fairy, like as not, or something similarly lacking imagination.  Tis a pity.  Ah, well.  Ere we proceed, little thief, tell me: from what village do you hail?”

He nearly answered just as swiftly and openly, since keeping the dragon engaged in talk was the closest thing he had to a plan here, but then something nudged him from within.  For a fleeting moment, Kaln was reminded of the…expanding, ascending sensation that had nearly taken him permanently out of his own body.  Nothing remotely that extreme happened this time, but it was as if the world around him shivered under some cosmic blow.  Or maybe it was only his own senses and perceptions that shook; whatever the cause, through the cracks he suddenly had a familiar glimpse of what lay under the structure of reality.  All around him were patterns of energy, a world composed of mingled abstract mathematics and the inscrutable pressure exerted on them by magic and life…

…and something in the dragon before him resonated.  He sensed…  It was inscrutable, and gone in a second, leaving him standing there purely contained in his mortal mind once more.  But he retained that lingering perception of…  Intent.  Malice.  Of a looming threat behind that seemingly innocuous question.

“Are you…actually so interested in my history?” he replied with great care.  “Truly, I am flattered.”

“Reputation, little thief.”  Atraximos took a step, then another, his head held high; he was not closing the distance toward Kaln, but moving to the side.  Draconic body language was different, but after a second the context seemed to snap together in his mind and Kaln realized he had seen this before.  Some people just liked to pace while they lectured.  “That I enjoy even a moment of tranquility in my own home is due entirely to the strength of reputation.  It is known what befalls those who disturb my peace, and only by reinforcing the lesson with every fresh opportunity do I maintain my serene existence.  I will hear who you are, and from where you hail, that I may go there and scour it from the face of this world.  The entire patch of creation which spawned you shall burn as a warning, lest the ever-fading memories of your short-lived kind forget the doom of those who court my irritation.”

Well, that had been a blessed instinct.  Kaln had been one careless word from unleashing Atraximos the Dread on Rhivkabat itself.  The Rhivaak Empire had ample defenses against all manner of threats…but presumably, so had the Valereld Empire in its day, when a younger and likely less powerful Atraximos had brought it down.

“I came here from the greater moon,” he said aloud, expression carefully deadpan.

The dragon chuckled, shaking his enormous fanged head.  “A poor thief, but a passing jester.  Maintain your paltry mystique, then, boy.  You were worthless enough to be sent here to die; I certainly do not esteem you more than did your own master.  The effort of extracting truth from you could not possibly yield any result sufficient to justify the tedium of the task.  Very well, I shall select a town at random.  You may apologize to its denizens in the afterlife.”

He ceased his pacing, turning to stare at Kaln directly, head-on, with a cruel little smile.  And still, he did not lunge, or spit fire…  Of course, Kaln realized, Atraximos was a monster even among dragons: sadistic, gratuitously destructive, and to judge by this conversation, evidently bored.  He was going to draw this out.

What was most strange to Kaln was how calm he was.  No longer panicked or frozen…in fact, he felt that strange energy thrumming in him.  Some kind of barrier had been breached and not put back all the way; something was seeping through into him.  Certainty, focus, motivation…  There was something within him now that didn’t consider this hopeless, that calmly reached out for a strategy.

The collection; the hoard.  That would be the primary thing staying Atraximos’s incipient rampage.  These treasures were his life’s work, the pride and joy of any dragon.  He wouldn’t lash out in a way that would destroy them.

Unfortunately, Kaln was standing right smack in the middle of the Timekeeper artifacts—the ones that were famously impervious to any harm or degradation.  Atraximos could bathe this part of the room in fire and at worst he would have to scrub the scorch marks off his collection.  He probably knew a spell to do that.  What Kaln needed was to get across the aisle in front of him, into that maze of furniture, weapons, tapestries, robes…

Across the wide open aisle leading directly toward the enormous beast who could move faster than Kaln could think, if half the stories about dragons were right.  How could he get across it without crossing it?

“Have you nothing more to say, then?” Atraximos purred.  He remained upright and still, save for the spaded end of his tail, which twitched like a hunting cat’s.  “Pity.  I dared to hope you would furnish some paltry amusement in your last moments.”

“I would be lying if I said your disappointment troubled me,” Kaln replied, courteously.  Think! How to get past…  Could he distract him somehow?  “The truth is, I don’t much care for you, sir.  I’m sure you understand.”

“Alas, the lion holds no regard for the rabbit’s opinion.”

“Strange for the lion to bother telling the rabbit so, in that case.”

The dragon actually paused, mouth slightly open in surprise.  Then he narrowed his eyes.  The faintest flicker of orange light glinted from behind his teeth.

Kaln shifted his eyes from the dragon to the display of far more fragile treasures into which he wanted to flee.  If he could only…

…only…

Pressure from within, the world faltering around him as the luminous nature of reality peeked through from beneath—and still something inside him was surging up, struggling against a barrier.

Until it suddenly wasn’t.  For the most fleeting of instants he experienced it all again: transcendence, complete unity with the pure mathematics, the infinite harmony.  He was nothing, and he was everything, and he was all stages in between.

And now he was just a man, standing far too close to a dragon, but amid racks of expensive and ancient-looking cloth and armor, all the way across the aisle from the place among the impervious Timekeeper artifacts at which the dragon was still staring.

Atraximos turned his head immediately, lashing his tail once.  But then he smiled.

“Ah.  Finally, a hint of sport.  A respectable trick for such a pitiable rodent.  And…is that a fleeting glimmer of strategy I see?  Very well, little thief.  I am happy to draw this out a few minutes more.  One of us, at least, has all the time in the world.”

He paced forward, placing his first enormous clawed foot into the aisle between sections of the neatly organized hoard, and changed.

Kaln knew dragons had two forms, of course; he figured it must be fairly common knowledge, but obviously everyone in the Rhivaak Empire knew that fact intimately.  Instead of a great lumbering fire-spewing beast, Atraximos could simply step into the rows between his orderly treasures in the form of a man, completely obviating the only advantage Kaln had managed to grasp.

He was really starting to intimately understand why challenging a dragon was idiomatic shorthand for any bad idea.  It was strange how cool he remained in the face of it—and what had that teleportation been?  He didn’t know any magic, and portal magic was notoriously among the most complex and difficult.  But that calm remained in him, along with that mysterious thrumming energy the Timegate had left him with.  He watched Atraximos approach, thinking as fast as he ever had in his life.

Immediately, he began retreating, moving backward and sidestepping in the general direction of the door.  The displays were orderly and well-spaced, making neat rows with ample room between them for a normal-sized person to walk and admire their contents.  Nice for viewing purposes, but disastrous for Kaln right now.  Atraximos just stepped in between display cases and armor stands, watching Kaln sidelong and moving with no evidence of hurry.  In fact, it seemed almost as if he was pausing to admire his treasures more than hunting the interloper.

“Ahh…yes.  This, I believe.”  The dragon flipped open a case with one clawed hand and reached in to pick up the artifact contained.  It was…a whip, seemingly twice as long as Kaln was tall, made of well-oiled and tightly-braided red leather interwoven with filaments of gold and small spikes of obsidian.  An ineffective weapon, but as an implement of torture, one that would shred flesh with each strike.  He had passed up any number of beautiful and probably magical swords to choose that.

Kaln ducked behind a row of shoulder-high cases full of knives and daggers, watching the approaching dragon through the glass.  He hadn’t yet started running, sensing that as soon as he did, the chase would be on in earnest—and then it would be as good as over for him.  So long as he engaged Atraximos in maneuvers at a walking pace, the dragon would hopefully continue to toy with him.  Every extra second bought him another hope of coming up with some way out of this mess.

Why was he so unnaturally calm about this?  The brimming, inscrutable energy within himself filled him with vigor, but he was neither numb nor overly excited, emotionally.  He could tell that purely by the inappropriate admiration he couldn’t help feeling for the suddenly humanoid figure of the monster pursuing him.  His emotions were not being stifled, he just…knew that he could prevail, here.  It made no sense.

In this form, Atraximos was most certainly pretty enough to be worth staring at, a sight Kaln might have taken his time to enjoy under any other circumstances.

The general proportions of draconic to human features Kaln was familiar with, having seen depictions of the Empress in books, statues, and murals his entire life.  His forearms from the elbow down and legs below the knee were covered in scales, as was his serpentine tail; his fingers were tipped in permanent claws that looked like they would make it difficult to hold things (not that he seemed to have trouble with the whip), and for feet he had large digitigrade talons like a bird’s.  They added considerably to his height despite the rest of his proportions being basically humanlike in size, making the dragon loom head and shoulders taller than Kaln.  The same horns sprouted from his hairline, arching back over his skull, and of course he retained those crimson eyes with their vertically slitted pupils.  His long hair, though apparently human in texture, was a vivid crimson that didn’t look quite natural.

Everything else was human.  Unfairly so.

Kaln continued to backpedal, putting a rack of thread-of-gold tapestries between himself and the dragon he was trying not to look at below the collarbone, which Atraximos had inconsiderately made more challenging by wearing nothing but a kilt in this form.  He was pale, like the people of these northern countries, his aquiline features narrow, perfectly symmetrical and apparently sculpted of living marble, right down to his cruelly arrogant smirk.  Impeccably refined muscles slid fluidly under alabaster skin with every step, every taunting flick of that whip, and Kaln felt a moment of nostalgia for his brief experience of pure animal terror.  If only he could be sensibly afraid right now he probably wouldn’t be distracted by extremely inappropriate appreciation of the flawless physique now bearing down on him with murderous intent.

First Haktria, and now this asshole.  Why were the hottest people always monsters?

“Is that truly the fastest you can run, little thief?”  Atraximos flicked the whip off to one side, a seemingly offhanded gesture that nonetheless made it crack like thunder.  His voice was still a warm baritone; deprived of the thundering volume of a dragon’s massive lungs, it retained the velvety smooth texture of cultured delivery.

“I wouldn’t want to cut short our time together,” Kaln replied.  “Why, are you not enjoying yourself?”

The dragon laughed, flicking the whip again.  “Truly, your regard for yourself is without boundary.”

“This from a dragon,” Kaln muttered, retreating around an armor rack.

Not as quietly as he’d thought, apparently—or perhaps a dragon’s hearing was as impressive as a dragon’s everything else.  Atraximos paused mid-step, eyes narrowing to crimson slits.

“The petty injuries such as your kind are capable of inflicting I can brush off, with the certainty that your lot is to suffer unimaginably for your arrogance.  But insult from the likes of you I shall not countenance.”

Kaln could barely pay attention to the words, menacing as they were; something had begun to shift when the dragon opened his mouth, and rose all through his little speech.  That ineffable power surged up in him again, and now it almost seemed to have…learned. The entire problem with his brief out-of-body experience had been his utter lack of control over the effect, but now it was as if the opposite was true.  Rather than a vast scope of perception and limitless power with no understanding of how it worked or how to use it, the force was suddenly melded perfectly with his instincts, but he couldn’t discern at all what it was doing.  Only, with absolute certainty, that it was reacting correctly to protect him, providing the assurance that it would get him out of this.

And so he wasn’t even surprised when Atraximos suddenly lashed out with the whip and his arm moved of its own accord to block the strike.

The cord struck his forearm with a force that should have broken it, instantly coiling around; obsidian spikes, sharper than the finest knives, dug viciously into his flesh from every angle.  Kaln’s sleeve was instantly shredded…and that was all.  It filled him to bursting, glowed vibrantly from his arm where he had caught the whip—not physically, or visibly, but with a new sense he’d not possessed minutes ago he could perceive the subtle energy blazing against the ancient enchanted weapon…and especially the dragon’s own power.

Atraximos narrowed his eyes and yanked.  Kaln braced his feet, pulling back.

He was caught in a tug of war.  With a dragon.

And it was a draw.

Only his instinctive awareness that showing weakness here could be a lethal mistake impelled him to keep his expression rigidly controlled, while inwardly he reeled, flailing about for an explanation.

The Entity.  It had told him, in as many words, that if he came in here and followed its instructions fully and precisely…then on the way out, if he needed to, he would absolutely be able to slay a dragon.  For all that the wretched being had stubbornly refused to tell him its true plans or desires…it had never actually lied to him.

“At last, a hint that you may provide some fleeting sport,” Atraximos said, but with a notable decrease in his offhanded jocularity.  He jerked the whip again, inadvertently providing Kaln another insight into how this worked: the power in him flared in response to the dragon’s action—not, he intuited, to the pull of muscle exactly, but to Atraximos’s intent, to the very fact of him taking action against Kaln.  “Have a care, little thief—this artifact is the crowning treasure of the Matzanatl civilization, now twenty-five centuries extinct.  Its worth is greater than the entirety of whatever muddy province spat you out.”

Holding his gaze, Kaln twisted his wrist, grabbing the whip.  Razor-edged obsidian barbs dug fruitlessly into his palm as he used the increased leverage to pull back, increasing the tension on the weapon.

“Well, we must be respectful of history, mustn’t we?  For the record, I’m not the one going around swinging the priceless artifacts at people.”

“Critical of my methods, are you?” Atraximos said softly.

He shrugged.  “I’m just saying.  You’ve got claws.”

The dragon stared at him in silence, down the length of brutal whip connecting them.  Kaln stared fearlessly back, entirely confused by the fact of his own fearlessness, but for the moment, just riding this wave to wherever it would wash him up.

Abruptly, Atraximos released the handle of the whip, causing Kaln to stumbled backward as the force against him was released.  It was only for a moment, half a second before he caught his balance again, but that was enough.

Just as fast, despite the space and the obstructions between them, he was there.  Standing calm and proud within arm’s reach of Kaln.

“So I have,” the dragon agreed, baring his fangs in a smug grin, and slashed those claws right across Kaln’s face.

The claws alone should have shredded him like paper.  The force behind them was enough to fling him bodily across the chamber, reduce him to a splattered wreck against the impervious Timestone wall.  Instead, Kaln staggered again, his face jerking to the side as if from the effect of an open-handed slap.

Atraximos blinked at him once in confusion, clawed hand still upraised.

Kaln slapped him right back.

He felt that inscrutable power welling up again—resonating with the dragon’s own magic, countering it.  Changing the rules.  His blow, which should have been as ineffectual as if against a marble statue, made Atraximos the Dread jerk back and to the side in a mirror of Kaln’s own posture.

He was having a slapfight with a dragon.  Amazing how, even though this adventure had proved less deadly than he’d originally believed, it hadn’t gotten any less stupid.

Atraximos raised his claws to touch his sculpted cheek—his expression not of pain or even annoyance, but sheer wonder.  Only for a second, though; perhaps prompted by Kaln taking a series of rapid steps backward from him, those slitted crimson eyes fixed again upon his guest, narrowing in focus.

“I have changed my mind, little thief,” he declared, pacing after Kaln’s retreat with measured steps, talons clacking upon the floor with each footfall.  “Be proud: you have proved yourself minimally interesting, which exceeds the highest aspirations of the vast hordes of your ilk.  I shall indeed take the time to unravel every mystery you present, and then to acquaint you with every nuance I know of suffering, ere I grant you the reprieve of oblivion.”

Kaln uncoiled the whip from his arm as he retreated.  Its murderously sharp teeth continued to have no effect upon his skin even as they reduced his threadbare sleeve to just threads.  Mindful of the artifact’s great venerability, he set it carefully atop a glass display case as he passed rather than tossing it to the floor.

“As tempting as that is, I have to decline.  There are people I actually need to punish.  You are just in my way.”

Atraximos narrowed his eyes in the first expression of open anger Kaln had seen on his exquisite face.

“And with that, little thief, you overstep once too often.”

The languid pace of his advance shifted into a rapid charge; he opened his jaws as he came, baring fangs and revealing the glow of incipient fire behind his teeth, claws outstretched in a lunge for Kaln’s throat.  The dragon was done playing.

And so was the enigmatic power that countered him.  This time Kaln didn’t even retaliate with his hands—he didn’t really have time, given the swiftness of Atraximos’s strike.  He felt the pressure, the glow, and with nothing but animal instinct to guide him as a dragon was lunching at his face, he lashed out with it.  They didn’t even connect, but Atraximos was flung bodily away, crashing against a row of armor stands and knocking them over.

The growl of sheer outrage that rose from the ensuing tangle of limbs, scales, and ancient metal was far too deep to emerge from a human throat.

Kaln whirled and had only barely started to dash for the exit before the magic rose again, and suddenly he was across the room.  He stumbled from the surprise of finding himself abruptly standing in the great arched entryway, but recovered quickly.  With his next step it happened again, and he was suddenly at the end of the hall, opening back onto the bone-strewn main chamber.

A third flicker of teleportation brought him to the lip of the stairs, where he got his first unobstructed view of the chamber before him and skidded to a halt.

There were now six dragons present, and they were all wide awake.  Upright and staring at him.

“Well, well,” rumbled the larger of the two green dragons, baring her full complement of forearm-sized teeth in a murderous smile, “just as I thought.”

Kaln was spared any further draconic commentary by the arrival of Atraximos, who burst out of the opening directly behind him in his full-sized form, snarling and spitting outraged little puffs of flame.

“No closer!” the crimson dragon bellowed, his powerful voice reverberating almost painfully off the walls.  “The little pest is mine!”

“Husband, wait,” said one of the larger females, who had pure white scales and pale blue horns.  She had turned her head toward Kaln and was studying him intensely through narrowed eyes.  “This creature is not—”

Atraximos rounded on her, extending his neck fully and letting out an animal roar of sheer savagery.

The white dragon sneered and turned away, lifting her nose.  “On your head be it, then.”

He turned his full, undivided attention on Kaln, for whom this was incongruously a relief: it resolved the dilemma of which terrifying threat to have at his back.  With the other six dragons ordered out of the fight by the alpha male, he could risk taking his eyes off them.

His ongoing lack of fear was no less eerie, but he embraced it now, staring up at the beast preparing to annihilate him.  In part, now, he had some logical assurance that the unknown power he now held would work; he’d seen it do so.  More than that, though, was till the unconscious certainty.  Whatever was happening to him, it was deeply integrated with the core of his being.  It knew, just as the Entity had promised, that he was a match for a dragon, even if Kaln yet had no idea why or how.

Atraximos extended his neck, jaws opened fully, and a blast of incandescent flame engulfed Kaln—as did a blazing glow from within.  He stood there in the dual inferno, for the moment just experiencing both.  Dragonfire was pure magic, he could see that now that it was met and matched by the power inside himself.  Recalling what he could of his experience within the Timegate, the sensation of ascension, of dissolution, he suddenly felt he’d gained a greater understanding of this mysterious well of energy.  Now, suddenly he could see it, feel it, comprehend what it was doing.  It resonated with the inherent magic of the dragon—not only Atraximos, but with the other six now watching him from behind.  There was something harmonious in it; not dragon magic, but dragon adjacent, like two notes in the same chord.

And now he understood, at least a little better, how to wield it.  Remembering the entity which had saved him, and then the instinctive response he’d used back in the treasure chamber, he reached out with his mind and pushed.

The flames of Atraximos the Dread were snuffed out.

Dead quiet hung in the chamber, even breath stilled to leave only the distant gurgle of water and omnipresent ticking of Timekeeper machines.  Kaln stood unscathed under the stares of seven shocked dragons, as untouched as the impermeable Timestone of the floor itself, while to either side of him a swath of strewn bones had been reduced to ash.  Not even his clothes were singed.

“What are you?” Atraximos demanded, showing open frustration now.

“I’m a scribe,” he said.  “A good scribe, thank you very much.”

Kaln reached out with one hand, and with his mind.  Then he closed his fist, and exerted his will.

His power sang, resonating with that of Atraximos—and while the power was something Kaln was using, magic was what the dragon was.  They roared in harmony, and again he pushed.

Atraximos growled, claws flexing against the indestructible floor as he was held bodily in place by nothing but the will of a scribe.  Kaln could feel him struggling—physically, and with the vast arsenal of spells he knew.  Multiple kinds of magic added their resonances to the silent song connecting the two of them, but they all stemmed from the dragon’s essence, an essence that was now under Kaln’s control.

It was heady, having the life, the existence of such a being, in his grasp.  In many other circumstances, the gravity of it would likely have made him question himself, stayed his hand.  But this was Atraximos the Dread, a murderer countless times over.  Slaughterer of kingdoms, destroyer of a once-great civilization.  A monster of legend, for whom no fate was too cruel.

Kaln pushed—in the opposite direction from what he’d been shown by the helpful goddess who had brushed his mind.  Atraximos expanded—not physically, not yet, but his essence.  Growing wider, more diffuse.

The dread dragon whined, struggling impotently against the grasp of the little human.  The light which gleamed across his glossy scales intensified, as if he were lit from within.

Kaln knew what it was like to lose himself, to disperse utterly.  He had come right up to the edge of it.  He remembered that sensation, projected it outward, then gathered his will and pushed hard.

The monster of the Evervales vanished into a drifting cloud of glittering powder on the air, and then even that faded.  That was the end of Atraximos the Dread: no daring heroics, no violent struggle, not even a sacred sword.  He was simply snuffed out, wiped from existence like so much dust.

Kaln turned around and raised his chin, staring fearlessly at six dragons.

“Anyone else?”