Or is there another way?
“I can’t kill all these people!” You cried out. Your tail flicked the oncoming attackers away, one by one, but your limbs were constantly getting heavier. Even your eyes struggled to stay entirely open as the wizards continued to mutter to one another, upholding the invisible chains that weighed your entire form down.
“How am I going to get out of here?” you thought to yourself, feeling the jabs of the swords against the pads of your armored chest. The men, well versed in your kind from circulating rumors of your presence, jabbed directly where the plates met where the tips of their swords had the greatest chance of escaping through the protection and striking at the bare flesh beneath.
They quickly piled onto you. Swords swung to your neck, spears poked your sides. The armor of your plates blunted many, but not all. The tips had begun to break through the little spaces of your scales, only visible when the enemy was so trapped that the attackers could walk up to its very sides. Your jaws struggled to open, thinking perhaps a little fire would scare them off.
“She’s down! Bring the rest!”
“Let’s finish her!”
“Rid the land of this beast!”
Their calls rippled along the insides of the cave. Your head echoed, but the sight of more men flooding into the cave quickly became a greater concern. One man, overzealous and eager to conquer such a mythical beast, threw himself down from above the cave’s opening. His feet guided him, shooting into the cave and directly into the nestled rocks where the egg sat.
Crrracckk!
“Noooo!” You heard the sound of the precious, creamed walls of the egg break. You saw the sudden spurt of its filling jolt up around the man’s head as he fell into the nest. Shouts of confusion and excitement rippled through the men.
A sudden fire shooting through your body, your head raised up with a crazy, thrashing motion towards the egg to see the top had been crushed in, leaving you to look down into a soupy mess of the egg’s nourishing film where, within, the frail form of the growing dragon lay still. Dead.
“You killed my child!”
Your jaws flew open, flames sputtering out madly from your mouth. Lava seemed to fly off from your teeth instead of drool, so much anger fell into the blast. The men in front of you didn’t jump, didn’t flinch. They didn’t have time. The flames roasted them, right there. After a few seconds, their forms in all black ash blinked back at you, then they crumbled to the ground in small, stacked piles of charred remains.
You just collapsed onto the broken shards of your egg. The sight of its lifeless, exposed form filled your mind even as both eyes sunk closed.
A gust of wind blew down the mountain’s side, sending the men’s ashes down onto the village beneath, coating everything in a fitting, mourning black as you remained, lifeless and still as the child in the egg.
Written by Picklesauce69 on 23 December 2015
The end (for now)