The Dragonslayer (title is a w.i.p.)

Chapter 12

"Go to each corner of the continent; the other 7 wanderers will be there; each can give you a crystal ball."

Another leg is gone.

"I'm not going to run around while you recover. You are going to get me these crystal balls. I don't care how. Get me this blast."Brownie coughed up blood. "Oh, you think you get the privilege of death? No."

Brownie's final leg was obliterated. The defeated creature lay on the floor. Limbless. Just a body, a neck, and a head. Armin stood on Brownie's head, pushing it into the ground.

"Go on then, use your teleportation, and get me that blast!"

Brownie disappeared. Armin stood in the room, his lightning calming down.

After a short wait, Brownie reappeared with eight crystal balls floating above his head. They ranged in colours; some flowed through different shades of scarlet; others had swirling blues; some had indigo spirals; all kinds of colours and patterns, none of them static, all ever-changing, all circling above Brownie's head.

"When we made the weapons of legend, like the one you hold in your hand, we made a prototype for if something bad happened, and that was a fragrancy that would call all the dragons together and therefore be an unstoppable force; however, since you killed Ultima-Devi, the dragons no longer have powers, meaning you could, theoretically, survive them."

"What do the crystal balls have to do with this?"

"By smashing them open over a mixture of a few other things, the liquid created will make a fragrance that can attract all dragons, regardless of anything. I assume you don't need me to get you dreadroot, mandrake, and an ozark's horn."

⚔

In Armin's hands lay the solution, his life's work; no longer would all of these meaningless deaths have to happen. Eight crystal orbs with dynamic, magical substances inside. They lay on the floor in a circle. He poured the crushed ingredients into the middle, and they started moving towards the pile of powders in the middle. Armin stepped back, the balls smashed open, and their insides mixed with the powders; it became one substance that spiralled up into the air. As the substances danced in the air, Armin became aware of a horrible scent. It was happening now. He looked around at the sky; it was empty, but as he looked around the horizon, he saw gigantic, grey lizards flying towards him. Very quickly, the sky filled with these dragons. Armin stared up at the hundreds of dragons above him. He raised his sword above his head and concentrated. He urged all of his will and his might into his sword and then released it. The night sky was filled with an enormous lightning bolt; every time it hit and killed a dragon, it went through to nearby ones. A spider's web of electricity lit up the sky, and terrifying roars and blood-curdling screams filled the chill air. Dead dragons fell from the sky, and hundreds of corpses surrounded Armin. But then the lightning stopped, and the stream of dragons didn't. They started to dive down at Armin; he sliced the head off of one and leaped from the neck-stub onto another, stabbing it through the heart; then he flipped onto another's back, again and again, jumping from dragon to dragon until he was high in the sky; he shot at ones far from him; they all swarmed around him; he leaped up and decapitated three with one slash, then hopped to another and killed it. He continued for what felt like forever. There were wyrms, wyverns, and coatyls, as well as feydragons, amphipteres, and normal dragons. He sliced and stabbed everything, killing hundreds. Eventually, there were none left in the sky. He landed on the floor and ran at the drakes. As the moon reached the centre of the night sky, every dragon that had come to him was dead, and the scent had run out. But that wasn't them all. There were still dragons left out there. Whelps that couldn't get there, eggs that hadn't hatched. They all had to die.

By now, Armin had no sense of time; he had no idea whether it was sunrise or sunset; all he observed in his world were dragons. He saw a whelp. It was grey with two rounded horns; it was a wyvern with fairly feeble wings; it was probably around seven months old, practically a new-born dragon. It was eating a rat from under a rock. It was despicable how it was already killing an innocent creature. Armin stepped towards the whelp. He stares at it, and it stares back; its eyes plead innocence. Armin knows better than to let it. It isn't innocent; it killed that rat, and many more, of course. Eating an innocent animal is evil. Not that Armin was vegetarian, but those were raised to be killed. Farmers must kill a lot. Should he kill farmers? No, they're humans; these animals are wild beasts. They kill to live; Armin kills for things to not be killed; he is what will make the utopia, but he can only do that if he kills all the dragons. But why stop at dragons? There are lots of things that kill. Kill lots of things. That's what he started wanting to do, wasn't it? Kill the things that kill the most. Dragons kill a lot; there aren't many left; he needs to kill them all. Then, there are hundreds of animals that kill loads; he would kill them all; he would kill so much. He would kill more than anything else would kill, so he should kill himself? No, that's ridiculous; then who would kill the dragons? Armin shakes his head and continues with his mission. He raised his sword, and in one smooth motion, he stabbed the monster through the heart. The little whelp let out a small squeal and then took a few steps forward and began to eat the corpse of Armin the Dragonslayer.